June 15, 2022 Voorhees BOE Meeting

001order good evening everyone um i will get right to it so that we can get to all the good stuff um pursuant to the open public meetings act public notice of this meeting has been given by the board secretary in the following manner posting written notice on the official bulletin board at the vorhees township public schools administrative building on july 26 2021 august 24 2021 and december 3rd 2021. sending written notice to the courier post on july 26 2021 august 24 2021 and december 3rd 2021 filing written notice with the clerk of worki's township on july 26 2021 august 24 2021 and december 3rd 2021 posting on the voorhees township website on july 26 2021 august 24 2021 and december 3rd 2021. please rise for the pledge of allegiance one nation under god indivisible with

002liberty and justice board secretary will you please call the role yes mr bryce here ms casenza here dr falk here miss galliano here dr levy here mr schmooze here this is stupler here this is watson here we are going to move right into honoring the 2021 2022 retirees um first and foremost this is um i love being a part of this but i hate to see some of our esteemed veteran colleagues leave um the district we have some of the finest educators um i would say we have the best in all of the district but my sister does work at another district so um i think we have some of the very very best um and many of you will be leaving us tonight so i want to say thank you thank you thank you

003on behalf of the board for spending your career educating our children keeping them safe and and allowing them to become um smart children that are self-aware that have people that are constantly in their corner and adults that will be contributors to our society thank you very very much okay so what we would like to do is we have an award for our retirees and i calculated it's about a century worth of experience that will in this room that will be losing uh tonight so on behalf of the board in the school district i would just like to piggyback on what the president said thank you for your service thank you for your dedication uh to our students so we will call you one at a time to present your award uh and soon we'll be

004taking pictures to be posted to our website and at the end of this everybody just to stay for a brief moment so we can take everyone's picture together [Music] okay first from bms middle school [Applause] oh okay lewis uh bms dave thompson oh administration the weeks from the administration building mike read the bmx [Applause] okay i don't feel so far away [Music] congratulations foreign we're going to take a brief pause um because we know that while these meetings aren't so exciting um we're going to allow people to accent if they should choose so we'll give everybody a moment to do so if you would like and we will not be offended [Music] hmm i just wanted to say a couple of words um and i think after that moment is probably the most appropriate so

005um and i apologize i have to look at my notes um as we draw close to our 2021 and 2022 academic year i wanted to again express my gratitude for all of the tireless employees of the district the teachers the staff the support the administration the bus drivers the cafeteria workers the custodial team the caseworkers the guidance counselors secretaries the pfas and the many many many parent volunteers this year was a success and you are all responsible for that miracle but i want to double down on gratitude and take a few minutes to thank mike redfern many have heard me joke that mike had no idea what he was getting into when i called him that fateful night but he embraced the challenge only after slight hesitation mike you are the coach we all wish

006we had on our sports teams you know how to rally how to support how to be tough when necessary and gentle kind and empathetic always you are the calm in the eye of the storm there is no issue you could not handle and no event that you did not attend all of our kids know you by name they respect you immensely but they admire you which is what i think is remarkable what you have been able to accomplish in our district is short of brilliance our teachers and staff are cohesive collaborative and a positive community about education for our children and making a difference in their lives i will continue to thank you because that decision that call that night was one of my finest decisions your contributions and impact are forever lasting can we

007all please thank my brethren thank you can i get a motion to approve the minutes of may 4th 2022 regular session and executives online voting is open alright under information items you can find the fire drills and safety drills as shown in the attachments the hib reports and the suspension reports under communications um we had three oprah requests for um since our last meeting um one of them has been cancelled and two of them have been closed so we have no outstanding over request currently board secretary report okay under the board secretary's report we have the wellness grant winners as mentioned before we get a wellness grant through our school's health insurance fund and we use that grant for various challenges to promote wellness there was the walking challenge which is the tavi challenge and

008based on how far people go with their walking names are drawn by the insurance company excuse me and they win a dollar amount where they get the top winner gets to make contributions to their favorite charity so the names are listed here uh russ winsett michelle goshaw kimberly stratton marilyn fitzpatrick sandra scott elaine bench rosemary de bella victoria scott and the the donation was made to miracle for molly we also had prasada raffle winners for february march april and may uh and the names are dawn danley fish lancaster allison francolino and vicki hill kaitlyn greenwood and eileen adams and in may it was vicky hill and eileen adams so thank you all for participating in this i think it's a nice fun competition and it's also beneficial for each person's well-being um i also wanted

009to just acknowledge one of my retire one of the retirees that could make it tonight michelle mordelli she's in my business office and she has been with the district 37 years so we will definitely miss her and i just wanted to give her a little shout out the next item is bid openings and we just have several good openings on this agenda under transportation um at this point i believe all of our routes are taken care of we awarded some bids in may we're awarding more now in june there's a few that we're rejecting because we receive no bids for the late runs or the athletic runs but the transportation companies have told us that it's still too early to pinpoint that they want to go through all of their their routes that they will

010be driving and then they will decide what they can do and not do so we're at this point after we reject after two bids we're allowed to negotiate with them so we're pretty confident that it all work out um it's just that we're kind of ahead of the game so that's all i have thank you thank you superintendent thank you madam president i'd like to thank you for your words i've been in the district 34 years and i can't think of a better district i've spent 34 years i always say to the new teachers coming in every once in a while you'll regret becoming a teacher we all do but nobody will regret regret coming to voice uh so i'd like to thank everyone uh a couple of uh thank yous i would like but

011i've gone to the different fifth grade promotions this week and i've gone to a lot of concerts and i want to thank the parent groups the pfas uh they are at every every uh function they're providing snacks refreshments and selling spirit wear so they're often overlooked but they are an important link in the chain that we call board east township public schools i'd just like to acknowledge all the parent group members for their support over the school year i'd also like to thank them take a moment to thank the people in this administration building i went to all the schools to thank the teachers but the administration building i walked in here 14 months ago and uh they all stepped up dr young dr al great clark matthews bruce taylor helen danielle the whole business

012office they jumped in they got me up to date on everything that i needed to know so that we could continue to move forward so i just want to thank them and michelle santor i can there are no words to describe we were in lockstep every every inch of the way so i just want to recognize everybody at the administration building for their support of me because i could not have done this alone so i want to thank that i'd also like to take a moment i know there's a lot of information out there on the new health curriculum that was designed in 2020 and one of the rules i always follow is when you when you're on the internet don't believe everything you read on the internet so there has been a lot of

013discussion and debate at the state level over the 2020 health and sex ed standards that are going to be implemented in september at this time the voorhees township school district has not updated its curriculum to comply with the revised standards the new jersey department of education continues to review these standards and will provide further clarification on what age appropriate guidelines look like for our students while the state sets the standards or expectations what students should learn it does not provide curriculum or lesson plans to district instead the state leads it to the districts to select instructional and that reflects the values of our local community our teachers and administrators will be taking a common sense approach when creating a curriculum that needs that meets the standards but also is appropriate in content that will be

014delivered at an age appropriate grade level for our students parents will have the right to opt their children out of these lessons if they feel the instruction in health family life where sex education conflicts with their moral or religious beliefs if this is the case students will be assigned alternate lessons to complete our curriculum is and always has been student-centered guideposts for instruction and a way to ensure all standards are met in a reasonable responsible and authentic way we have approved staff members who will work over the summer with our assistant superintendent for curriculum dr young to outline and write the curriculum it will then be shared with our board curriculum committee and then eventually the whole board to be approved and it will be posted to our website i'm confident that our district will

015do an excellent job in interpreting these standards and creating a health program that is both informative inclusive and age-appropriate and i will add i taught health 34 years ago in this district and 34 years ago it was just as controversial and we used a common sense approach back then and we will use a common sense approach going forward and finally i have two middle school teachers i have stacey fulton and crystal love from middle school earlier in the school year they did a service project with the middle school students and like in many projects it starts off more small and it just grows into a project that the students have really embraced so i asked them to come here today and again these are middle school students uh they're not an outside agency or firm

016they are staff in our building so they're here to present a little bit about this project that they have created at the middle school so i will turn it over to miss fulton and miss love good evening everybody my name is crystal love as one of the co-advisors of student council along with my partner stanley sharon gray we have always wanted to expand the martin luther king holiday to have a more meaningful experience for all of our students students started out writing thank you letters to doctors and nurses but as the pandemic approach we wanted to have the mlk day be more than just a single day but a month-long surface project to give an impactful running experience to our students in extending this day of service we could utilize creative ways and providing a

017more concentrated experience in building a sense of community and promoting social harmony to augment this concept we partnered with our school librarian mrs and we created a mlk choice board and it was born we created the service choice board based on activities that would address all of the interests of our students to achieve a full school-wide participation mrs fulton i really wanted to include organizations and charities that had a connection to the creator for this community we supported two locals and pantries one at st andrews church and one at home church two local animal shelters we supported a charity started by a former student jordan grebel called love letters for literacy we supported a charity near and dear to my heart smiles for cara the memory of powerlandowitz which provides scholarships to financial support to

018local organized families book smiles obviously as a librarian something important to me where a teacher in lindenwold started the charity to fill book desert his goal is to put books in homes and schools wherever they don't have books valentine's smiles which spread cheer to local nursing home residents letters to the police and fire department supporting them and artwork for the wooden pediatric facility residents in addition the wilhes township education association made two large contributions total 1200 to the food banks at home church in san andreas to support local families in need the btea also donated 350 worth of snacks to the orgies pediatric facility a virtual hospital to help them thrill i'd like to just take a second to talk about um really quickly one of the letters that a current seventh grade student mommy

019rostovie wrote to the police department moved them so much i'm gonna cry that detective hawkins actually reached out to us and said how moved that police officers were by her words and at the time she was only sixth grader that letter also um i forwarded to a friend who works in the fbi so her words traveled all the way to dc to spread the message of support from our students the other thing that really moved me was sarah johnson and i spoke with erica diploma who runs the book church in the country and we asked her what the greatest need was and we went shopping at aldi and we have the shopping cart pictures to crew when we showed up with shopping carts full of chicken she cried because she knew how many people she

020could help so this is not just something that the students erased with something with the staff in greece and this is gonna tell us what happened next which is a surprise and certainly surprise to our supplies last year we were contacted by the njea television series group called classroom close-ups that airs on new jersey's public tv pbs this series highlights positive and innovative stories that are happening in new jersey's public schools the njea and pbs wanted to highlight the wardens middle school mlk month-long service project just to summarize over the last past two years students have wrote nearly 2 000 letters to health care professionals to our local hospital staff we have collected books around 600 books students have donated 400 food items to our various food banks our students have dropped off groceries to

021help methodist church and to st andrews students have donated gently used gym and software software equipment but more importantly they also went into their diets and they collected 900 smiles community-based organizations that provides financial assistance that underprivileged and specialized needs children as they rotate in extracurricular activities although our project was intended to last for only one month we've had continual opportunities for our students to spread cheer to our local nursing home residents during father's day for the holidays spring and we've had other opportunities where they've been able to give back to their community so it's canadian dividends over and over and lastly needless to say our staff and administration are truly proud of our students efforts and achievements and we wanted to thank the wardens community for being such dedicated parents and partners we are

022truly stronger together we'd like to thank mr redfern in the board of education for the opportunity to share all the amazing things that our students and our school did over the past two years so thank you for this opportunity great job thank you the video highlighting the project you'll get to see some of those students in this video for years we have always had mlk celebrations but they had only been for a day and i wanted to express to the children that service is something that we work on all the time it's the random act of caring and what we really need is empathy so this is probably one of my most favorite times of the year during the mlk month-long celebration and that's what it means to me to share and to give back

023of oneself dear healthcare staff member we had the initial idea from the student council to send letters to healthcare workers my name is emma and i am a seventh grader at voorhees middle school there are no words to truly express the gratitude and appreciation for what you do every day in saving lives for the month of service projects every teacher had posted options of what we could do and then you had to pick the one that you were most interested in dear voorhees police officer my name is my motivation for the beginning of the letter was i wanted it to be poetic and heartfelt but i wanted there to be truth so that they would really know that we do see them i want you to know that everyone appreciates the risks that you're taking

024and that your hard work has not gone unrecognized as a result of the covid pandemic we had to adapt and by creating an interactive virtual choice board anybody could access it anywhere anytime so it was a really great format to be able to share with principals teachers parents and students if you wanted to do something um to show appreciation some of my students are really good in art some of them are really good music some of them play the piano one girl just loves to go shopping and her and her mom brought up a hundred dollars worth of food and took it to one of our local churches i believe from an educational standpoint and for the the experience to be impactful if you use your own gifts and if you always tap in to

025that inner strength you'll always be a good person catchers for the kids in the hospital thank you very much for the presentation for the video for sharing all the wonderful contributions that you both are making to our community policy uh committee miss galiano uh yes the policy committee met this evening um for some first readings and um basically nothing new no real new policies just some changes to current policies and um that's it thank you audience participation anyone wishing to address the board please approach the podium and write your name and address on the login sheet if you are attending via zoom please use the raise your hand feature to be acknowledged while the board is limited in its ability to respond to the public on matters involving personnel litigation negotiations and attorney-client privilege the

026board will now hear comments from the public relating to items on the agenda for this board meeting comments are limited to three minutes the board will not take action this evening you will be notified at some later time by letter electronic mail telephone or in the context of a later board meeting of any action the board does take hello um my name is marlene kaplan i live in voorhees and i have a granddaughter in 40 schools um i didn't realize i just limited three minutes so i'm going to quickly edit apologies i am a licensed clinical social worker in new jersey and i've been working as a therapist since 1982. in 1982 i was hired as a family therapist by a school district here in south jersey i worked with children and their parents whenever

027the school or the parents had a concern about the child the program was enormously successful giving access to families who could not otherwise afford marriage i have also worked in a private practice for many years i've worked with children adolescents adults and families i am here to strongly support the seo social and emotional learning curriculum i have read the guidelines and my professional opinion is that the proposed lessons are age-appropriate and important for the well-being of our children i have listened to and read commentary from people who are opposed to this work i disagree with their objectives and believe objections and maybe objectives um and believe that they are mischaracterizing this curriculum i would like to speak about what i call gender ovarian people i understand that if you have not had any experience with

028this population you may be alarmed scared or judgmental i have worked with kids who are gender non-conforming this means that some children are adolescents do not feel comfortable in the body in which they were born i could tell many of tell you many of the stories i have heard from these clients of mine first a little story as you can see i have very curly hair i was born with very curly hair my curly hair was unusual where i live there were no products to use for hair like mine it was sometimes unruly because of that so my mother decided that i should fit in with my surroundings and i should have my hair sprayed she took me to a salon and had my hair scraped this was a very long time ago and very

029harsh chemicals were used so harsh that my hair on top of my head broke off and took a very long time to grow back this continued for many years if you saw a high school college graduation pictures of me he would not recognize me me that i am now after a number of years when i had a bigger say in my appearance i decided that i wanted to return to the me that i was meant to be a girl with curly hair as a result i no longer had my hair straightened and my hair was returned to its curly state and it has been curled i have been curly haired for decades now this is not an exact example of what my gender non-conforming clients have told me but it is close can i finish

030later you are you are more than welcome to come back up to the to the position thank you for your comments is that an agenda it really wasn't it was just a superintendent's comment but you're welcome to come up again okay oval request that you've probably stated is made by eric simkin i'd like to know why is a member of the community and i say that allowed to attempt finding out information which can be for no other reason than retaliation [Music] he's also publicly in alignment with and seen with look there will be no outburst tolerated in the meeting no there will be no no she's entitled to her there any other comments made outside of at the podium or up here you will be escorted out that is it we have to have decorum

031in the meeting please please stop speaking if you're not at the podium or up here that is the last warning where i will ask them to escort you out so explanation we have someone who was fighting with a white power domestic terrorist group wanting to come on school property but yet he sits here on this in this board meeting today and it's even attempting to sit on the board again you cannot speak unless you are at the podium that was an agenda item she was addressing the oprah requests so i can respond to her since she's been addressing that this is not a back and forth you can address the board if you would like to address the board this is not a no you cannot respond to a comment that was previously made by

032a community member this is your opportunity to address the board on agenda items specifically yes you are more than welcome to talk about the over requests well the reason my name is patricia connie and i'm from washington township lost him the reason i i'm up here is because um we're a little concerned with people when they address these items they have to tell the truth and if you don't know for a fact that somebody belongs to an organization that no you're addressing a comment that was made i'm not going to i'm not going to reiterate myself if you cannot address the things that are on the agenda you cannot speak if there's any more outbursts officer please escort them out because people are not following the directions i i don't know how many times i

033have to say the same thing as to the overrequests since you have added that to the meeting if you could please also post the results the reason the open requests were done was poor transparency so in order to give the public transparency can you also please post the results thank you hello eric simpson president good to see everybody uh agenda item for the minutes of the may 4th uh and when they got to the point of asking about public comments and bringing comments back people and communities have aspirations in schools uh because watson you actually said you need to listen to people what other groups of people are for what reasons it's very interesting um can you hear me yes hi um my name is julie mandel sloves i am a parent in voorhees i

034have lived here for 22 years and i have three children who have all gone through vorhees township public schools um i wanted to address specifically um the sexual education curriculum i'm speaking out as a parent of a non-binary file i'm sorry that's not that's not currently on the agenda even though um superintendent redfern did address it it was in his public statements it's not an agenda item i apologize you are more than welcome to address this at the open section at the end of the meeting okay thank you any other comments comments from the board um i'll take and then grab you yes um uh i would like to thank everyone publicly uh i would like to acknowledge uh signal hills around the world uh and thank the signal hill staff um especially miss cole

035and mitscochi um every year they do such a great job um in this year like three pandemic years it was a little different during the pandemic but pre-pandemic years we were board members invited to go on a tour around the world and they would send the board members a little um ticket uh to come on board i can't describe it accurately and we would come and they would have fifth grade students would tour us around the school with all of the different places that the students learned about and the students mostly from memory would do these wonderful presentations they were missing during um kovid and it was wonderful to see them back this year many of us were able to go to the school and really appreciated the invitation it was wonderful for the students

036to be able to see all the work that they did displayed up there they certainly stumped me as a board member um i can say i was not smarter than a fifth grader that day um history not my strongest suit and it was really great to see the kids uh you know getting back into some of the more traditional wonderful things that we do in the district and the teachers guiding them through especially all the artwork and the places that we visited so i just wanted to acknowledge the work that everyone has been doing and thank you so much for the invitation for the board members to join have a brief comment um i'd like to thank um miss love and miss fulton for the community service project i've seen nurses open up letters from

037students and it really changes their day this is you know it's a health care workforce that's been through you know the ringer over the last couple of years and especially our nurses that suffer from a tremendous amount of burnout but but getting a letter of appreciation from a student is something that can really change their day brighten their spirits and make a difference in the work that they do so so thank you sincerely for doing this taking this on and for guiding the students i would like to take a second to thank all of our principals and administrators and faculty organizations who hosted dr hackett's meet and greet evenings we did five of those very well attended each one had about anywhere from 50 to 75 people a great uh presentation that she has done

038for everyone and a lot of good questions and i want to thank you for being a warm and wonderful host that we know you are thank you to thank our um they do so much work it was a lot of work for them um jory kovet and during the shutdown too just to try to you know keep the morale up and try to do whatever recoveries they could to get for fifth grade needed to get to this point so i'm very happy for the kids i'm proud of the parents that um contributed to that to pull that off because this year they did have a little bit of normalcy with their not everybody gets the opportunity to go into the schools so maybe you have a full-time job that prevents you from going there or

039maybe you don't have a child in the school district but i can assure you pre-covered um that our schools are such a loving joyous place to be they really are i have spent sorry i'm i'm a i wear everything in my heart so very emotional um i've spent many years many hours involved with the other activities and school districts and when you're not in a board meeting you're there i promise you there is so much love behind everything that the staff puts in that parents put in and these kids are happy and they are loved and i also assure you and nobody ever thanks them and i hope it's not too pretentious but i want to thank my board members because i've only been on the board for about a year and a half and

040i became a board member in the heat of all of this in the heat of all the arguing arguing and asides and they have made it comfortable for me they haven't bothered me with open arms it has not been easy they really do try and work together they are trying their best there's not one person sitting at this table that would ever vote on something or do something to hurt a child so i assure you when the time comes and after mr mcfern finds out exactly what the state is um you know what guidelines are in place that this board will make sure that we are making the best decision as much as we can for everyone so i just please i encourage you to not argue it if you can don't bring figures we

041love when people come to the podium and they they give us their input there have been many meetings that i go home and i said that woman got up to the podium and she said xyz that really resonated with me and that made me think in a different way so we really do appreciate it i appreciate it but i please encourage you to remember that we're here with kids these people at this table were reminded in ethics training that you were voted in to be the voice of the children so there are every single person at this table is a loving person so i do believe so if you can just continue not fight with each other don't fight each other on the internet social media just let's all try to do our best job

042for the kids thank you any other word comments ladies thanks and i was very impressed by everything that they did and i was happy they were back to regular schedule programming i wanted to thank all the teachers i have my second child graduating sixth grade next week so thank you to everyone who helped me two out of three of my kids um they are um um but it's been a wonderful amazing experience and every person in the school district has contributed michael just graduated high school which is crazy to me but um i'm so thankful for everybody that contributed to their education and making them know that they are um and thank you you know you've had a rough last year um but thank you for everything you did a great job in spite of

043all the challenges of the last year i know a lot of the teachers have had a very challenging year so um they really have their work cut out for them we're going to really enjoy their summer break so thank you to everybody thank you um i'd like to just say thank you to all the teachers um you guys have done a great job you know kind of persevering throughout this whole year it's been a kind of adjustment year but you guys are still have i'd like to give a special acknowledgement to uh principal uh uh mr bob um and um miss stacey margus for uh welcoming school and their staff and i hope you guys enjoy the wonderful treats i got you guys i'd like to give a special shout out to miss love and

044hey mrs love she's an awesome teacher that worked with my son he was in eighth grade and miss fulton and just that wonderful display of service learning service project um you know teachers appreciation is one week and then we need to figure out how we can give a day of service to you guys for more than just a week so um that's something that we'll definitely i'll definitely ponder about just overall just overall thank you uh in general for all that you do and to you young lady i love your curly hair [Music] so thank you any other comments transportation can i get a motion to approve all the items under transportation don't move voting is open promotion unanimously passes closing voting under policy can i get a motion to approve all of the items

045under policy second online voting is open motion unanimously passes i'm closing the voting and i get a motion to approve all of the items under personnel i'll move that second online voting is open the motion passes unanimously and closing the voting you know items under deferred action under new business um i apologize i'm going to throw a wrench in here um a board member has requested that we've reopened the vote on the vacant board seat um in order for us to do that we need to rescind the original vote that took place at this point i don't remember how many meetings ago two meetings ago where both candidates received four votes i am going to ask for a motion to rescind i'll make that motion a second yes and now we can open it for

046um discussion so with this motion that has been rescinded that gives us the opportunity to vote or re-vote fill that spot correctly two candidates that we were the finalists correct the same we would just we're just going to re-vote on the two candidates to fill the vacancy the vacancy that is just until the end of this year there's no speaking in the audience ma'am ma'am there is no more public comment there's another section for public comment at the end of the meeting if you if the two of you three of you continue i'm going to ask the officer to escort you out just show some decorum and respect any other comments or questions from board members having heard none um i'm going to then we'll open up for the vote correct can you read what

047the motion is just let me know exactly sending yes the motion is to res it the motion is to rescind the prior vote for the vacant board seat the two candidates dr dr alabato and julie ketover mr boyce oh i apologize so so how do we do this because we vote the last time we did it a motion for each candidate or is this this is just the motion tourism this is just a reset correct okay if that passes you're allowed to make a motion to rescind a prior action correct for the prior vote the 4-4 vote correct that's what we're resenting let i was a board member requested that we re-vote and because the county superintendent would prefer that the district made the decision we are making a motion to rescind to re-vote it

048could be the same result i don't know a board a board member has requested that we reboot be re-voted and that's the only procedure is the procedure that we're just now discussing that is the only procedure for vote was only two people that's the that's the vote you are moving to the sin for somebody needs to ascend so that's the only vote what's on the table right now is the motion to rescind the vote there will be an election in november where they'll all be able to run for the vacancies okay helen will you call the roll thanks mr bryce yes ms casenza yeah dr falk yes scaliano no dr levy yes mr schmooze yes this is stupler this is watson yes motion carries five yes three no i'll make a motion uh so now

049now we go now now you go to a motion for one or both of the cameras so how did we do that same way you did it before motion open the floor for emotion okay i open the candidates correct i open uh the floor for nominations for the head over a second julie cut over do you need two seconds well i'm wondering i mean so we're just going to call the names that we want that's how we're doing it without we're doing it well there's a there's a motion without a second for dr adabata uh i didn't know yeah yep okay this is a vote for dr alabata mr price yes dr levy no mr schmooze no this is stupler this is watson yeah uh no i'm sorry no so i have five no just

050double checking my work here three yeses the motion fails so the the first who nominated miss ketover john john and who seconded it mr bryce yes miss casenza dr faulk yes ms galiano no dr levy yes mr schmooze yes mrs stupler mrs watson yes there's three no's five yeses so that means cut over congratulations okay can i get a motion to approve all of the items under new business oh second online voting is open unanimously passes closing voting our next meeting will be on august 29 2022 it'll be a regular meeting and the location will be the administration building at 7 pm audience participation anyone wishing to address the board please approach the podium and write your name and address on the login sheet if you are attending via zoom please use the raise your

051hand feature to be acknowledged while the board is limited in its ability to respond to the public on matters involving personnel litigation negotiations attorney-client privilege the board will now hear comments from the public comments are limited to three minutes the board will not take action this evening you will be notified at some later time by letter electronic mail telephone or in the context of a later board meeting of any action the board does take i've worked with a number of non-gendered conforming science um i'm going to edit what i have written um a few years ago one young man that i had worked with for a few he told me with great trepidation that he was transgender that since the age of three he had an overwhelming desire to be a girl he suppressed that

052for many years until he disclosed this to me this may be hard to understand if you have not had any exposure to people who are gender and uncomfortable i understand that excuse me i've had years of experience with this population i have read study consulted learn so i could do a better job kids and adults who are non-gender conforming do not feel that they are really meant to be the gender into which they were born it's important for me to tell you that within my client population not one person has described being suggested forced or indoctrinated in any way by their parents families peer group or by any adult let me briefly explain to you that this is not a new phenomenon gender variant expression has been documented in a variety of human cultures our

053culture our culture has historically recognized only two genders male or female people who have not fit comfortably into that binary system um are have always existed and because they do not fit into the norms of our society they feel isolated out of safe and desperate i want to emphasize again that not one of my non-gender conforming clients it has reported being cars or influence in any way be transgender non-binary or bisexual i firmly believe that we owe this population understanding empathy acceptance and support without someone in their lives to offer this these people live lives of quiet desperation and that is putting it mildly the guidelines that i have read for the social and emotional curriculum and i believe that's the name of it fcl and no in no way tries to convince children to

054become gender non-conforming no child who is comfortable in his or her own gender would ever be convinced to become gender non-conforming i am not an expert on this population i've worked with a number of people who have told me that they are gender non-conforming and witness their struggles their agony as they try to live their lives as who they are meant to be they deserve to be allowed to do just that thank you let me a lot of parents do not know but it says by the end of grade 5 that means first kindergarten first second third fourth by the end of grade 5 and say fifth grade the students will be learning children the students will be learning about content sexual development and roles of hormones romantic and sexual feelings masturbation this is what

055the letter says and it was sent to your department your chiefs school administrator on april 13 2022 and it should have been distributed to parents my first question is how many parents actually received this letter number two says by the end of great week not eighth grade by the end of the day the student should perform its expectation define vaginal and anal sex [Music] he did not mind okay okay but i want to show this sorry i asked that question also it states in this letter that the sentence should have gone to parents it states that they do have the right to opt out parents but my question to you is how will they know the lesson plan are you going to make it publicly known the lesson plan when they will be teaching this

056information so that those parents can opt out and how far in advance will they know that this discussion will take place number one the next question i have for you in this letter that was sent to everyone and the parents should have received it it says the family and community engagement the new jersey department of education strongly encourages the board of education to allow the parents to participate in the curriculum development of the curriculum and the instructional material my question to you would be have you developed a parent group already and if not when will you be developing that because the parents should be involved in this now the reason i say this is because i do live in washington township in boston county so my time [Music] um sure i because there was some

057discussion i'll i'll give you an additional medicaid thank you i appreciate that um the parents are involved in washington township gloucester county um in developing the curriculum in the instructional material also in township in gloucester county they're doing the same thing and in denver township they're doing the same thing so i'm asking boardies to do the same thing and allow parents to be involved in the development of the curriculum and the instructional material i also want to address when i came up is defamation of character we according to what i know and the solicitor have probably been verified is that we are not supposed to come up here and bash any other publicly and that was done and i'm shocked that the board of education allows that to be done because that is not to

058take place in your in this meeting and you did allow someone to be bashed um if i was that person i would be contacting an attorney for declaration of character um the solicitor i have a question for you the last time a couple times ago i asked you if i could come up and talk again the second time you said no that was falsely um information incorrect and i have not received an apology from you because you did not allow me to come up and speak again so i would like to receive because thank you um [Music] ma'am again respect decor yeah i'm gonna have to ask you to please leave the meeting i'm sorry how about you start over that number was more than half transgender and non-binary survey by the trevor project's third

059and international survey on lgbtq mental health 52 of all transgender and non-binary young people in the u.s seriously killing themselves in 2012. please listen closely more than half of them did rather than trying to face rejection isolation loneliness bullying and being targeted by politicians and activists just this weekend fulfilled the transgender woman was hospitalized for the condition after being disciplined by an attacker as far as i'm concerned those promoting this record and you know who you are good evening natalie juliano here i'm a resident of warden i don't have anything officially prepared um but i just want to thank you all for taking the time to thoroughly evaluate this stuff that's coming down from trenton i'm really confident you guys are going to do a good job in implementing the age-appropriate standards and i just

060want to rewind and remind myself that there is a lot of fear surrounding this this new stuff that's coming by the way it was really hard for me to understand at first the transgender until i heard something on npr and it really opened my mind to this possibility of like understanding the transgender and wanting to be a different gender and it was that they observed a gorilla in in the in the wild with other animals the female gorilla and it i it always was with the nail and gorillas right and i was like all right keep going i'm going to stay open-minded because i was really close-minded about this and then they were explaining that the gorilla even though his girl behaved with the men and the boys and looked started to look like a

061boy and was behaving and hanging with the male gorillas and it opened my mind to the possibility that okay in the wild there's a female gorilla that will only play with the boys behaves like a boy even was had like a forehead like a boy but anatomically genetically was a girl and grew up i think her name was donna actually the irony that it was a woman in italian but donna hung out with all the guys right so that kind of opened my mind and excuse me and put a little less fear i have a five-year-old who's going to eat hamilton i see the principal back there he'll be better in kindergarten next year he came to me the other day and said oh i can get dressed up as a girl and really can

062get dressed as a boy and i was like and i froze and i um i said for halloween for halloween sure you can do that because now for a five-year-old it's not the time to talk about that and i know i'm confident you guys will make a decision when to implement this information this is human anatomy we look if you're going to sit there and act like you've never masturbated really i mean come on like don't this is not this is not an evil word okay this is not let's just all get real okay this is not an evil thing okay um and it it helps children at the appropriate age to understand their body and what they're going through we're not gonna suppress it okay so i am confident you voted into office will

063do the right thing let's put the fear aside not be afraid and be open-minded and that's why thank you yes my name is sean london relatively uh new um president of glory township now one of the reasons my wife and i came to oregon we haven't have five-year-old who's also when we started e.t hamilton started a new school year i just in regards to the curriculum that was talked about that's part of the reason we moved before he's because i trust it's an awesome school district and i believe the gentleman um will be used um like it was 30 some years ago today but what i really wanted to say just on a personal note as far as what's been talked about with um gender and uh you know gay and that have lesbian brought

064up tonight i i am the son of um a gay woman dude um in a relationship same-sex relationship with her now-wife for the last 42 years and when i was a kid grandma you know the people that i talked to were my mom you know and her partner who i consider a moment but like this it was i'm a little older so back when this was like in the late 70s early 80s like there wasn't anybody to go to in the school i and i you know i had questions but i was scared enough to ask anybody these questions so you know as a result i bottled that stuff and created drama in my life later on and um it taught me some very uh some character defects that we're not coming you know how

065to hide things you know um just very stuff from that so i like to know that my son if he's got any question that he can feel free to ask any staff member at et hamilton at the middle school um whatever he feels um in regards to that or anything else and it might be able to wear glasses more uh to start from you actually kind of addressed my issue already so i kind of don't really even say too much about that um but i'm getting back to what another person had mentioned about this um the acting uh commissioner in general did send out a memo to everyone that said that the uh this should have gone out to all parents however i did not receive it i received it from someone else but in

066any case it talks about you know parents being involved you mentioned earlier [Music] teachers and parents but i think that that was i think and she did recommend that parents get involved [Music] it's important to discuss our kids my children are here to learn about math science english to ensure that they are learning to develop in a way that they can think for themselves and to be successful members of the community that is the purpose of today we come here with our own values or religious beliefs and i'm going to know that my beliefs are going to be valued and respected just like everyone else in this room we all want our values to be respected and that's all i am right and um that our children find in this community be respected everyone regardless

067of gender grace regardless of that we just want to know i just want to know that issues gender issues thank you your phone any other comments oh i'm sorry what one second um after uh miss swellings then you can we'll go to the computer so i just want to add some comments about the the problem with what the state is implementing or trying to answer is that gender issues don't appeal to all of the kids in the school the transgender population is about one percent so maybe there could be an elective or or they can handle it a different way but to have all of this content starting from beginning of second grade we talk to every child in the school in this health class it's wrong and that's the problem okay so however you

068know if well okay another thing that i want to add we do want to uh ask for a parent bill of rights warren county has implemented that this way as sarah said parents are also involved we are the taxpayers so you work for us so we would like that acknowledged so anybody that's not in agreement with this curriculum can voice and there could be a shared discussion as to what is appropriate and what's not appropriate sex ed at a very young age where all these kids is not appropriate so i want to know also has every member looked at all of this curriculum and has really studied does that exactly what they are putting into the curriculum and where you know we'd like to you know confirm that you have because it's highly inappropriate to

069have this pushed on all the children thank you um i just wanted to say that if there's a disagreement in the curriculum it has always been as to my understanding the option opt out if you didn't play something like that when i was growing up that was the option my parents grown up that's the option and as far as i'm aware and i have read through standards there's nothing that's groundbreaking or wildly inappropriate you're not teaching your children proper names for their body parts you're actually setting them up for being a victim of pedophiles and being molested so i'm not really sure where all this information these people are coming up with coming from but it definitely seems like a scare tactic for the community as far as a community parent bill of rights i

070can probably say that there's a very very few of us excuse me i'm sorry what was that um there's probably very few of us that are uh capable of developing a curriculum i'm not capable of developing a curriculum for my child i've homeschooled my child during the academics i don't want to know her curriculum i trust that the people that are hired to develop curriculum are here to do it if you don't like the curriculum home school opt-out there's plenty of options for you but please don't tear down public schools that's what we know the end game is we don't want that we value our teachers we value our communities thank you so much oh yeah hi i'm megan gallagher um i just wanted to um say that so most police and social workers support

071the diversity educational learning and the psychiatrist um thank you okay hi my name is um i'm currently a senior at eastern regional high school i will be graduating on monday so i'm finally done um i am a professional princess and i don't mean that like i am a diva i'm quite literally a professional princess that's what i do for work my job i go to children's birthday parties as well known as beloved characters like cinderella belle and rapunzel all of which got their happily ever after within the princess is always fine to prince that is how the story goes in february of this year i told my parents for the first time that i had a crush on a girl i it was something that i had been denying for a year because it wasn't

072right it wasn't how it was supposed to be on the weekends i would go to little emma's birthday party and i would wear ariel's tail and a bright red wig on my head and i would answer questions about the love of my life that's eric but i had a crush on a girl and i wasn't supposed to but i did her hair was nice and her eyes were pretty and she did not look at all like prince eric and i liked her anyway i did not like a girl because i had been told it was okay i liked her in spite of being told i was worried by those around me by the curriculum and by my favorite story about princesses and i hated myself for it i denied it for years i hated myself

073for that too i am not the way i am because a teacher parent or adult i am who i am in spite of them not teaching me not talking to me and not educating me when i needed it moving forward and dealing with the sel i encourage you to be what i wish i had and what our storybook commences would really which is to be kind to be compassionate to teach love and to show all right good evening i was not planning on speaking tonight at all i'm here with my mother tammy wilhelm who's being honored tonight um i'm i'm not only a alumni of orkies i went to hamilton morty's middle eastern i've also been an american history teacher for the last 18 years at a local high school if you need any help

074on your parent faculty curriculum panel that you are going to assemble in the coming months i'm sure for this upcoming curriculum change i would be happy to help my degrees in psychology i would be happy to help in any way that i can my daughter just graduated preston and she's embarking on middle school she had a fabulous time and i want to thank all of you for volunteering your time i know you're not paid for your positions so i understand that you are are working for the taxpayers but you are not paid so i appreciate for all of your hard work and your dedication to our kids thank you i think there's a couple of people on yeah i had a couple loops i broke down first tonight uh the first one went through for

075being here like all of our clients see everything i think it's probably gonna be more than more exceptional um i actually did also attend the ethics training online i knew a lot of it just from over the years but it was good to hear what the community can expect what board members are permitted to do as far as not responding so i think that's probably something i want to congratulate the retirees the retirees um their patience to bill my daughter's locking up that she's actually back reached out to me and picked up things that were very subtle uh helped me um i also wanted to thank the bms my daughters had the absolute fabulous time i was petrified sex-free the sports were phenomenal she did her best enjoyed everything the track was great they had

076all schools came to us so it was a phenomenal year even though she didn't win any awards she felt part of myself i wanted to go two things we had a recent retirement for our police officer sponsor chris at our um and he kind of brings in something that mr predator does um it's direct for instance i've known him has probably been somebody that checks all the boxes boxes usually one thing mike has done that i think is something i've always wanted us to do is he made our district one school just happens to be in five buildings not five different schools and something that i take pride in because i'm just in the process of selling the house decided to stay in the mornings again but i like the idea that he attends all

077the events over the years one thing that we did at our school and i hope this represents so i'm i will make sure in my heart i will do that thank you all you're all amazing appreciate everything for our kids i would thank our principal hamilton phenomenal greatest district i just want to touch on one thing a dress a skirt whatever it's not thank you i'm just going to take a moment to circle um you know mr redfern i've worked with mike for 34 years and i've never known or worked with somebody who was tougher than mike uh he was but ultimately reasonable and always having students always have a children and mike provided just that right bit of leadership i really needed it the most in the white house but so we really appreciate

078everything that he's done thank you so much for coming in stepping into that space when we needed you the most and you know bringing us together in a way that craig really eloquently stated but also mike has devoted his life to serving children retirees have also done that uh you have an amazing group of people and again i look forward to working with you in the future no we don't know how much longer but we'll save it thank you before anybody else comes up i want to go to the five people who have patiently been waiting on the computer can you hear me yes hi my name is uh lou horvitz and i'm a resident of voorhees uh i wish i could be there but sadly i'm recovering from surgery i'll make this brief the

079voorhees citizens have had enough of some of our board of ed's bullying of parents and citizens some of their intolerance of those who disagree with them show us their true colors some are authoritarian bullies who are only tolerant of like-minded america haters some board of ed members think brainwashing our children with racist critical race theory and radical gender ideology all under the guise of diversity equity inclusion and social emotional learning is their higher calling monica watson rachel van aiken marissa levy and solicitor frank cavallo are unfit to serve voorhees township well while van aiken has already left for the good of our children the remaining three must resign or be removed based on their unethical actions that betrayed their oaths of office ignored the board of ed bylaws ignored the best practices of the new

080jersey state board association and ignored robert's rules of order all while harassing anyone who disagreed with their politically motivated agenda further i'm a 63 year old resident and i've seen pretty much everything in my day but at the last meeting i saw something that exposed just how radical and uncivil some of these board members truly are they staffed our last meeting with three armed warheads township police officers tacitly showing that they view anyone who opposes their views or go beyond the three-minute mark as potentially requiring physical force i love our police this board of ed should be ashamed they used our good police officers as pawns in their smug effort to intimidate us they wasted first responders for a non-emergent unnecessary reason these three board members and solicitor have violated our constitutionally protected first amendment

081civil right of free speech constitutionally protected fifth amendment civil right of due process and our constitutionally protected 14th amendment civil right of equal protection they've showed their true colors tonight in spades why they're unfit and i'm humbly demanding their resignations today i thank you for your time yes hi uh thanks for the opportunity to speak to you this evening i started before i'll try again my name is julie mandel sloves i'm here with my husband uh we wanted to just represent the perspective of a parent of a non-binary child our children all three of them have gone through voorhees township schools our oldest child came out as gay a couple of years ago and told us that they first knew that they were gay in middle school they didn't come out in middle school because

082they didn't feel comfortable they didn't feel that they would be supported um they didn't you know they had questions and they weren't ready and that's okay but in an environment that exists currently uh things have changed uh being able to come out in this day uh you know 10 years later than they were at in middle school they find that they're incredibly supported by their friends their siblings and their friends have no problem using the proper pronouns i wish i could say that was true of myself and my husband it's the adults that have challenges with uh with non-binary or lgbtq community it's the adults that it challenges not the kids the kids get it and it's incredibly important that the kids feel respected and represented and able to be comfortable in their school settings

083and i'm asking as you consider the curriculum that you consider the kids who need to be seen and heard and feel that they are included in their school thank you for your time thank you hello my name is julianne verde and i'm the proud mother of three soon to be four young children we moved here last year from new york city in large part because of the voorhees school district and i'm genuinely impressed with the quality of education my son is receiving here since we're all talking about it i want to express my support for medically accurate age-appropriate comprehensive sex and sexuality education in our schools next education saves lives clean and simple and we cannot allow the vocal minority to fearmonger us into a watered-down curriculum i also want to address a few other

084issues for the second year in a row my middle child was not selected in the lottery for our town's pre-k program well i understand that's how lotteries work i think there are ways to improve the lottery process to ensure greater equity and fairness for our town's young families both years i submitted our application as soon as the application process opened in in january and patiently waited we were told we would receive lottery results by the second week of may but after that we came and went and social media moms groups were full of panic and confusion we were told that the lottery was delayed it wasn't until the third week of may where we finally received notice we were not selected i then scrambled calling other programs in our area to be met with long

085waiting lists there is no reason that it should take five months for decision on the lottery systems friends and families in other towns and other with pre-k lottery systems were told months earlier of their town's decision having such a late date for decision and voorhees unfairly benefits those who have the financial means to put non-refundable deposits down in private programs while awaiting results of the lottery my hope is that boris voorhees can get to universal pre-k to ensure every three and four-year-old in our town has access to affordable quality early childhood education but recognizing limited resources may make that more of a longer term pipe dream we must streamline our application and lottery selection processes so parents can be given a fairer opportunity to ensure that their children can get a seat in an alternative

086program should they not be chosen in the lottery the final issue i'd like to address is the lack of second language education in our elementary schools coming from new york city where i attended public schools k through college i was very surprised to learn that worries vorhees does not provide second language education in our elementary schools for decades studies have shown clearly that foreign language education in early in early school years improves cognitive abilities reading skills memory function and problem solving young children also have a better ability to actually absorb and get get to fluency in a second language than middle and high school students second language education can also be an important component to dei efforts early exposure to a second language has the added benefits of increasing tolerance inclusion and improved attitudes and

087perceptions towards other cultures races and ethnicities and combating xenophobia if none of that moves you and are increasingly global involving delaying foreign language education simply puts our children at a real disadvantage if we want them to compete in a global economy we need to invest in their language skills early on i hope that you'll consider that thank you for your time thank you hi can you hear me yeah thank you i will i will be brief my name is kristen sinclair i'm the attorney for the child advocate coalition llc my family has property at 4903 gina court where he's new jersey i live in medford new jersey i'm here at the request of a number of voorhees parents parents just to encourage you to take a brief pause before you implement the 2020 pe and

088health standards and really review the age appropriateness of the curriculum it's not that my group in particular has any objection to a healthy sex curriculum or an understanding of diversity equity inclusion but as we have analyzed the standards it is very clear that the second grade and the fifth grade standards present information that is objectionable to many parents and an opt-out clause alone does not protect children from being informed of information that may be inappropriate for their age group having the parents either be able to opt in only having the option to have this curriculum taught at the end of the year or like other towns like barwood millstone jackson there's a number of towns that have said we're not even going to include this curriculum based on what we've determined is appropriate for our

089community i'm not saying it's not appropriate for voorhees but i think there's a lot more that would go into determining whether these standards are needed for the community of voorhees compared to another district and my the parents that i've been asked to represent would urge you to take more time include more parent input and be able to display every worksheet every lesson plan before you implement this curriculum with no information to the parents in september thank you so much for your time thank you please uh can you hear me like am i speaking clearly yes we can hear you all right uh i am a student at eastern regional high school and i'd like to talk about uh this sex education program all right so i don't think sex uh is a secret to uh

090middle schoolers and even some elementary schoolers uh like in fifth grade right uh many of my peers uh myself included learned what sex was all the way back in fifth grade and someone fourth right sex is a natural desire you know we're human that's okay and uh from my experiences in high school i can say that many people uh of my age uh do partake uh in intercourse right so i find it to be i find this be very important that we're taught how to safely do it okay it's not it's not about politics here it's about people getting the education that they need to uh practice say safe sex uh and on uh things like uh gender right what are you afraid of you know like information spreads like wildfire you know in this

091day and age right uh again like we all knew what that was back in elementary school we all we knew about uh people being gay and transgenders it's you we know more than you think you do or than you think we do uh because well we're not going to go to our parents and say anything okay and no matter what you try to do to try and suppress this knowledge it also reach your kid you know like through you know their peers uh so i just want people to remember that ignorance breeds hate that's what history has shown us so for you to say it's not appropriate to talk about uh genders and sexuality is kind of disheartening you know the like have you ever read a history book you know what happens when cultures

092don't understand others right violence and in many cases leads to like genocide uh or just a group being condemned and i don't want that of anyone right so i think that uh you should check your own morals that you're imposing us right uh well that's all i had to say thank you hi can you hear me yes hi my name is sabrina joynes i am i live in voorhees i grew up in voorhees i am a graduate of osage elementary school voorhees middle and eastern high school um what i would like to say about all of this is one first thing i i had the opportunity to go on the fifth grade field trip today and i watched children walk through exhibits where they learned about how people were suppressed and oppressed and were denied

093the right to vote in this country and i feel that it's very important like our last speaker talked about to know about these things so that we're not doomed to repeat them and secondly parents are the first teachers we need to teach in our homes love and respect for other people and give our children an outlet so that they can come to us and don't have to learn about who they are just from their teachers in school some of us have children who are different whatever that is and they're afraid to come to us because they hear us in these platforms feeling hate so what i will say is that my mother was an educator for 45 years she taught her children and she taught her students love and respect and how to be a

094good citizen and i would ask that of every parent here i'd ask that of every educator here and i trust that you guys will do the right thing our children need you and they need us too to be better citizens so that our town does not turn into some of these other towns where people are being persecuted so that is all i had to say and thank you for your time thank you any other comments hi my name is richard rosen my husband and i knew that before years ago and i tell you i was scared of south jersey but it's the community is very warm and friendly and open and very happy something that i think people get important about the lgbt community is that sexual orientation and gender identity are two slightly different

095things it has nothing to do with it the fact that lgbt is because it's a minority but a personal man who's gay does not want to be a woman and a woman does not want to be a man they don't have a question about their identity whereas the person who's trans is not yet a person who's born assigned agenda as a male at birth they identify as a woman they are not confusing transition and sexual orientation can be separate and it is one thing that you need to learn it's on facebook or twitter um [Music] you want professional education and yeah i also want to come to another person spoke about teaching foreign languages um at an early age and i i'm a great component of that i've been learning very last years um i

096would suppose [Music] uh foreign [Music] thank you hello my name is cassandra flynn i moved here a few years ago i have a five-year-old graduating kindergarten at crescent this year i have two younger children also coming into the district um my husband is also a graduate of wartley schools we had options where to move and we chose war leads because voorhees is a place where our children can both succeed and interact meaningfully with people who are different from them and that is not present in every school district in every town and i just want to impress upon the board how very special this thing we have at boardview is how we move here to be a part of it and it's not just me i just nearly represent this year um and i also want

097to just take the time to thank for he's for supporting a diverse education that includes more than just reading science back you know the arts are important health is important physical education is important i have been over the past year so so impressed with the just completeness of the education that my oldest child has received and i would answer the board consider that their their job is more than just test scores that the job here is truly ensuring a complete well-rounded education because children who cannot interact with others who are different from them who cannot grow up tolerant of others significant robots and i just i just want to once again reiterate how grateful i am for the job that you guys have all done those whose opinions i mostly agree with those whose opinions

098i do not agree with i appreciate all of you thank you very much please consider the importance once again of all the subjects not just the core thank you any other comments all right board comments i do want to i wanted to say that um um you know as everyone's talking and i really want to talk about what the last woman said um sitting here thinking i'm just seeing myself at almost 50 years old at 50 remember all of that you may not remember all the science you might not remember all the social studies that you learned here or um and it really you really have to think about one different success because making you having um public speakers but um how you define success so you don't have to be the smartest person in

099the room you don't have to have the top scoring grades success could be that you learn to respect other people that you are accepting of other people and there's really you're accepting of yourself so it's not always whether you were excelling in these classes that you may not remember if it's great when you're 50 years old but when you respect people and you accept them and you accept yourself that saves you for your whole life and that is what makes you successful be kind and respectful so i just wanted to say that it's important and i think it backs up what the last woman says and i really just wanted to say that because that is what i teach i have a brief comment um so thank you kelly i want to thank it's not

100easy to get up here and talk and address people and share your personal um thoughts some of your personal stories and anecdotes so i greatly appreciate everyone who has taken the time to not only attend the meeting but then share on such a personal level but i want to specifically call out our two students the um i i believe mr rubin and and and you um that's sitting in our audience i apologize i don't remember your name um but first and foremost i want to say i want to say i'm sorry that we failed you um because that's not the experience we want anyone to have and i'm happy that we are now looking at this and that we are thinking about this critically and that we will be compassionate and thoughtful in our approach

101moving forward clearly you have become a wonderful wonderful human um and i apologize on behalf of the district for for failing you in that way because you deserve to have the social and emotional um safeguard and support that you need uh and i hope that we do better moving forward but thank you for for speaking up and coming i know that was a lot but you are incredibly articulate and we are very proud of you just to read comment i i appreciate that early foreign language education is something that is tremendously important and you know i think this is something that we can work towards as a district to see if we can and how we can incorporate that into our curriculum moving forward so so again that's thank you for bringing that up i

102think that's an incredibly important piece that we are missing early on in our children's education um the other thing i'd like to say is that the most distressing part to me that nobody has brought up about our health and physical education curriculum is squared in so so i'm not sure like like what skills we're getting out of square dancing anymore that are incredibly important for our children and you know my wife makes me take ballroom dancing she doesn't make me i enjoy doing it with so i think dancing is important it's a great um part of physical activity in education but i'm not sure if square dancing is something that's important for our children to be learning in the 21st century thank you you're welcome any other i just want to um thank god my

103daughter is graduating 28th grade this year all of her teachers um mrs love is in the audience uh she's such a good experience after two bad years of the middle school so this third year has been such a good year first i just want to thank all her teachers um and um thank you for all that you do thank you um first i wanted to also commend our two students for speaking up i know it's so hard for grown adults to get up they were accomplished so people spoke so beautifully and very impressive so lucky we have you as part of our community and that you have the courage to get up and speak about such a sense of topic um i also wanted to talk in general this past year i started volunteering to

104go into schools in our entire community to speak about holocaust education my grandchild had four holocaust survivors and i tell one of my grandparents stories to use lessons of the holocaust that he creates his own bigotry everything that goes on today and just this week i actually had the opportunity to speak at two different schools and it's really so amazing but what can i tell the kids at the end of my story like what he could do what hitler was able to accomplish protein it's so much easier to you know hate is so much more contagious behind us and maybe if we all take a lesson out of that book and just be kind to all types of people um and just use that as our you know as our motto i would think um

105because i think we'd be a much better community much better society if we kind of remember what hate could do um and just really try to focus on kindness it's not just we're all guilty of it you know he definitely stands out a lot as he's getting older and it's a struggle as a parent so i sympathize for a lot of you that have their own personal struggles um so you know just be aware there's all sorts of people out there that don't perform and that was basically his message if you weren't one of those people who wanted you to die so um i think it's so important today to really use our lessons really focus on doing good and accepting all sorts of people out there any other comments let's move to finance can

106i get a motion to approve all the items under finance so move online voting is now open sorry i'm all votes are yes i'm closing online voting we did have to amend the agenda unfortunately and we will have a very brief executive session um so it's not it's added on our end but it's not on the printed materials um so be it resolve that pursuant to section eight of the open public meeting act the public shall be excluded from that portion of the meeting involving discussion of matter involving the purchase lease or acquisition of real property with public funds and setting of banking rates or investment of public funds where it could adversely affect the public interest of such uh uh is this the right one yeah sorry sorry as i was reading and i

107was realizing that this is not this is for personal matters um so not so scratch that um yes give me here we go is it one that you i apologize be it resolve that pursuant to section 8 of the open public meeting act the public shall be excluded from that portion of the meeting involving a discussion of the matter no questions yeah of personnel matters of personnel we will be taking action at the um when we return uh i can't imagine it will be more than 10 minutes um can i get a motion to adjourn to executive sessions i'm opening online voting you're going to executives oh [Music] right [Music] all right and dr lee okay oh everyone's vote is in it's unanimous closing the voting thank you this will be manual okay um frankly

108make the question sure um based on uh discussion held in executive session and my recommendation um as counsel to the board of education um i am recommending that the board consider a motion to rescind the non-renewal of dr david gentile's contract except at the same time a letter of resignation effective june 30 2022 and a separation of service agreement dated june 15th 2020. second first and second dr faulk is first that was john and okay sorry mr bryce yes mrs casenza dr paul yes ms scaliano yes dr levy yes mr schmooze yes this is stupler yes this is watson yes motion passes unanimously uh all those in favor of adjourning the meeting first motion motion second i need a motion you want to go thank you all have a good summer everyone