001pursuant 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 january 28 sending written notice to the courier post on january 28 2022 filing written notice with the clerk of warheads township on january 28 2022 posting on the voorhees township website on january 28 20 20 20 20 22. please rise [Music] mrs casenza miss galliano here dr levy here mr schmooze mrs stupler mrs van aaken here mrs watson here there are no information items there are no communication items the board there is no board secretary report we're going straight to the superintendent report for a presentation on the crescent edition thank you madam president on tonight's
002agenda there is a recommendation that we alter the construction project at crescent school from a kindergarten program to an early childhood program at the conclusion of this presentation it would be my recommendation to make that change please understand and this is important this recommendation is being being made because the current plan not because the current plan won't work it will work uh it's being made because we've had the opportunity to evaluate kindergarten for two marketing periods as it has taken place at the home school and it's working well uh the specials are scheduled lunch room is scheduled uh recess is scheduled transportation is working um so when we looked at it uh it's working well so we looked at is there could we all uh repurpose uh this facility to help even more students uh
003so that's the reason for this so mr taylor if you you ready just a brief history in november 2020 the voorhees township public school district approved a 4 million addition to crescent school this edition would not require a bond referendum or a vote by the community uh the funds it would be paid for out of surplus and capital reserves this new facility would consist of 10 newly constructed classrooms and the refurbishing of five existing classrooms at crescent school this edition is scheduled to house all district kindergarten students in september of 2022 and all eligible kindergarten students would be transported to this new facility instead of their home school back when we we first took a look at this we looked at a couple of different options at least the board looked at a couple of
004different options in 2019 they looked at reconfiguring uh all the current kindergarten classrooms at the four elementary schools to include bathrooms but we thought this would reduce the actual size of each classroom requiring construction at all four elementary schools simultaneously and hindsight being 2020 we could have had four projects taking place at the same time with supply chain issues the other one was to transform the administration building into an early childhood center housing preschool through first grade this would be very costly and would require demolition and construction the third option which was which is what was decided on was to add an addition to crescent school like i said it would be ten classrooms plus five renovating five others giving us 15 classrooms and all the students would be transported to crescent school for a
005full day of kindergarten instruction the board was so uh adamant about having full day kindergarten that we started it this year we needed waivers because some of the classrooms didn't have bathrooms so we did need some waivers to pull that off this year the department of ed that's a temporary thing the department of ed won't allow us to just continue to keep asking for waivers so obviously we're bringing 255 year olds into one facility has its challenges so we took a look at it it would increase the traffic both by buses and parent transport we could have possibly students transitioning to three different schools within three different years uh there'd be an increase in the capacity of supervision for approximately 300 students uh in the lunchroom and recess we'd have to get them through art
006music health physical education and library we had to schedule all that in uh would be a significant increase in the the number of students needing support nurse guidance counselor reading specialist there'd be a significant increase in parents who would need sac which is a cer school-age program we couldn't accommodate all those parents it just wouldn't fit the sad parents we need to drop off could need to drop off at two different locations kindergarten students unable to attend school with their siblings which is important i know it was important to me and extend his time on school buses and we don't know how long that time would be until we actually ran it through a couple weeks and we got the kids and we saw who registered and from where they registered and how you know
007how long the bus routes would be and a continued increase we do have a continued increase in our preschool population so when we took a look at preschool we can see that the numbers continue to increase um from total number from 41 to 45 to 46 and potentially 54 of this year so we see that our need for preschool is increasing each year so the alternate plan that i'm proposing tonight would be to repurpose it from a kindergarten facility into an early childhood center so four of the rooms would be used for the crescent kindergarten for them to stay at their home school we would have five rooms which would be designated for the preschool inclusion program which currently takes place at signal hill so those students aren't necessarily live in the signal hill area
008they're bused in from across the town so crescent would be more of a central location for that so it'd be easier for them to get there we would also move some of our early elementary self-contained classrooms in there and we think and we're hoping that we would have a room that we could uh kind of repurpose as an otp speech room so we would have those uh child study team members right on site now the benefits of this you know as when i when i said the uh the challenges it reduces the flow of traffic because preschool dismissal is at two o'clock so those students would be gone before the regular dismissal took place at start of a preschool and special education they utilize smaller buses or bands preschool impact on the lunchroom is minimal
009because only about 25 to 30 of those students would be staying preschool does not participate in specials they do not get art health physical education library preschool and special needs students reside throughout the township so like i said crescent is more centrally located it'll be easier for the parents to get there special education classes have fewer students there'd be a minimal increase on staff the lunch schedule would remain the same because preschool would just eat with the kindergarten students and we said we're only looking about 20 to 25 of those students would stay all day kindergarten could have could attend their home school with their siblings it reduces the transportation drive times for kindergarten students like we said we don't know how long those drive times would be until we actually run through it for
010a couple of week weeks and like we said ten of those classrooms uh in the addition uh would house the five would house the uh or four excuse me four would house the kindergarten a five or six could house the preschool because we're looking at those numbers that are increasing so you know we're kind of leaving some room for some flexibility uh additional space at crescent would house the younger self-contained classrooms we would return the computer lab to crescent because they had they do not have one now it's been uh repurposed into a classroom parents would not need to travel to different schools for back-to-school night conferences and other school events current schedules already uh allow for kindergarten students to utilize the lunchroom and receive specials so it's working now so we're kind of taking
011the approach if it's not broken let's not try to fix it it reduces demand on the nurses the guidance counselor and the reading specialist okay it brings the preschool and the special ed teachers together in one location so they can collaborate better in one building it allows for better utilization of our support staff our resource assistants and our behavior therapists allows parents to utilize the sac program at one school and they don't have to pick up at two different locations provides all kindergarten preschool and our younger special education classrooms with bathrooms allocates a state-of-the-art facility to some of our youngest most vulnerable population provides continuity of services to our younger special needs population and provides future flexibility if our preschool continues to expand we took a look at the buses crescent right now we have
012nine buses that are utilized to crest we have six large buses and three vans if we go with the current program we would have 17 large buses and three small bands if we go to this new preschool or early childhood center we would be looking at six large buses five preschool vans and one large preschool van that would depart at two o'clock and then we would have six maybe seven smaller uh special education buses so we also looked at the numbers uh that would be at each school so we looked at them this would be uh if we kept the current um planets in place we'd be looking about 660 estimated at crescent school we would have 320 current uh 320 kindergarten students and another 310 uh that are currently there osage we were looking
013at about 475 estimated population at one time they had 696 at osage school so we're you know we're still reducing the population dosage which was one of the other goals uh at hamilton we were looking about 385 estimated population and at signal hill about 354. so we go with the early childhood center and you can see it kind of levels and evens the playing field creston would have about 507 estimated population osage 576 hamilton 528 and signal hill about 423 but we could also have room to house some of the older uh self-contained special needs classrooms in that building so we would even we would even out the population throughout the district again these numbers again until we see who registers who moves in who moves out these numbers would you know be flexible but
014these are just estimates okay the one other thing i want to mention is although we expect this construction project to start in september obviously we know there's a global supply chain so we have to consider that there could be delays before those delays happen you'll see helen out there with a hard hat on trying to help get it done uh but we have we have to understand that there could be some uh supply chain issues we had to take that into account um and i think this plan if we had to hit the brakes uh be much easier to hit the brakes on this plan than if we plan to bring all the kindergartners to one location so at this point um do you want to open it up to comments madam president you know
015absolutely um so first first and foremost i want to thank um all of the individuals i know this was a large ask and it took a lot of hard work that went into preparing and getting all of the information the numbers doing all of the the the background work so that we could make an informed and educated decision so for thank you um to your entire team for doing the work and getting us the information and if i may and i left i'd like to thank helen and clark uh we we consulted bruce all the principals we reached out to land who was overseeing this project to make sure that everything was good uh dr al gray was instrumental in helping us with the special ed part of it so i left that out but
016i'd like to thank everybody involved for that absolutely so and and i reiterate thanking that entire team i especially appreciate and and like um the solution-oriented um way that we approach this that we didn't just see problems and leave it at that but we actually came up with what i think is a really elegant solution um i especially like that we will be focusing on our special needs population and that there will be some continuity for for them in particular um but i also like the continuity that we will be providing some of our families with siblings um and the available resources that will be better utilized by um by allocating them more aptly to each of the district schools um so i want to open it up to the board for comments or questions
017yes mr schmooze uh mr redfern could you give us uh kind of a brief update on how the all-day kindergarten's going now as we speak at the existing school yeah and that and that was one of the reasons we took a look at another look at this project because it's working well um the parents are pleased with it the parents are happy that obviously they're excited that they're getting full-day kindergarten um they like it at their home school um so it's working very well but we won't need them when we go to this plan uh all the people all the classrooms that need bathrooms we'll have bathrooms so we will not we will no longer have to apply for waivers and groups out the preschoolers are moving so those classrooms that have bathrooms we're repurposing
018them for kindergarten well the way we're doing we would if we had if we doubled almost the size of press so we went with the kindergarten we were bringing in almost 300 new students so if we did that we would have to hire some help at crescent but if we go with this plan then no we'd only be bringing in we wouldn't be bringing in that many students so we would not need to hire enough administrators yes yep because the numbers would be even across the board about 500 students yeah we did budget for an extra custodial staff because we are looking at a whole new wing that has to be taken care of like technology or equipment that you need no we i reached out to mr taylor about this and the technology and
019what was in place for kindergarteners would be fine and appropriate for the preschool um i just want to make a comment although this is you know this was really challenging to come about and find a solution i think that the most important thing that we all have to keep in mind is our priority was to deliver full day kindergarten and we were able to do that so um just uh appreciate that we you know had support from the community and from uh teachers and and administrators and obviously the board um for providing full day kindergarten which our district definitely deserved i think that is that dr levy yeah definitely thank you um first mr redfern i want to thank you for your leadership here i always appreciate your leadership style where you recognize the team
020but i also realize in this situation that you're taking on a project from midway and it's not always easy to bring someone else's project to completion so i want to thank you for for helping lead us through this i also i have some thoughts that i haven't quite solidified yet so i'm hoping um president watson we can come back to board thoughts maybe after we hear from the community because i'd like to hear if there are any public thoughts and concerns i know we've put a lot of thought into how this will impact the community but sometimes there's things we haven't thought of because we're not the ones that are actively going through it right now so hopefully we can just have some time to do that at the end any other i want to
021thank you as well um reconfirm this not only it's not just a transportation issue that it's not the only issue but for myself as a parent i would be thinking i want my children especially my in the same school that he's starting in and to be with his brothers or sisters so i definitely think it's important to try to keep families together as much as we can and the other thing i want to make sure that we're not overlooking is if you did split the foundation what a huge inconvenience it is for the families once your children are enrolled in cr that you're trying to you know within the last 15 minutes pick up two different kids from two different schools is a nightmare so i know for me i would want my children so
022thank you yeah i i i know i had a kindergartner and a third grader and my kindergartner was so happy to go to school with her big sister uh it was only one year but it was one year the big sister wasn't thrilled but the kindergartner was happy yeah um we're going to move on to audience participation anyone wishing to address the board please approach the podium and write your name and address on the log in 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 negotiation and attorney client privilege the board will now hear comments from the public relating to items on the agenda for this board meeting comments
023are 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'm going to turn it over to our board solicitor for a brief comment uh thank you uh mrs watson um i um i would like to uh correct uh a statement uh at least partially correct the statement i made last meeting regarding public participation um your board policy uh you actually utilizes the term may um with respect to individuals making more than one comment after the three minutes has has expired the use of that term may means that the board has discretion as to whether or not to allow those additional comments but i
024did wanted to uh i did want to uh correct the uh the comments i made at that meeting and i appreciate the time thank you thank you i am opening it up with somebody online we have someone online yes please um i'm sorry it was that you said that was the only one okay hi yes um question uh i was curious when was the original plan approved and where did the i don't i didn't recall hearing where did the funds come from so i was just curious uh to those questions thank you yeah the original plan was approved in november of 2020 uh and helen i believe the funds were from surplus and capital reserves so we did not have to put a bond referendum out to raise taxes okay hello my name is eric
025simkin i'm a resident here in fort east and this is the first time i saw the presentation so i can't really comment as to if that's the best thing or not for the future but i do have some questions about how the decision was made uh back in november 2020. uh this it looks to me like it's more like 4.4 million uh and i understand the term surplus capital reserve how does money actually get to become surplus reserve and did any of that money uh was any of that part of the 1.6 million dollars for the return of school demand money that we see from the federal government uh so i guess we'd like to see or i'd like to see when when the money was deposited how long it sat there and as far
026as the challenges there i could see that those are challenges but i'm wondering why those challenges were not considered prior to whenever they were considered and that you know letting us know today the public and what would happen had there been no addition with the surplus capital reserves yeah very good point and are there any are there any adverse effects i mean i saw the challenges of the initial and i saw the presentation uh what's great about this plan and again i can't disagree until i have a chance to digest but are there any adverse effects from this particular plan and is this the plan that's going to be the final plan or is it subject to change again so thank you very much do you want to speak on this sure i can give
027some background on that um surplus and capital reserve are two different things um at the end of each fiscal year our auditors come in and they calculate what the surplus is fund balance used to have to be two percent but now it's raised to four percent so at the end of the year any unspent funds from the budget um is calculated surplus f so the surplus then has sometimes has to be applied to the next year there's a calculation for that too um capital reserve we have capital reserve we have maintenance reserve and we have projects a long-range facilities plan that lists all of the future projects that we're planning on and you can um fund up to 60 of the long-range facilities plan so the funds are sitting there until they're ready to use
028so what happens is you do some projects you add some more projects in there and then at the end of the year when the auditors are here again well first of all in june of each year you pass a resolution to say of any surplus i would like the maximum amount to go into my capital reserve based on the sixty percent of the long range facilities plan or my maintenance reserve which is also based on a calculation that's called the comprehensive maintenance plan and m1 so that whole thing happens in june the auditors come they calculate how much you can put in and then it transfers in so in the year of um i believe it was 2020 some things changed with the county in that we couldn't take money out of capital reserve mid-year
029before that was allowed but they said that is not allowed you can't do it so we had a year where we were not taking out of capital reserves so we had excess surplus that we could put back in so what we did is we did a combination of the excess surplus from 2020 and the capital reserve money to fund this project so and you're right the the number is closer to 4.4 it was 4 million 372 thousand 700 feet but really when mr redfern said 4 million if you're rounding for it's not 4.6 you know it's 4.3 so you're right it's roughly 4.4 million but it was funded by surplus and capital reserve so both of those things don't have anything to do with the grants so there's no grant money this was all money
030that was from our own budget and helen can you also explain if we don't use the surplus what happens well the auditor comes in and he calculates you know where you are with it so if you don't you you totally fill up your maintenance reserve and capital reserve as much as you can and then the rest of the surplus that you don't use must be applied to the subsequent year so whatever we didn't use whatever surplus was was calculated for 2020 had to be used in the next year i said the auditor comes up with that so you're kind of forced to use it it just goes to like fund the next year's budget so the timing was good because we were talking about this project in the ad hoc committees and we said you
031know what we don't have to take all the money out of capital reserve even though we have plenty in capital reserve we'll just save that capital reserve for something else and use the surplus money and put it towards this building so it really was good timing well you could splice it it could be state aid you know like we get state aid every year we get taxpayer money every year and whatever isn't spent like it goes into one that goes into your general fund so when the auditor comes and calculates it out it's not it's no longer differentiated you know it's whatever is not spent out of your appropriation money is calculated and so like i said now more money will go into fund balance because fund balance used to be at two percent and
032now it's four percent so more of the surplus now will go into fund balance the fund balance is there in case something terrible happens like suppose like a roof blows off or something you can always go to that but we do have enough maintenance reserve and capital reserve that we can easily again tap in the maintenance reserve for a maintenance thing capital reserve you can only take out during the budget process [Music] uh lou orbits and i appreciate you giving me the time to ask a few questions uh looking at this as an opportunity cost issue whatever the money is whether it's four point whatever or whether it's from ex part of tax dollars versus state aid or whatever it is uh before there was a change there was a thought that this was the
033way we wanted to have it we wanted to have it adjacent to crescent school for a specific reason and it seemed like for years that was that was the plan uh i'm still not clear in terms of what exactly changed what the dynamics were that changed and then if you also could just address the issue of the fact that the type of services that you're offering which i think are they're fine i mean i i really haven't had a chance to to review the whole thing in its entirety but rather these kind of services are also being being provided to some degree by private enterprises we have a lot of a lot of uh you know pre-k's and we have a lot of nursery schools in the area so we're looking at tax dollars and
034we're looking at state aid and we're looking at whatever who are in in some ways competing directly with with private concerns so from the standpoint of a why did this this all change i think you presented it and i might have just missed it and maybe you can reiterate that uh the issue of the opportunity costs that are missed because you know now whatever money and wherever it came from is now being spent on something that's kind of redundant in the community not for everybody it's going to offer some new services that others might not have been able to afford but rather now you're going to have a building there that really didn't need to be built there right you could have because because now as you mentioned uh your children are going to be
035happy going there the same school as their their brother is their sister you know at crescent at uh osage and uh whatever uh you know where could we have been if and and what did we not anticipate uh and and how did it how did the dynamics change that we're now sitting in this position where the four million dollars plus uh is uh just a missed opportunity of having reallocated it to other things you know because it anyway if you could just address those and also the trade-offs that you made in terms of these kinds of uh decisions thank you well like i said in the presentation it wasn't uh that this facility was not going to work it would work but what we did we took a step back and we took a look
036at the plan uh our parents are very happy with the kindergartens being at their home school i've got numerous uh uh responses from parents i i once we posted that we were taking kindergarten registration i got a number of phone calls and emails from parents asking if we could reconsider because they would really love for their kids to stay at their home school like they're doing now um so what we did again we had the opportunity we're halfway through the school year we took another look at it i don't think there's anything wrong with taking something and taking another look at it putting another set of eyes on it and seeing there was something better that would serve all of our children or at least more of our children so we we looked at keeping
037the kindergarten kids where they're at with their siblings which the parents wanted and then we could service uh our early childhood preschool students uh three and four year olds give them a state-of-the-art facility uh from the very beginning that would help foster their education and bringing in our special needs students so that they could take advantage of this facility as well as far as private industry and private sector i can't speak on that can i give one follow-up from here well and the other one is what if we didn't do anything we couldn't keep the kindergarten where they're at now uh because the department of ed would give us a waiver because we could say to them we got this facility we're going to move the kids in there they're all going to have bathrooms
038but they won't give they won't give us the waiver forever so we have to uh supply the bathrooms so can i follow a couple issues sure okay so are you saying that it's because of the bathroom issue that you'd never be able to get in the state to sign off on having a full day kindergarten in that building well the new building would have bathrooms yes but we couldn't keep it the way it we couldn't just say we're not going to build anything we're just going to keep everything the way it is because we need the bathrooms okay and is was the incentive and what triggered this all that you saw how well everything was working with the full-day kindergartens at the home schools well that was part of it and then we looked at
039the numbers the transportation numbers the number of buses that would be pulling in and out of crescent school 250 parents if half of them say i don't want my child riding on the bus that's another 120 some cars pulling in and out it becomes a safety issue um so there's a lot of other issues that we looked at um what's that our major increase in preschools and preschool continues to to rise and this would also give us the flexibility to increase our preschool program as well down the road would i be able to mention that sure um around in early 2019 a demographic study was done and it was estimated that like i think 400 additional students will be coming over time because of the new developments that were getting built and so it was
040kind of a combination between us and the talent of talking back and forth about how many students were anticipated and then um the functional capacity of each school was compared to how many students will be going there based on the current configuration so at that point it was determined that we would need something we would need an addition somewhere so um we had an architect at the time radio associates that did a study of like four or five different options one was for this building to be like mr redfern said like an early childhood center but that was going to cost like 9 million dollars and then there were other scenarios where we could build something onto osage or build something onto crescent like there were various scenarios to look at and after looking at
041his whole proposal we got the proposal in february 2020. um at first we thought it would be good to go to just um do the construction in each of the four schools but again the more we looked at it we're like okay there's construction going on in all four schools and we would be putting bathrooms in all four schools and it's a lot of disruption a lot of walls coming down who knows what will be found something like that so at that same time we were getting closer to the end of that year and seeing you know what the surplus would be and what we had in capital reserve so it came to light that we i mean actually this is kept progressing all the way through so finally around november of 2020 is when
042it came to light because the audit was finishing up and we said oh my goodness we do have more surplus we could put it next year or we could use it for this project and that's when we started looking at how could we do this differently than than doing construction in all four buildings at one time so it kind of evolved into it um but it was well thought out and no matter what we needed space we couldn't really keep going the way we're going if the projected increase in enrollment is going to happen and again that was based on permits that were issued by the township so a lot of it was a projection hey just follow up just to conclude so in conclusion all the children will be getting full day kindergarten yes
043yes yes okay so that's it and then the other end of it that you didn't address maybe you did and i'm still missing it was the trade-offs with this uh switch over in the plan yes i don't mean i don't know what you mean by trade-offs like what are the negatives i um the negative is that this isn't going to be a a kindergarten only facility which was the first contemplation um that we had however that being said this will house all of the preschool students there will you know i think we did do a cost benefit analysis when we said it's going to have the preschool students it's going to it's going to accommodate a lot of our inclusion classrooms our special needs there's going to be a lot of continuity there and i
044think when we looked at that i think the trade-off of not having an only kindergarten building was beneficial more importantly we didn't we just didn't have the capacity for cer for all of the the um extra specialist teachers for all of the things that we needed to add in order to make that feasible it just didn't make it didn't quite make sense um so this to us was the best alternative if that makes sense mr redfern uh given that uh this question came up it seems to me like the underlying question is really about uh whether or not there's gonna be a building sitting empty since we've decided to reallocate the kindergarten to go someplace else so i mean i think the answer is no um the camera is only uh shifted to the right
045so i can't see the stream uh but uh i'm assuming that the answer is no because in order to make this work we put some kids back in their homes we will put some kids back in their home schools but we've moved those preschool kids out in order to make space for them right so this new building that we're building is not going to sit empty and unused it will be used just in a different capacity yes that is absolutely correct that was my understanding but the questions that were coming up seem to point in that way so i just wanted to make sure we were all on the same page there thank you two online yep hi my name is pratima sharif i am on 30 ashton drive um and i have two students
046that are currently at signal hill and i have a son who is going to be starting at signal hill um in the fall hopefully at signal hill for kindergarten um so i just have a couple of comments and then i have a quick question at the end um first i want to commend um the board and the teachers and all of the parents who have written and called in regarding this issue um it seems that you guys have really put a lot of thought into this all of the questions and concerns that i had about moving kindergarten to the other facility were all um answered um in detail in the presentation that mr redfern just did um you know i would like to have all three of my children at the same school i think
047busing would be a little bit of a nightmare i also don't want to put my five-year-old on the bus um you know working parents would have difficulty with cer being at two different schools um i think it's great for the kindergarten students to stay at one school and to get acclimated to that school that they're gonna spend the next five years of their education at um so i i'm really grateful that you guys have taken all these things into account in coming to this decision um the only question i had and this is gonna seem silly but i keep hearing the bathroom question um and this requirement that there's a bathroom in the kindergarten classroom for the children my knowledge are currently not the bathrooms in the kindergarten classrooms um that are at the existing
048elementary schools is that going to change in order to accommodate this full day kindergarten sorry she broke up what was that is that to her knowledge that there is not yet so yes yes that is going to change we're going to rejigger where the classrooms currently are and we will no longer we currently have waivers that say we don't need to have a bathroom in certain classrooms that's why there aren't class there that's why there aren't bathrooms in classrooms but once we reallocate the classrooms correct me if i'm wrong um uh mr edvern once we reallocate the classrooms and we move the preschoolers out they will then move into classrooms with bathrooms yes we currently have some kindergarten classrooms in the district that do not have bathrooms so those kindergarteners have to use the regular
049bathrooms walk down the hallway and that those were the rooms we asked for waivers for from the department of ed and like i said with this plan we will no longer have to do that great waivers are temporary everything you guys have all been doing for our kids okay i thought there were two okay any anyone else okay excuse me for my long name okay so a lot of this i'm pamela rosenberg um i am a parent of three i'm an educator and i'm also a resident um a lot of what i want to say has been stated but i want to reiterate it that it's coming from multiple sources and multiple parents um i stand here today in opposition of the kindergarten wing being in crescent and i know that this wing is going
050to have pristine walls it's going to have shiny things it's going to have all the wonderful sounds that we want in a back to school but it's not going to improve the education of my child and in fact i think that this all these new treasures are going to mask the reason why my child will not have the education that i hope she would have in her kindergarten year education thrives on comfort and it thrives on routine i think moving children from school to school at a young age does not facilitate those needs currently my daughter has been in signal hill for two years the new kindergarten if it opens in the fall she will have to move to a new school at five years old she will no longer have the consistency and the
051predictability that she has known for those last two years i feel that this would be a detriment to her kindergarten learning i think it's a detriment that she won't see her siblings in the hallway that she's come accustomed to having that support system and worse yet is when she finally gets accustomed to crescent we're gonna move her right back out again and i'm gonna put her back at six years old to another school and another move and i think that's detrimental i think she's going to take a toll on her education my proposal is the same as what we've been saying is get our youngest students there so when they start out school for the first time in this beautiful new building they're going to know from day one the love and support that voorhees
052has to offer and that when kindergarten finally starts two years later only our non-crescent students have to move and they only have to move one time and then they can live at their new school family for their entire k-5 time so i asked you to really reconsider this to really think about not having that kindergarten weighing save it for our preschool and as you said our special education students and if we still need more information i think we should reach out to our neighbor and reach out to cherry hill school district who already tread these waters and already started the barclay pre-k early childhood center thank you for your comments good evening my name is kate mitchell i reside at 87th century chase i speak from i have a second grader and a kindergartner currently
053at signal health we couldn't be happier it's been amazing i won't i don't have any more children but i see how amazing this experience has been and i hope for all the other families this experience continues so i'm so grateful that the leadership said maybe there is a better solution i think that takes amazing gumption to be able to say maybe our first plan wasn't the best plan let's see if we can reconfigure it so i appreciate all of you because that's not always the easiest thing to do with leadership so thank you and i really do hope that you reconsider and keep our kindergartners with our bigger kids any other comments board comments dr levy i'm not sure if you okay i don't i just wanted to hear from the community and i think
054their voices have been heard so thank you perfect thank you um there are no items under transportation i'm sorry did anybody out i didn't look behind me and everybody again okay um nothing under transportation policy or personnel there's no deferred action can i get a motion to approve all of the items under new business thank you okay voting is open um i i if anyone goes yes it's perfect okay okay just make sure mr smooth yes the motion's passed unanimously closing the voting statement okay motion motions carry um meeting dates the next the next meeting will be a regular meeting scheduled on february 23rd 2022 at 7 00 pm at the administration building audience participation anyone wishing to address the board please approach the podium and write your name and address on the login sheet
055if 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 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 sometime later later by letter electronic electronic mail telephone or in the context of a later board meeting by any of any action the board does take uh hello eric something back uh the current executive order that requires national schools by the government expires february 11th what exactly is the return plan assuming any further mandate of any sort is completely futile and the effectiveness of covert or omnicron transmission mass do nothing
056to prevent the spread of omicron i could say that factually as i have successfully complete 150 hours of in-person classroom education specifically related to indoor air quality within the last 120 days my instructors have over 150 years of combined indoor air quality experience they're certified by the national association of technology excellence mass do not stop the transmission of viruses even served on advise they serve on advisory boards bear quality advice manufacturer service providers and health advisory courts lock downs masks and even max vaccine mandates have caused division amongst the public they've caused way more physical and emotional harm to students than a disease they intend to report so i'm looking forward to mass optional there and then lastly uh the letter that's back there for the board member uh resigned is that a second board
057member to resign there's no date on this letter or is that still the same board member that resigned last time it's the same one that's the original okay so i thank everybody for their time and uh for this time i'd like to uh i'd like to have tara adele fill the currently vacant board of ed see and why do we want this it's because k through 12 education is the primary means of transmitting knowledge tools for success in the american vision from one generation to the next we have to protect our children from indoctrination so that the idea of america remains a shining city on a hill our children are protected they need to be protected from woe culture that attacks family god success in america itself well martin luther king dreamed that one day
058his daughters would be judged by the content of their content of their character not by the color of their skin this movement instead infuses race gender other immutable characteristics into everything while embracing a woman's right to terminate a human being's life before birth they offer no choice when it comes to masks covet vaccines in person learning or opting out of morally republican school curriculum many board of ed uh volunteers wonder why parents have become so passionate about dating it's because parents they know their children are tomorrow's america's citizens and leaders and they don't like what they're seeing they feel the need to protect them from the toxic ideas that squash their spirit ambush their leadership potential today schools they're actively carving out valuable math science english history time to make room for social justice anti-americanism
059the normalization of hypersexuality transcend genderism and critical race theory where all this divisive content gets sprinkled openly subliminally throughout the entire curriculum shouldn't we also teach that america overturned dred scott jim crow laws that america is the only nation that ever fought a civil war to accept slavery that america passed the civil rights and voting act and america elected an african-american president not just once but twice as the great philosopher and economist thomas soul once said the most basic question is not what is best but who shall decide what is best sarah dell got the next most votes in the last election and she alone should fill the position anything less than that is undemocratic looks like a communist politburo where corrupt communist central planners get to pick who represents the people instead of the
060constituents let's be democratic fill the vacancy with tara thank you yep one online hi yes uh this is a terry del i just uh was wanting to comment on um our super uh our superintendent search where we're at in that process i wanted to ensure that we're focusing on picking the person who's most qualified for the position so i know you've had a meeting this past saturday i understand it was from zoom i couldn't get on at the time but i just wanted to know where we are at in the process of that and that decision will be made soon thank you i can give a quick update similar to last time we gave an update we have met and we will we are looking for mid-february to be able to make an announcement of
061our chosen candidate here's your devices sorry about that um i just as to the selection of the superintendent um i just we would like some community input since it's such a big position and i know you just uh rachel you just stated that you're close to making a decision in mid-february but how does that leave any community input on the table um we want to basically make sure that the person's being selected only on their qualifications and not on any political ideologies or influence so um i just would like that addressed as to any masks i already served the board with a notice of demand to be freed from federal state and corporate interference uh as to the unconscious unconstitutional mandates um the masking the quarantining all the protocols uh in hopes of preventing virus
062spread are unconstitutional and are infringing upon students parents and teachers constitutional rights so i will defer to that comment since i already served the board thank you um just to address the community input on the superintendent search um i i'm sure you remember deborah that we did elicit uh community input the search firm held community um forums so we certainly uh welcomed community input at that point how do we raise my hand if it's a different topic okay so basically you're stating that there is no further community input allowed or going to be going to happen is that what you're basically stating um as far as whatever you held before uh nothing nothing continues nothing else uh you know you guys just interviewed the candidate how do we know that there isn't going to be
063any kind of political influence in the decision we would like to confirm that so please address how to do that how to address that there's no political influence there's no answer to that question are there any other comments i have a board comment are we ready for board comments i'm not i'm not sure hold on uh yep we're ready for board comments uh thank you for the opportunity i do have some concerns about the superintendent search given the two comments that i just heard i do not understand why a community member would be suddenly concerned about political influence in the process all of our board deliberations at this stage are confidential um so they're i don't i don't understand why there would suddenly be concern about uh there being some sort of hidden agenda and
064this is very disturbing to me i echo your concerns me too um i'll also say um the first comment said um how can we assure that only qualified individuals are selected for this position this has me also concerned so i'd like that on on the record yep i will i will echo those those comments and share that to the extent anything that is shared in executive session outside with the general public um is grounds for an ethics violation and will be grounds for removal from the board we all take the superintendent search incredibly seriously we only want the most qualified competent individuals we have spent a ton hours and hours and hours of our free time interviewing and reviewing and trying to find deliberating and trying to find the right individual um and it is
065unfortunate that these conversations and deliberations are not being kept in i don't know where confidence coming from i don't understand that comment what what's politic why i don't understand any other comments right comment from here uh there's no more audience uh comments there was like two seconds ago wasn't there yeah but that that was a board that was a board member sir that comment that was a board member yeah is um dr o'leary barney can i please make a statement the public participation is over i would still like you have to wait until next meeting but again by the next video you're probably going to have a superintendent right sir i'm going to ask you to sit down please you can ask me to sit down and i'm going to ask you to give me
066the luxury of at least addressing just the question maybe elaborating based upon what miss wellings was concerned about is that possible the public participation portion of the meeting is over so it's not it's not possible since i have a serious concern that you're not going to let me speak sure the public's the public participation portion of the meeting is over gonna you're gonna stand on ceremony when someone in the public has has a as something that might be relevant that might explain i would assume i would assume that someone um who is articulate as you are and if they had a comment like that would have made it when they had their opportunity i just didn't realize that we'd all of a sudden switch from a from from the public to the board that's okay
067so i'm a little confused maybe you can give me a little bit of stuff was not about politics she just wants to make sure that whoever the superintendent is that you guys pick is somebody who's going to uphold american values it's somebody who's going to enforce independent thinking that's not going to you know going to want to have have mass mandates and other mandates there's going to be more viruses that's what she's talking about she's not talking about democrat versus republicans she's talking about being pro-children being pro-america that's what she's talking about okay because what we see here including your your behavior is authoritarianism telling people you can't do things you can't speak up you can't have it i'm not i'm the furthest person from our office that's what she was trying to say and
068it had nothing at all to do with politics okay sure thank you very much there are no other items under finance we're going to adjourn the meeting i think adjourned from