001call the meeting okay i'd like to call this meeting to order the mission of the freo township school district is to honor and support every learner every day on the journey to become curious and engaged members of a diverse global community a notice listing the time date and place of this meeting was posted on the public bulletin board of all freehold township schools on the entrance door to the administrative offices for the board of education on the district website at the office of the freehold township clerk published in the asbury park press on january 7th 2022 and sent to the news transcript on january 5th 2022. uh please join us for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it advanced
002one nation under god indivisible with the creator of this world here mrs lambert here we have a quorum okay i'd like a motion to approve the regular meeting minutes from june 28 2022 i'd like a motion to approve the minutes from the executive session meeting from june 28 2022 all in favor say aye aye and one abstention the only communication this evening is enrollment uh may of 2022 we had 3507 students in june of 22 we had 3501 not sure where those six kids went and june of 21 we were 3621 and that is it this evening okay um i'd like to thank everyone who came out this evening in the summer meeting as you know this evening we will be interviewing candidates for the open seat on the board of education that will come
003later in the meeting i just wanted to explain what the process is going to look like for those of you sitting here prior to the interview we'll take a short 10-minute recess so that we could set up the room in the proper format we will have all the questions we will take turns as to who will answer the question first sort of um you know the way they do some of the community events when there's the election run you'll each take a turn answering a particular question first we'll just go in no particular order and then after the interviews conclude there will be public participation so that we can hear from any members of the public would like to have say anything in support or against a particular candidate the board will hear all the
004public participation and then go into executive session to deliberate amongst each other when we come out of executive session we will vote in public so that's what that format is going to look like and we'll discuss that more later [Music] this week the district lost an employee robert mayer he was a staff member at barcelo school and this board of education would like to extend our utmost condolences to his family and at the same time would also like to express our appreciation for our central office administrators and our building level administrators and staff who all gathered together to support the staff at barcelo during this difficult time and with that said we will observe a moment of silence after dr beth howard says a few words in honor of mr mayor thank you miss lambert
005as miss lambert shared it was an unexpected um passing and mr mayor has uh always had kids at the forefront of everything that he did if you knew him um which many of you did whether you saw him in shoprite on your weekly uh treks to the supermarket or uh your kids um ran track or participated in track and field in some way he was an official mr mayor started uh subbing with us in 2007 and then he took on a ta position with us in 2009 this was a second career for rob and he just wanted to give back to the same [Music] to education that had educated his own children some of the staff members have had his children and we are going to have a place tomorrow at barcelo for uh barcelo
006staff to gather um so it's a really difficult time in the summer to experience a loss but at this time we'd like to have a moment of silence in honor of and thanking rob for all he has done for our kids thank you um administrative report i have not at this point in time we will have our first public participation session this is the first opportunity for public participation on agenda items only if you wish to address the board regarding any item on the agenda this evening please write your name and address on the sign in sheet state your name for the record uh statements are limited to three minutes and shouldn't be abusive obscene or defamatory in nature would anybody like to address the board on any of the items on the agenda this
007evening okay um seeing none we will move to personnel thank you yes i just assumed you were doing this i looked at you i apologize for that that should be nice she's not here yeah thank you okay um the personnel committee did meet this evening uh myself dr barthour and mrs lambert were present we reviewed items on the agenda and i will move them now number three retirement um mr astorini thank you for your 15 years of service here at freyo township schools number four resignations as listed number five recent offer of employment as listed number six new employment um done i don't know i can't see i'm not sure if any are any of our new staff here this evening i have the podium in my way i think a lot of them are
008tuning in virtually okay um so i'm gonna say should i read the names okay i'll try my best yeah i apologize uh elizabeth andrews stephanie burrow rebecca kara monica bonnie cove covert jenna cresulo elizabeth delles tiziana kimberly fredericks jessica ganchiodo elizabeth gian caspar gian casbro gina gross jennifer google guglieri jennifer klein sabrina larrissey sharon mamone colin monaghan paige montijo jessica ortez heather ostrow dominique perozzi alana steins deborah suler aiden sweeney jennifer trayna and heidi valentine welcome to the district uh number seven change of assignment salary adjustment as listed number eight change of assignment as listed number nine leaves of absence as listed number 10 uh rescind pto honorarium as listed number 11 honoraria as listed number 12 district mentors is listed number 13 2022 data coaches as listed number 14 summer curriculum committees as listed
009number 15 rescind esy employment as listed number 16 esy band staff as listed number 17 esy transportation staff is listed number 18 summer band volunteers as listed number 19 pbs summer committees is listed number 20 preschool screenings as listed number 21 summer evaluations is listed number 22 summer work is listed number 23 additional compensation wellness wednesday advisory is listed number 24 additional compensation transfer of assignment room as listed number 25 translator interpreter is listed number 26 district pbs coaches as listed number 27 certified substitutes as listed number 28 non-certified substitutes as listed does anybody have any questions regarding any of the items any questions no okay um we need a roll call a second in a roll call okay all right mrs cosolino yeah mr girl julo yes mrs o'sullivan yes mrs patton yes mrs
010van de tulley yes mr amarosa yes mrs lambert yes motion carries okay um curriculum and policy committee miss patton yesterday okay the curriculum and policy committee did meet this evening we discussed all items on the agenda um the first reading of policies for quorum hib which are all basically updates to the state um state directives uh care of school property and the related regulation for care of school property um congratulations to our erickson supervisor ms perella for being selected to serve on the new jersey department of education and jsos implementation or college and career ready committee she will provide input and feedback to help guide the state's decision-making process around the review and revision of college and career ready standards this is the second time this year that one of our administrators the first being
011miss mrs hohenshilt has been selected to serve on a state level and jsla committee congratulations to ms perella hello ms perella um i said as if we couldn't love you any more than we already do summer curriculum updates mrs montgomery reviewed with us the ela updates the highlight being fourth and fifth grade conventions of writing companion guide which will be aligned to our writing curriculum and a new eighth grade unit for content called contemporary fiction social studies math and comprehensive health and pa so if anybody has any questions please let us know august committee meeting date and time perfect i'll just keep reading it i'm sorry and i think that's it so okay i'd like to move the following items item 3 course reimbursement is listed item 4 first reading of policies and regulation as
012i mentioned earlier item 5 the abolishment of policies and regulations as listed item 6 home instruction item 7 student teacher practicum observation placement and item 8 affiliation agreement the superintendent recommends approval of the affiliation agreement between montclair state university department of communication sciences and disorders and freela township school district anybody have any questions ah keep forgetting anybody have any questions i'm seeing none can i have a second all in favor say aye aye motion carries okay finance facilities and transportation ms o'sullivan do you met as a committee can you put your mic on thank you here we go we met as a committee mr davida mr amoroso and myself um we discussed the year-end financials the business office is now working on an audit the aces electrical bid due to the volatility in the energy
013market the aces consortium did not award a bid or to a third-party vendor for electricity we will be supplied electricity by jcp l until the market warrants another bid typically we are paying less for the commodity that what jc jcp l offers the fire alarm bid we re-bid for the fire alarm testing and repair bid but no one submitted a bid we are working off of quotes for the testing portion of the work this needs to be done before school begins we will re-bid only on the repair work and then we discuss the agenda items moving to number three bills and claims i reviewed the bills and claims this month oh for three million four hundred and twenty five thousand five hundred ninety five dollars and one cents debt service month that's why yeah that's
014a that's a big one uh travel and related expenses as listed traveling related expenses update as listed travel and related expenses rescind as listed transfers as listed transfer ratified as listed transfer revised as listed number 10 donations as listed disposals as listed out of district contracts as listed nursing services as listed consultant services ratified as listed maintenance reserve account as listed contact with the core bts incorporated as listed approve and change of use of educational space as listed breakfast and lunch prices revised as listed and that's it okay does anybody have any questions bob sure what happens if nobody bids what do we do if we needs the work done before your mic oh sorry for the fire alarm if what happens when we go out if nobody bids again and we need the work
015done before so there's two separate pieces to this the first is the alarms have to be tested prior to the start of the school and the fire marshal has to after their test has to come by and check them all out before so that piece we're able to get done on quotes okay and then what we need to do is as long as we're operating underneath a total expenditure with the company of forty four thousand dollars or in this cot this area forty four thousand i can get quotes up until that okay and we're going to allie's on vacation this week which comes back she's going to work on a time and material bid just for repair work to the fire alarm system um we reached that when we re did the bids we sent
016them back out to the two parties that bid the first time and i believe bobby reached out to them too and for whatever reason the other one bid and the guy who had the business for a while said oh i didn't see it so they're all very busy this year yeah it's whatever labor is tight so um but bobby over the weekend worked with the companies got quotes okay we have the po when they get tested and i said we have some wiggle room and we will put this video we're good we'll be good right now we're good to go okay and the only issue we have there are a number of state contracts or co-op bids for repair work but because of the type of system that we have we need to have providers
017that are licensed and certified in the type of system that we have here okay it's sort of yeah it's proprietary but you don't have any concerns with us not unless bobby tells me he can't get the guys in he already spoke to the company and said we'll be here saturday sunday we'll be here nights you tell me when you can come and we'll make the spaces available so thank you it's not where we want to be but but we'll get it done yep we'll get it done bob can we call people if we have to off of the state bid and see if they you know are able to deal with our system or bobby we looked prior to going at the bid the first time he reviewed all the state contracts and co-ops i
018could find nobody was certified in the edwards system which is what we have that's the it's just like our control system is jci and there's only two companies in the state that are licensed to reprogram it same thing here if they find a programming area you need someone who's been you know got the license you can come work on that piece of equipment and nobody else on the list has that not on the list now so we'll get through it i just want to make you guys aware in case something happens okay okay so then any other questions if you could just clarify that jc because don't we like the difference between jcp and l versus not having a so what happens is we've been a part of aces going back all the way to
019like 0.607 when i was assistant to ba and i believe school boards runs this consortium bid on our behalf um typically all the school districts get together now a lot of us do and we pull our purchasing power together and we get better prices on the commodities for natural gas and for electricity we do them separately because they're different marketplaces so we never buy from jc panel directly typically they cost more than our bid because what's happening out there in the real world with energy prices um they've received non-competitive bids back and so they declined the bids and they're gonna go with jc pin off for the time being and then once the marketplace is in a better spot to uh re-bid again they'll go put the bid back out our vendor won't change but
020no we always pay jc p l directly what would happen if there was a third party who was less expensive they would appear on the jcp l bill for the commodity portion and we would pay less than what jcp l was providing to the typical customer okay that's not happening now we'll get jcpennel's price which is less than what the rest of the marketplace was so i just want to mention that to the board it's very unusual if you look at the net when you review the bills you'll see there's two companies for natural gas there's new jersey natural gas and i think it's direct energy now correct energy supplies the commodity of the natural gas new jersey's natural gas just supplies the transmission of the commodity through their lines okay you know when school
021boards depends upon the marketplace okay yep so they'll they'll notify us typically they'll put a couple months before they'll come at us just to verify they have all of our existing meters for the bid and then they'll do that so but right now i just want to make sure this happened right after the last board meeting we were notified that the we weren't going to accept the bid okay okay okay any other questions can i have a second okay all in favor say aye aye aye motion carries okay um moving on to old business the only old business i have is our retreat we still need to set a date and um think about that um and uh the only uh other old business that's sort of ongoing business i don't know if any of
022you received i was on vacation last week but i was inundated with text messages with people's tax bills and pictures of their tax bill so if you haven't received any emails or texts with your fellow neighbors tax bills like i did you can also anticipate them uh the the people a lot of people's taxes went up by a significant amount it was not our school budget driving that it was the increase in property value driving that so i think there is a little bit of confusion because the reality is that the school's cost is a considerable amount of the tax bill so there there is some confusion there's a little bit of a disconnect i've had to talk some people off the ledge do mini budget lessons and whatnot so if anybody receives any texts
023or emails and feel the need to talk about it or send people bob's way normally king bob we could talk about it at the budget meeting i always say i can't tell you the tax rate's going to be because i don't know the final assessed value but it's going to be between this range right and we knew that the rate itself would decrease but we knew that the assessed value had the township have increased significantly right or the overall assessed value of every home that led up led to an increase in taxes for people so i just wanted to put that out there in case anybody else michelle are they still doing the monmouth county plan where they like just reassess a third of houses randomly every year so you could have gotten a reassessment
024last year and a reassessment yes i think that was me i got reassessed two years in a row in 2020 and 2021 so i my taxes actually did not go up considerably because i really was at where you know but the the to the development actually right behind me i guess they had not been reassessed in a couple years so like one person in particular their taxes were up fifteen hundred dollars that's a lot of money um so i understand that people you know were really upset about it i got it but there was a lot of misinformation out there as to why it occurred so i just wanted to give you all the heads up so um at this point we are going to take a 10 to 15 minute recess so that the
025room could be set up for the board interview candidates and we can begin our board uh interview for the candidates in about 10 to 15 minutes so you need to take a break now in preparation four pages okay so um like i mentioned earlier we have the interview questions we will allow each person to answer and you'll we're just going to go in the row that you're in so the first question renata will answer first then faith then mike then catherine okay so the first question is please tell us a little bit about your background and why you would like to serve on the board of education i am a retired certified public accountant and with over 40 years experience excuse me in preparation auditing and financial analysis and tax returns so i feel that
026that background gives me a step to help the school board with the audit reports and the financial statements when they're prepared for the budgets why i'm interested is because i love children i have four grown children and eight beautiful grandchildren two of the two of my boys are college grads two are blue collar workers and they're all happy and successful and i want that for children for the for all children i want them to be happy successful and i'd like to help them do that so uh and the third reason is because it's the second reason i'm sorry i just have i just have a uh caring for children and i want to be able to help them leave it okay thank you faith um i'm new to this area i just recently moved out
027here uh i moved here before the start of the pandemic in 2019 and then i have um my daughter who's actually in the school district so i always had an interesting device is that better so so i've always had an interest um my background in case management where i've dealt with uh family and children um you know so especially with my daughter being in the school district is what really gave me the unction to want to join the board and you know my care for children is what did that i'm originally from long branch new jersey so i've lived out there for years and then we just made three years out here in freehold okay thank you thank you mike yeah thank you i'm mike matthews um so i've been a resident of the town
028for well over a decade i'm a public educator i have certifications in both mathematics and in psychology i have been in my capacity i've also written and been part of numerous curriculum committees so i'm well versed in the process of writing curriculum i have six kids five of whom are in the k-8 i have three in elementary school actually i had three elementary school one's moving up um so i'll have uh actually two in elementary school then two at middle school and then another one two of mine are now in high school which is a little weird but you know we're getting we're getting i'm trying to wrap my head around here but we're getting there um so i've also have in the past i had served on the board for three years and i
029feel that um given the position and the time frame in which his position is going to exist that the experience that i bring having had that would be beneficial to the board because i'm i am well versed in how things run and i feel that i am capable of working well with it with everybody on the board thank you okay hello my name is katie saluccio i'm originally from a suburb of chicago i moved out to new jersey when i received an academic scholarship to st peter's university in jersey city while completing my undergrad in international business and trade i started working at u.s customs in 1999 as an inspector in the port of newark after i decided to stay with customs which actually turned into u.s customs and border protection after the serious events
030of september 11 2001 um i also then earned my mba in international business and trade in 2007. so i've been a federal government official since for about 23 years now i'm currently a manager for a partnership program in customs which deals with the trade and it's focused on anti-terrorism and security i've conducted conducted hundreds of security validations of companies around the world from ports to corporate buildings to warehouses you name it small big multinational corporations with top level ceos um i focus on everything during a security meeting pertaining to how you hire your staff how do you keep your cyber security safe and protected from outside harm how do you secure your ocean containers your air containers prior to that leaving to come into the united states also how do you go about contracting to
031do business with outside companies when you are trusting them to do the right thing with that i've helped develop curriculum for our current supply chain specialist that we have it's currently in the federal law enforcement training center in south carolina i'm also currently developing training for foreign customs administrations around the world to do exactly what we're doing in the us in their country i know how to de-escalate problems that employees might be having or any problems that we have with the trade almost all of our employees are unionized so i follow the collective bargaining agreement the cba also my program is funded by the senate so budgetary expectations need to be met we have to make sure there's no waste or abuse of funds and make sure that everything's fiscally responsible because we're dealing with
032millions of dollars here in tribal money and in salaries i'm very good with a detail attention to everything research i can think of solutions for any type of problem my experience will greatly help the board of education the reason why i wanted to run here today for the board of education was because i do have skin in the game i have two young children that go to lord donovan one is going to be um going to first grade and the other one is going to be going into third they're actually here with me tonight my whole family i want to make sure that i can give my kids the best education possible in the past couple years the scores weren't really where they should be they faulted a little bit i want to make sure
033that we focus on subjects that are important for the future reading writing and math i don't want to focus on new topics that are just thrown into the curriculum i want to improve for everyone transparency between the board of education with the parents and the community i want to ensure that the parental rights are being respected i value education actually my mother was on the board of education when i was growing up and she was the president on the board so i know what it takes to be a board member and i feel i possess all these skills i also want to make sure the safety and security of the students and staff is improved i want to use my knowledge skills and expertise to help our town thank you thank you um the next
034question faith you will answer first then michael catherine back to renata the question is what do you see as the key issues facing public education in new jersey one of the key issues that i see is definitely security on the safety of the kids and security while they're you know being instructed um for like kids and parents shouldn't have to worry about the safety of their children while in school that should never have to be no parent should have to worry and no kid should have to worry so i know that's one of the bigger things that um everywhere that's one of the big talks everywhere um and i feel there definitely needs to be some adjustments and things need to be taken a little bit more serious because you just never know in this
035day and age that we're in now um that along with um i know a big thing with covert like i said i moved here at the beginning beginning of covert so seeing that whole adjustment with my daughter and all the kids having to be homeschooled and you know learning virtually and even for myself because i'm pursuing my law degree half it was a bit of a struggle in the beginning not just for the kids but for the teachers too and i feel like some people didn't understand from a teacher's standpoint from the educator standpoint they everyone was doing the best that they could at that time to make do with what the situation was that we were handling um i do feel that it was handled to the best of their ability being that it
036was something new to everyone um there's probably some things that could have been done a little bit differently maybe but overall i was happy with how it was handled for the again concerning the safety of the children the educators the teachers and keeping everyone safe to the best of their ability thank you michael um so one of the main issues currently um we have to deal with funding so um through the state and you know how we apply that money and that is always an issue right and that's something that the board has to deal with and decide you know how to allocate that money uh what line items need need um exposure at that point and need um our kind of guidance um so that's that's always something that's important is is the funding
037and making sure that we're on top of the state and that we're getting our fair share of course curriculum uh has been an issue we do know that um i will say that the having three two kids having completed the k-8 recently one one of mine is going into junior year and one of them's going into eighth grade year uh gum sorry going into freshman year just finished eighth grade um i will say that our programs our core programs our math our english are top notch they are prepared when they go into high school i have my daughter is going to go into algebra 2. she is well prepared she loved her teachers she feels you know i can speak for her because i've spoken with her many times that um she loved her experience
038here and all my kids love their experience here so when we talk about curriculum we do have to recognize that what we're doing already is fantastic and we just need to keep that going there are other things that the state is requiring of us and it's our job as a town and your job as a board to make sure that it's being implemented in a way that makes sense for the people of our town and that's obviously an issue and from what i can see it's being handled well we had a curriculum roundtable which i went to one of them and i thought that was very very well run everybody there we had contrasting opinions which is the way it should be but everybody there i thought spoke eloquently regardless of what side they were
039on i thought it was productive and i think these are the types of things that the board should continue with because it did impact i feel the people that were there i felt people learned and really that's the goal right the goal of the board is to obviously run the district but also to educate and if we continue where we're going with that i think we're in good hands and we just need to continue with that so thank you thank you catherine yes so um i too think curriculum is very important in new jersey with the state standards that were just that came out a few years ago during the last couple roundtables that took place one virtually and one in person it was discussed with community members and parents alike the vast majority of
040those people did not want the health and pe standards in the curriculum most felt that it was not age appropriate and it is not the job of the teachers to discuss the sensitive material with such as this that's been proposed the fact is the department of education is not in charge of approving or reviewing the school district's curriculum as it relates to health and pe items in state standards which are considered not age appropriate do not need to be included in the curriculum if that's decided by the board by the parents by the staff and by the teachers the fact is this does not affect the funding if i got to have a vote i would vote against it definitely believe that funding is definitely an issue it always has to be looked at with
041an unbiased eye i think that's very important if there are things that maybe need to be tweaked or maybe we need to look at contracting out with different people may be doing some risk mitigation i know that busing was an issue that goes into staffing that goes into funding it's all interconnected that that really took a toll for everyone that's going to be coming up in september it's affecting the teachers the staff and the parents since everything is pushed back especially with laura donovan where our kids go nine o'clock start time it's affecting everybody's life i feel that if i was on the board i'd be there to research to look at different contracts that are out there not to only not to just go to the lowest bidder because oftentimes the lowest bidder is
042not going to give you the best results and we see this time and time again with security in factories and companies they go with the lowest bidder and what happens the security guards they're not doing their job who's auditing those people so i believe i bring a lot to the table when it comes to that protecting our kids very important safety and security looking at all options here how much is it going to cost to have an outside company do it how much will it cost to have the police in town do it um additional training for staff and teachers protecting parental rights and some of that language it shows that parental rights aren't there at all and parents are kept out of the loop in a lot of different scenarios i feel that is
043a very very big issue and i am unhappy about it also the covet situation so you know it was a terrible situation the pandemic but let me tell you we are no longer in a state of emergency we are not in a state of emergency this is a lot different from the beginning when nobody knew anything that was going on the covid data was not properly analyzed in regards to oh when are we going to send our kids back to school how long will it take for them to take their masks off when can we stop remote learning i already think that um the schools in new jersey are prepping for a new pandemic or a heightened number of cases on something that as of right now is more like a cold or a flu
044so thank you okay thank you third question we'll start with you michael literally oh i'm sorry it is the key issues in my mind my are the recovery of the core academics by the students that were lost during the covert uh pandemic lockdowns and i feel that we are in a slower position than we were originally and we can make that up with extra help and and efforts also more important is also the curriculum parental knowledge and consent needs to be had before uh health and academic issues are implemented the parents are the ultimate caregivers of the children and they should be addressed and confronted also return to the basics no none of the extra material that's being proposed in the 2020 learning standards and the health section at least the the reading the writing
045and the arithmetic are basics schools should be using their their authority as uh to teach children how to think not as um to teach them what to think that's all thank you okay now fairly to you michael question number three what do you feel are the greatest strengths and the biggest challenges in the freehold township school system so in terms of the greatest strength you know overall i feel we have fantastic teachers um i think the job that the schools do in hiring the right personnel for the positions um that's really the core of any good school is the staff in the school and of course the administration supporting that staff um and i think that's somewhere where we shine and i think that's a big reason why people move to this town right they
046come here because they know that this town has a great education system that's why i moved here so i think that's our biggest strength um and you said in terms of challenges to the district um so challenges the district i mean we've we've touched on some of these things already of course the postcode learning app that's real it is real for every district in the state this is not unique to us it's something that's going to take time as an educator i can tell you we did what we had to do in the time because we were dealing with we didn't we didn't have all the answers right so we worked in the best capacity that we could with the limited information we were given a lot of times and i'm sure you're all aware
047because i know from the high school we found out about initiatives from the governor after he tweeted it out they didn't tell us first so we were always playing catch up and it was difficult and you know and unless you're involved in it you don't necessarily understand that you know we there's an assumption that well the board has all the information and you don't because we didn't have it so it was difficult um but it's not unique to us and for sure given our capacity as a district there is no question in my mind that the covet gap the learning gap that we've experienced we're going to get them back right we're going to we're going to make up that that learning gap and and the kids will they're going to wind up being on
048the right path um it's it's just gonna take time and that's okay right that's okay because if everybody is dealing with the same thing everybody's at the same level right so like every student around the state is dealing with the same issues and every board around the state's dealing with the same issues but we're working on it and you know i feel like as long as the board and the parents are working together and understanding okay this is our goal that weakness will become a strength okay thank you um catherine so definitely uh we moved to freehold township because of the education that it was going to provide to our children and unfortunately coveted hit during that time when my son was going to kindergarten so this is all pretty much he that he knows
049the school's definitely better in new jersey than other parts of the country but we did fall behind and we shouldn't say oh it's okay you know new jersey is still really high with education we need to push on and we need to do better and we need to focus on those uh subjects that are important you know around the world kids all over the place are doing really well and it's a race out there and we just keep falling behind and we're worried about things that aren't important we should be focusing on these things that make our children stronger to go ahead we should be worried about the academics the academics went behind the mental illness of the children and what about the socialization that has done damage and it will take a long time
050to get that back but for sure that's in my forefront in my eyes right now the problems i think probably in freehold township maybe trying to get staffing for buses trying to get staff for instance substitutes there's a shortage i think throughout new jersey but when you think about who you're going to hire to teach our children the background checks aren't done right away there's a backlog on that all these things are detrimental to the safety and the security of our children as well and what about the busing and who's going to do this we need to have more help and we need to make sure that the help that we get is legitimate and that it's safe for everyone thank you granada i i feel that the overall the freehold township school is a
051strong and amicable place for children that we have a strong community center with the superintendent with the grammar schools they develop community outreach programs but on the downside the negative side is i believe like it was discussed before it's transportation we need a solid plan with the school buses we need to be competitive with the prices and the um vaccinations i don't know if that's an issue anymore but buses should be we should approach all options not just follow you know past pla plans that were that didn't work in the past and safety and security safety is is being an issue now more than before because it's never been so obvious has been in the past so we need to have a plan to address that issue thank you okay thank you hey um for
052me the strength which is why i moved to freehold township is the education that's what brought me to freehold township um thing especially seeing how they handled everything during the pandemic um like i said everyone was doing the best they could and i think they did an excellent job given the situation not knowing every all the information finding out information after the fact and being resilient and getting helping them get through that the best that they could um so i definitely think that's a huge strength i will say where we need to get stronger is the busing as was stated in the security okay thank you nice fourth question we'll start with catherine as a board member you have to represent the interests of all the residents and students and make decisions that are best
053for the district as a whole even when they may not reflect your personal opinion bless you please provide an example of when you were in a similar situation and how you dealt with the decision that did not reflect your personal views thank you so um definitely in the role that i have as a federal government official i constantly have to be unbiased no matter what administration is running who's my boss i've been with the federal government for 23 years and in that 23 years i have been under five different presidents bill clinton george bush barack obama um donald trump and joe biden now each of those people had different ideals use opinions and ran their government differently but i knew i had a job that i had to do no matter who was in charge
054and who was my boss so on a day to day it happens all the time and administrations change their thoughts and their views and i just push on what the agenda is that day and i'm able to go back and forth because that's the role that i have thank you granada my view would be to consider the people in the community and how their their general moral code would be and stay within the realm of like follow the rules that that that are given to the people very weak i don't know it was a tough question i guess okay okay thank you mike oh faith i'm sorry i gotta get my papers in order here hey all right um i think you have to definitely just know how to pivot um i've worked in different
055roles um i did government contracting for almost seven years i've done non-profit for years you have to just know how to pivot and um some sometimes it's difficult because there are certain situations and laws that are put in place and rules that are put in place that you know maybe the other side may not understand they don't understand and i and i get it but you just have to learn to pivot and adjust accordingly thank you yeah so um you know being able to work with people who may not necessarily agree with you is a really important uh skill i guess i guess i'd call it a skill um especially serving on the board because we do not all agree on everything as parents and i'm sure you don't all agree as board members and
056when i served we certainly did not all agree and there were times when i was definitely in the minority opinion and you know i didn't necessarily agree with the particular decision but once the decision is made you know you listen and you learn because if you're not willing to listen and learn why are you here um and at the end say well you know what this i don't necessarily think this may be the right way to go but let's do it you know you have to put your sometimes you have to put your own ego aside um as a personal thing it's it's kind of silly but i've been a coach in freehold soccer for probably a decade now and um there have been plenty of times where you know you have a team and
057we're doing really well and you have to make substitutions and you know you got to take out your star player and there are some coaches that will leave those kids in the whole time and that's because you know they want to win and some other kids don't get enough playing time that's not how i run i don't run my team's like that if you're if you're playing especially if you're in rec if you're playing you're part of the team and you're going to contribute just like everybody else and that doesn't always make you popular because i've heard from parents and it doesn't always make you popular but it's the right thing and um you know and it may be silly but that's kind of how i approach things right i i say what i believe
058but once a decision is made you support it wholeheartedly and and you do what's best for the kids um i will say one other thing um currently we don't have geometry in the middle school and that's something i feel is important it when i was serving it didn't happen for whatever reason um and while i didn't necessarily agree with the decision not to implement it i understood it for me as a you know as a personal matter my student my daughter would have taken it and she would have been she would have benefited from that but at the time it wasn't the right decision for the district so i had to put my personal opinion aside and do what was right for the majority of students in the district which at that time was not
059pushing forward with that geometry hopefully that is something that we're going to look into but at the time it wasn't the right move even though for me personally would have benefited myself thank you thank you what i think okay back to you renato what do you feel be your primary responsibility as a board member to speak for parents and to hear parents and to ex to hear their uh um okay say their concerns and relay those concerns to the board and try to address them as well as the academics of the children to make sure that the those values and education are maintained and recovered from the from the covet thank you faith i would definitely say um there's two parts to that for me for the parents for sure you know um but also
060you have to consider the interest of the children and you know children learn at different capacities and things like that so that also has to take into account with regards to being a board member um and you just have to weigh in and figure out things from there from the perspective of the parent i get it i have i have two children that went into the school district my son is grown now but now with having my daughter and things are totally different from when my son was in school versus her being in school she's 10 and he's 29. so i've seen a lot being a parent and i've heard a lot from you your children your children voice their opinion also like i teach my kids to voice i always ask them how their
061day is um you know what happened what they felt could have been done different and things like that so you have to weigh in on both sides thank you um so yeah for me the primary focus is always on the student right it's always on the child everything we do has to be with a lens for how is this going to affect the students that we've been essentially elected to represent they don't necessarily have the voice right um so it is our primary job to make sure that we are making the right decisions in the capacity that we feel is best for those students now at the same time you have to balance that with the fact that we can't do everything we want there is a limited budget you have to allocate dollars responsibly
062and it's a difficult decision sometimes sometimes there's things you want to do you can't for whatever reason it may be a money issue or whatever a staffing issue we talked about the buses several times and yeah you have to make it work right um i was affected by the bussing issue i have laura donna i'm in lord ahmad and i'll say i wasn't thrilled with the nine o'clock start but i also understand that this is the environment we live in right now there are not enough bus drivers and there's a limited amount of money that you can use to allocate towards that when you have other competing interests so obviously being the voice for the students but doing in a way that's responsible for the taxpayers ultimately and balancing those students it's not always easy
063um but that's that's what we're elected to do okay thank you catherine yes thank you um for sure i'd be speaking for my community for the parents for the students and for the teachers i want what's best for everyone for sure there's always conflict with funding but like i said what i'm going to do is use my analytical skills and my background to think outside of the box and come up with other solutions and resolutions i want to make sure that the parental rights are respected and i want to ensure the safety and security of everyone including the staff and the teachers and most importantly the the children right um so that's going to be my primary responsibility through the whole time that i would be on the board i'm going to use what i've
064done in the past to help us in this town in the future thank you next question we will um renata we we started with you last one right so we're going to go back to faith okay yeah what is your understanding of the relationship between the board and central administration honestly that's part of the reason what lies in my interest in this position because there's certain parts that i don't know that i want to understand more so honestly speaking i don't really know the connection or have the understanding of that there but that's something that i'm interested in learning so i can get kind of all the pieces together to see how it works okay thank you um so the board obviously works closely with central administration but there is also a hierarchy if you
065will so we have our committees and our committees will discuss pertinent issues within their within their realm finance curriculum and so on not every board member can communicate directly with the superintendent at all times because then the superintendent can't get anything done um we you know as a board you should be discussing things anything that's a concern you should be going through the vice president the president who would then reach out to the superintendent or to the particular party now if you're on a committee and you're reporting to another administrator on a committee then you should have direct contact with with that particular person um but the board's job is is to guide and support initiatives while also you know again keeping an eye on what's feasible and also being a voice for the students
066and the parents as well thank you catherine when i think of the board and the central administration the board is responsible to make sure that everything is on track you have laws or mandates you have to analyze it and think about what it means for our township the superintendent is the one in charge like mr matthews was saying there's a hierarchy here like a chain of command and military in federal government it's the same thing everyone's working for the ultimate goal is success i would say the board is not paid you do this out of your want to do something for the good of the town for the students for the teachers a superintendent or someone that's an administrator is getting paid so you're overseeing that there's fiscal responsibility and everything is working the way
067it should be thank you okay mike we'll start with you dr nada started okay that's right renata i'm sorry it's okay [Music] my view of the board is a group of independent people that basically can represent the the concerns of the the community and the parents and the children to work together towards a goal of of um meeting the needs of the children you have the superintendent but we're like like uh kathy said we're independent we're not paid so we're not paid so it's a volunteer that uh we would be working together to cooperate with this the board the the superintendent i'm sorry it's a team effort to work together and specializing in these different committees that you would be able to uh approach thank you okay okay thank you next question we'll start with
068mike can you identify an area that is in need of improvement in our schools or areas that the board needs to focus on more um well we've definitely i mean we've talked about the busing obviously i think we need to continue to look for solutions to that that has as minimal an impact on the community as possible i know you as a board have did communicate that these things were happening ahead of time so it wasn't like sprung on like a surprise but it's something i think we should continue to look at and continue to see if there's solutions that can maybe make that a little bit easier for everybody and i'm sorry can you repeat the question i just want to make sure i was answering it right can you identify an area that
069is in need of improvement in our schools or in areas that the board needs to focus on more yeah um so yeah obviously with the buses um yeah and something i think regardless of how good a board is transparency is always something that we should keep in mind and it should always be a goal to say you know how can we better communicate um there is no perfect communication amongst you know any group of people so there should always be in the back of our minds you know how can this communication improve i think the roundtable was a great way for example of improving communication and getting people to discuss things i thought that was really beneficial people learned things that they didn't necessarily learn they were interpreting the standards a little differently than they
070were actually written and they didn't realize that until we discussed it and so i think those kind of things are things that we should continue to strive to to hold in the districts i think they benefit everybody okay okay thank you so um definitely improvements on alternatives to busing to substitutes to getting additional staff backups all these things the research that i know how to do to find other things other other companies i know you have to go out and get quotes bids from companies i've dealt with that too transparency is something that i believe needs to be improved upon i do know the round table was a good way of expressing ourselves but i don't think that we have full knowledge of actually what's going on when we're at a board meeting if we
071are given an agenda and you're passing things let's say curriculum i'm not exactly sure what that was and everyone said yes to there were certain things that you said yay or nay to but i don't understand the full picture people in the audience do not understand it you have your curriculum committees you're not discussing anything that's going on with the community or with the parents we would have more visibility if you explained exactly what that was instead of just saying yes i'm passing this i agree with it i have no idea we just agreed on oh do you have any questions well everybody on the board has no questions because they understand what it means but the people in the audience don't understand anything and giving our three minute time frame is not enough time
072for me to go back and forth with anyone on the board to explain it to me when it should have been explained somewhere maybe prior to the meeting have more meetings with the community with the parents i think that there's a lot of other ways to resolve this i also believe that we should be looking at other research and opinions when it has to do with pandemics and illness and what does it mean for when someone gets sick with covid now people are prepping i notice the chairs are spread apart some people are wearing masks some people are not i believe all these things should be a right of if you want to wear the mask you should be allowed to wear the mask you shouldn't be told what you should be doing no one
073should tell you that you have to get a vaccine all these things are affecting one another the busting the staffing issues people don't want to get tested every week you still have to get tested every week for the teachers what about this the kids when they go back to school what's going to be going on there so all these things this is something that we need to focus on because i see it and an election year is coming up and always during election year what happens pandemics come out of the woodwork bird flu swine flu covid now there's monkey pox so yes i think that's something that we're always going to have to deal with and we need to have better protocols in place thank you renata i feel that uh the focus of the
074school board should be on the communication with parents and like kathy said being able to be clear and transparent with what is being what is happening in the community and back and forth not just speaking to the parents but having listening and hearing what the parents have in response what their concerns are and how they want the their children to be uh treated and handed it's not just uh it's not just school and you know in like like uh like we had in the in the older days we have to be flexible with situations that arise every day and science is more important today i'm not sure that we're here we're hearing all the truths about what's being said with the with the coven and the and the mandates thank you faith um i definitely
075agree that transparency um is definitely something that is key um with being transparent so that they can understand exactly what it is um feel like some things could be broken down into layman's terms so that they can understand exactly what it is because you know there's certain positions that i've had if i read it or said it to someone you wouldn't know what i'm talking about so i have to break it down in order for you to understand exactly what that means and as a parent um that's huge for me like i want to get the basics break it down to the basics so they can understand what's going on and then also there's the security and the safety and also the staffing i have a lot of friends of the teachers i know that's
076everywhere right now the staffing shortage so those would be my key things that should be focused on thank you okay our next question begins with kathryn there are times when the board members may not all agree on an issue and need to respectfully discuss the matter in public please give us an example of when you have been part of a group where not all of the members agreed on a decision and you had to respect respectfully discuss the matter so this happens often for me i always have to de-escalate an issue i was in a foreign validation meeting overseas it was in i won't get into all the details but anyway there was foreign customs administrators there that did what we did there are federal government employees in that country there was company representatives from
077the factory and there was company representatives that were from the importers so there's two different importers that were there that were using the same supplier i was asking a question about uh their hr policy and what did they do with hiring and what kind of background checks did they do and i'm asking this in front of everyone and the woman that was in charge of hr for that huge factory started to talk and tell me exactly what they were doing she did that job the owner very big millionaire billionaire something like that shut her up and stopped her from talking i said no no don't say it like this don't say it like this because it looked embarrassing for him that he knew what she was doing was not really following the protocol it was
078an embarrassment for that woman that he told to be quiet it was very condescending it was terrible and i was in charge of running that whole meeting the u.s government side is in charge of that when we go overseas so i looked at him i looked at everyone can you please um stop talking that's not appropriate i would please ask you to leave right now she was upset and she was crying let's give her a moment and we can continue you're doing a great job so this type of thing happens all the time and i'm there to be as respectful as i can but knowing i am in charge and we need to move through this and someone else shouldn't be you know speaking over someone else and and not giving them their time and
079making them look like a fool so we continued with the meeting and he he joined the meeting again he was quiet for the rest of the meeting and everyone told me that i handled it appropriately so that is the biggest thing that still sticks out in my mind today thank you um we have two questions left we'll start with renata um wait oh reading no i have to right yeah yes we're still on you have to answer april sorry i'm sorry could you repeat the question please sure there are times when the board members may not all agree on an issue and need to respectfully discuss the matter in public please give us an example of when you have been part of a group where not all of the members agreed on a decision and
080you had to respectfully discuss the matter well when i was in a public accounting we were in order teams and so there would be differing opinions of people on how to handle a situation but we always uh we would we would we would keep a time for each other's give each other time to discuss it and review it and then just see how the how the senior management felt about it also thank you faith so um i've encountered quite a few times because of positions that i was in as far as case management and having to meet with different liaisons that help the organization that we were helping and um you know things like you said sometimes people don't see eye to eye on things and things could get some people a little bit more
081upset and talking loudly but what does that resolve like so it's just being respectful of everyone in their decisions and just because you don't agree don't mean you can't come to a common ground so you just have to come to a common ground and be respectful of everyone that is speaking regardless of whether you agree with this thing or not thank you um so um a recent thing that sticks out when um when kobe became a thing obviously and we had to shut down we had to figure this out on the fly and no school had ever been in this position before and in the position that i was in which is a teacher coach one of my responsibilities was figuring this out like how are we going to take a thousand teachers in this
082high school district and be able to deliver the education that these kids deserve um in a way that is you know as authentic as possible given the constraints that we're under and so over you know we did the best we could at the end of the year and then over the summer we had met with a lot of the administration team and i had piloted um different ways that we could actually use our technology um we we tested out different uh equipment to to you know to do virtual teaching tested out all these possibilities with we use google so we're a google district so google me and how can we implement that what can we do with the teachers and we have to put together information we sent out information to teachers and said okay
083here's how it did we did trainings but in the course of doing that and trying to figure this all out you can imagine given the stress that the schools were under at that point it wasn't always smooth sailing we'll say and um there were a lot of opinions on how things should be done and how we should be teaching virtually which we had never done before um and it took it took a lot of you know we were we butt heads there's no doubt about it but at the end of the day we were working towards a common goal so even if at some times it got even a little bit heated we would all take a step back i would take a step back and say listen why are we here right we're here
084because we want to do right by the kids let's keep our eyes on the prize and we did it and we got through it and we put together what we thought at the time was you know the best program we could given the constraints we were under um and like i said it was it was trying but um but you know we worked together as a team when we got through it thank you next question we will start with renata how would you handle a phone call from a resident or staff member asking to meet with you regarding concerns such as technology curriculum the budget or human resources well none of those are my expertise except well except for the budget but i wouldn't i would consult with the president or with the superintendent and
085ask for information first i would ask and for more information from the parent see what their concern was and then bring back concern to someone in the appropriate committee and see how they what their suggestions would be and then get back to the to the parent either in a meeting in person or over the phone with the appropriate people as as help and to discuss it and clarify issues that they had thank you okay um you know i would listen to their concerns and then let them know i would have to um i will come and speak with someone on the board to see how it goes with regards to how you handle that situation i've never had to been in that situation so i don't know the structure of how something like that should
086be handled so i want to make sure i'm not crossing any lines that i'm not supposed to cross and then go from there thank you um so yeah so after hearing obviously after listening um my first bit of advice would well my first question after hearing what the issue would be would be who have you already spoken with um because we want to make sure we talked about a hierarchy before we want to make sure that the appropriate parties are able to deal and hear the parental uh concern and or complaint and or issue whatever it is all right you know if it's something in middle school have you spoken with the teacher yet have you spoken with the assistant principal have you spoken with the principal um you know and and from there you
087know kind of guide them here's who you can speak to and if they've spoken to everybody already that everybody to speak with well then it becomes a board issue and then maybe we have to get involved in that um we certainly want to be aware of what the issues are so we can um you know know what's going on but at the same time we have to let the people whose job it is deal with these things to be able to deal with them we don't want to blindside people and and have you know side conversations with people and and people who are actually supposed to be working with parents don't even know that this is happening so our our main goal initially is to make sure that we're guiding them to talk to the
088right people before it gets escalated to the board level thank you catherine of course i would um i would have a meeting with the person that brought up the issues um i would ask the background history i would get all the details that's what i do all the time with my employees and with any outside companies that we deal with you have to get the whole story if there's a seizure at the border we don't just say hey you're no longer in this program we investigate we look to see what took place what happened what did they do who did they meet with and at that point i would take the concerns and i would write them all down do a big report and i would come back to the board and i would say
089this is what took place and if they had gone to all their avenues they already went to the teachers or the principals or the vice principals whoever's involved i'm not sure on the issue but maybe it's a higher issue it needs to be elevated and discussed at a board meeting thank you faith what do you think are the characteristics of a great board member and why we should select you as our next board member um i think the characteristics of someone that would be an excellent board member is someone that is able to um first of all feel like someone that cares for the community and the children the parents you know i feel like you have to have patience um i feel like you have to at times maybe um be stern um be
090able to be knowledgeable and learn what it is that you have to learn as far as how the board works and certain implementations that are put in or taken out and adjust accordingly i think that makes for a good board member someone that truly has the community the students and the teachers in mind those that are like the forefront of the school district and i feel i definitely possess those qualities there's some things that i would need to learn of course but i'm always open to learn and looking to learn new things but i definitely think i would be a good fit to be a board member thank you michael um so i think it's important to understand you're one of nine um that you have to be capable and willing to work as part
091of a team to understand that no one person is going to dominate discussions and make unilateral decisions among the board and that you have to be okay with that that you may be in the minority opinion and that you have to be okay with that you have to be willing to work with people and as we've just talked about this a little bit but we have to be willing to work with people whose opinions are different than yours but work with them in such a way that you you can be productive and you could get to the end goal which ultimately again is always is this the best decision for the students and for the community um given that i have been part of a board and part of this board um i've had three
092years on here so um i know i'm capable of doing that um i believe i have the respect of the people on this board and i believe that i have the respect of the people in this town i know many people um i've been involved in the community um in coaching for years i'm a high school teacher so while i didn't obviously teach the kids in the k-8 i know a lot of the families um just by virtue of having a lot of these students um and i think people know that i'm fair i'm reasonable i have my opinions but i'm willing to listen i don't argue for the sake of arguing um i try to educate myself i don't always assume that i'm correct and i'm willing to learn um and i'm willing to
093be part of something that is greater than me and what i want to do is contribute to that because there's a reason i live in this town there's a reason my kids go to these schools and i want to continue it i want to continue the excellence that is freehill township thank you catherine i too understand how people need to be able to work together i constantly am working together with the people that i work with the people that are directly reporting to me and outside groups of the trade and other government agencies i am constantly negotiating things all the time between employees and staff and other companies and trying to figure out resolutions i've had training on art of negotiation through the state department i know what's necessary in order to get the job
094done and it's always a group effort it's not just one person but if you have a great idea you need to bring it to the forefront if i have some information on different research capabilities to try to find resolutions to something i'm going to bring it forward i want it so that we have a clear picture i'm going to try to help everyone come up with an agreement on what we can do to make this town better like i said before when i first started speaking i have so many different qualities that is going to be able to help the board um you know a big part of it is having my children in the school district they're the most important thing to me in my life right but i am not going to be
095biased on anything i can look at it from perspective to see what's great for the for all not just select few i'm able to analyze the the research and the data i think that with everything it's necessary to analyze the information more than the surface level there's always something in a law a mandate that maybe not everybody understands and that's why i think education is important that's why i continued and i got an mba because i too agree that's important so of course i always have i'm willing to learn more i want to learn more i want to do right for the community for the staff for the teachers for the children i want to improve transparency i'm a great communicator whenever there's a fail it's always because the information was not relayed it didn't
096get out there's confusion i don't understand it that person didn't speak to me appropriately there's no respect there has to be mutual respect i value education it's very important to me since i was little all the way through my whole entire career with my with my kids i feel the same way we talk about it all the time safety and security is very important and i'm going to bring a lot to the table that i think that currently maybe we don't have i want to help this community as much as i can and i'm a bit i'm available for it i'm here i want to help i want to make a difference and i want to do what's right thank you renata i think the main characteristics of a good board member would be able
097to communicate and speak with other other board members be part of the team and work together for the benefit of the students and the community it's important that everyone understand and communicate those needs that are addressed by the parents knowledge i think of policies and protocol that's used in the board is important to have as a way of of expanding your information base critical thinking being able to analyze the situation and look beyond look past the the first issues is important for dissecting and and discussing the issues that that come up uh cooperation with different people and being able to to speak with them is important i feel that i can bring all this to the table because i've been in group situations in the auditing and in the uh preparation of financial statements in
098the groups and in uh in in in my public work thank you um and i'll pull the podium over okay [Music] i want to thank all four candidates for coming out this evening excellent process excellent answers uh we truly appreciate it and love seeing invested community members in our town which we all hold so dear and and for our students so at this point we are going to move on to public participation on on any matter including the interviews so if any member would like to address the board please write your name and address on the sign-in sheet state your name for the record and statements are limited to three minutes um salvators luccio 17 hampton drive freehold i'm not going to say who should be on the board but i'm going to put in
099a um an opinion on who should not be on the board um there's a member that has already been on the board and has been voted out so i don't think i think the town has spoken mr matthews has also um said he is able to work with people with a differing opinion well if you look at facebook when there's a differing opinion he does not i don't think he would want to work with you uh he turns into a a bit of a keyboard uh tough guy so that would be my input on who should be a member of the board thank you thank you would anybody else like to address the board i forgot to put your name down leaviera 31 pittinger avenue good evening everybody good evening i have one question for
100the people who are running for the board and um that i wish would have been asked um and then i have a question relating to a different agenda item so if i'm the last one i can i don't know how you want to handle that are you going to come back and take more public questions after you go vote or this is it this is it all right so i got to i'm going to have to ask your agenda question first okay my agenda question goes back to last uh month's meaning there were two items that were voted on and they had to do with competiting contracting for the 504 and iep program that is that you can answer some of those questions okay oh okay and then also for the district's intervention management program
101can you give me a little bit of an explanation of what that is are they managing the ieps but they're getting software behind it wait becky we have to give you a mic or else you can't yeah yeah thank you justin um no they're absolutely not managing the iep process that will continue to be managed by our our child study teams and our and our staff here in the district the competitive contracts were for the software programs that we use to house those so it's kind of like iep direct correct but we're not using iep directly we will continue to use iep direct for our um for our special education ieps we've moved away from that platform for 504s and for intervention plans we've moved to a different platform okay intervention meaning prior to the
102it used to be um correct it's it's it's the rti process correct so we we have uh moved to intervention manager which is a different platform that'll be managing those two um and so when when students information goes into that platform the company is able to see that information outside of just people in this district so we have a and diane can certainly speak to this we have a very stringent vetting process that um that we go through when we select software programs and you know from a technology perspective diane can speak to the vetting process it has to um meet multiple criteria so once we identify that it aligns with what we're looking for to meet our student and staff needs then we go through a two-pronged process we actually have a company we
103work with that works with us to make sure that student data is protected um it meets the standards of privacy um it's a it's kind of multi-layered they do a lot of the work for us and uh what's nice about i mean there there's a lot of times where we can't support the use of a particular platform or software and it's very upsetting i'm sure to teachers or parents who are familiar with it and like it but if it doesn't protect our students we won't use it i guess i'm just wondering why we're using it at all we haven't used that it must be something in the last couple of years that we've started using outside of iep direct so um more and more companies have come into the market and offer services and this
104company link it that we have opted to use offers a much more robust platform for housing interventions for students for for allowing staff to review student data to make decisions about interventions to have a homeschool portal for parents and teachers to share intervention supports for students it's it's just a much more robust platform from an intervention perspective it does not meet our needs from an iep perspective which is why we stayed with frontline for iep direct and so this is 30 something thousand dollars that we have to pay every year for this 589.15 how long does that last that's an annual contract so every year if we continue to use them and 16 200 for the intervention management and whatever we're benefiting from this program we're not able to do that on our own in
105the district no no no certainly not we're not how did we do it before these companies well enough because i as someone who's had students with ieps i'd like to say that the concern for me is not only how this gets around ferpa because i'm assuming that once you approve them they become consultants slash entities of the freehold township school district i can't speak to that they're housing the data they're not acting as consultants with us they are really helping us with the back end like usability of it and in the days that you know when i started teaching and we were keeping notebooks and binders and passing binders and yeah or when we got kids in sixth grade and say what do you mean they struggled with x y and z in fifth grade
106well i'm in the middle school how would i know that um there are a lot of gaps in the system when it's so it might i see i hear where you're going with this but at the end of the day if our goal is to truly help kids right and to make sure that interventions are working that they are not lifelong interventioners right right and that we're making data informed decisions about doing that i guess i guess for me and i don't want to come back and my first thing comes across as argumentative but the issue that i have is we're saying reviewing the data it's just hard for me to see 30 something thousand dollars a year we also pay how much to have another company review our policies for us and tell us
107whether they're in compliance with the state i see twenty thousand dollars in this agenda on data coaches which i guess has nothing to do with this it just seems a lot of money going out for other people to review now don't get me wrong 100 percent is my number one concern ferpa because this is the most vulnerable population's information going into sites that i don't care what they say about security is breachable and that information can be sold can be used i mean so it can't be these kids of determining is that they they you know part of the contract is we don't they do not fail we will not enter into contracts to companies that do that okay the second thing is that there's i and i ep as i'm sure you've heard this
108phrase often is individual not identical and if we're going to a company that's going to review against uh programs that are used by everyone else and even when i would sit in iep meetings with iep direct it became very frustrating when they're looking on the ipad saying i can't really find something for that in the drop down menu now we're going to this other system and using these other systems to give us the advice it's moving further and further away from what i feel is the individual plan for that student i just wanted to go on the record of saying that because it's it's very very important so this intervention manager is not designed to give us the strategies for kids the the teachers and the staff and the interventionists at the schools will continue
109to be the people who make instructional decisions about kids it's a platform for giving us a template for building those plans so are they i'm sorry i don't i don't need to interrupt i apologize are we what is this interventionist as opposed to the child study team i thought that's who the decision like what used to be our bsi teachers okay that's right but if your child has an iep and doesn't have a bsi teacher then who it's the child study team who's reviewing your progress monitoring and writing your goals yes none of that change your questions are about this intervention management tool okay which is not which is not specific to students who have ieps that's specific to students who are forced 504s or rti plants but in this where it says it says
110504 and iep it means that we're not using it now but the way it's written part of that and bob can speak to this is that because it's such a large sum of money we had to go out for rfps and and rfp'd all of these pro all of these tools there were lots of them that applied to determine which ones were going to best meet the needs of our our population in our community okay leah i'm gonna um stop you here because you are out of time okay i'm sorry so i can't just say the question that i would have wished i have to see if anybody else would like to address the board and then and then you can come back but everyone else needs a turn oh i appreciate it thank you
111okay thank you very much thank you and when everybody's done if if anybody wants a second turn they can come oh back one it's like double again thank you for interviewing me today and giving me the opportunity to voice my opinions and my background for the board um just to piggyback what she was talking about on the software the software company or whoever's whatever company what was the name of that company that was that you're doing the ieps with we used a company called iep direct frontline iep direct so they cannot sell that information to anybody else but that information can be stolen and these are the things that i want you to think about as well that company may be reputable and you think that do you know what kind of policies and procedures
112they have in place do they have a cyber security policy do they lock their computers do they change their passwords do they do off-site backups all these things go into the way anything can be compromised as you know so um not just the money what's going to do the job for you it's also how are they going to protect our information for our most vulnerable children with ieps but it's also for all the children and not just those with ieps and i don't know what kind of software for other programs there are right now and do you know what kind of security protocols they have in place because it's our information we're protecting our children your staff your employees as well and and when we went with uh private if i'm not mistaken i don't
113want to misspeak because we had vetted a few um part of it is they have a multi-layered like we needed to say what are you actually vetting right and there and i don't have it obviously to hand to you but i could share with you there is a um it's multiple how do they run their company how are their policies what are their policies from passwords logins how are they making sure that they have mitigation strategies in place to minimize risk um sort of like how we implemented duo that was yes it was it's good practice but why because that's harder for people to get into our you know information so um but yeah private is doing that multi-leveled for that reason there was a time a few years ago we didn't and we realized
114we needed to do that um because technology was moving too fast because a lot of these software companies are linked with outside countries and they're gathering our information and our data and it's it's prevalent everywhere not just you know but multi corporations it's schools it's everything so thank you thank you thank you hi guys uh mike matthews again 21st report um so just real quick i wanted to speak about linkit because i have experience with linkit i know there's a question about it from a teacher's standpoint something that linkit can do that we couldn't we really didn't have access to prior to that kind of data warehousing is the ability to get to a granular level of detail on student achievement um so you know for example if i were teaching ap calculus which i've
115taught in the past and i had kids coming in from pre-calc i could see their grade historically okay they got a b minus they got an a minus but what i couldn't see is well they got to be minus where where is that struggling coming from are there specific issues and now what lincoln allows us to do is dive in we can see assessments and we can see them at the standard level so i can say okay this particular student at this particular standard struggled so rather than just saying you know going in and saying this student is this grade level i could say this particular student struggles with this particular concept and that's a game changer for a teacher because we can really intervene and we can target and you know obviously one of
116the biggest things is time right everyone we don't have enough time to do everything we want to do so by having that level of detail where i know at the standard level where a student is struggling it really makes the process of intervening an intervention with a particular student much more efficient and i think much more beneficial for everybody both the student the teacher and and obviously the parents too so i just wanted to give another perspective on that okay thank you thank you would anyone else like to address the board okay i'm seeing none leah you can read i'd like to say thank you to all the people who came to uh fill in the seat and sat here tonight and took those questions that's not easy to do it's hard to be put
117on the spot like that as a member of the community you know i thank you for doing that i also wanted to ask i wondered if any of the people that are applying for this have already begun the process of running or were thinking that they would run in november or if they've held a board seat or if they currently hold a seat on any other um political board okay do you yeah sure hello yes yes so i i did put my paperwork in to run for the school board on the same ticket with my husband salvatore saluccio for parental rights protecting parental rights so yes but i think that this vacancy goes to the end of the year and so the election in november is for january 1st going forward for three years so
118yes i did put my name in thank you okay um yes i i also put my name in um as i'm allowed to do i put my name in to run and uh i'm not on any other political committees or anything like that so i am running uh for november okay yes i also put my name in i'm i'm running on single ticket just myself for not a brand thank you yes i did also put my application in also thank you thank you okay would anybody else like to address the board with any comments or questions at this juncture i'd like to make a motion to go into executive session can i have a second okay where is pursuant to njsa 10 412 b the board of education may exclude the public from that portion
119of a public meeting at which the board discusses any of the matters described at njsa 10 412 b 1 through 9. now therefore be it resolved that in accordance with the provisions of the open public meeting act the board of education shall conduct a closed session pursuant not of this available session will be 60 minutes and that action may be taken in public after the executive session be it further resolved that said discussion may be disclosed to the public when reasons for discussing and acting upon it in closed session no longer exist so at this point um the board will go into executive discus session to discuss the candidates are we leaving we'll leave we'll leave you all can stay um and we'll come back in [Music] a motion to go back into regular session
120okay um at this point i'd like to thank all the candidates for uh coming out we truly appreciated the wealth of experience and the breadth of knowledge that everyone brought to the table and the board deliberated um very closely it was each candidate brought strengths and weaknesses for lack of a better word that meant more to say one board member or another and i'm happy that you're all running in november i wish everybody good luck but the primary focus of this interview process was to get somebody for the remaining five months to just serve for the rest of the year that could keep the district running smoothly by law i don't know if everybody realizes we have 65 days to fill a vacancy so it's not even like you could say let the vacancy sit
121open and just let the election take care of it that's not even an option so i do appreciate it and uh if anybody has any questions i can answer for myself personally where uh i i ranked any person any particular person on any question you could feel free to email me i would give you my own feedback on any particular candidate so on your own candace candicey i should say not everybody's um so with that uh now that we're back in public session um would anybody like to make a motion to push any particular candidate forward i'd like to make a motion um i would like to make a motion uh to nominate mike matthews to be appointed to the board do you have a second this is a roll call vote make sure your
122mics are on please thank you ready mrs cosolino yes mr gargiulo no sullivan yes this is patton yes mrs van vitoli yes mr amoroso yes mrs lambert yes all right motion carries okay um any other questions by anybody okay then i'd like a motion to adjourn someone moved second second one second when do we swear in the new board members next meeting yeah okay he has to have a background check before he could be sworn in okay so ally will reach out tomorrow yep which is we have two meetings and all this this year right okay all right thank you again