Freehold Township Board of Education Live Stream | July 27, 2021

001i'd like to call this meeting to order the mission of the freehold township schools in partnership with our community is to prepare all students to be responsible citizens and lifelong learners 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 of the board of education on the district website at the office of the freehold township clerk published in the asbury park press on january 8 2021 and sent to the news transcript on january 6th 2021 i'd like to invite anyone who'd like to join us in the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible

002with liberty and justice for all okay roll call mr amarosa president mrs costanza yeah this is casolino mrs holtz mrs o'sullivan president this is filming here this has been the tully here mrs patton president mrs lambert here we have a quorum i'd like a motion to approve the regular meeting minutes from june 8th 2021 second all in favor say aye hi okay okay i'd like a motion to approve the executive session meeting minutes from june 8th 2021 all in favor say aye okay okay i'd like a motion to approve the regular meeting minutes from june 22 and i'd like a motion to approve the executive session meeting minutes from june 22 2021 all in favor say hi okay okay moving right along enrollment enrollment it's the only communication for this evening may of 2021 we

003had 3 622 students uh the following month in june it was 3621. uh compare that to the prior year of june 2020 we had 3708 and as i said it is the only communication for the evening okay i'd like to thank you all for joining us this evening i hope your summer is going well shortly in the administrative report i'm sure mr dickstein will address how the summer is going in the district with the students and the spark program i hope you've all had a chance to enjoy some little time off maybe a vacation i just got back from vacation which was very refreshing for the first time in a couple of years but i be would would be remiss if i didn't extend condolences to ms costanza who lost her brother-in-law kovid and our

004other fellow board member k holtz who lost her father-in-law this week so the board expresses their condolences to both debbie and kaye um and what day will your brother-in-law be featured um it'll be on monday on monday yes okay he only does one briefing now a week this monday yeah okay um so that's that's very nice uh her brother-in-law will be featured by governor murphy this monday i would also like to remind all the parents that this summer is a little bit of a moving target for this administration and to give everybody the time and space and patience that they need to get schools up and running for september there's a lot involved every summer summer is the busiest time believe it or not in a school district in terms of staffing and getting the

005schools ready for the students and this summer is that on steroids so if you are hearing lots of information misinformation please be patient wait till you hear from your chief school administrator himself on what the policies and the procedures will be that is where you will get the most accurate information when it is truly available and with that i will turn the meeting over to neil for the administrative report good evening this summer is especially busy we are running our spark program which is new this summer we have about 400 students enrolled in the sport program pre-k through eighth grade and our annual extended year program it runs for six weeks the it is impressive to see the students in their classrooms really focused and working diligently and also taking the time for some social

006emotional learning and some breaks during the day to just enjoy some socialization it needed to be more than just an academic program we needed to make sure our students are well socially and emotionally and also socially engaging with each other uh i did not send a correspondence we'll announce it here since the beginning of spark and esy we've completed three weeks and we've had four positive cases of covid we are in our typical summer mode additionally interviewing candidates for various positions throughout the district it's a battle to find time on our calendars to get everybody in with everything else that's coming we are finding that there is a difficulty in certain positions we've heard for a time now that there's a teacher shortage but we haven't really seen that in new jersey what we're starting

007to see now is some high needs positions particularly content area in middle school content area specialization with special education so special education language arts special education math we're also seeing esl bilingual difficulty finding people appropriately certified and media specialists so we do have some high needs positions if you know anybody who is interested and properly certified please send them our way elementary we do have a nice candidate pool however it is less than it typically is as well so i think the the teacher shortage is starting to catch up a little bit in the state of new jersey we also have committees in full swing unpacking new standards and writing correct curriculum to be aligned with those standards other committees are writing new units of study in various content areas the road forward was released

008at the end of june and we're drafting our district plan for september we are using the road forward as a template and then personalizing it for our school district however we will not be ready to share that plan until mid to late august it will not be the last board meeting in august though it will be communicated um via email a summary of it and then a link to it and we will do an overview at the august board meeting but you will have all of the information prior to that board meeting as i said a correspondence will be sent to parents outlining procedures with a link to the full plan at that time we continue to monitor enrollment and noted that preschool registration had increased resulting in the need to establish a waiting list

009for next school year we do not it's not a great practice to have students waiting for a place in our preschool program being a public school so i'm pleased to share that we will be allocating grant funds to the expansion of preschool by adding an additional class therefore opening 16 additional seats in preschool this will eliminate the existing waiting list and open additional seats for low socioeconomic students and tuition students if anyone attending the meeting tonight is interested in their children attending preschool or you know someone who may be interested please contact the main office secretary at eclc for additional information this evening we have on our agenda approval for the esea grant we recently submitted that grant application for those that don't know the esea grant is a non-discretionary federal grant with four subgrants

010title one is based upon free and reduced lunch counts at each of our schools our title one schools change each year for this upcoming school year they are donovan erickson and barcelo grand funds for these schools will be allocated for an additional intervention teacher at each school title ii includes funding for professional development and will be allocated for teachers to be certified in the wilson reading program and for teachers college trainers to train and support teachers in grades 3-8 in reading and writing workshop title 3 includes funding for english language learners and is being used for teacher assistance to provide language support to esl students during the summer spark program as i said we have a teacher shortage in the area of esl and bilingual and we only had one teacher who was properly certified

011to teach esl bilingual this summer so we provided language support in a typical classroom title four is reserved for student support and academic enrichment funds under this subgrant will be used for positive behavioral support coaches and positive behavioral support supplies in school first typically we have the need to hire staff later in the month and if the meeting remains on august 24th it's likely we will require a special meeting to approve new staff prior to the first day that they're back on september 1st i'm going to turn the report over to dr breath hour who will share the legal requirement of harassment intimidation and bullying grades for each school and for the district thank you as mr dick said annually the new jersey department of education asked each of our schools to complete a self-assessment

012for determining grades under the anti-bullying bill of rights that a self-assessment is completed by school counselors in coordination with principals um and the maximum grade you can score you can get as a 78. so our katina school had 72 reported points out of 78. um that's mathematically a 92 percent for those of you that are trying to think of that quickly the applegate school reported 73 points out of 78 which is a 94 percent the barcolo school reported 75 points out of 78 which is a 96 percent the eisenhower school reported 76 points out of 78 which is 97 percent the ericsson school reported 73 out of which is 94 the donovan school reported 76 out of 78 which is 97 the west freehold school reported 75 out of 78 which is a 96 and

013for the first time we were able to um they added the early childhood learning center it's usually not included in this process we have a 71 out of 78 which is a 91 the overall district grade is a 74 out of 78 which is a 95 percent and the self-assessment has us focusing on training for our staff the uh following procedures and protocols as as outlined by the bullying bill of rights curriculum and instruction that is connected to related to and how what we do with our students personnel staffing that is involved in the process so all of those pieces we are asked to score and then i total them up and enter them and this is all available on our district website if you go down it says district self assessment for hiv and

014you just click on it and this spreadsheet will come up there for you and a shout out to my school nurses working the summer programs keeping kovid keeping us very busy so just want to say thank you ladies do we have anything else although not very long okay good okay this will be the first opportunity for public participation i'd like to make a few clarifications now that we are back into live meetings this board offers two opportunities for public participation the first opportunity is to make comments or ask questions on agenda items only the purpose of that is for the board to hear any concerns or questions you might have before we vote on the particular items that are on the agenda this evening the second opportunity for public participation allows you to ask a

015question or make a comment on any relevant item related to the district when we were only virtual we had to you had to type your full name and address for the record since you will go to the podium and you have the opportunity to write out your full address you do not need to state your full address for the record for the youtube channel you do need to state your name and municipality you can reserve writing your address onto the paper that's at the podium if you don't feel comfortable saying your address out loud so again this is the first opportunity for public participation if anyone wishes to address the board um please sign in your name and address for the record and state your address state your name and municipality out loud for the

016record statements are limited to three minutes in length and i should remind you they should not be obscene defamatory or abusive in nature so if anyone would like to address the board please feel free um cheryl freehold township um don't forget to write your your information down that doesn't count for her well i'm not here i just have a question just real quick the stats that you just read off i'm just curious as to what you do with this information now and um the criteria you use to evaluate eclc students they're three four years old their little kids as far as bullying is concerned like how because they right it's not evaluating the children this is evaluating how well we train our staff how well um we have procedures outlined in our handbook and if

017a parent calls and says i don't know what to do with this next we're directing them in the steps in the process if a parent is to appeal like that all the pieces of that legislation are included in our policy and are followed okay um and typically the eclc doesn't have a guidance counselor on staff right um and and i've only been in this seat for three years this is the first time they're asking us to report which is great we should be because those rules apply to all of our kids and all of our staff yeah yeah i understand that i'm just curious as what they'll do with that information now you know like what what's they see your rating if you're we got a pretty high rating yes but if you have a

018low rating like what happens you know i think the intention is that you remediate so that you have a high rating because the goal is that we're following the law and we're following the processes all right that's my understanding there is a positive behavioral expectation and program at the they work to eclipse the ucl even though they're little right yeah that's true that's important i'm from freehold township as well state your name ginger gibson and i have a child in middle school and high school so when you say that you are now monitoring was it four and five-year-olds for bullying now our pre-school children are three four and once they turn five they would move along so three and four-year-olds they can get anti-bullying messaging for just innocent remarks that they might make i mean

019do three and four-year-olds really know about bullying yeah be nice and would be friends kind of thing right we teach that's really important too but i mean would you really go that far to call it bullying with a three or four-year-old toddler what i can tell you is that we've never had a case in the eclc but we are required to follow the law it's it's very interesting that we would spend that kind of energy on toddlers so you try to staff if there's a toddler who reports um that someone called them a name which you know kids do that this is childlike behavior and they learn as they grow older but to actually spend energy and money on ensuring that toddlers are not bullied we recommend you learn a little bit more about the

020eclc program it's not it's not accurate well i guess maybe i'm just going by what she just said sure in terms of the age group so that's what i just want clarification and the positive behavior support framework that's in place we're thrilled that it is at the eclc because the language is consistent from our three-year-olds all the way to our 14 year olds and we do teach explicit lessons on behavioral expectations at school so that it looks probably different with our three-year-olds it does look different than it does in our elementary than it does in our middle but all the tenants in that framework um is connected to the fact that we're training our staff right in and what our students their rights are with regards to the hiv i just i don't know it

021sounds a little alarming when we talk about bullying with the three or four year old no i i didn't the report is called the bullying report for the record the department of education names so i need to say that if it was up to me i wouldn't have to give prices this is something i have to state okay on our website whether we like it or not it's called the anti-bullying bill of rights this was legislated under governor christie years ago yeah well it's still interesting regardless of when it was legislated i'm sorry may i just finish can i just finish yeah i still find it very interesting that we would if governor christie did it or whoever did it that we would include little toddlers in such a conversation that's all i had two

022kids that went through eclc i had a child in with in the special ed program and tuition kid um and my experience from being there and you know seeing everything is you know little kids they make mistakes and the teachers really would work with them it wasn't where oh little jimmy did this and we're going to send him to the principal's office you know a little kid would throw something you could you know it's typical toddler stuff but it was never anything that was it was never anything that was you know taken to a point no i'm sorry there's there's a policy with that i have to interrupt this meeting are you recording this meeting or just i still have my three minutes before you kind of go off uh you interrupted me a couple

023of times too if you have something to say all right all right address address everything here no address sorry i'm addressing it but people keep interrupting and talking to other people so i just want to you don't have to look at my breath and know it's just do you have to come across to me like that i'm just asking questioning you you can go okay well thank you you know you work for us you should be a little bit more polite i don't work for you i'm elected by you we're elected by all of us i'm no i'm telling you to keep this meeting in order and in order to keep this meeting in order please ask your questions my question was answered you don't have to talk over me i just wanted to get

024clarification on why we would include toddlers in an anti-bullying campaign that was my only question and thank you for answering would anybody else like to address the board are you able to hear me with this on yes nicole bonamassa west freehold um dr brethauer i just have a quick question just to clarify is that rating with regard to how the staff is addressing the bullying issues in the school what exactly how exactly is that so there there are several indicators right so hiv programs approaches and initiatives typically pbs and the framework falls under that training on the board approved policy that is another component we have to score ourselves on other staff training and training programs so should we bring in any parent speakers any student speakers any offer any community we can embed that

025in there and so we're evaluating and this is for 1920. uh just to be clear it's a reflective look back um curriculum and instruction on hiv and related information and skills hiv personnel so that would be do we have an anti-bullying specialist in each of our buildings should there be you know uh process needs to be adhered to that's the person in that building school level hib incident reporting procedure so do we have a procedure in place and do we follow that procedure um investigative procedures it's sort of duplicative but that's where we have to score ourselves and then hiv reporting which would be when we sit and do the administrative report on the monthly we have to say this many confirmed non-confirmed so each school is rating themselves in several categories underneath those big

026categories and that so it's really not scoring children it's scoring the district and the schools on our ability to follow the law it's compliance it's it's a state the state holds us accountable so it's compliance are you doing all of those things and our district anti-bullying we use pbs as our district anti-bullying it's not designed to be an anti-bullying program it's designed to encourage positive behavior processes we behavior but we we cite that as our anti-bullying program uh the only reason i ask is because i'm wondering if parent feedback from children who are reporting bullying is ever taken into consideration with that rating because i've had experience with my children uh in the elementary schools where bullying was occurring and i i have to say i was not thrilled with how it was addressed i

027it was left a lot to be desired okay this particular process no doesn't but that doesn't mean we aren't open to and i know i've spoken to a lot of parents over the years having been a middle school principal for 13 years have had a lot of conversations about the process about the letters the scary letters that come home you know which are very much connected to the law and it is overwhelming as a parent but conversely if you don't feel like those processes are in place um then i certainly would want to know about that you know because that's falls under my purview in the district okay so may we contact you then sure absolutely right and sometimes it's as easy as understanding that um once all the information is uncovered there has to

028be a determination if it meets the criteria and that's where it gets a little fuzzy for some people because the old definition of bullying and what the new definition i say knew under the legislation it tweaked it a little bit so um sometimes it's just a matter to making sure we're all speaking the same language but if it would be helpful i'd be happy to also put out something informational you know on the website moving into next year that you know what web something or other that you can watch that maybe that would be helpful going through the pieces thank you sure if my man just was going to say part of the hiv was to inform the community and parents and every school district including ours has to stay right on their website on

029that home page who the contact would be and that's why dr dr beth howard mentioned that is her so but i appreciate you standing up and that's a good question okay would anybody else like to address the board on agenda on any item on the agenda this evening okay seeing none we'll move on to personnel um ms costanza yes yes can the people in the back of the room hear clearly no okay i i was worried about that bring it i guess bring it closer to you can you hear me now yes okay so the personnel committee met last evening we discussed all the items on the agenda and the difficulty of filling some of the positions i would like to move the following items number three evaluation tools for the 21-22 school year for

030a retirement julianne etlinger and ronda gorski whom i've had the pleasure of working with both of them i congratulate you on your retirement and wish you the best of luck number five resignations as listed number six new employment we have many new staff members that we've hired so we won't be naming them all however if you are here we congratulate you and wish you the best of luck for this upcoming school year number seven [Music] recent offers of employment number eight change of assignment number nine change of assignment salary adjustment number 10 curriculum committees number 11 i can't find number 11 curriculum committees ratified number 12 rescind honorarium number 13 honoraria number 14 essie and spark staff number 15 additional compensation 16 summer iep meetings 17 certified substitutes 18 non-certified substitutes 19 rescind substitute anybody

031have any questions can i have a motion second second roll call mr amoroso yes mrs costanza yes is o'sullivan yes mrs thoren yeah mrs ben yes this is patton yes i am on items six and 17. okay mrs lambert yes all right everything passes okay moving on to curriculum and policy ms o'sullivan okay uh yesterday the curriculum committee met uh the following people that were that attended with mr dickstein dottie specht monica hintinger mary casolino and myself monica hittinger gave an update on the social studies curriculum it is going to be a program that is a using a digital textbook platform the name of the program is the teacher curriculum institute program um it was also mr dickstein had alluded to a lot of things that we had discussed before in our meeting which was

032um the covet plan the development of um which is still in a development process and will not be finalized until late august and we reviewed the findings of the correction action plan for the federal grant and desk monitoring policies and regulations were read and discussed right i would like to go to number three which is the adoption of the tci teachers curriculum institute number four course reimbursement as listed the partnership agreement with toro college as listed the home instruction ratified as listed number seven the abolishment of policies um 1648. and 1648.03 as listed the first reading of policies and regulations policies numbers 1 through 10 and regulations numbers 11 through 17 as listed the student teacher practicum observation and placements as listed and that is all any questions what was the corrective action plan for

033the federal grant i was i was thinking of reviewing that during the administrative report and i chose not to but i can go over it quickly so the corrective action plan we were chosen to be desk monitored for the grant that i explained earlier last year's esea grant so title one two three and four the desk monitoring means from a distance they tell us what they want to see to show that we're in compliance we had very few findings but we did have findings that needed a corrective action plan fiscally we passed we had no findings in the fiscal in the area of program we did and they're very simple fixes that we already implemented several of them and um that's that's what it is more detail they also looked at idea yes i'm sorry

034and yeah the first escrow grant and then the the set there was a esther 1.5 that gives extra money onto they looked at everything so okay i had a question about the remote learning polishing are we creating a new snow policy or not so um we work as you know with strauss may i'm just for the for the benefit of the public that's here as well we work with stress estimate who are policy consultants i reached out to them because i needed to know what the requirements would be for the coming year as far as what documentation and planning we have to have to be in compliance um they will be abolishing their will be recommending the abolishment of in addition to these two they'll be also recommending the abolishment of the uh it was

035called restart and recovery plan i believe it was called um because that was for last year and they'll be recommending a new one on august 15th which is the delay in some of the delay in me getting that that final plan completed to make sure we're in compliance so um in the road forward our personalized version it exists we are not permitted to offer anybody and i think those are the two regulations that are here remote learning options for families and full-time remote instruction are not permitted legally so in um i can tell you that for sure in the in the road forward plan for september 2021 uh what it says is that if a school or school district has to close for a public health emergency and it lists other things but for now

036we'll just use public health emergency as the example since covet is is what the factor we're dealing with right now um we would have to use three emergency closing days before we can go to remote instruction so that that will be coming in a new policy that you'll approve at the end of august once joss esme gets that to us will it be similar to the way we learned during the shutdown no there is no remote learning option uh available to the public to parents or towards you know there's no full-time remote option everybody is expected to be present in school physically present in school if we have to use three words for closing days it's going to be added on to the year yeah that's how our calendar functions if we any emergency closing

037days as days on so what if we go past it we've done that before it just continues on [Music] until you get to june 30th right but don't we usually build them in the pro in the calendar we stopped that practice a while back it was confusing to people understandably so oh yeah so we took that practice out i i'm sorry i didn't turn this on and it's not working uh we the practice we stopped years ago when we put out the school calendar we don't add days in for snow days it just gets added on to the end of the year um if we you know if if if at one year the the school year was looking to end a little bit later we'd probably have to build them in to do that

038but that's that's what i said i'm sorry you know what i don't want to really bring this up so speaking to the speaking to the mic sorry um i really like the zoom calls let's just say you know september comes in october the end of october or november and we've got sporadic classrooms shut down due to covid do we can we put those kids into remote do they take sick day i mean i that's a that's a really good question so we are not we haven't final i'll tell you what's allowed we haven't finalized our procedure yet but when they talk about remote instruction for the purposes of this they're talking about our decision or being told your school is shut down or your district is shut down a class at a time that's not

039considered remote instruction when they say remote they're talking about a school shutting down or the district shutting down that's what they consider remote if a class is excluded or five children are excluded we do we are a lot we haven't decided if we will yet but we are allowed to still run that that's not considered that we're on remote instruction that's a class that shifted not the school that's my understanding and that's how we're going to operate thank you any other questions okay um do we have a second thank you all in favor say aye aye bye okay um finance facilities and transportation ms venditoli thank you mrs lambert okay uh the finance facilities and transportation committee met this evening in attendance were mr davida mrs williams mrs patton mrs tolman and myself we discussed

040the year-end financials the auditor came earlier this year with our accountant leaving last week so we also discussed our reserve account status as of june 30th we have rfps two competitive contracts on the agenda tonight for approval we talked about the long-range facility plan the architect was anyone have any questions no okay so i'm going to move the agenda items um number three certification number four secretary treasurer's report number nine dollars and 1839.90 thank you to mrs patton for doing the bills this uh session number six travel and related expenses number seven the central jersey consortium for excellence in equity membership number eight the transfer number nine year-end transfers number ten the maintenance reserve account number eleven a donation um of one thousand dollars from the sulzer family foundation for the laura donovan elementary school

041we thank them for that number 12 ratify a consultant number 13 consultants number 14 out of district tuition contract number renewal of competitive contract for linkit number 16 competitive contract for literacy coaching professional development number 17 competitive contract for online personalized learning platform number 18 contract with commercial interiors direct number 19 the contract with core bts number 20 the collaborative federal desk modern corrective action plan number 21 ecip payments number 22 fiscal year 22 esea application and 23 the least purchase for six 20 passenger buses i know that was a lot any questions can i have a second second all in favor say aye aye in old business we did have a 10 we do have a tentative retreat date of august 19th um we do have um one board member who might have to

042coordinate that with a class so it hasn't been 100 finalized yet but keep that date on hold because we do want to get our retreat in before the summer is over that's all i have for old business new business do you want to discuss the board meeting change yeah i mean we we typically what happens is our best effort we do have people who you know especially long-term subs that we hire who very late on in august wind up finding full-time jobs in other districts and withdraw their contract with us or rescind their contract with us so typically as long as i've been here when the meeting is a little bit earlier in august we wind up um sorry we wind up needing a um a special meeting to get people approved and it's hard

043to pull that together especially this year before september 1st so i i do think it's a good idea to move that board meeting to august 31st at 7 30 if everybody's agreeable to that i talked to bob and he wanted me to bring it up here does anybody have a conflict with that date no okay then you should have enough so okay okay august 31st so we have to advertise it okay so this is the 24th right correct um it would normally in new business i would uh tell board members to check your board calendars coming up as the schools put their back to school nights on i don't know what our procedure is going to be with that so we'll hold off on that and we'll figure that out at the end of august

044because we do want to make sure we have fair representation in each of the buildings should in whatever format that may look like and just to share with you and the people that are here we have not started we have the dates for back to school nights we haven't discussed the format we do have an administrative retreat this thursday and friday we're doing some team building so we do know on one of the days we need some more time so we have our second we're bringing everybody back together on or around august 20th i believe is the date so we might not have specifics for back to school night until august 20th but we do have the dates for i believe that i even advertised on our calendar and if they're not we'll get them

045up there so that our the parents know when they are um but then you'll know what representation yeah if we could get the dates just to put them even on our calendars okay just we have them and whatever that may look like okay i'm doing a board building tour prior to school opening are we cancelled if you guys want to that's a good question i think last year was the first time we didn't do it in a while so but if you guys want to that's probably a good idea are you aware of that meg um right prior when bob lets the board know that the buildings are ready for the students um which who whichever board members would like to attend take a tour with bob of each building to ensure ask questions see

046something you like don't lie if that's the time to raise it speak with bob likes get a sense of what he thinks it'll be done okay it's usually right before like yeah beginning of september right before the building's open to this to staff and students great okay any other questions in new business michelle do you want like those of us have kids do you want us to send you the schools that we are already going through for back to school would that help yeah i mean yeah just to make sure um you know we've been because that's happened before you obviously need to go to your own students back to school nights and we've had some buildings under represented where if we had a little bit more planning we probably could have figured out you

047know how to work that better so that's why we usually start now but i guess we won't know what the format looks like but if we know the dates and we could start now that works okay i'm going to skip in in public participation you could no you have to wait till public participation um so um also i'm sorry i'm sorry we have to follow the rules so otherwise we'd have anarchy um the um i want to circle back to what happened in public participation earlier for those of you that are here for those of you seeing on youtube you need to know that this board has a no video or audio tape policy without prior permission of the va and the board president by asking that's why this board member thought she saw somebody

048videoing and interrupted it that is specifically not allowed in our board meetings and i would remind you all to just keep familiar with the policies or if you have any questions about anything ask ahead of time this is the second opportunity for public participation on any item addre related to the school district again statements should be limited to three minutes in length and i'll remind you not to be abusive obscene or defamatory in nature so at this point if someone would like to address the board please come to the podium hello please state your name in town for the record and write your address on the paper george falcone freehold township um thank you for hearing me um so mr dixie miss lambert i've been in direct communication with you guys you know my passion

049right now is about mass on our kids mr dixon you did write a letter saying that you intended mass to be optional going into the fall but you intended on keeping them massed on school buses per cdc guidelines so now we have a little wrench thrown into the situation hours before this meeting the cdc changed their minds and said they were going to recommend maths on kids now um miss lambert you were pointed at me in the june meeting and said it was my opinion that these masks are harmful i disagree completely we have much data much research much studies done now showing how harmful this is to our kids emotionally physically and mentally mr dickstein what's going to happen now so what i can tell you is i and to be fully responsible and

050trans fully to be responsible and fully transparent and that's the way we've always been the plan in its first draft does say with a disclaimer and it has to it says that it's subject whatever we put in there is subject to change based on local data so we have been in communication we started conversations with our our head nurse and our friend township public health officer we look at data when it gets closer such as our local transmission rate hospitalizations percent of the free old township residents that are vaccinated and i know our kids can't be but there is a direct correlation with the adult those who can be so we look at those percentages right now in its very first draft it says that it follows the same thing we have in place right

051now it recommends that masks are recommended but not optional for students recommend recommended but optional they're recommended but optional for students sorry um on the school bus they must be worn there's a difference between the two things that you brought up from cdc and and i will be honest with you i saw the headline did not get to read the the ensuing article or any information on their website i saw the information the difference my understanding and the difference here is that that's a recommendation and this i think i sent you the link this um the transportation they're taking school transportation and putting it in with public transportation airplanes airports they put us in there and that is an that's listed as an order versus this again i didn't get there yet but it says

052a recommendation and that's the difference right now you've been ordered at the stage i understand but you can see my concern going forward is that this is going to be a problem you know we again we have information knowing if you're going to allow it in school and then say just because the cdc says so you're going to have it on the bus that seems like a real irrational way to make decisions about our children's safety and it's not it's not it's it's a no like i showed you the difference in them i hear you about you know things are changing it's i hear you i can't assure you of anything except at this moment our intent is recommended but not required that's what i meant to say recommended but not required for our students

053except on school transport that puts people parents like me in a real bad position because i'm not going to let my kid be abused with a mask anymore i'm just not going to allow well i would have to remove them pull them out of the district and figure out something else if you're going to wait until august 31st that's going to be a problem for me i'm not waiting until august 31st on august 15th stress first of all i just drafted it by myself we have a central office meeting tomorrow to review it and then with our principals on friday to review it our head nurse is in the process of reviewing it what we need to wait for is august 15th to see what comes from our policy consultants and then will be finalized

054somewhere in that week it will not be august 31st you will get a communication from me summarizing and then a link to the actual document itself you will not have to wait until the board meeting on august 31st i understand that concern is there a way to understand where each individual board member stands on these issues it's interesting because it's not believe the board oversees like i said as far as employment goes just strictly employment in in the law i am the i am their only employee and then everybody else is my employee that's the legal structure so in this case there are that we draft the policy it's not a board it's not up to like mrs benitoli to say i think you should take it out you have a meaning and vote on

055certain issues i assume as a book right i don't believe we only vote with on what we are required to vote on the role of the board of education is to ensure that the schools are properly run we are not allowed and we are bound by the code of ethics to administer the schools that's considered crossing a line so there are many decisions that are made administratively that the board does not vote on and nor should we vote on because it's considered not our place that is not to say that we don't work collaboratively and that um mr dickstein does not know where we stand on all matters and on many matters where he's not even obligated to notify the board he would do so in in many cases um and and so he knows

056how we feel about things and i'm sure he takes that into consideration but they are the professionals the board hires to to guide these schools run these schools and do it and you know do it correctly i just want to also bring in dr brethauer um in on this subject as well too and mr dickstein mentioned that um we have infancy like and and everyone's asking the same questions the principals the teachers can i have my rugs back like it's every day but i can tell you that from the nurse's perspective there is a little bit of concern on the word optional because right now it's not optional on buses and it's not optional in large group it's not optional upon arrival when 600 kids are coming in and on dismissal when there's 600 kids

057leaving there's a lot of times where it's not optional what we want referring to masks masks masks right so i think that we don't have any answers right and and everyone can certainly stand up and say i'm i don't want masks i do want mess at the end of the day we don't have we're not going to have that answer today but everyone's input including our health experts will be taken into consideration what i will tell you before just to be clear the one other place that they are required and this comes through osha is we just learned that is the nurse's office is they're considered a health care facility so that uh we are required to mask anybody who goes into a nurse's office is required to be amassed and that came through that

058actually came to us through osha okay we have people here that have a lot a lot to say about the health of you know the health uh implications of all this on our jobs i can't a lot of this you're saying is out of your hands i don't believe that should be the case i mean you know you mentioned federal mandates federal dollars i'd rather my kid be in a classroom with a chalkboard chalk and a book at a desk rather than all this money and having to you know say xyz you have to do this you have to do that it's going to hurt my kid now yeah i just i just want to say one thing before you i read that i that's all part of your email and if you want to

059have a conversation separately i can it seems in theory that it makes sense but if you knew the dollars connected and what it does i think you'd be in uh you just you'd be interested in hearing what you had to say because that was very well researched more than welcome and i told you i read everything you sent so i'd be more than happy to have a conversation outside of the board meeting to set up a time over the phone questions mr amber is there a policy on returning parent emails or responding to parent emails on the board no so if you just ignore him that's that's just it no i i answer emails where appropriate and where not appropriate i don't okay thank you for your time what oh thank you shanna pizzuto freehold

060township i just wanted to voice my opposition to putting masks back on children in september i just wanted to say that so much damage has already been done to these children in the last year and a half my six-year-old would complain of dizziness loss of concentration and headaches throughout the school year and i know he wasn't the only one he's been afraid to ask for mask breaks they were supposed to get in kindergarten he's going to be in first grade now but in kindergarten his class his teacher would tell us that they were going to get two mask breaks um and included in that was going to be their 20-minute snack break and because of time constraints because she was doing virtual and there was only a four-hour day i mean i understood it was

061hard but she wasn't able to do it the entire school year even on beautiful days you know we were asked to bring in a towel for him to sit on to to sit outside for even for a few minutes and he was telling me that they didn't go out they didn't go out for a gentle those are the chances that my son had to breathe and i just it just made me sad and i just don't want him to go through that again i don't want all the other children to go through that again so i just wanted to voice my opinion and say that i oppose them inside the school come this september and i also wanted to ask you um what your plan is if the children are sick because i know last

062year my son had a cold he ended up having a fever for a few hours it went away without medicine but i still had to either keep him home for 10 years or do a pcr test and prove that it was negative so i just want to know what is going to happen this school year it will be it will be similar from what we've read the exclusion chart hasn't changed rumor that it's going to be changed mid to late august and that that's not something that we create that's something that's provided to us by the new jersey department of health and i understand what happened with your son is they don't allow alternate diagnosis um to be if they have more than one symptom which in that case it would happen so that the

063choice you're right the choices are that allegedly um and again i have no solid you know no proof i always say allegedly when i don't hear it myself when i haven't heard it uh you know from a reliable source what i've been told from one of my colleagues who sits on a state committee establishing long-term goals one of them was that this new the new jersey department have health is allegedly going to update that quarantine chart and if they do that'll change until then uh from what i've done so far it actually remains exactly the same okay so then another question would be if we're going to be not if we're not going to be having virtual option what's going to happen on the days that my child if i choose not to do the

064pcr test is home for 10 days yep how will he learn we're working on that now when there are two options so again rem what you said and it's perfect to use the word virtual because that would be permitted as per the law remote of the whole school is not permitted so we still what's the difference between virtual environment i know okay there is what for the state remote means that i'm putting an entire school or district out okay and the only instruction for everybody is remote okay your child being out and quarantined for 10 days if whether you choose not to or or do the pcr they're still hope he's still correct they'll still be home so we have we are allowed to provide the virtual we just haven't decided yet we're looking at

065some maybe home instruction also options we haven't done that yet but it'd be just papers that we worksheets we have to do with them or they will be in the classroom like video like they did last year we haven't decided yet but that is allowed or it would be home instruction after the school day we just haven't gotten that like home instruction a teacher is going to come to the house over like if they're coming to the house why can't he go to school sorry i just wanted to make sure i understood that that was a perfect that was perfect yeah it'll be over the computer you know like yeah we haven't decided yet okay again it's in the infancy and we just these are things that we're going through though it's just it's already

066middle of july and we're just sitting here you know twiddling our thumbs waiting to find out what's gonna happen and and i understand that that's that you're waiting to do that i can assure you and i don't think that's that's what you were saying but where we actually are work like i did it over sunday we're working and we just we don't want to give you information and then tell you oops all of that information has changed the cdc does it every day we are not the cdc i know i know but but you like to follow their guidelines so not necessarily we started to pull away from the guidelines and stuck to mandates okay so new jersey may and differentiate between new jersey mandating like our governor mandating through his authority and cdc recommendations

067okay we did slowly start to do that for example we cannot and this is right in our plan we cannot maintain three foot three feet of social distancing with all of our kids in school okay so it'll stay too there's not going to be like markers in the hallway anymore where they have to stand and stuff like that we're working on maximizing social distancing where it's reasonable um but we can no we can't we don't we don't have the space it's you can't put 25 kids in a room and have them spaced three to six feet apart and we want to start we want to start instructional groups again we want to start the teacher to be able to pull small groups so we're looking at how we can accomplish that okay and and minimize

068risk because we also want to mitigate risk okay um so we're looking at alternatives and that's that's why it's not easily to just give you the plan today okay we're working on it and we hear we hear the concerns we know what they are good i just want to let you know that and then i don't know if i have enough time but i also just wanted to quickly say um also for the new curriculum that's not going to be rolled out you said until september 2022 which includes the critical race theory and inclusion act or bill we're not talking about that no no no you're shaking your head critically theory is not you're just have it am i saying it wrong critical race theory is not curriculum okay i'm quite honest with you i've

069shared this before i had to research what critical reasons because it was not something i knew yeah it's actually uh it's a really sophisticated uh uh philosophy okay that really is reserved for like the university level okay so it's not something you would expect in in a k-8 okay but i know that there was like the new implementation of um maybe the inclusion yeah okay inclusion curriculum three different place that's no problem we're talking about you're talking about the comprehensive health and phys ed standards at a future date i will go over it um i don't know if i'll do it at the meeting on the 31st i think i might hold like a parent session um where i where i'll where i'll go over what that's going to look like but when you're talking

070about the standards themselves i went through them with a fine-tooth comb there's only two standards that connect to the concerns that some parents have okay i just wanted to i want to be able to educate the parents on exactly what that's what i wanted i wanted to be included in you know whatever is going to be happening with our children going forward before it's in the textbook or implemented or written you know i i think i i said that i at the last meeting that i would do something okay and i probably will do it prior to the board meeting i think it'll be to we have a lot going on at that board meeting as for our presentation strategic plan so um i will make i will advertise a date before the board meeting

071where i will share that with the kids and you did say you're going to be also bringing back spelling didn't you say it's not only spelling it's like uh word history vocabulary okay it's all inclusive not the traditional spelling but it does include spelling and when will that be it starts in third grade in september and rolls up okay great thank you for your time thank you would anybody else like to address the board okay good evening please state your name and municipality my name is crystal i don't live in freehold i am here today give your full name and your municipality where you come from please crystal lopez stanhope new jersey thank you i have friends in this community i am an advocate for protecting children and i have been on the ingram angle

072cbn network and i recently published an article on the daily signal my website is new jerseymomma.net all my information is on there and you feel free to look me up i'm sorry it was new jersey new jerseymama.net that's right i'm here to speak about gender identity and how it harms our children i understand that schools will start to teach gender fluidity due to the inclusion law i am a mother whose son identifies as a woman transgenderism teaches children that there might be born in the wrong body and they can choose to be a boy or girl regardless of biological truth these are lies that are being fed to our children identifying as the opposite gender is not just about wearing what you want and celebrating with coming out rainbow parties i've done my research and

073what i've found is horrifying the trans activists in media won't tell you that children who are gender confused are prescribed puberty blockers then opposite sex hormones sterilizing them then they are set up for future barbaric surgeries they won't tell you that 80 of children learn to accept their biological bodies if they are allowed to go through puberty due to the graphic nature i have some pictures that i would like for the board to pass around so that you can see the types of surgeries that our children are being set up for if they are allowed to believe they're born in the wrong body in new jersey there's a surgeon dr keith who performs multiple types of surgeries dr keith removes healthy breasts so teen girls can present as boys ma'am because we do have some

074young children in this room can you please address how this is relevant to this district specifically because of the gender ideology that will be taught due to the english don't know that what will be taught since we do not have our curriculum set there are standards there are standards that are set by the state how they are placed in this curriculum is up to the um purview of the administration do you mind if i pause and i address some of the things that you had said and if you still feel that they don't address your concerns then you continue would you mind if i did that okay so um two things first of all as far as the standards go specific to gender are you specific to gender identity are you going to go further

075into its gender identity so as far as gender identity our implementation of the phys ed and health standards are in september 2022 we have two year rollout for the new curriculum that's come in the september in those standards there are only two now we are in ka district so there are two standards that address any type of gender lgbtq gender identity there's two of them and they fall under the section i think called physical and social health if i'm not i don't have it in front of me i'm sorry so there are two one in fifth grade by the end of fifth grade that students will understand and again i could i could be misrepresenting but this is the gist students should know the difference by the end of fifth grade between gender identity and

076sexual orientation and then by eighth grade it it extends into gender identity sexual orientation gender expression and a plan for all of those children who identify with with those um issues like a plan of inclusion so those are the standards that come in now there's the there's two different bills that are laws now they're not built anymore there's the bill that in middle school we will include the historical contributions of people who identify as lgbtq and those with disabilities in middle school that will happen we're in the middle of rewriting that curriculum it will happen naturally in the curriculum just like we do now this is the first person african-american person who did this first woman who did this that's what we're anticipating but the curriculum isn't finished yet and that's in social studies and

077then the materials so instructional materials need to be inclusive of of i think it says specifically it lists all the different uh inclusive level all the different types of um of lgbtq and i believe there was more it was racial ethnic there was more it wasn't just lgbtq or gender identity issues and that will be through instruction materials that are not teaching so in other words might and again i'm we haven't finalized this yet might there be a book that has a family with two mothers potentially but we're not saying look this this child has two moms it's not for instructional purposes for years and even when i was in the classroom when we when we did program reviews we had actually a checklist our students with disabilities represented in the book yes are students

078of various ethnicities in the book yes and again i've been out of the classroom for a period of time but when we piloted we had to do that now it extends the the types of representative of society so that is what we're looking at as far as our our counselors and our nurses we are in a position where we provide support to students who have concerns however we do not educate them when a student comes and says i'm struggling i feel that um i i feel like i'm a i'm a boy and i feel like i'm a girl you know in a boy in a boy's body we counsel them through those feelings encourage them to speak to their parents encourage their parents for ongoing counseling we do not in any way discuss promote educate

079on any type of medical intervention for those students it's not it's not our we don't see that as our role we see it as our role to support them emotionally but i never said that that was no i'm just i was trying to see i just want to explain yes you are bringing in gender ideology and bringing this subject to the children which makes them start to question or wonder what this is and maybe you have a young girl who doesn't typically fit into the role model of a little princess and she doesn't like to wear dresses and she'd rather play football and she'd rather hang out with the boys and what would be called a tomboy you know she might start to think the way the trans activists talk they might start to she

080might start to question wow maybe since i like boy things i might have been born in the wrong body you are introducing this to these children ma'am he just established that we are not introducing this to the children in a year to limit your comments to what is relevant to this school district at this time well we don't know because we don't know what the what what the curriculum is going to bring out so i want to bring this to your attention the harms of gender ideology and just so you know in 2013 governor christie signed into law the new jersey conversion therapy law for minors which makes it illegal to help a child feel comfortable in their body so a parent who has a gender confused child in this school will not find a

081therapist in new jersey to help them feel comfortable in their biological body but it is legal to transition the children and that is giving them i'm not saying you're giving it to them i'm saying the doctors and therapists will give this child puberty blockers hormones and it will be their children will be sterilized no underlying issues will be addressed statistics show that children who have gender identity issues have been associated with trauma adhd and autism and none of these underlying issues will be addressed by the therapist so i just want parents here to know and all of you the harms that come with gender identity and you will be teaching this because you'll be explaining to the children what gender identity is and gender expression and i see nobody is interested in seeing my pictures

082they are graphic but they do show you top surgery bottom surgery you know why are we doing this to our children ma'am that is not relevant to this board of education meeting at this time public participation at this board meeting must be relevant to the business of our school district your medical photos are not relevant to the school district i have to tell you that you have to limit it to our curriculum in this district at this time okay so then when i find out what the curriculum is and if i see gender identity is in there then i will be back to address it and i will continue to follow what this board does so that when it does come up you're going to see me again and that's september 2022 and i will

083be back thank you thank you for your time would anybody else like to address the board i'm gonna take this down so you can hear me nicole bonamassa west freehold i just want to take this opportunity to express again my deep concern with regard to the legislation that is going to reform our public schools into teaching children children as young as kindergarten about race and sexuality this is based on the curriculum that we were given it's online i had actually called the elementary school to see what was going to be implemented into the schools and has spoken to several of the administrators within that school and this is what was presented to us so it's not something that we're just theorizing or something that we're getting off the internet this is what we were presented

084with as the parents um i also want to state that during the board meeting on june 8th it was stated by the board members that your personal beliefs and bias have no role in determining what's taught within the schools but on the 22nd when there were several members of the community that came out in favor of the new curriculum it was widely accepted by the board it seemed that this is something that you are in favor of um treating children and adults like humans i i was presiding at that board meeting and there was no in favor of an ideological stance or a political stance it was being a kind human being to each other that's that's what i said so i want to be clear i didn't say anything in your absence that i

085didn't take a stand being kind and to all humans that's absolutely that we should all be teaching that and i think uh that majority of parents that's what we are teaching our children that you're going to get people that are not going to teach the right things but i don't feel it's the place of the school to take this out of parents hands i've had several issues with my own child within the school system where there was bullying issues not with relation to this but it really was not handled well at all there was a lot left to be desired so i'm when you're talking about how teaching children about sexuality and sexual identity and race and all this how it's going to help limit bullying or prevent it as it was stated in the

086last meeting i don't see how that's going to happen at all these are not things that the only these are not the only things that children are bullied for cheerleader children are bullied for any number of differences anything that you can pick out and say that this makes me stand out that's something that somebody's going to be bullied about so why do we not have staff more on top of it i can't tell you how many times my daughter came home and told me about things that were happening in the classroom and i said where was the teacher where was the staff and it did not it did not help well i mean just for the record we train our staff annually we have lessons that are taught and i know it doesn't seem like

087it's but a teacher makes about ten thousand decisions a day and so while it might seem that nothing happened from the perspective of a child there's usually a litany and a boatload of things that are happening so while it might not meet the criteria of the hiv law that we discussed earlier unkind not social mean right behavior is not tolerated so i want to be clear what if it doesn't meet the criteria it doesn't mean we just let it happen right we address it and we have to teach pro-social behaviors we have to teach that um there's a way to ask someone to stop developmental growth from when they are little littles our littles through 14 because we can't go with them to high school we can't go with them to you know the grocery

088store and we can't you know remind them what pro-social behavior is in public we hope that they learned what those behaviors are so they don't violate other people's rights right so and i understand that's what it's all about so i don't i don't i would expect that any time and i said before please reach out if you feel you have concerns a lot of times when we unfold the layers of the onion there's a lot of things there you just might not be aware of it i understand that and it's no disrespect to any of the teachers i know that they work very hard to be able to give the best to our children i even went to the principal and the principal actually called my daughter out in the middle of the lunch room

089and the classroom were you bullied today i mean what is that how is that giving her any autonomy how is that giving her any privacy to the issue that's being handled we're getting a little off topic here this isn't meant to be about bullying this is uh with regard to the the curriculum i feel that the new curriculum is going to be stripping our children of their innocence uh we are going to be teaching children to notice the differences amongst each other okay um differences such as race gender and sexuality have absolutely no bearing on a person's character or ability to accomplish anything in life yet the new curriculum will be emphasizing these differences i ask why teaching grade school children about topics such as sexuality has no place in our schools they do not

090have the mental capacity or maturity to comprehend or handle sensitive information if a parent feels compelled to have their children exposed to this information that is the job of the parent not of the school okay and it is our job to determine where how and why this information is presented uh we i feel strongly that the school is trying to take parenting out of our hands as well as the government and personally i don't know how the other parents feel but i don't co-parent with the schools i don't parent with the government what my children know as far as that is concerned is my business and my decision schools are supposed to be teaching them about reading writing math not how to be a good person that's the parent's job i think we've readdressed this

091[Applause] in prior in prior board meetings i hear what you're saying if you disagree with the legal mandates i would urge you to bring your argument to the state board of education it starts there by the time the mandate reaches here it's already law if you truly want to make a change you need to start at the state level i did call the state board of education and what i was told was that parents are not able to attend it's fully virtual and we're not allowed to speak they're only two times a year reach out to your local legislators they vote on i've never attended them so i'm not sure but i thought they had to follow the same structure as our meetings no what i was when i called them and i spoke to

092them i was told you are parents are given two opportunities during the year you need to pre-register and to be able to speak you two opportunities during this year not during the meeting and it is not every meeting that you're able to speak so while it's i understand your advice to approach the state that you're not creating these laws no i would right i would put it in writing and i would go to your legislators go to your local legislators okay well that brings me to my next point though as far as the the school masks i know a lot of parents are very opposed to them and when the mandate was held the last two weeks of school there was a bevy of parents that came to you and said we do not want

093this we do not want our children masked even though it was the mandate and it was the law and several different districts wound up writing letters in opposition to the masks well guess what it got overturned and it was tor it was turned to it's optional so why is nobody speaking up now to oppose this legislation i know you've received contact from many many parents saying that we are not for this and if you're concerned about how the majority of the the community feels about this i ask you please send out another survey we will tell you how we feel but i think the parents should have a say in this and exactly what is uh taught to our children it's not just going to be put into sex ed where we can opt out

094this is put in history this is going to be weaved into the all the different topics where we don't have a say the explicit just to be i want to clarify for you the explicit teaching of what it of what what you've discussed the explicit teaching starting in september 2022 is a fifth grade one fifth grade standard and one eighth grade standard that's the explicit teaching other than that the historical significance is oh and those that is considered family life and parents do have the right to opt out because those that explicit teaching falls under family life so those standards i talked about before parents have the right to opt out of of those that explicit teaching when you're talking about the diversity and inclusion our goal and and and it lists it lists more

095than just an lgbtq population it talks about race gender ethnicity it talks to students with disabilities i feel like we do that already and we are just missing some populations that we need to pull in so the explicit instruction is not happening until september 2022 and not in kindergarten in fifth grade okay historical significance or contributions middle school that's where that is supposed to that's the law there the one bill that impacts diver is the diversity and inclusion and that is where we will be doing a holistic we haven't gotten there yet we haven't planned it yet a holistic approach to everybody treating everybody kindly there's differences among us in society there's difference among us among us in school and we need to recognize that and treat each other with respect why do we have

096to recognize and point them out children are not born with these prejudices this is something that is taught why does i have to sit my child down and say this person's skin color is different than yours this person is a different religion or whatever my children have friends of all different backgrounds different races ethnicities what have you they don't look at this child and say i'm judging you and becoming your friend based on what is superficial on the outside well i will tell you that for why we do it that's the way the law is written and when we go through our data relative to harassment intimidation and bullying our data consistently shows that those those offenses are typically race and lgbt in elementary school starting in kindergarten we don't we're not teaching at starting

097that's not what the law says the law says starting in kindergarten it says diversity and inclusion and as relative to the standards and and that it's not explicit teaching of what it of what that means what's the teaching of what it means is fifth and eighth grade it also seems that the language is changing in with regard to what the law is and what the curriculum is going to be putting out every week so if we're calling it critical race theory and lgbt education one week it's going to be inclusion and equity another week and it's all changing because they know that people are opposed to this again what we receive it and we are bound to to do it we have not written or come up with the manner in which we are you

098know we're doing it we're working on that this summer but it's not explicit instruction again i do implore you then you guys stood up against the masks please survey your your community find out how the parents really feel i'm not saying that i represent the entire community i'm sure i'm don't i'm sure there are plenty of people who are in favor of this and that's their right but survey your community and find out how the parents feel what we want our children to learn and then stand up and and support that thank you for your time christine mata freehold township i have a quick question um regarding clarification of you're saying that it doesn't require direct instruction in these matters but if you read the the actual text of the bill it says as amended

099the bill requires school districts to provide instruction on diversity and inclusion in the appropriate place in the curriculum of students in grades kindergarten through 12 as part of implementation of the new jersey state learning standards pause there for just one second because that's exactly where it is because i just went through it again so at that particular first part is connected to implementation of the standards the standards are the two that i told you about in grade five and eight so it's in connection it's saying you're required to do this as per the standard the standard is in grade five and eight right if they're just saying it's restating you have to teach this as per the standard and the standards in grade five and eight are you talking about the health standards in grade

100five and eight yes no this is the diversity bill right as per the standards that first part it created new standards though for kindergarten through twelfth not standard so let me just be quick that that first part that you just read is only connected to the state standards that are in print form the rest of what you're about to read is not connected to the standards that is law and there's no standards that accompany it so the first what you just read is connected only to you have to do you have to teach you have to do and implement what you what you had just read based on the standards so that's the two that i discussed with you after that the rest is correct that's part of the law and not not our our

101student learning standards in new jersey right um but so that explicit teaching is only connected to the standards in that first part you just read so you're saying that you're making materials available to the students that promote different kinds of lifestyles right yeah but oh god i'm sorry i thought you're finished that you're not explicitly teaching it though correct the explicit teaching is in grades five and eight in starting in september 2022 and parents have the right to opt out because it's part of comprehend it's part of family life the rest where we're trying to teach diversity and inclusion and explain to students that there are all types of people and these are the types of people that you're going to encounter and we need to be understand the diversity and have an approach of

102inclusion that is beyond the curriculum that's we have not established how we're doing that yet so it's not explicit teaching of this is gender identity this is uh that's not it's two separate two separate things the explicit teaching versus the educating about our community our school community and the diversity that's there and including everybody right but this is a separate bill from the standards that you're talking about so after that first part yes this part is related to the diversity and inclusion standards that are going to be implemented starting in kindergarten there's no right it's as as you're reading it now after that first part the rest of what you're reading yes is kindergarten through grade 12. there are no standards that that's the bill like here you go right they're still going to develop

103the standards they basically what you read is what they told us this is what you have to do so we are working now to determine the best way to do that i i understand the confusion please i don't get me wrong i don't i i hear you but there are standards and then they legislate things and this is legislated not a new jersey student learning standard right um so you're saying that you're not going to provide explicit instruction on these topics except in health in fifth grade and in eighth grade health explicit teaching of what gender identity means sexual orientation no so how would you meet the rest of the bill that's um bill 40 44 54 that says highly highlight and promote diversity including economic diversity equity inclusion tolerance and belonging in connection with

104gender and sexual orientation race ethnicity disabilities and religious tolerance how would that part be implemented we need to determine at what point each one of those is appropriate and do it there we haven't finished we haven't completed that process yet so we need to find where it's appropriate we do it in the summer our summer all of our work is done in the summer for the following school year right and it starts in 2022. i know no the first part of the explicit teaching in grades five and eight is 2022. that bill has to start in september okay so so so it will start in 2021 all these um the rest of it correct the rest of the bill it's being designed it's not that we do our work our curriculum work over the summer

105for the next school year okay so will the parents get some notification and be able to give some input about how these will be implemented not input we don't apparent the one place we don't take parent input is into the curriculum but what we will do is hold a session to educate parents on what it will look like prior to the beginning of the school year right because these are meant to be input there is no input into curriculum that's the one area where we don't take parent input it's educators writing curriculum but we will definitely educate the community on what that is what it's going to look like once it's completed okay thank you okay hi my name is nick stauffer and i'm from medford i'm from the child advocate coalition i was asked

106here i was asked to come here by parents today to discuss the information that i testified at at the assembly hearing at the new jersey state capitol i am a biostatistician i do statistical analysis on clinical trials and on population health data and i've recently analyzed the data in the new jersey state i took from the nj shad database i examined all of the deaths for school-aged children between the ages of 5 and 18. this is available online you could do them themselves and i created this nice handy chart and it goes over all of the deaths that occurred between january 2020 and may 2021 of school-aged children between the ages of five eight five um five and eighteen and out of that entire time there were three children that died from covet 19. in

107that additional time there was 32 homicides 37 suicides 40 cancers and 80 intentional injuries now children in particular in many studies actually reaching one from hopkins it pulled a bunch of charts and it looked at 43 000 children who had coveted 19 and there were zero deaths among healthy children healthy children are not affected by this disease and it is shown in multiple studies and in most multiple things and in the new jersey chad database so i um i just wanted to explain that because the children aren't any particular risk they don't need any particular intervention and a mask is an intervention it is a medical intervention a mask is a medical product under fda emergency use the fda does not it's not an article clothing it is used for the prevention of disease and

108the fda doesn't measure bras it doesn't check your shoes okay this is a medical device a mask not the vaccine a mask is a medical device so as a biostatistician additionally what i do is i do statistical analysis on clinical trials which means i take a population of people and i apply a medical intervention to them like a population of children and i apply a medical intervention to them like a mask does that sound familiar because that's what you're doing you're taking a population of children and you're applying a medical intervention to them well when i do a clinical trial i make sure that i get a consent form i i have to have informed consent you're not getting informed consent from parents they don't consent and the reason why you get informed consent is

109because you need to establish liability they need to understand what the possible implications are of the mask and you know there are because people have testified that children are sick they get migraines they get headaches they get rashes they have anxiety there's a million different implications to these masks and the parents know because they're taking their kids to the doctors and they're having them treated for these problems due to the masks now eventually somebody's going to have to be liable for this they're not liable for it they didn't sign a content form who's conducting this clinical trial you're in a very awkward situation here because the state is mandating that you provide this medical treatment to children without any training without any review board to make sure you're doing it properly you are collecting data

110every time the children go to the nurse because they're sick from the mask you get that information you're collecting effectiveness data because every time you're tracking all of the coveted 19 so you're kind of only doing half the trial here you're not doing the full thing and you're really not you're in a very awkward position because they told you to do this under mandate and then under suggestion but they're not looking at the full implication of what they're requiring you to do so that you're in a very awkward situation here and as a medical biostatistician i would not be able to be on a school board and do this because i know the implications of doing a clinical trial and applying a medical treatment to a class of people without a consent form and without

111collecting and tracking the data yeah my pediatrician's office requires my child to wear i'm sorry my pediatrician's office requires my child to wear a mask to even a well visit since being a biostatistician is that considered a medical trial and what have you what kind of research have you pulled so so that's for you're at a doctor's office so there's a medical professional there at your doctor's office when your child's wearing a mask when you're at the school there's not a medical professional in every classroom making sure like when i do a clinical trial and somebody's using a minimum intervention i have a nurse everywhere at every site where we're doing it like i know you have a nurse on site but she's not checking to make sure these masks aren't wet they're not snotty

112they're not like you you don't have the ability to do that like the teachers don't have the you're at being asked to do something that you can't do and additionally the children are in masks for six to eight hours a day i mean you're going back without remote instruction so the kids are going to be in these mess it's not an hour at the doctor's office it's not an hour here you're talking about from the time they get on the bus to the time they go to after-school activities because beforehand care and after care you talk about maybe nine hours a day like when a surgeon goes in to do a surgery every time they take the mask off they put a fresh mask on kids aren't doing that you can't manage that that's not

113the thing that schools are able to manage would you be willing i mean you have the would you be willing to leave that chart yeah i have additional charts i mean i have i have actually a video that i've done on all the state data i've done through the pandemic and showed the first wave and the second wave and how we're actually at a wall right now i mean even though they are claiming that you know the delta variant is killing people there's no evidence of that in new jersey if i have the i have like right on the state database well what i i mean i appreciate you taking the time and i appreciate that what you interjected the few times understanding and recognizing that it's a you know we're we're in a we're

114between a rock and a hard place because it was a mandate at that at that time that this is what has to happen and there are consequences in the school district when we don't follow mandates so i appreciate the educate the brief education you provided with your dad also and i appreciate the understanding also that we were between a rock and a hard place moving forward while we haven't made any decisions yet what i can say is our practice at this moment and would likely continue unless it can't we and that's my that's my worry is august 28th we can come out with um receive a mandate you know that that changes everything but at this moment you know that is i wouldn't you know put that say that's out of the question at this

115moment our mantra has been masks are recommended but not required that's good and um at this moment that's our intent for september but that can change it's an initial draft and again you don't know you know august 28th and i'm not talking cdc recommendation i'm talking like a mandate from the governor oh mandate from the government yeah mandate where i don't have a choice yeah because thank you for throwing this on other people and he's not going to be the one liable for it everyone else but i would be interested if you don't mind leaving the charge i'll pick it up on the way out thank you i appreciate it [Applause] hi my name is colleen visconti i live in freehill township my question is to the board members my thought and hope was when

116i voted to vote you guys into office that you would represent the parents best interests i understand that dr dickstein's doing what he can and the very best he can but i think that just aligning yourself with whatever the governor cdc and everybody blindly goes along with is not the way to go um i really have a hard time when i hear i think michelle lambert you said at the last meeting at june 8th before anyone spoke you said we blindly support dr dickstein matter what he says i have a big problem with that i really want you as board members to represent the parents if you don't have hold on if you don't have a sense of what we want then do a survey send it out we will gladly give our input in

117our opinion so that you can sit here and then represent us and not just blindly go along with whatever the school is recommending i didn't say we blindly support mr dickstein we wholeheartedly support him okay like i said it's not the same thing and like i said earlier it is done in collaboration what i also said at that meeting was that the many opinions that were coming before in public participation at that meeting were also there was another side to that that came to this board and many members of this board via emails people that may not stand up and speak at the meetings so you may not hear the other side but we see the other side because we do represent all the taxpayers of free old township not just parents understand the taxpayers

118of freehold township are what support our schools those taxpayers could be 80 years old or they could be a parent of a student in the district so from a fiscal perspective we represent all the taxpayers and all the taxpayers have a say and an opinion and we do see it all we do account for it all um between the nine members of this board they definitely have a finger on the pulse especially in the specific neighborhoods that they live in we hear it we account for it i i think i i'm just speaking for myself i think that if you did do a survey and it was like the results were tallied unobjectively by somebody like you know unbiased and really got a sense of what people want whether they want their kids masked whether

119they want this inclusion curriculum no matter if it's mandated or not how that's rolling out i really think we should have as parents an active role of what's happening in our schools with our kids because i think there's been a big overreach big time so if you could if you could do that i think that would be well received i still want to see i know we've repeated it over and over again but i i have to say even if it's jokingly i i wish there was over that it was what was it unquestioned support we i get they they hold me accountable with a lot of questions so i think the difference was the support once it's finished but i i swear that i'm hel there's accountability and a lot of questioning before it

120comes forward um also and i always freely share this i'm a parent in the district now it's only one because my other one went on to high school but um you know i'm a parent in the district too um i really the issue is just so you know our surveys are very poorly we get very poor responses i'm not saying that's the reason we shouldn't do it you'd be i think some of you would be surprised with there's not a great response when we do surveys but the issue is like if i asked you know what do you think about diversity and inclusion law it's the law and we are held accountable in many ways to the state through monitoring by not following it so to say that that would be helpful yes i would

121know what a majority of the community thinks but i don't i don't know i honestly i'm being honest i don't know what else to suggest to people that don't agree with it to go be to go higher than us because that's where it has to be heard once it gets to us there's there's there's consequences for not following core curriculum there's consequence new jersey student learning standards there's consequences for not following laws you saw this was very minor the corrective action plan that's very minor but something as simple as that we now have to do a corrective action plan for and if we don't follow it there's significant consequences so i don't i don't know the answer to tell you but there has to be some other mechanism above us here to be able to

122communicate your your discontent with what's there because once it gets to us we're accountable and we're accountable to the state our mon and there is a direct effect to the to the taxpayers because our monitoring will get lower scores eventually they'll they'll designate us as ineffective our tax dollars will our home values well like it really i know it sounds odd but there's consequences that we'll all pay so i hear you and i know that there's parents that support and don't this particular controversial topic but there has to be some other way to communicate to a higher organization that discontent so that they re-evaluated at that point because it's when it's with us it's the it's the law well it's you know a struggle to say the governor just blindly does something and that we

123everybody else it trickles down to us i really feel that these meetings wouldn't be so combative if we felt like you guys were supporting what the parents wanted to do i truly believe i know it's an us versus them feeling now and that's how we feel with the government right now at least i'm speaking for myself but i just felt like if i knew that the board up there was fighting for us and advocating for us i'd be singing a different tune i really would and and i think that there are times where we can and there's times where it's ineffective like once that law is in place it's it's a law that the government signed that our legislators sign it it's in place i can't there's nothing i can do to override something like

124that i wanted to interject to your point you could send out a survey but you know the real survey is on election day oh i know it a free old township goes and votes for our legislature so if you don't like the laws you have to go out and vote that's the real time to say this is what i want so once the law is written and it comes to this board what would we do gang up and fire mr dickstein because we don't like masks when he's been doing a phenomenal job all these years it makes no sense so there's not much that this board is going to be able to do to overturn a state mandate you know as much as we would want to we can pick it and riot but on

125election day you go out and you vote and only 20 sometimes 22 to of people vote so that's the real survey and i just wanted to interject that there because that's what you get you get people that get elected and then they create these bills and they become laws and then we have to deal with them here and then the messenger gets shot because we're really just the messengers here we're volunteers that we come in here to try to make sure the district's being run properly mr dixon works 24 hours a day trying to make sure the schools are ready and these kids are educated well and he's getting beat up over these mandates and it's actually pretty unfair so i get it we have the pulse but the pulse needs to be everybody goes

126to the election and and i think you know mr falcone i think asked the question earlier wanting to know where each member of this board stood on the masks and the answer we was was the right answer we don't vote on it so you wouldn't know at this board meeting if you want to know where an individual stands send them an email and if they're inclined to answer it they can answer it i also received emails wanting to know the political affiliations of the board members and i i will just remind everybody here that a board of education is non-partisan um we don't align on this board with one political party or another that's the way board of education needs to be so that's that's to answer that email and i didn't answer the email

127when asked what my political affiliation was on this board because it has no relevance on this board okay thank you sorry i just have a quick question here um not to interject my own political beliefs but hopefully governor murphy he's not getting back in i'm sorry for those of you who support him but my belief hopefully he's not getting back in okay the new representatives are claiming that they have intention to repeal this new law for the inclusion diversity what have you so that's repealed now what do we do are we rewriting the curriculum yet again or is that something that you feel you're going to push forward with and you said that uh if it's if it's repealed that if it's repealed yes and they've look besides laws being repeated yes if it's if

128it's repealed then we have to rewrite absolutely and they've done it to us before with standards they put out new standards in 2020 and then in 2021 they're like here's new standards again so we've had to do it before so yes so there'll be nothing in the history if it gets repealed there'll be nothing in the history book saying so and so was the first whatever background identity whatever that has again no no bearings whatsoever on a person's ability to accomplish anything but we're emphasizing it and you guys stated that once it's law it's law and that's fine i understand that but you also wrote a letter opposing the mandate for masks where's the letter opposing this legislation that and just to be clear the letter that we wrote was asked it was it was

129pleading for consistency that's what it was it wasn't we believe or not because that's i'm not a medical professional i i don't remember your name but bio i can't that is not my wheelhouse but um it was please just do something with consistency um and give us solid guidance that's what the letter that's that's what we ask in a timely manner that's what i wrote the letter for because i i can't i'm not i don't in any way desire to overstep into a medical profession i didn't want to go into one i went into this for kids and um i you know that's i don't think any of us are asking you to overstep we appreciate and understand that you do have to work hard and that you are yeah receiving a whole bunch of

130opinions from all different walks of life i understand that we're just asking that the majority of the parent we're our input is taken into consideration absolutely it is thank you would anybody else like to address the board let's put this up a little bit okay uh cheryl palu freehold township um i just wanted to mention a couple things um the governor when he passed that first bill the lgbt into law in 2019 he circumvented the new jersey department of education from my understanding normally the new jersey department of education would write standards and then laws are passed so the inclusion bill now uh well after that bill uh was passed in 2019 then the new jersey learning standards came out for 2020. i think they were approved june of 2020 if i'm not mistaken and

131then after that the inclusion diversity law was implemented to align with the standards if i'm not mistaken that's what i understand i'm not sure the sequence but yeah you might be right so i had the opportunity to meet with dr replet in february 2020 at the time uh when he was the commissioner of new jersey department of education to talk about these issues and bottom line he referred us back to the board of education at the local level so i think parents are feeling like a ping-pong ball so i think that's why there's like a lot of passion i want to say when the parents are up here trying to understand exactly what's going to happen how it's going to be implanted how it's going to affect their you know children you know you have

132different philosophies and values that are you know taught at home and you know there's a lot of concern and there's a lot of information going around about what's happening in other schools there are other school districts are taking this full force from a to z when it when they talk about the lgbt lifestyles there were pilot programs implemented throughout 12 schools in new jersey they're teaching you know everything about the community things that i don't want to discuss because i know there were children here but i just don't want to get into the details um i'm familiar with it it isn't relevant to our audience i'm familiar that the pilot opportunity exists yeah we did not apply for it right okay so i mean there's a lot going on so i just just to to

133let the parents know that the department of education it is good to write to them definitely about how you're feeling it does definitely come down to the legislature you know if you don't agree with the law the other thing i wanted to just follow up on and i touched on the last time i was here is the policy transgender 5756 and i want to understand how we can get that policy looked at and reviewed and revised the reason why i'm bringing it up again is that the guidance that you're referring to our board policy no it's a transgender policy in the school 5750 so our board oh yes yes i'm sorry okay yeah um it was guidance from the new jersey department of education um i guess went through strauss esme and they uh wrote

134up the the policy um and the policy is almost verbatim of what the guidance is the guidance or legislation guidance the guidance okay okay um you can read the guidance from the department of education and almost every line is the same as if no one really looked at it now this was um i guess um adopted in 2019 in october here the problem i have with it is two things one it removes the parent's consent there is no law anywhere it's not legislated anywhere and you can look up all your consent laws of new jersey that minors that parents um don't have authority over their children when it comes to medical issues and gender identity disorder now is still on the dsm is medical illness now called gender disorder dysphoria okay um in this policy

135it allows the child to decide on what he or she would like to do you know and the uh school will acquiesce to the child and parental consent is not required and i think that needs to be readdressed with the with the board i i believe i feel that the members of the board of education need to be educated on this disorder you know i i mean board policies are aligned with what the law requires if you are here to tell me that the law does not require something and we are requiring it that we can address if you are here that's what you're saying yes that's what i'm saying that i've been i've been i it is my understanding that the law is in line with our policy now you are saying otherwise that

136jesus is sad we will take a look at our policy to make sure we are aligned with the law yes because i know mr dickson we've spoken already on these issues i will um i did not look at that policy i will pull that policy the policies have citations you're familiar so i it will take me some time um yeah because there's a lot of different priorities but i will i assure you that i will pull it up the issue is you know it's not going to be as simple as reading it it's going to be also reviewing the citations that go along with it but i assure you i haven't written down here and astra sized i will pull that policy and do our due diligence you also i just want to touch on

137one thing you talked about training we require training as well as administrators and as teachers if we're going to implement this appropriately for children so we have we are going to work with a non-um actually a uh not an organization we are actually working with a professor of i might must speak of sociology i believe could be psychology from monmouth university um because i thought it was important to have not a um you know a non-biased organization one that not for not against any any person but somebody who's skilled in being able to work with us and help us so um we are going to avail ourselves of that as well so we are seeking training as well okay as soon as we review the policy we'll get back to you yeah thank you just

138one comment is parents should understand that if the policy as written you're basically signing your authority over to the school district and if you don't agree with your child's gender identity you could be held in liable or whatever they can actually call diaphys on you and take your child away not saying that this school would do that but the policies understand their understanding and that is what can happen whether you're for or against you might change your mind with your child you might be saying yes i agree but later realize that oh wait a minute i made a wrong decision your hands are tied and that's not right okay i will definitely i will take the time to do that thank you would anybody else like to address the board i'm going to remind you

139to keep it at three minutes we seem to be like a runaway train tonight and we will be timing at three minutes we have to stay in line with our policy good evening my name is alicia mendez i am from freehold um good evening to all of the parents in the room i think the one mutual thing that we can all agree upon is our love and our advocacy for our children and wanting to make sure that um we have some say and what happens in their lives and so um i wasn't able to attend the last two meetings but while i was abroad i caught them online and i was really concerned at some of the language that was used by our parents in this forum um with respect to this particular bill um

140one of the comments where some laws are meant to be broken another um you know you'll placate a student suffering from gender dysphoria and so i think as a parent of a non-binary child my concern as a parent i'll say i want to know i want to have authority over what's going on with my kid you know what i mean and so i understand that perspective and i think what it comes down to for me and my family is a desire for mutual respect um for the respect of our mutual humanity and when my daughter is in school and she's being told non-binary is not an identity if you're a girl and you transition to a boy you're never going to be a girl and it's just it's the lack of education and the lack

141of understanding amongst young ones right um and and we're here to usher um our children and to create um perhaps more commonality um and i really feel as as a community especially i've only been in freehold for seven years i've felt very welcomed not just by the school district that i've been in but the parents within my school district at laura donovan and um i have serious concerns about my child and not just my child some of the children that they are in school with who are picked on i have a minute left i'm going to just share with you my child's experience on the last month of school pride was approaching and they identify as non-binary but also they identify as an advocate for all of the letters in the lgbtq community and so

142they decided to wear a shirt that said proud to 365. and for this she was jeered at she was um humiliated all day by countless of her peers and so when i hear a comment like we should teach our children to respect each other behave kindly and compassionately towards one another i agree but when we lack that compassion and respect over identity and let's just be clear gender identity is not the only diversity classification in this bill um that when it is not respected that then as a parent i'm like well if you're not teaching it at home then maybe we do need to teach it in the school so i'm going to continue to return and just understand what the update is around this um time to myself for y'all um thank you keep

143myself informed of what is going on and what our youth will be subjected to in terms of diversity thank you miss mendez i know when we were corresponding you were traveling i did reply i think before the meeting asking for time so that we can follow up because we never got to follow up thank you would anybody else like to address the board okay seeing none i would like to thank you all for coming this evening it is at this portion of the board meeting that the board will go into executive session whereas pursuant to njsa 10 412 b the board of education may exclude the public from that portion of a public meeting at which the board discusses any of the matters described at njsa 10 412 b items one through nine now therefore

144be it resolved that in accordance with the provisions of the open public meeting act the board of education shall conduct a closed session pursuant to the personnel and legal exceptions prescribed by njsa 10 412 for the purpose of purpose of discussing the superintendent's contract and pending or anticipated contract negotiations with the ftaa twu fta and chapter 44. it is anticipated that the length of time of this executive session will be 90 minutes and that action will not be taken in public after the executive session this board will return in public simply to conclude the meeting you are certainly welcome to wait around for that but no further board action will be taken this evening be it further resolved that said discussion may be disclosed to the public when the reasons for discussing and acting upon

145it in closed session no longer exist so at this point i believe we will stop the youtube feed you