001calling the meeting to order pursuant to the open public meetings act notice 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 voorhees township public schools administrative building on july 26 2021 and august 24 2021 sending written notice to the courier post on july 26 2021 and august 24 2021 filing written notice with the clerk of voorhees township on july 26 2021 and august 24 2021 posting on the vorhees township website on july 26 2021 and august 24 2021 please rise for the for the pledge of allegiance of the united states the board secretary call roll mr bryce mrs casenza here dr faulk here ms scaliano here dr levy here mr schmooze here mrs wallace mrs van aaken here mrs
002watson here so i want to welcome everyone here today today we have a very special part of the meeting we are recognizing three fantastic educators for their 25-year service aware award so thanks everybody for coming out and i will start with regina boragine regina began her career in the vorhees school district as a substitute teacher at voorhees middle school before becoming an instructional associate at vms and then cressen she was the pta president at signal hill school for and for 17 years she co-chaired the sunshine club at vms regina and her family volunteered for several years at the vorkey soccer association including managing the field snack bar she has been married for 43 years to her husband jerry and they have two grown children kristen and kyle in the last year she has been blessed
003with two grandchildren nicholas and brooke congratulations regina boragine [Applause] thank you so much where would you like us next is tim hassell eighth grade language arts at vms tim was hired in august of 1996 for two-month maternity leave so the fact that he is still here 25 years later i think speaks volumes besides being an amazing teacher at vms he has written four academic books in education three eighth grade english books and of course s.a.t express he has taught s.a.t prep for 16 years now tim has been both an annenberg scholar and a national endowment for the humanities scholar at the national constitution center and at independence hall tim would like to thank the district for supporting its teachers and making it a place to be happy and proud to work tim congratulations on your
00425 years of service [Applause] last definitely not least jill lock secretary at osage school jill has been the secretary of osage for the past 25 years besides the numerous behind-the-scenes tasks that keep the school running jill served as the osa osage yearbook editor for 15 years in addition she co-chaired numerous opfa fundraisers such as the designer bag bingo casino night and monte carlo night jill is most proud of her five grandchildren thank you so much for your service jill i think having three individuals when uh when uh be awarded the 25 years of service is a testament to how strong our district is and how wonderful our educators are so thank you again for 25 years [Applause] okay um next up we're going to approve the minutes can i get a motion to approve the
005minutes of the september 29 2021 meeting as shown in the attachments for regular meeting and executive session sorry just one second okay now we're going to take the vote on those minutes people can log in and cast your vote i'm opening it up right now [Music] oh you're voting for separation yeah that's since you hold it out that way we'll do it separately okay that's a little bit tricky because sometimes people need to stain or vote exactly we have the first item is voting on all the categories and in some cases that will be the case but if somebody wants to if i open it up to the first one if somebody wants to know something else maybe they can just let me know to open it up individually perfect for now i guess that's
006how we'll do it okay can i get a motion to approve the minutes of the october 6th oh i'm sorry are we not finished not mr price yeah i don't have mr bryce's vote yet thank you click the button to start at the meetings so [Music] okay i have eight yeses and one abstention i will close the online voting and save it okay now we can go to the next one okay can i get a motion to approve the minutes of the october 6 2021 meeting special meeting and executive session i'm sorry who was the one that said first oh thank you i'm sorry sometimes it's hard to tell and the second is jason jason all right i'm opening the online voting i have seven yeses and two abstentions the abstentions are dr lee and
007mrs wallace i forgot to mention last time the abstention was mrs wallace we have several information items fire drills and safety drills have been conducted for october 2021 you can see the list you can see the list on the attachment for the meeting the hib report and we have enrollment data as of october 15 2021. there are no items under communications board secretary report okay the port secretary report is kind of short today it's just a reminder that november 2nd is election day we are hosting a election in this office in this room also we are not really part of the whole process but the county board of elections is so you can always check there to see as the votes come in they tally them and post some information the second item in my
008report is the budget calendar so we always start preparing for the next year's budget the 2022-23 budget around october and so this calendar lays out the process that we deal with every single month it concludes in may but it does take a lot of months to put it together so that's just for your review superintendent report thank you madam president at this time i'd like to ask sue donnelly uh to come up and give us a brief overview of our annual student safety report good evening tonight i'm going to be reporting on tuesday award on our state department of education student media's data and safety system for the 2021-20-2020-2021 school year so this is the data that's based upon the criteria network during the reporting period of september 1st of 2020 through june 30th of
0092021 the district reported eight incidents through the ssds system of those eight incidents one incident involved stress passing at two hours one involved aggressive behavior and one involved physical contact the other five incidents three were affirmed cases of grasp continuation bullying and two were alleged that were unfair we also report at this time the second reporting period january 1st 2021 through june 30th of 2021 for harassment intimidation and bullying uh this this gets reported two times a year and again we had three affirmed cases um typically this time of year we report on something called the self-assessment data uh that goes along with the anti-bullying world rights act however the state is behind with that so normally we complete it in the summer but they just issued it in the fall so we'll complete it
010it's due in january thank you as part of this section we have to have at the public hearings so we need to open it up for public comment just on the topics that sue was talking about it's the public hearing on the 2020 2021 i will report on student safety data system open for public comments on this particular topic if anyone wishes to address the board on this particular topic 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 board will now hear comments from the public relating to this agenda item for
011this board meeting comments are limited to three minutes the board will not take action this evening you will be notified at some time later by letter electronic mail telephone or in the context of a later board meeting of any action the board does take no comments thank you so much we also have to open it for board comments if there's any comments from the board on this topic any board comments okay thank you a couple of informational items i'd like to go through i would like to recognize dr howard margolis for donating a number of books to our staff on professional development and his continued support of our schools is deeply appreciated i'd like to thank all of our families who participated in our first annual family night i received several emails from parents and
012some pictures uh it was game some of them were called a game board night some had outdoor movies uh picnic dinners were just a few of the activities i'd also like to thank vba boys basketball association for buying into this activity and they wanted to kind of cooperate with us and follow the family night the third wednesday of every month i'd like to thank a special thank you to our pfa members who have worked extremely hard to provide some fall outdoor activities i had the opportunity to go to osage's uh trigger what is it trunk or treat last weekend the vehicles were amazing the parents did an absolutely wonderful job so i'd just like to thank the pfos and and the uh the parents for for coming out last weekend it was it was amazing
013they did a great job the construction project at crescent school continues to move along all concrete footings have been poured and the cinder block walls will soon follow all students in grade 4th grade have completed the new jersey star start strong assessment we're currently going through that data to assess the students needs dr young is currently preparing and uploading information for new jersey cusack new jersey cusack is a new jersey quality single accountability continuum it's what the state of new jersey uses to kind of grade the schools and monitor public schools they review operations personnel finance and curriculum to ensure that we are following the proper procedures and guidelines it also includes a physical inspection of our schools and at the conclusion of the inspection and review the board will be get presented with a
014report we're pleased to announce uh the pending approval of a covert vaccine for students we have partnered with adler's pharmacy once again we have a tentative schedule to offer vaccinations to eligible students wishing to participate we anticipate sending additional information out next week we have cut quite an aggressive uh plan but if it works and everything works out the way we hope uh the students who are eligible parents who wish to participate in vaccinating their child five and up would be fully vaccinated by winter break this afternoon i attended the bms girls field hockey championship game uh although they lost uh two to one in overtime the girls fought hard they did an amazing job i'd like to congratulate mrs rossetti and ms parks for all and the girls for uh all their hard work
015this season we also wish the boys soccer team best of luck tomorrow as they play in their championship game and finally last month i asked all the schools to come up with a scarecrow to do a scarecrow competition and the scarecrows are sitting behind me as usual the staff did an amazing job i am embarrassed to say there was some trash talking between schools uh at the end of tonight's meeting the board is going to be voting uh for their favorite scarecrow and then we'll post the results up to our website and to our facebook page now i was told this afternoon by our technology director that i have to do my best impression of anna white to walk along so that the people at home can see the scarecrows so i'll need to just
016walk along the microphone so the camera picks me up and follows me so here it goes so over here our first three scarecrows here are middle school sixth seventh and eighth grade and as we move down this is kind of my favorite right here in the middle number four this is done by the administration building and they worked hard and then and then we have right here number five is crescent strong they're cougar number six here is the pack is stronger together from signal hill then we have number seven here which is hamilton and our last one right behind mr schmooze here number eight is osage starts strong we know what that face there's two there's two mr crabbers so i just want to thank the staff we had some fun with it it was
017a good fun activity and they really came through that's all i have not in prison committee reports galliano can you do the policy committee update please sure the policy commitment earlier to the policies that are updates from the from thank you very much mr schmooze and can you provide an update on the personnel committee certainly the personnel committee met october 6 to review and revise the salary guides for the food services and custodial vote salary guides which will be presented tonight we took some time to look at those and and revise those to benefit both of those units perfect thank you very much and dr fox can you also provide a personal committee update yeah um so so i'd like to thank mr reverend and miss ali for for their hard work in reorganizing the
018business office so so this effort it's actually going to save the district a total of 95 000 i think over the next fiscal year so so this the first stage of this is that they're hiring a new transportation coordinator and then they're transferring a portion of the purchasing and procurement responsibilities to an in-house staff member who recently got certified as a purchasing agent and then the second stage of this which is going to start in july of 2022 is that the accounts payable and purchasing staff member is going to be retiring who's currently doing that it's retiring june 30th and then the purchasing and procurement function will be fully transferred in that staff member they would have a joint title that assumes both responsibilities and they would get a stipend for that but we're saving
019the salary of the person who is retiring so the business office clerk and the accounting payable positions are now going to converge thank you so much anyone 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 board will now hear comments from the public relating to the 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
020of a later board meeting of any action the board does take i'm actually going to wait because i just heard i just asked anyone at the podium speak up i'm sorry i just ask anyone at the podium to speak up okay it's hard to work remotely the public the next section will be later on in the agenda okay perfect any board comments moving on to transportation and i get a motion to can i get a motion to approve the items under transportation i'm opening the online voting all motions are approved so i'm going to close the voting so it's yes unanimously thank you can i have an uh motion to approve all of the items under policy can i make a comment before we go yes um unfortunately somehow we some of us did not
021get notice of the policy meeting today so i just asked that we get these meetings timely although we did get the policies obviously to read ahead of time i just wanted to make note that i didn't get notice of the meeting until a few hours before any other comments in this section do you want to vote individually or the whole thing so i'm asking [Music] if we can for policies for second reading if we can vote individually okay so what we can do is we can make the motion on 13.2 and 13.3 okay okay can i get a motion uh to approve the items under 13.2 opening the online voting the voting is yes unanimously so i will close the voting on that one can i get a motion to approve the items under 13.3
022is there a way to separate those policies under the second reading i think uh helen can you just make a notation i think so okay um i guess if you want i mean right now the voting would have you could write yes or no and i will say does anybody want to clarify they'll open up i think there's a there's a summary in contest summary and content section we'll just adjust it there that's okay all right so let's give this a try okay so you can do the motion so if i object to one i have to vote no for all i have to see how it looks when i go in there okay okay i'm just not sure this is still kind of new um so i think we'll just give it a try
023i all know that you want to clarify how's that is that good okay all right so i guess this might do a motion second okay do you want me to open it for comments so that dawn can sure now okay that's good uh do i have any board comments related to 13.3 the only thing i want to clarify is i do have an issue with 2422 i think um for k-8 some of this is should be dealt with parents and doctors and psychiatrists and not a school some that i also do not think pretending to help them physical education that's the only issue i have any other board comments yes i have a question i what i did is i went into the summary content and i just wrote the 2422 in there i don't
024know if you have access to that but i put it in there there's i have three tabs summary and contents or comments do you have three or no no i click on it i can just see the questions yeah if you click it into the right hand corner okay that's true okay we'll do the online voting i did make note of it and uh if you so my question is yeah how should she go yesterday i don't want to vote no for the whole thing um at this point i'm just going to say vote no with clarification you know like like when i get to call the role i'll say you voted no and then then i'll ask you to specify and i'll write it in the notes okay is that okay yes okay so
025i'm opening the online voting okay right now i have eight yeses one no i'm going to close the voting and i'm going to go back over to the summary and comments and i would like to ask mrs wallace which item are you which items are you voting no on and which items which yes either way whichever one makes sense i'm only voting them on policy two four two two and that's item 13.3 a correct okay uh 12.38 no policies for second reading okay so 13.3 a you're voting no all all others yes others in this section section yes okay that's good thank you thank you no that's okay we're refining this as we go new new situations all the time all right thank you okay moving on to personnel uh can i get a motion
026to approve all of the items under personnel or would anybody like them separated out okay i'm opening the online voting hmm motion approved unanimously i'm closing online voting there are no items under deferred action sorry i'm sorry something something just went wrong here um is it flashing on i'm sorry is it flashing on everyone's screen because when i clicked it everything came back can you guys vote again on that one please i'm sorry yeah on the personnel it's it's just blank when i went to when i went to close it it just blanked everything out click on change vote and click click click on it again we apologize we're still obviously working this is our third meeting i think using this maybe okay okay it's unanimous yes i'm closing it saving it all right thank
027you no problem there are no items under deferred action new business can i get a motion to approve all of the items under new business if anybody would like to separate them out please let me know [Music] online voting is open [Applause] the motions are unanimously approved closing it and saving thank you we will be holding a special meeting on november 15th 2021 7 p.m at the admin building um it will be for the hya to present their leadership profile report and the desired characteristics report related to the superintendent search our next regular scheduled meeting it will be on november 29th 2021 at 7 30 pm at the administration building audience participation on any topic anyone wishing to address the board please approach the podium and write your name and address on the login sheet
028if 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 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 am going to use the timer function so hopefully this won't be difficult so please hold until i you can uh you can provide your name and an address before you start okay michelle necito 38 sims very drive timer okay uh good evening first i want to
029say thank you to the entire vms team on a successful start to the school year i have a sixth grader there now and i am truly impressed with how the vms team has worked to transition our children back into the classroom including mrs kaufman who i know ran around like crazy for some of us to make sure we had working ipads so thank you vms i also wanted to address the entire board and members of the community that are present regarding their um the board's role and their reactions to what life has offered us over the last 20 plus months i was reflecting recently on the elected members of our board and how the board dynamics have changed and what we have allowed this pandemic to do to our community it seems we have reached
030a point where the world has come between us some of us used to be very close friends and some of us sat together at the voorhees swim club and collaborated on ways that we could advocate together for full day kindergarten in our town and after attending board meetings for years together we worked to elect members of our community new members to represent the board there was a lot of collective energy and joy in our community and there was a lot of support for our teachers while we did this we never approached elections for the school board by trying to disparage or attack the integrity of any sitting board member that had an opinion that was different than ours sadly it seems that environment has changed and i am asking the community to not let this
031divide us arguing with friends and neighbors over mandates that the state requires our board to implement and shouting from the social media rooftops that we're going to not vote for this one or not vote for that one because they voted against the reopening plan which is not true they voted if they thought the plan was appropriate for our children and our staff no member of this school board voted that they did not want your children in school that is inaccurate and that is false they wanted our children and our staff safe so to look back on the meetings over the last year and know that this board has not voted the same way on every single matter tells us that we have a diverse board to look at this board and know that most of
032them except for the few members that were elected last year voted to give your former superintendent an increase after only being here for 12 months and then later voted collectively that he was not living up to the standards that before him speaks loudly to our community i ask you to come together and stop attacking one another it does not serve any purpose it divides our community and it's a poor example for our staff and our children uh can you start the three minutes now please deborah welling 34 christopher road um i do want to touch on some things that were just spoken about um as far as everybody being divided this is a heated time climate uh things are said people are running against each other and that is just the climate that we are
033in as far as the two members not voting for the kids to be in school it is exactly what happened uh in august 13 2020 monica and rachel did vote for the kids not to be in school so i don't know why that's misconstrued but that is an issue um the board meeting board members are supposed to be putting the kids first um i also want to ask uh this question comes from another parent should like to know when or if the township will begin resuming the hiring of substitute teachers via ess since a lot of them have been fired due to the schools employing full-time subs also the policies that were voted on this evening copy of p2422 where can we get copies of those are they available online or we just want to
034know where we can get those online okay thank you um whenever there's any type of secrecy which began with the firing of the superintendent that michelle spoke about surrounding what's going on in our schools parents are going to question and rightfully so they have every right to question anything that's happening in our schools our kids are there to learn uh we don't know what's being implemented these curriculum changes are not being trans afforded to us so there's no transparency so that makes parents upset i have done numerous open requests and i was referred to them as being frivolous by miss ben akin okay a parent's open request is never frivolous that's that's number one um but we're not being told what's being what's being taught to our children we want to know parents have have
035that right um you know so a lot of parents are up in arms about that and we're obviously very divided we want to know it's all right i mean this our kids are there uh how many hours a day my son's special needs he cannot tell me i learned this today or i i'm exposed to this so we want to know exactly what's happening in our schools and there's nothing wrong with that that's why i i decided to run for a seat in the board i saw unethical things happening and it's just the way it is thank you mr cavallo uh can i address the voting situation sure i want to be very clear um and please feel free to go check the video from the actual meeting the meeting because this has gotten a
036lot of rhetoric a lot of discussion i'm the person who voted let me tell you what i voted for we were we were given the reopening plan we were asked to vote on whether it was sufficient and adequate in order to reopen our schools safely not whether the schools were reopening we don't vote on that we don't vote on mass mandates we don't vote on any of those items we simply voted on whether or not the reopening plan was adequate as written to protect and keep our children safe miss monacan and i both voted no because we did not think that there were adequate measures and protocols and processes in place in that plan please i i urge all of you to go back and look at the actual meeting look at the hour and
037a half of questions that were presented related to the reopening plan and why we did not feel it was inadequate and i hope that this will finally put this particular issue to bed happy to discuss any of my decisions and why i made certain decisions but that decision in and of itself i wanted to make sure that the record was reflected accurately i'm not sure if you would like to address the oprah request i will let's hear the members of the public uh hello everybody i know i'm going to go over my three minutes so i brought copies of everything i wanted to discuss i'm happy to leave uh made a copy for each of you and i'll also be emailing you to you tonight my name is eric simkin i live at three windham
038road i'm a resident of voorhees township i'm here because i have concerns about the upcoming voorhees township board of education elections i've been doing my own due diligence by attending regular school board meetings reviewing the meeting minutes over the last 18 to 20 months and by attending the candidate meet and greet night and thanks to everybody put that together was awesome i have found several key issues in my opinion and uh since i won't be able to do it in three minutes like i said i'm going to be leaving you with this but i have two main concerns transparency between the board and the citizens support and the citizens of warheads township and potential conflict of interest that may exist with at least one incumbent member as follows at the meet and greet a candidate
039alleged that mrs watson and miss van aaken voted against the school board school learning in school learning mostly for most of the students in the 2021 year actually you mentioned mrs watson that it was misinformation or disinformation that was being disseminated but i did pull up the notes and they're here uh from august 26th you brought a motion and this is ben akin second the devotion and a vote on revising the reopening plan to exclude any in-person learning for most students both mrs watson and mrs van aiken did in fact vote against in-person learning for the majority of students the only miss or disinformation i see there um was saying that that vote never occurred it did second i found the board website that mrs van aiken works for a company in educational technology called
040classlink and actually when i looked at her linkedin profile it has the title of board of education vice president which does appear to violate the voorhees township policy 0142 board member qualifications prohibited acts and code of ethics as well as some other state rules the ceo of classlink burj ikayan participated in an article that started by saying burj ikayan doesn't want to hear about going back to school as normal as the founder and ceo of classlink he has long advocated for the removal of barriers between students and impactful educational content the way he sees it the pandemic has created new opportunities to improve this dynamic even more in this episode he discusses how the education industry can take advantage uh then i saw on facebook uh mrs van aiken saying uh actually to one of
041the other candidates do the pac taxpayer of orgies know about your frivolous oprah request cost the school district 10 000 in september alone making school business uh school business public knowledge when the information is not available to the public is also an apparent violation of code that ethics the social media policy and the anti-bullying policy i just don't see how mrs van aiken could continue serving the board nor able to run for re-election given potential conflict of interest and disclosing school businesses okay what can i leave these with thank you [Music] mrs watson can i just make a comment of course since it was quite directed at me um number one um whether my the the opinions of my ceo of the company that i work for are his opinions and his opinions only um
042i have also worked for classlink since uh may 24th of this year so um so the back to school plan was uh it was was way before that um i know that mr simkin called my employer um so there are there are no other conflict of conflicts of interest uh so i just want to you know make it aware clear that um opinions of my ceo are his julie head over nine fairway drive ready yep good evening everyone though you likely know i'm running as a write-in candidate for a board seat i'm speaking now as a voorhees resident of over 17 years and a parent of two children in our schools every resident should care about our schools their quality impacts the future success of our children the ability to attract and keep education talent
043and property values this board has seen unprecedented challenges and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future it is my opinion that the board needs to focus on four things covid recovery getting a comprehensive understanding of all impacts and closing in the gaps equity and education across the district improving the caliber and reputation of our schools and hiring a dynamic empathetic superintendent who will lead effectively there are also two issues looming large i'd like to address safety and ensuring an inclusive curriculum safety can mean protecting students with allergies or ensuring protocols and drills relating to threats are followed safety also means curbing the cases of kovid by masking three board candidates oppose masking and want it to be a choice even though that choice puts everyone at risk you can't smoke whenever you wherever
044you want to because smoking risks both the health of the smoker and the health of anyone around no one likes wearing a mask we do it to protect ourselves and each other at the august meeting the board addressed a letter from a parent's united candidate that asserted that masking is a violation of the nuremberg code which was put in place after world war ii to address atrocities in medical experiments conducted on people in concentration camps during the holocaust thereafter all three non-incumbent board candidates demanded repeatedly that the board defied the governor's mass mandate what kind of message does this send to families to teachers to staff ironically they're all running on a platform of fiscal responsibility but defiance of the state executive order risks funding which is by definition fiscally irresponsible the second issue of
045concern is diversity equity and inclusion and education the same candidates would also have this board to file law passed in new jersey last year year requiring teaching on dei we should be celebrating our diversity striving for equity in education and teaching inclusion and tolerance phrases like parent choice may seem innocuous but make no mistake they are antithetical to public education these would-be board members reject the idea that education should give kids a well-rounded world view and prepare them to think for themselves rather than just regurgitating their parents beliefs what they want is total parental control they are not interested in partnership or collaboration with other stakeholders that is alarming i am a product of a superior public education that enabled me to continue success throughout my life i want all kids here to have this
046quality of education public schools of public schools are flexible enough to meet most kids needs those who want a personalized experience have other options but i want to remind everyone that public school is for all not just some by all means we should improve and focus on excellence and reputation but infiltration and destruction of the system by those who fundamentally oppose it cannot be the way please pay attention you ready randy stupler seven cranberry please um like i said i'm randy stupler and my main purpose tonight was to come here to really bring everybody together as a community and kind of plead to everybody in our community to really come together and put our differences aside move on from the past but there's nothing we could do tonight that will ever change what happened what's
047behind us is behind us and we have to focus on the future and bringing up all these contentious comments i don't think really helps i think we're all here for the greater good of our children i think there's so much negative news today about school boards i mean it's it's all the way up on capitol hill as we saw today in the news so i think you know i would love our school district to make the news for good things not for all these negative things that are associated with school boards today and i think the only way to do that is to really put our differences aside come together work together as one community because that's what we are we're lucky to live in this amazing community we all like we can argue all
048day all night about covid protocols crt anything you want health curriculums it's not really going to get us anywhere we're going to keep being contentious and arguing and confrontational and that's not going to do our children any good so that's really just my main message i think we all really want the best for our kids and i think that's where we really need to focus on you know who said what or who did what we've all said things we've all done things i don't think we can really hold that against because we've all made mistakes we but i think our goal is really the children and i think that needs to be our focus and i think we need to stop coming after each other and all this negativity because i don't think if you
049know our kids are the ones that we're here for and i don't think that really sets any good example for them that's it works hi good evening my name is terry doe i'm at 32 christopher road um i'd like to thank randy for your comments i must say i have to agree with that we are here to uh we're lucky to be in this community we all um i know i am very grateful to have the teachers who are so thoughtful and engaged in our children's education i think that is everything we are here to encourage and to promote um but to say that we are here to say that uh we don't agree with keeping our children safe i think is misinformation by a certain individual who's just up here that is not what
050i or my co-runner is here to encourage we are here to ensure that our children continue to get the best of our education our main concern is around transparency as we talked about and for someone especially on the board to be referring to a parent putting in for an open request as frivolous i think who defines what is frivolous on a over request i think is definitely uh inappropriate uh to be discussing on social media so i'll just put that out there and leave it at that um but at this time no one is here to discuss not being an advocate for diversity or inclusion our main concern at least for myself is to continue to be focusing on especially in light of cobit and how that is impacted on our children's education to be
051focusing on our basics of math science english and history including the good and the bad and striving to encourage our children to be successful adults the teachers that are here are not employed to be therapists they're here to be teachers who are encouraging to teach our kids basics of all those those subjects so our kids can be successful in life i know my main concern discussing about parental involvement to ensure that our parents are aware of going what's going on my concern is around our transgender policy of five seven five six where parental rights have been removed this is not about transgenders this is about parental knowledge of what's going on my concern is the school district has accepted that parental consent is not required when it comes to a child changing their name or
052their uh their gender as a licensed mental health clinician i must say i'm highly concerned because for according to this policy a student need not meet any threshold diagnosis or treatment requirement has his or her gender identity recognized and respected by the school district in addition legal or court order name change is not required there is no affirmative duty for any school district staff member to notify students parent or the student's gender identity or expression time so my concern is obviously that is the parents i understand orange that means that means you are done speaking thank you thank you but to make sure parents have a role please stop thank you speaking [Music] uh my name is kara thornton i'm from 37 rollinswood um a couple of things uh the first one being um i've
053already voiced this to um mr redfearn that i'm concerned about wrestling happening i'm not really sure how it's happening when there is obviously no social distancing in any way shape or form able to happen so that's just my one issue is not everyone is vaccinated yet and you're going to have kids put together wrestling and then that's going to possibly pass things on um now for my second point um as someone who was raised in voorhees who attended hamilton vms in eastern myself i moved back here for my children to experience the same especially for the exceptional diversity in this district the other sounds are a few other towns are so vastly multicultural mostly multifaceted as ours i want my children to experience and most importantly learn from others who have different backgrounds in color
054religions and identities moving to an area where not where everyone looked exactly like them was not an option for us because that's not what our country looks like exposure to diversity are what lead to understanding and empathetic adults which clearly is missing in some of this room today some who are fearful of everyone who does not look or act like them this underscores just how important diversity education is along with a board that understands diversity to avoid the cycle of fearful ignorant adults raising fearful ignorant children again this is why i'm raising my children here and this is why it is terrifying to me actually terrifying that there are certain people people under the name parents united emboldened by conspiracy-laden fake news raising the voices in this town in fact some trying to get elected
055to the board of ed itself in an attempt to silence the truths about the racism which on which our country was built to turn a blind eye to evidence in science and to publicly i repeat publicly promote transphobic and homophobic views in an effort for students of the white cisgender bubble i have screenshots from public pages in case anyone is interested to see these exact things that i just talked about i and i know many others and voices have zero tolerance for this starting now i hope to drown out these voices with mine mine and others who are appalled by this behavior and let these ignorant voices know they are not welcome in this district they will not allow to make any child feel lesser which is exactly the structure they are on to make
056any child who is different than them feel less it's basically bullies that are just grown up and it sickens me let's keep parents united out to protect our children from their exclusionary and intolerant views which will outright harm the children they are supposedly trying to protect i urge everyone to vote for van aiken watson and write in julie kitover to ensure this district thrives thank you i believe i still have about 30 seconds on my timer i really cannot believe what just happened in here and the fact that we have a member of the public who came up and publicly called out a board member's employer location and had the audacity to call them on the phone and that we have board members standing by watching members of the public attack blame and essentially haze
057your colleagues and say nothing and allow them to bear the brunt of your collective decisions just because you don't want them to be re-elected or because you have a personality conflict with them have the courage to stand behind your decisions have the courage to stand up and say yes i voted that way and i may have a difference of opinion but it is not okay to treat our fellow board members like that it is really unbelievable that you essentially are not saying anything and allowing a member of the public to quasi-stalk miss van akin touching on what she just spoke about nobody is calling anybody out first of all okay that's not what this is this is about the children this is about the children losing an entire year last year and they had a
058hybrid program these two members voted against that we want everything to be in the best interest of the children so if it's not reflected in that way we are going to speak up about that that's not attacking anybody personally that's not saying oh i hate you you shouldn't be on that's not what this is about this is about the children it's all about the children the children everybody has experienced such turmoil in the last year and a half and we understand that but the kids especially have experienced a lot of learning loss a lot of mental depression a lot of anxiety by not being in the classroom which is essential and paramount to that well-being that is why we had an issue with the two members that were the only ones that voted against that
059that's an issue we don't see that putting the best into something of the kids at heart and that's the only issue here because you still went back to school the kids weren't two days a week no no no ladies come on no debating you want to debate go outside um exactly go in the hallway and hey i would appreciate if you would wear your mask correctly ma'am well so do i but i'm wearing my mask appropriately you can step outside um i guess i just wanted to everybody keeps going back to all these things and i think we're not going to get anywhere unless we put everything aside and come together i mean arguing we can argue all day all night but at the end of the day what are our kids benefiting i mean
060it's time to stop come together and work out our problems and help these kids emotionally i could tell you all three of my kids suffered and they were i was fortunate enough to be home with them and we live in a neighborhood with other kids there's plenty of kids that weren't fortunate like that but i'm i was very lucky and my kids still suffered and i have the youngest my youngest has special needs and he still suffered he suffered from the pandemic he's suffering starting middle school right now it's been an awful time for us but you know what if we can't lean on our neighbors and friends and you know we can all call each other out but how do you know our kids aren't friends at school if they sit at tables together
061or have activities together so i think you know we we need to stop the bashing stop the negativity and move forward in a positive direction and whatever was done is done and let's put the past behind us so that's all i have to say any other comments board comments i have a comment everybody here every parent here is passionate very passionate about their feelings [Music] vaccines but this is not a venue or a campaign and i can tell you as a board member that was attacked by people that are saying not to attack candidates that are running it is very difficult to sit up here and make decisions some which are out of our control and i agree with the non-attacking i don't agree with the hypocritical talk but we are all here for the
062children we all do our best the mandates unfortunately are just that we're all up here because we care about the kids we all have jobs we all have families we're doing our best everybody has to come together that's all i have to say that's something that's right that's why i too have been attacked by the public and the staff um in our schools letters were sent to my house anonymously i would stop on facebook and criticize for going on vacation which has nothing to do with anyone in this room it's my own business so um i just want people to know like we have our own lives too like we what we don't we do people know what's best for the kids but we are people too so you have to understand that we have
063our own lives too and i think that it needs to be recognized that the whole thing was racial like that's you know her personal that's her personal business where she works you don't look into things like that so um i think everybody should really recognize the fact of the good that we have done and just stop all the attacking because it's really i've had enough of it to be honest with you this is my fifth year serving on the board and will be my last year um because of what has gone on in the past 18 months i like to start i actually have three things that i'd like to convey i'll start with the kids because that's the most important and that's why we're here so i will again thank the district all of
064the teachers for creating a supportive and inclusive learning environment i very much support the dei curriculum and i think if we could teach more of it in our schools all of our kids would be better so thank you for continuing to work your best within the district to support our children uh the second point is um while i do think that this has gotten to be very ugly and i don't just mean the elections i mean all of the meetings that have occurred here i do not think that we can just stop and come together i think it is completely inappropriate to call somebody's employer i actually think miss van akin should consider a restraining order should have should have uh the police involved at this point as uh as uh ms gagliano said uh
065we are volunteers here we are all doing the best that we can and i can tell you whether the records share showed exactly what what the vote indicated last year we all had discussions about covid many times over the course of many sessions over reviewing many drafts of many plans and even though i was one who voted yes at that vote there was not a single board member that didn't want our kids to go back to school it was about whether or not and how they should go back to school so i am sorry that there is a lot of confusion i'm not going to use the words misinformation or disinformation as that is clearly politically charged but i do think that everyone needs to respect everyone and we need to get back to some
066civility and focus on the children any person who wants to come here and talk about curriculum any person who wants to come to a meeting and talk about sports any person who has concerns about what is going on in our school district to keep our children safe has the option of coming here to talk i it is it is beyond the pale to talk about a board member in a way where they have and call a board member's employer i'm actually i i just cannot believe this has happened and that is in civil i will leave it there i have a couple of comments um so so i just want to say that the um the decisions to to wear a mess and cut back and forth were absolutely the correct decisions to be made
067at the time and in fact wearing this is still the correct decision to give you some background on my thought process i have a couple of different jobs that i do i'm i work at the university of pennsylvania at their main hospital i'm an anesthesiologist i'm also an icu doctor and i also run our quality and safety program within the operating room and one of the things that we talk about when we talk about safety in operating rooms is we always talk about something that's in never events and there are events that we have in the operating rooms are things like you should never have a surgical instrument left on the side you should never have an operation that happens on the wrong lid so if you're supposed to get a right knee replacement you
068should never get along and the way i think about over protocols the way i think about keeping our children safe is keeping our children safe is it never it's one of these things that's never even so anything that we can do to mitigate the risk of children getting sick for a staff member getting sick is something that we should um you know some people say that i'm i'm like a little bit affected by this and i've had a number of patients who have come into my icu and haven't made it some of them have been really young too i've had people in there in their 20s i've had people in their 30s just over the past month who haven't made it out of my icu so this is something that i think is real and
069i would hate for one of our children or one of our staff members to wind up in that situation it would be my greatest nightmare for that to happen so i think that what we have in place has mitigated that risk as much as possible while giving our children the best education possible over this time period um the other thing that i think is really important is that you know public schools they serve a number of purposes and one of them isn't that there isn't to tell children what to think but to teach them how to live and i think that that's something that we really need to stress moving forward and i think that the curriculum that we haven't set up is set up to teach them how to think so they shouldn't just
070be getting information regurgitating that from any source whether or not it's from their parents or from the internet or from their teachers what we should be teaching them how to do is how to process that information and think for themselves and i think that ours our teachers do an incredible job of that i had i said you know mr hassell was here before getting his 25 years of recognition and my son had him and he really taught me critical thinking so this is um you know again i think that that's part of our mission and what we should be focusing on rather than exactly what we teach is how we teach people how to think and how to process any other word comments i will move to finance can i get a motion to approve
071all of the items under finance [Music] opening up the online voting all items were unanimously approved i'll close it and save it okay i get a motion to adjourn the meeting so moved all in favor thank you eating adjourned please don't forget to vote