08-25-22 Watchung Borough BOE Meeting

001i'd like to call to order a regular meeting of the wachong borough board of education on august 25th 2022 at 7 p.m uh may we please stand for the pledge of allegiance welcome to a meeting of the board of education of the borough of wachong please be advised that this and all meetings of the board are open to the public and media consistent with the open public meetings act and that the advance notice required therein has been provided this is a regular meeting of the board of education of the borough wachong at which formal action may be taken this meeting is being live streamed on the web on the district website where recording of the meeting also will be posted the public will have an opportunity to be heard as shown on the agenda at

002points in the meeting provided for the public to address the board recording or photographing other than for private personal use requires the consent of parents slash guardians whose children may be included in the image can we have a roll call please mr barbella mr buccarelli here mrs harvey here mr gracia here mr mcdonald here murad mid-sadvani and mrs scharf here can i have a motion to go into executive session so moved is there a second any discussion all in favor say aye aye any oppose uh mr pepe can you please read the reason for us going into executive session whereas the open public meetings act njsa 10 cone 4-11 permits the board of education to meet in closed session to discuss certain matters now therefore be it resolved the board of education adjourns to closed

003session to discuss pending and pending or anticipated litigation or contract negotiation and or matters of attorney-client privilege the further resolved the minutes of this closed session will be made public when the need for confidentiality no longer exists this closed session will be followed by an open session where action will be taken thank you mr pepe um we're anticipating maybe about a half an hour give or take so just everybody has an idea um as to how long we'll be and i have a motion to come out of executive session so moved for a second second any discussion all in favor say aye aye aye any oppose uh so we're going to move on to the board vacancy amber can you please move the board vacancy item i move uh board vacancy to rescind appointment is

004there a second second any discussion roll call please mr barbella yes mr buccarelli yes mr gracia yes mr mcdonald yes mrs murad yes mrs scharf yes and mrs harvey yes motion passes okay we're moving on to uh board member comments are there any comments from board members well i guess i'd just like to start out by saying that uh i'm very sorry for the families that are experiencing this very upsetting situation with the transportation issue without having adequate buses um it's you know upsetting as a you know i'm on the operations committee i wasn't uh made aware of the our district families were going to be affected this dramatically by bus shortage until just a couple days before uh the email went out to parents but in hindsight i couldn't i can see that the

005july meeting um could have set off more alarm bells so to speak because we did you know get a bad result on the request for proposals there so um you know i do uh speaking for myself i am very sorry that this is is happening um i think that we could have provided more transparency and more notice on the issue i i have seen uh other districts like long hill have been more um upfront maybe more transparent throughout the summer with district families and um i do think that uh tonight one of the the results should be that uh the parents deserve an explanation of the timeline uh when the bids were requested how many times when the district could have been done negotiating and so i you know i would we would all want

006that explanation as board members which um you know we probably have more information than what you've heard so far and so i think we'll be getting more as part of the meeting tonight but i just wanted to provide those comments here at the beginning of the meeting thank you i actually have a comment as well um i echo what mr ingrassia said and i have a thought in april we passed the policy with the intent that there would be enough time to review the curriculum prior to the beginning of the 2022-2023 school year three days to review the entire curriculum and ask any questions or get clarifications from the curriculum committee wasn't enough i understand that the curriculum committee has moved the physical education and health education items until a public session is conducted however

007under nj statue 18a semicolon 35-4.7 any child whose parent or guardian presents to the school a signed statement that any part of the instruction in health family life education or sex education is in conflict with his or her conscience or sincerely held moral or religious beliefs shall be excused from that portion of the course my question is does this apply to any other subject other than the listed above if so i ask that the curriculum committee of the curriculum committee is that they do their due diligence in looking through the entire curriculum in june president dory harvey reported that we would be purchasing new social study textbooks is this the reason i found nj 2020 sls comprehensive health and physical education which ends at 5th grade 2.1 personal and mental health social and sexual all

008individuals should feel welcome and included regardless of their gender gender expression or gender or sexual orientation they should be able to demonstrate ways to promote dignity and self-respect for all people sexual orientation gender identity expression race ethnicity socioeconomic status offering ability sorry differing ability immigration status family configuration under social studies and under the third grade social studies curriculum for tolerance in amsterdam do parents truly have an opt-in option if health and physical education related items are found in social studies this is why i will not be voting on the curriculum tonight parents deserve better and have the right to make their own decisions any other comments from board members okay uh superintendent's remarks george good evening everyone nice to see such a large crowd we're all excited about the opening of school and for welcoming

009back our students and staff next week so i'll begin with the district update but but first let me thank the pto in advance for kindly sponsoring the welcome back breakfast for our teachers and staff on monday it's much appreciated so let me begin with safety and health protocols uh as everyone is aware i'm sure at this point the cdc revised its health guidance for schools on august 11th and typically that means the state will follow with its own revised guidelines they have not yet done so but we expect to receive it at some point soon the state's july 6 guidance does not add any mandates and actually de-emphasizes contact trace so after consulting with our local health official we're planning to follow the protocols we put in place last march with the change of no

010longer regularly conducting contact tracing which we were doing only for informational purposes last spring the exception would be when circumstances warrant further investigation and this would be determined in consultation with our local health official this is of course subject to change when the updated guidance is issued but it seems like the health guidance is relaxing its protocols and we will be following suit meanwhile the slightly revised protocols for families are being placed on the district website please remember our goal is to keep our students in school when they're healthy we're not excluding children based on potential exposure but please keep screening your children for symptoms and keep them home any kind of symptoms we want to have healthy kids in school and and keep the sick ones at home getting better keep them home when

011they're sick so if we can maintain so we can maintain a healthy school environment and please reach out to our nurses in the schools with questions they're the best resource in addition you may already know governor murphy has rescinded his executive order requiring covet screening testing of unvaccinated staff accordingly the state is discontinuing its testing program that we participated in last year and we will not be offering screening testing for staff and students during the school year on a related note on the issue of safety and security though i can't be specific here i can say and can assure you that we've continued to update our security protocols in consultation with the police this summer i want to thank chief hart his team and the borough's oem coordinator carolyn solon for meeting with us and

012for their ongoing support we're exploring the possibility of an sro in the future but we have more research to to do and we'll be providing updates on that board vacancy um for as for the recent board vacancy and the appointment to fill that board vacancy at the july meeting we were able to confirm that dr joe is ineligible to serve on the board of education and as a result the board rescinded the appointment tonight though it's incumbent on members of the public who are interested in serving to know the eligibility requirements and though this issue has not arisen in our district during our time here we have revised our protocols the application process and protocols to ensure we do not encounter a similar situation in the future despite what was written in an editorial today

013i believe dr joe did not serve on the board she was not sworn in and was not privy to any board business the uh board vacancy remains and we have the um vacancy notice on our website the process now changes because 65 days have elapsed since the the board spot became vacant and the process will be conducted through the executive county superintendent's office as for transportation and the challenges we are facing we have watching hill's business administrator and board secretary tim sties here this evening mr stize is kind enough to be here to explain the efforts made over the last four to five months in trying to secure bus transportation he's been doing this a long time and has never seen anything like what's happening across the state and country with the lack of available

014bus drivers by way of background just so you understand mr snide's role we operate under a shared services agreement with wachon hills and mr sty's coordinates the transportation bidding process for our district so tim if you could come forward and offer some background information for our board and our public we really appreciate it thank you thank you george and thank you to the board rich um allowing me to come up here and explain where we are with transportation um i don't know what you mean by i've been around for a long time george i'm trying to figure that one out but it's all right so anyway so we have eight separate tiers of busing that we tier with the k-8 we also do the same or similar program for long hill and warren so we

015have and greenbrook does their own however we're involved in all of the districts to make sure all the busing goes well we always feel the same way that you know even though we're at regional high school to us this is a k-12 so what happens here is or what happens with us is important and what happens with you guys is important too so we're always paying attention to all the details in terms of transportation i've been doing this for 27 years in fact 30 in education 27 as a ba i've never quite seen anything like this and and the hint was last year and the watch young residents probably and the parents probably know um there were times when we got calls at six in the morning and i was calling rich saying hey rich

016guess what we don't have a bus uh so he had to contact your parents likewise i had to contact our parents so this is what's been happening with all of the districts all the towns um what's happening is there's not enough bus drivers that's really been the issue and the it's it was bad before the pandemic hit after the bentemket it's been horrible um and what we did this year just to give a timeline because i know folks have been saying which have been you know worried about when we started so we we start the transition process back in april and may so what we do in april is we try if we have good contracts with contractors which we do i thought we did um we tried to renew those contracts the first thing

017you ought to wait for is the renewal rate from trent it came back at 1.9 well that was a problem that's nowhere near what inflation is as you all know it's in the eight to eight and a half to nine percent range but they go two years back for transportation which i don't know why they do that it's one thing i complain to doe about like really i mean this is you know what's going to happen we're going to have a hard time renewing these contracts anyway so we went through the contract process and we were unable to renew all of our contracts um i kind of thought we would at least get this one i was actually surprised but they did pull out and i actually gave him an ultimatum in early may saying

018look if you're not going to renew you got to tell us now so i can get out the bid they did so we went out to bid so we prepped uh the bid specs and we went out in june we got two bids two routes back at the time rich and i reviewed them we said look we need eight so we rejected it looking 48 went right back out got the bids back in july had nobody so nj uh the nj law allows you to then negotiate after you've gone to the bid process twice unsuccessfully so that's what we've been doing since um some of those negotiations started out okay so i kind of thought we were we were in better shape we were talking i was talking rich about it but then some of

019those some of those conversations broke down we realized okay we gotta notify parents now because we we may have a problem um i am happy to report that we've done some negotiations we're about halfway there so out of the eight tiered routes we have four that we believe are going to be covered and we're still working with a couple of companies right now i don't want to get into uh the negotiations and and the conversations because that will hurt my ability to to go forward i will let you know that your ba has been we've been constantly communicating every day practically so we you know we're trying to um we're trying to do everything we can to make sure you have busing in the beginning of the school year and that includes a lot of

020um different kind of negotiations that i've ever done before we've done some things to and i don't want to get into the details to try to sweeten the pot so to speak to try to entice some folks to come in they're a little unconventional they're a little out of the box but we're kind of in that position right now so that's where we are i will be in contact with rich and george on literally every day for the next week it's taken up most of my day and because i realize as does rich the importance that transportation has particularly indicated ace high school we got a little advantage because the kids get there they can get there as early as seven o'clock for so for working parents that's a little easier and we have a

021late bus and sports and things so we have an advantage there a little tougher for you guys and the little ones are it's a little tougher i understand for the parents um i had two kids myself so i know that so now again we're we're pushing real hard i got a couple companies right now that i've been talking to and i you know i don't want to say i feel confident with because i don't want to give you any hope that i don't that i don't have however some of those conversations are going well so that's kind of where we are and i just again apologize that it's it's come to this level i've talked to colleagues all over the state um i've heard some horror stories the town i live in hillsborough they're actually

022they were down as of last week five uh five of those tier routes one of the schools told me that they they combined a multitude of routes and some of the bus routes for an hour and a half long i that's bro that's rough um but again it's not a money issue it's a driver issue there's a lack of bus drives and that is an issue that we're actually reaching out to other contractors as well to see who's eligible to do this type of work to from in the morning is a little tougher to do because the regulations are really tight you can't have just any bus and you can't have any bus driver and one last thing you want to do is have a contract with the two from like that where you're you're

023not following the law um because if there's an issue you're gonna have a real problem so that that's where we are folks and again thank you for allowing me to come out the board questions or whatever you want to do thank you so much tim does anyone have questions i actually do so i you're saying are the four routes that are locked down right now i mean at what point will parents be notified as to whether their children are being put on those routes do you get what i'm asking yeah so so the communication piece is is critical um we've we're aware of the four that that we know of right now um i'm gonna have some more conversations tomorrow to see what else i can get um if that breaks down around midday i'm

024gonna be talking to mr pepe and uh we're gonna have to strategize on what to say when to say it and and that kind of thing uh i i get it and if a family has let's say three children and let's say they happen to have three you know child a bay bury a child at valley view a child at the high school if they get one of those routes can they be assured that all three of their children or is it going to be by do you understand what i'm asking is it going to be by school yeah that's it's difficult for me to answer at the moment because i don't have all the information in front of me and that's something we have to talk about but i mean it's a very good

025question i understand what you're saying i mean people who know me know i have three kids but i don't have one it'd be very just asking all right thank you anyone else tim thanks so much thank you thank you rich do you have anything to add that you want to share sure there's one other transportation matter that we handle which is our special education route that we have historically had an in-house person drive um for various reasons i decided to put that out to bid this year we actually was at the bid last year and we had a contractor do it and i said let's see if we can get a contract to cover that route and then maybe free that driver up to do some the other and we did get bids back they

026came in at about two and a half times what we paid last year so it's it's extremely expensive but we at least got a bus so we're going to move forward with that for the special education route at mayberry great thank you and just let me add that we're working on a plan and doing this in consultation with chief hart um a plan we hope like tim mentioned that would allow for early drop-offs and later pickups tentatively looking at 7 30 in the morning at valley view and eight at mayberry um we're planning and talking with chief hart this week and we have another call with him tomorrow to work out the details of the uh additional um additional number of vehicles on the on the properties especially at valley view and of course we're

027going to be flexible with drop off and pick up times and we'll be providing an update once details are finalized we'll send that update tomorrow to the school community with a brief survey too to determine how many families would need to take advantage of the early access and later pick up uh unless tim calls us tomorrow and says that the whole transportation route the routes are all covered but we'll see so we got to be prepared for bad news too um and that that's it for those updates one other thing on the agenda um that i have here is the professional development plan being reviewed for financial impact this is an annual requirement so what i've done with this is um you know having having a professional development plan that's aligned with our district goals

028which are also on the agenda tonight to be approved um they were developed by the administration in consultation with the board at its retreat in june and the goals and accompanying action plans are now on the agenda for approval um the professional development plan which is aligned with those goals and action plans uh have been presented to the board for a review of financial or fiscal impact that's been done in committees and it's memorialized this evening the mentoring plan is also included in terms of financial impact in the professional development plan and that has been shared with the board through the personnel committee agenda in minutes and with reviewed for the financial or fiscal impact which is minimal and that will do it for my comments mrs harvey thank you thank you george um and

029i just want to say thank you because i know that a number of board members including myself jen kevin joe and rich have made suggestions to try to help accommodate the parents for the transportation issue that we're having and you know i think that it we appreciate as parents that the administration definitely took those suggestions of you know an earlier drop-off for parents to try and help accommodate as much as possible and then also a later pickup as well um and then you know the issue that we brought up about sometimes we only have about 10 or 15 minute window that we're given as parents on the regular drop-off and pickup that obviously with more cars coming in that you know both buildings are going to be flexible with extending that time is great um

030so i just i appreciate that um as a parent myself and then just trying to maneuver children so um i just wanted to thank you for the time you guys have put into to making that available for parents um uh so we're going to move on to committee reports uh human resources kevin can you please give us that committee report uh yes the um human resources and personnel committee uh met this past tuesday august 23rd at 4 30. uh present were jen sharp dory harvey mr alexis and i um first we discussed the professional development schedule which is i believe an attachment to the packet and as well the danielson 2022 rubric and the mentoring plan we also discussed new teacher orientation schedule these items were reviewed with the committee the danielson rubric is a

031much needed update that will improve teacher observation and evaluation the last form that we were using was from 2007 so this should be a great improvement the mentoring plan is to be reviewed each year for financial impact currently there are no need for mentors this year because all the new hires have experience so only provisional teachers require a mentor we also discuss salary adjustments for non-affiliated staff and we will like be likely to be taking action on that at a special meeting in early september the committee next discussed uh a tech restructure um we're going to make an adjustment to the tech supervisor position as we previously discussed and this is another way that we're actually going to be conserving resources we're going to reduce the amount that we pay on consulting fees for similar

032work that can be done by our own employees so that should be a good saving for the uh the borough uh next we discussed um part-time secretarial staff to assist counselors and we're planning on using uh grant funds to achieve this um this will hopefully hopefully free up our nurses and counselors to spend more time with the kids next we moved on to a discussion of the school resource officer and i won't spend too much time on that because mr alexis already touched on it but we are continuing to look into obtaining a school resource officer and how we would potentially pay for that after that we moved on to district goals and action plans the committee was in favor of the goals and action plans we also discussed professional development plan for financial impact

033mr alexis reviewed the pd plan and explained it is aligned with district goals and budgeted resources we moved on to discussing pto volunteers mr lex has explained that pto volunteers going forward due to the governor's guidance will no longer be required to be vaccinated mrs harvey then gave an update on the referendum planning and then mr alexis uh gave a brief overview of the five-year strategic plan there are a number of potential board items on for this month's agenda including the appointment of district substitute coordinators ratifying the appointment of special education teachers at valley view and bayberry and of lead replacement teacher bayberry there's also a resignation on tonight appointing before and after care staff approving revised iep and 504 meeting participation appointing student information system liaison resolution for speech externship uh which is attaching

034the packet general education practicum watching hills regional high school work based placement valley view co-curricular appointments esy staff revision leave of absence for a valley view aid revised annual reappointments and we discussed all these matters and i believe we're in favor of all of them finally we moved on to new business and there was a discussion about class sizes for the future and the possible need for additional teachers down the road which we will obviously need to find a way to pay for but we will because we have to and that's all i have thank you dory thank you kevin uh rich can you please give the operations finance committee report yes and the ad hoc referendum committee report no i just said if you can give the operations and the ad hoc yeah can

035you hear me yeah okay uh we'll start with the ad hoc we had two meetings in august one on august 1st and one on august 17th august 1st meeting myself uh mrs harvey mr angracia and then the community groups borough council jim d'amato idea tanisha sims cpag smita sara swat and waf angela mealy members at large frank visignano hans jewett phyllis jewett kathleen ruperto ferrara first item we discussed was the uh projects list sorry i'm out of order let me give the july july 2nd ad hoc referendum first i have four reports here uh so we had two we had july 2nd and we had august 1st the the july 12th meeting with myself mrs harvey mr igracio mr alexis mr pepe uh borough council jim d'amato representatives cpac smita saraswat members at large daryl

036eisenberg nickname francesca escalaria and hans jewett phyllis jewett and chris ponza the feedback from ad hoc committee member phone calls where the committee reached out to the non-uh non-board members to cage progress the general feeling was that the committee was not accomplishing very much useful and needed to make decisions and move on some committee members also felt the board members should do less of the talking we agreed on a schedule of objectives for the next meeting that the current meeting would be used this is uh july 12th to agree to projects to include and exclude from a potential referendum and recommendation to the operations committee and for the august 23rd to propose the timing for the resolution discussion on how to propose a resolution on the ballot and send an ad hoc committee read out

037to the operations committee board of education third item on the agenda was to go through projects to decide what is recommended to be in or out starting with prior referendum projects with the possible edition of kitchen upgrades jim ac and security camera upgrades the committee reviewed the project's list and identified projects to include in the new referendum and projects to consider not including the committee was in favor of accepting the engineer's suggestion to replace hvac units rather than attempt to refurbish or rebuild the old units projects that were identified as maybe projects included the addition of a storage building the outdoor learning commons the addition of air conditioning to the gym hvac units and kitchen upgrades the proposed referendum was suggested to be voted on by the board of education no later than the september

03822nd meeting if the proposed referendum approved by the board of education uh we would reconvene the ad hoc committee for one or two more sessions to discuss public outreach education marketing of the proposed referendum the committee discussed how on when to obtain public input including how to reach all wachong residents a suggestion was also made to look into alternative options for replacing hvac units meeting adjourned at 8 35. the meeting on monday august 1st had the participants i just read off before the projects list the committee revisited the discussion about the hvac projects that it had at a prior meeting additional suggestions were made to pay for an additional assessment of the chillers with an estimated cost of thirty to forty thousand dollars for the study and to obtain bid estimates for various projects in

039the list the committee reviewed the steps that had taken place prior to this point along with the recommendations that were made by uh in the previous ad hoc committee meetings which was by drg and by a second engineering firm higher class dlb the committee was not in favor of of proposing these suggestions i.e additional studies to the operations finance committee the committee reviewed the recommendations from the previous meeting regarding which projects to include in the new referendum the committee was in favor of breaking the referendum into two questions the first question would include all the previously agreed to projects the second question would include the repurposing of the valley view softball field and the addition of air conditioning to gym hvac units at both schools the committee suggested leaving the kitchen upgrades and the valley

040view storage shed and outdoor learning commons out of the referendum the committee recommended that the district prepare one of the ovens at valley view using operating funds a suggestion was made to break the referendum referendum into more than two questions the committee was in favor of breaking the referendum into only two questions to avoid confusion and to emphasize that the first question included essential items and the second question included items other items helpful to the school district but not deemed essential a suggestion was made to ask the architects to reduce the scope of certain projects such as the art room configuration and the indoor learning commons in order to lower the cost of the referendum the committee was not in favor of taking a step which was not recommended by the administration it would slow

041down the committee's progress the committee felt they had ample time to review the six emails from fellow community members and were comfortable that they were taken into consideration while discussing the projects for the referendum the committee was in favor of having the board of education discuss the ad hoc committee's recommendations in each of the board committees and vote on the project's list in the august board meeting the committee discussed how to explain the cost of specific projects such as the art room music room learning commons case work and bathrooms to the public and decided to continue this discussion at the next meeting a suggestion was made to address questions and comments that have been posted on facebook including is the referendum more money than the one from last year and how can the high school

042have a referendum that doesn't raise taxes um this meant let me just give the public a timeline of of what the public engagement on the referendum has been to date on march 21st there was an invitation to referendum ad hoc committee meeting a district email blast town email blasts and mailers on march 28th the referendum ad hoc committee initial planning meeting was held a virtual meeting about 26 people attended on may 3rd uh referendum ad hoc committee had him his first meeting uh they had another meeting may 23rd they had an end of the meeting uh june 14th um they had a meeting on uh july 12th and meeting on august 1st which were the minutes i just gave in addition to that on june 24th an invitation to provide input to the board of

043education on the referendum was sent by district email blast town email blast electronic town sign and an echo sentinel ad questions and comments uh regarding the referendum or directed to be sent to the email referendum at watching schools dot us i believe we received uh six responses from all of that effort operations and finance committee met on wednesday august 17th and tuesday august 23rd uh august 17th committee members myself mr barbella mr gracia and mrs harvey substituting for mr mcdonald mr alexis mr pepe were there guests were patsy well and frank buble from drg architects tony solomine who was from woolens goldman and spitzer as bond council is present today we discussed student transportation at both of these meetings but i am not going to uh go into anything because it is actually redundant and

044outdated compared to uh what tim just uh and mr uh alexis just told the public that is the most current information and the most complete information we discussed the referendum the committee posed questions the architect and bond council regarding the prospect of a successful referendum after a failed referendum the recommendation to include a 30 contingency for fees and soft costs and the possibility of submitting two ballot questions with the second question being contingent on passing of the first question mr solomine stated that a second referendum following an unsuccessful referendum is usually smaller in scope but can sometimes be larger he advised that this determination should be based on the needs and wants of the community mr c wells stated that he had never been involved with a failed referendum mr seawell recommended keeping i guess

045that is probably not true anymore pat mr seawell recommended keeping the 30 contingency to protect the district from the possibility of not being able to deliver the promised projects should the referendum pass mr solomon confirmed that the district cannot spend a single dollar more than what they got approved by the voters he also confirmed that any remaining funds after the projects are completed must be used to reduce the principal payments on the bonds and cannot be used for other purposes so you know i just read a bunch of words let me just explain this part of it to the public because it's an important point there was a lot of discussion by a lot of folks at the ad hoc committee and in the operations committee that the prices that our engineers and architects drg

046had put on certain items were too high and that we should not uh add a 30 contingency which is the maximum allowed uh by the state just some insight into why we decided not to try to second-guess the engineers on pricing and why we decided to put the 30 contingency in which is the maximum allowed by the state yeah i've been the ceo of a 300 million dollar real estate company i've been the uh the head of uh the real estate uh department of uh fortune 500 company with a 100 million dollar budget i will tell you and and there were other people experienced in the on the board on the ref on the referendum ad hoc committee um that seemed to be questioning these things a lot you don't know the final cost of

047a project until it's completed and the punch list items are done that's just the fact so what what happens in this process is you get the best estimates from the engineers then you go into a detailed architectural drawing phase then where where you get all of the requirements then you go out to bid and then you accept the best bid sometimes there's changes in the scope of work sometimes there aren't changes in the scope of work sometimes there's cost overruns sometimes there you come in under budget you know in a public company or in a construction company or even in a private company going over budgets never good going under budget great it helps your financials for that year when you're dealing with a public referendum however uh it was the i think it's the

048best wisdom and i think the operations committee agreed with me by and large that you have to be conservative in your costs and this is the reason why you can't go out to the public and say we're going to do all of these projects and for this amount of money and then what happens if you spend less money it's fine it all goes back to the public either usually as a reduction of debt service and our attorney is here if we have any questions about that but that is that is what happened you can't then spend it on other things it goes back to the public if you find yourself in a situation where there's a high inflation environment the costs are higher than you were expected you get cost overruns you can't spend more

049because you didn't get approved for more you end up doing less things and to me and to the majority of the operations committee we did not want to put ourselves the board the town and the position where we said we're going to build all of these projects for you for this amount of money and then go back to them later and say well we didn't have enough money to finish these projects so you only got some of the projects for that money to me that would be a disaster giving money back to the public not a problem not doing what you said you were going to do for that money that would be a huge problem that's what those words i just read meant so hopefully that's a more common sense and plain explanation the

050committee then confirmed the ballot questions can be written so that a second question is contingent on the first question in other words there'll be two questions on the proposed referendum the first will be you know the things that we considered you know the most important the most essential the second were a lot of things that the people in the ad hoc wanted a lot of things that the administration wanted it's a it's a much smaller amount but the way it works is that you vote on the first one if you vote no on the first one you don't get the vote on the second one if you vote yes on the first one you can either vote yes or no on the second one that's the way that works uh the committee then discussed the

051projects list and determined that the valley view storage building outdoor learning commons and repurposing of the softball field along with the addition of air conditioning to the gym rtus at both schools would be included in the second ballot question the kitchen renovations would not be included in the referendum and all remaining projects would be included in the first ballot question the committee also discussed the bid process timeline and public engagement which i just went through that was and then we discussed other potential items for tonight's agenda and decided to cancel the ad hoc referendum committee meeting for august 23rd and replace it within it that would have been last tuesday and replace it with an additional operations finance committee meeting the minutes of which i will read now we had a meeting on tuesday august

05223rd myself mr barbell and mr agracia mr mcdonald mr alexis mr pepe guess was tim's dies who the gentleman who just spoke about the busing issue we discussed atlanta student transportation um mr stize gave us an update again i won't read this because you just got it from the horse's mouth and it was the most recent update with most current information we then discuss the referendum um recommendations we brought the recommendations from the ad hoc referendum committee and based on these recommendations uh we decided to take all of the recommendations except for two two cases one was to remove the storage building project from the referendum that will be that was going to be in question two uh and the other was to include the outdoor learning commons in question two because the administration felt

053um very strongly that it would enhance the educational achievement of this of the children in our district we then discussed uh potential agenda items for tonight's meeting and had a discussion about what the board would do with addition we have we found ourselves in the position of having additional extraordinary aid and what that means is we got a little extra money from um from the state what was that from rich what do you mean i'm sorry the additional extraordinary aid right so we we get our notification of our extraordinary aid in the summer um we received something like three hundred thousand dollars more than what we have three to four hundred thousand dollars more and the question is what to do with this and our choices are basically we can you know roll it over

054we can put it in the uh the maintenance fund or you could put in the capital reserve correct right or it can be appropriated in the current year budget right that's what i meant by roll it over i'm sorry uh and but the point is we don't really know what's facing us this year especially with bus busing costs and other inflationary items and other special needs so um we don't have to make this decision now and so what we're doing is keeping this in suspension and making uh making the decision to revisit this topic in the middle of the school year sorry for taking up so much time we had a lot of meetings okay thank you uh jen can you please give the curriculum committee report yes the curriculum committee met on monday august

05527th 22nd at 4 30. uh myself uh rita sadvani dory harvey george alexis karen kid denise victor were all there first we discussed the summer curriculum writing the committee reviewed the curriculum in advance and offered comments and questions the committee was in favor of approving the revised curriculum at the next board meeting the one exception is the health and the pe curriculum uh an information session will be offered for the health curriculum which will be placed on a board agenda in september the committee also recommended perhaps creating an opt-out form to streamline the process and administrative approval prior to staff using supplemental materials not listed in the approved curriculum we plan to get an update on these recommendation items on at the next meeting mrs figner also gave us a synopsis of the gifted and

056talented enrichment and extension activities that were developed this summer to assist the elementary teachers she offered examples that were included in google classroom uh and the enrichment activities will be available to any student not just gifted and talented students as deemed appropriate by that child's classroom teacher we discussed field trips we asked questions we made the suggestion perhaps of curriculum you know reason why they're going on a trip being linked to the field trip itself we discussed our therapy dog baxter will be returning this year students and staff i really enjoyed him this summer we discussed the class sizes kevin already spoke about that uh district goals and action plans were discussed professional development plan uh mr alexis reviewed the pd plan and explained that it aligns with district goals mrs harvey gave us an

057update on referendum planning uh five-year strategic plan mr alexis gave a brief overview of the strategic strategic plan uh we discussed the new social studies textbooks the principals gave an overview of the proposed textbooks and resources the committee was in favor of these resources and a discussion about back to school night arose and we offered feedback and suggestions about previous school night back to school nights prior to the pandemic thank you jen joe can you please raise the policy committee report sure so the policy committee met on monday august 22nd some of the items covered include the second reading as noted on page 14 of certain mandatory and voluntary policies and regulations uh all of which were minor non-substantive um there was also discussion also on page 14 of adopting certain mandatory uh policies in

058relation to title one for those of you that are unfamiliar title one is academic achievement for disadvantaged economically disadvantaged children in essence and to summarize these particular policies uh address the interaction between the school district and parents for title one the good news and discussion with mr alexis was that uh in large part uh most of the policy items uh that are mandatory recommended the school district was already doing so it was more so just codifying these and ensuring if any of the items needed enhancement in terms of community engagement for title 1 that we were appropriately doing so additionally mr alexis provided an update on the professional development plan and financial impact as mentioned we also had a guest mrs datoda to speak to us about a prior policy which we will bring forth

059at the next uh committee meeting we decided not to include it on this committee meeting given the packed agenda i know the discussion items such as the buses and the referendums just be too much tonight uh but in essence the policy that will we'll look at for next meeting has to do with potential out-of-school district students who may wish to come into district that have special needs so there's a policy being reviewed with regard to that also we had a discussion again we'll raise in the next board meeting for the topic of uh potential hybrid uh board meetings or discussion on that topic there was something previously discussed uh you know during covet we went uh full in person um and then it was raised again and brought the policy whether we should have uh

060some kind of hybrid once again so that will be raised at the next meeting thank you joe i will move on to board liaison reports kevin is there anything as the legislative liaison uh just briefly earlier this month the governor signed into effect public law 2022 chapter 83 to establish threat assessment teams in public schools the law takes effect the first full school year following enactment it requires school districts to develop the threat assessment team to provide school teachers administrators faculty and staff with assistance in identifying evaluating and managing at-risk students and to ensure a safe and secure school environment that enhances the learning experience for all members of the school community and there was also the governor signed an executive order that we already touched on regarding unvaccinated workers undergoing routine covet 19 testing

061and that's all the updates i have thank you kevin uh jen is there anything as the somerset county ed services commission liaison uh yes we met on august 3rd a very late meeting they served their new website which looks fantastic very user and continue to you know work diligently to fill teaching positions you know it still continues to be a problem thank you jen amber is there anything for the somerset county school boards association there are none um the next meeting is in october so i'll be attending that thank you amber and i have nothing for the new jersey school boards um association so we're going to move on to comments from the public on agenda items we welcome input from the public there are two times during the meeting when the public is invited

062to speak the first opportunity to comment is on agenda items only is now the second opportunity for public comment is towards the end of the meeting total time allotted for public comment is 30 minutes before you make your comment please state your name and address in the event it appears the public comment portion of the meeting may exceed 30 minutes the presiding officer may limit each statement made by a participant to three minutes duration comments submitted to the board secretary prior to the meeting will be read first our public forums are not structured as a question and answer session but rather are offered as opportunities to share input with the board in instances where the board feels a response is needed the presiding officer or superintendent will address the comment new jersey statutes do not

063permit the board to discuss personnel or hiring in public session names of students should not be used members of the public should consider their comments in light of legal rights of those affected and identified in their comments and be aware that they are personally legally responsible with potential liability for comments that they made to the board the board shall not be held liable for comments made by members of the public if anyone would like to get up and make a comment on an agenda item mrs harvey i have one oh for the to read i'm sorry we did receive one written comment this is from katie chakell hello there i am writing to share a written comment in relation to the agenda items for the august 25th board of ed meeting in regards to the

064referendum i am in full support to have this back on the ballot in november as our schools are in desperate need of basic up updates to provide a safe environment for our students teachers and community as for the school buses i would like to share my comments that this is an urgent matter that must be resolved immediately and we cannot put further burdens on the teachers and staff to make up for this loss in service if a temporary solution is needed for parents to take on transportation then flexibility is critical to allow longer drop off and pick up times as well as before and after care we are we as a community are willing to work together as needed with the understanding that boe will resolve this as soon as possible given its their responsibility

065and not just pass the burden on to others thank you are there any comments from the public all right good evening my name is paulo morano 172 summit drive watch on a father of three daughters each of various stages of their education here in wachong i just prepared a short statement to keep myself on track and for time's sake regarding the opting in and or out of a curriculum pertaining particular to the trenton's sexual education curriculum i just want to say thanks for letting giving me the opportunity to uh to address this and for you guys to speak uh openly about this i understand this frustrates a lot of parents and i understand that the board must follow the education standards set by the set by and trenton i've read these standards and i believe

066i understand them however i've spoken to many parents that are uncertain about what is being taught and kind of frustrated with what's being proposed and um enough for enough an effort to promote transparency parental rights i respectfully ask the board to implement an opt-in policy where that's different it's uh for the new sexual education standards other school districts such as middletown and monmouth county have taken the lead on this approach not in process provides all parents the full details of the new curriculum and affords them the opportunity to voluntarily off their children in where this is different the state's proposed opt-out approach is insufficient because it inadequately informs the parents of what is being taught to their children thank you good evening uh my name is hans joette at 20 elsinore drive in wachong um

067i have a question regarding the topics that mr buccarelli addressed one of the ones is the the contingency amount of the referendum uh as we as we know we've been talking about 30 or 40 percent of the referendum being a contingency item at 40 percent uh the referendum calls for about 4.5 million in soft costs and overruns and it calls for 8 million for 10 million in actual construction expenditures i'm just wondering if now or later that mr buccarelli might address what the percentages are that make up the um this 30 to 40 percent because we really are talking about 40 to not 30 with cost escalation and why wouldn't cost escalation uh be a contingency item generally things when you look at cost escalation that is part of the contingency i think it's a

068it's an important point really to make to people and watch on uh if you build a house for um a million dollars do you really want to pay a million for for architect fees soft fees and things that nature so i think it's really very incumbent i think for the for the board to make that pretty clear uh generally speaking i think a bond issue is is about a hundred thousand dollars uh architect and engineering fees on the projects of this nature should be in the five to seven percent range and usually construction overruns you figure 10 and that's a pretty good number for most construction overruns and most of these items like heavy air conditioning equipment those prices are set they've been set for a long time and they're not like bread and butter

069that are going to rise on us so i think you know it's important to know should we be at 40 or should our contingency really be more in line because i think that shows fiscal responsibility you never want to cut yourself short but contractors are bright people we know there's a lot of money out there you're going to get bids to try to chew up that money so if you could break that 40 percent up a little bit mr buck really i think it'd be helpful for everybody thank you very much thank you madam president we do have tony salamoni here and drg for the purposes of i know the referendum is going to have a lot of questions and um i think we have them here to answer questions like this but the figure's

07030 it's not 40 mr salamone can talk to that and uh you know pat can talk about uh what the the contingency amount uh breakdown is if you think that would be helpful i know it's not a question and answer but we do have our experts here would you please so let's just be clear it's not forty percent it's thirty percent good evening everybody at siwell drg architects um just to further the point that mr buccarelli mentioned earlier 30 percent njdoe recognizes that there's uh certain soft costs uh that are associated with any kind of project that we're talking about and it's not only the architectural fees and maybe some overruns there's a lot of other soft costs that haven't been identified yet or have not been procured uh by mr pepe um these types

071of uh of expenditures really come after the referendum is um is passed so beyond the a e fees there will be some design contingency there will be bonding and legal fees that will come out from the sale of the bonds we also have line items for potential construction manager this this particular project that we're talking about is heavy in hvac the board may elect to hire a commissioning agent there will be some testing fees we do have some areas of concern when it comes to asbestos uh latent prod uh products like uh vct there will be dca fees if we decide to go or we'll go local um and then there's also printing we have uh furnishings built into that soft cost i can tell you that the bulk of the 30 percent that that

072i had planned for this particular project is really to cover the market conditions the swings that we're seeing with equipment and the bids that are coming in are just incredible and and i think everybody can relate to that when they when they go to fill up their tank when they go to buy a loaf of bread the prices are just escalating uh beyond what we can predict and you're at what you're asking in the architect to do is uh project what the costs are going to be two years from now because when the referendum passes we don't go right out to bid with a package it takes the architect the engineers a certain amount of time to put a comprehensive bid package together to to put out on the street for qualified contractors to come

073back and um and actually bid on these packages so it is recognized by the doe we've used 30 especially in a uh a renovation heavy uh referendum like we're talking about here and the 30 percent has held up to the point where once again and we we all mr buccarelli talked about it what our goal is to um whatever we're promising the the public at at a meeting like this at a referendum we need to deliver that two years later so i i i it would be it's always my recommendation once again for the renovation heavy uh projects that we're talking about here uh 30 is uh is certainly uh you know within the industry standard for all of that for all of those work for all of that work and all of the fees

074i just discussed that's over the next two years that's correct uh that's not though that that's the the escalation that we propose is an escalation what we expect to see over the next few years but if that doesn't cover the market swings that we're talking about um i still say that that you know the way we price these projects um once again below the line is going to be the 30 percent we do ask add a little bit of an escalation above but once again it's to protect all of these projects perhaps we should let the attorney talk now and and and just to like reconfirm and put everybody's mind at ease that if the contingency is not used it goes back to the public it goes back to the public uh good evening everyone

075tony solomon from lens goldman and spitzer um as pat discussed this is kind of unique when you talk about a public project because pat's got to design and estimate the project two two and a half years before you're actually constructing the project the actual cost will be determined by the market at the time when pat goes to bid uh the good thing is that this law is taken into consideration if you have money left over once the project is done the only thing that the board is allowed to do with those funds is to give the money back to you as the taxpayers in the form of tax relief and the only way they can do that is to pay down the principal amount on the bonds so there's a mechanism in the law to

076protect the taxpayers that the district is not allowed to spend one dollar more than is authorized in the bond proposal on these projects and then once the projects are done they have to use that money to pay back the bond that was issued to pay for those projects so there is a mechanism in the law to protect the taxpayers and from the public on agenda items hi gina cookiado 121 stanny bray drive i want to start by thanking um anthony and amber for expressing your compassion for the busing situation obviously it's one that's being critically spoken about throughout town it affects everybody many working parents i know that it does not need to be prevailed upon because you're all in the same situations as all of us so i appreciate the great effort that mr

077size went through to explain the process and how they've tried to diligently be battling this issue that really the whole world's been dealing with i'm optimistic and i'm sure it's going to work out but i was very happy to hear tonight that should we not have buses next week there are some workarounds and they're sure i'm sure you're probably gonna come up with some additional ones because if you don't i'm sure we've got a lot of great community members you're gonna find a few options for us as well so keep working on it and i appreciate it um on the referendum i know there's going to be a lot of discussion later i have one of my younger children with me i don't know that i can save the end and i don't know if

078i may need to leave depending on how the conversation goes so i just wanted to quickly give you a few of my points um you know thank you to the operations committee for all of your hard work on this and also the great length that you went to go for community outreach it sounds like you really did try very very hard to get folks involved and a lot more people got involved this year than they did last year and i know that you have been working on this now for over two years um you know part of me thinks the reason why folks don't show up and don't express their opinions is probably because they trust you to do the work and to make the decisions we vote for you we are your constituents you

079serve us in the most respectful way possible and i know the long hours that you folks are putting in and every single one of us should deeply appreciate that because the most valuable thing that we have is our time and our children right the children are your ultimate constituent they don't vote for you although possibly some may come in and maybe hit a button here or there your children our children are suffering i got four kids three schools thank you for looking out jen really appreciate it two different classrooms fourth grade first grade wearing jackets through the winter and having fans blowing into the classrooms papers of the children flying on the floor if you were lucky enough to sit in front of the fan and the kids who weren't in front of the fan

080just had to deal with it and you have teachers and tank tops if the children aren't happy if the teachers are miserable i love them all but if you get hot you're cranky what happens when those kids get home they're going to be cranky and then their parents are going to be really annoyed that their children are cranky so really it's just creating this monstrous storm of unhappiness and in my opinion the best thing about wachong is that in my opinion the administration cares like the staff cares it's unusual for teachers to go out of their way i dealt with this kid earlier or i guess it was last week now it was a simple question and the level that she went above and beyond to help was truly unbelievable i didn't expect it and

081at the end of the day it was the same answer but she went way above you would expect somebody to do just for an average question and you have to appreciate that and appreciate all the time that's going into all of this i mean if anyone thinks hvac is not needed and i don't know what's decided and not decided i heard something about there being two questions is that a final answer having two questions on the ballot i don't know who okay so i'm in favor of the referendum either way you want to slice it i think the two questions are a phenomenal idea because i would love to talk to any one of you who thinks hvac is not needed because i had three kids suffering through it not to mention valley view which

082i also love where air conditioning was just not working for a full week and you had children who were dying in the school the gymnasiums now are going to be part part of the second question it's fine break it up you want to vote for part of it both of it all of this stuff is needed if you want to talk about can we can the cost be different should we do it this way should we do it that way it's been two and a half years i love all of you i have utmost respect for all of you and all the time you put into this but really you got to stop talking about it you got to stop studying you gotta stop spending money on it and you just have to vote and

083get it done because we need this stuff and our kids are suffering and i you know i keep thinking to myself would i feel this way i'm sorry am i over time would i feel this way if i didn't have kids in the school and i said to myself guess what by the time they fix bayberry i'm not gonna have any kids there shockingly i'm not gonna benefit from that but someone is because guess what if i knew what the schools were like when i bought into wachong because i grew up in warren i don't know if i would have moved here i would move to ward is it disgraceful that our children are wearing coats in the classroom it's unforgivable it really really is so stop fighting about the costs of all these things

084if you could get it done cheaper find whoever your connections are and get them to bid on the job at a good price so maybe we can get more for our money out of the referendum because if you guys are talking about this in a year from now i'm really sorry you don't belong here you're here to serve the students please don't vote for the loudest voice in the room i know the average taxpayer never wants to pay a dollar more but we're talking about at the end of the day a couple hundred bucks which i get it's a lot of money but you're investing in the school it's part of the town people are going to move here or move out of here and i know a lot of people who pulled their kids

085out of school and you have to ask yourself why is that is it the structure is it the students is it is the school the administration you got to start doing it right because you're going to lose your families and again the heart of this town is the school and the reason why the people love this school is because of administration but it's a pretty sad state of affair with some of these really really basic necessities and as far as it goes for valley view the outsider learning commons and the multi-purpose field or whatever's in or out of that second question again i implore you look around it's a sad state of affairs there's literally nothing for a value student to do here if they're lucky they get a basketball to play at the hoop

086in the driveway we've had problems with kids playing in the parking lot i think our kids can use that gorgeous field that we have back there i think we should stop being short-sighted try to find a common ground so you can actually serve your constituents and i say all of this truly without most respect so please don't take this the wrong way just start helping the kids thank you [Music] thank you good evening to the board and to the wa chung residents that are here present um i'm here to raise also an area of concern that i think goes very much in line to the safety and basic needs of our schools i know that you certainly put a lot of just say your name my i completely went right in there thank you so

087much jennifer vinces kua 316 sterling road and so here i wanted to highlight um where we are in terms of our students and their academic success i think that the priority that we are looking at is definitely basic needs but in continuing and in alignment of our district goals we need to look into where we are in terms of academic success and achievement of our students when we look at those 2017-2018 reports when we break down that ela and math we are meeting the standards but when we look at that growth potential of these students in comparison to other students we are just at the cusp we needed to meet 40 and in one we are 42 and the other one we're below at 39 and that was then so we don't have updated data

088because of the pandemic but when we look at those iready scores that we do have from spring 2022 we do see that a similar pattern is there and pretty much for us to see so again as we think about this new school year really working very hard together as a board as leadership in school our families parents what can we do to support our students so that they do succeed because we have those state exams and data will be collected again once more but ultimately we want the best for our children so as we think of all these big picture projects that are needed the upcoming curriculum for the health and sex education standards we do need to keep our focus on that priority of that goal one for that academic enrichment and achievement just

089so that we do not lose sight of what is actually needed because i'm pretty sure that we want all of our students to reach high high potential but that's not going to happen individually it happens pretty much as a team so strong curriculum strong administration teacher support um ongoing consistency and leadership for our schools so all these pieces come together and are needed and required so if there is anything that we can do as families as parents to support our children that needs to be in the forefront with enough information so that we're not kind of seeing this low pattern and then trying to quickly respond because we are below standards and i think that um it's been happening like that and if we don't know what curriculum is at hand that maybe is not

090helpful or working we're now going to see what is coming in store so we're in line for new jersey state standards for that sex education curriculum and we we are not aware what that timeline looks like and we don't have an opportunity to see it i know we will have something in september but that's already in september and this was supposed to be implemented in fall and that i think is too late and we need to have that awareness so in all i'm saying this as a a growing edge for all of us to have transparency and accountability for the success of our children in all of its components thank you thank you any other comments from the public on agenda items uh good evening um board members uh walter and community my name is

091joe 400 johnston joined so um i'm the one i come here today i feel i have the responsibility to make some statement and if you recall from last month's board member meetings i'm here to apply for the vacancy of the board members and i thank you here sincerely for the trust of the board members and our superintendent you know to to endorse me and appoint me as as a potential board member it's a pity that i actually do not have the opportunity really is my personal loss coming from today's board meeting i've seen the community here discuss so many important topics that are so relevant to our kids to our school district that i am so want to make a personal contribution and committed time to however i acknowledge that i do not have the

092eligibility due to the fact that i'm not a registered uh voter in wall chang which um you know things can change in the future um but um that's just something i cannot make any um change at this moment giving you know my personal reasons um but i'm here i want to make some um so first i want to i really want to thank um you know the the the community uh and the board you know actually open you know the this opportunity to every one of you who can be a registered voter in this town so you uh everyone have the right you know you can serve on the board and it takes a lot of the time uh as a lieutenant today um we've given all these topics and time the work you put

093in um you know just non-stop the meetings for all the committees so i fully um recognize the the challenge and so even now i can step back um you know i might really you know can commit as you guys uh here to the board whatever you know you know problem you want to solve so i definitely second uh and i i show my respect um but the most important reason i'm standing here is i want to make clarification that regarding i'm not a registered walter the fact was was not released to anyone of the board to anyone you know before the official appointment went out by the superintendent i thank you you know for the the the letter you know full of um you know positive um attitude but it's uh it is not known

094it's not uh asked the questions it was not evaluated and myself i apologize being you know ignorant not knowing the criteria i thought that just be a resident of war chang and if you want to serve and then you have the opportunity to you and so and then you go through the process so you are given opportunity and i was just too quickly to cherish this and then since this turned 180 degree um but um i am here just to do my personal witness that um nothing has been hidden from you know the public the board um you know everyone that uh um so something was known beforehand and before the appointment before uh last month's board meeting and that anyone or myself no actually i'm not being not a registered voter that will disqualify

095so that's that is something was you know brought up later on after the letter was uh sent out so i i feel regret you know this uh my ignorance uh make the confusion here and also cause uncertainty because this has been reported in some local newsletters and the facebook community which my personally is not a follower and i'm not reading that but if some of you have read those and you have on the process of how you know the vacancy of the board member is filled or interviewed i want i want to clarify i i hope my testimony today will take away this uh uncertainty or thought in your heart that uh this process is not compromised um there's some pro there's a process to be improved you know um you know on the applicant

096and also on the committee side but the process uh was not accomplishment again i thank you for your time and i look forward you know in the future to have the opportunity to serve the community on a board level but again as a community parent and a community member i definitely can continue my time you know to participate in many other forums thank you for your time thank you uh linda goldstein 70 sherwood i had no intentions of speaking tonight i just and i'm very disappointed on the number of people here i'm surprised that bussing didn't bring every parent down but as far as your referendum and reaching the public forget it i don't have children in school i went on the website all you could find out was what last the last referendum was

097you had no way to allow us senior citizens that have been here a long time and are interested to communicate i think you're very closed um and you didn't i mean maybe you send things to the school to parents but we're out here voting we have our children are finished with the schools i mean my daughter went to school with george's sister so i mean um but it's disgraceful that we couldn't get information or put information in on this referendum i think it's inflated i think you've let things go much too long and it's disgraceful the fact that someone had to donate a playground to bay berry when i pay taxes that should have had a playground at baybury years before is disgraceful and as far as the busing that is a problem but i

098don't know if it's still that way but i know bus drivers used to be very abused by the kids and maybe if there was a monitor on every bus you would get bus drivers because they were abused there's no question i don't know if that still happens but i doubt if it changed thank you hi i'm phyllis drewett 20 elsinore drive in watt junk i was listening about the scores and how the excellence in wachong has really gone down and that's a concern for me because what brings people to watching which is why we came here 47 years ago was there were the schools and wonderful schools i'm just wondering do we still have we did have at one time a gifted and talented program do we still have that john because you're the commit

099not a question answer session but yes i actually mentioned it in my minutes yes okay i is there a formal curriculum that can be followed it's not just um i don't know how it's worked out in the school because we used to have a teacher pull the kids out and they would do gifted and talented mr alexis do you want to answer that or do you want to bring it to committee how does that work yes it's uh it's largely a pull-out program where we have the kids go with one of our sword teachers uh at both schools we have this so and i don't believe every middle school has a gifted and talented program we do um and we also have a very active one at bayberry and um you know i just want

100to clarify too i you know what i share what we shared on the website and i um suggested uh to a parent just yesterday about you know asking about academic achievement of kids and i directed them to the district goals section of the website where we do have a lot of information we had periodic reporting about the growth of our kids last year based on our i ready sports because the pandemic correctly you know uh it was said earlier that that's prevented us from having any of the state data um but you know we continue to report um we continue to design programs that are authentic in nature and that are helping kids learn and grow um you know we believe in our vision statement as a board and as a as a leadership team

101and as a staff and community and uh we're moving our students forward in that direction so that you know they they do continue to ascend and and we're talking about all students not just the high achievers and talented specialized students when you have gifted and talented you have children who are working two three maybe more years above grade level so you don't want to keep them at that you want them to be able to go as far as they can go and i'm just concerned that is there a curriculum that we follow yes yes there is and that's what we were talking about too that we have extension activities that we prepared for the baybury teachers that can be used to help those students in class okay because if you look at the new district

102goals what with the ones that are on the agenda tonight we're putting an emphasis on personalized and individualized learning strategies uh to to um help all of our kids kind of meet where they are meet them where they are and help help them grow but you don't have the pull out well you do we we do have a pull out program you do have absolutely yeah so but there's a process for selecting those students right and you have that all right so it's based on scores and teacher recommendation and such all right so about how often are they pulled out do they go during their lunch period how does that work mrs joy if you just would like to make a comment if there's anything that you say we could always bring it into the

103curriculum committee and report back so this is this isn't really a question no it's not it's not the time it's just it's not really a question and answer we don't our board meetings aren't structured that way so normally if there's some misinformation that's said or if we need to provide some clarification on something that said then that's when you know myself mr alexis will provide that but at this point you know if you just have a statement to make you can make that okay that's it thank you thank you hi i'm jackie pike 81 joan drive um i didn't plan to speak but gina got me all riled up so my speech is not going to be as great as her so um i just want to say my child also went through a very

104hot spring end of year with multiple fans in her classroom um and i only knew from her her teacher didn't complain which to be honest if i were a teacher in that classroom i would have probably been sounding alarms and been like this is not a good working condition these kids are miserable we're all miserable but they made it through i was probably more upset than they seem to be which is astounding i don't know if they've just gotten used to such crappy conditions in the schools that they just don't care anymore they it's just what their working environment is but it's not acceptable nobody moves to wachong for the downtown district they move here for the schools and if our schools don't even have proper air conditioning or we're getting called at 5 45

105in the morning because the heater went out now you can't bring your kid to school today find something else to do that's not acceptable i am 100 for the referendum i know i sound too many people that know me in this town like a dog with a bone about the outdoor learning annex but i've heard a lot of people say i don't see anything on this that has anything to do with education with teaching the kids if you do a simple google search of does teaching kids outside have any benefit there are thousands of studies done all over the world for two decades that show when you take kids outside to teach them their self-esteem goes up test scores go up and there's less bullying in the school and then other people will say well

106we don't live in florida so what are we going to get out of it i don't know about your family but my family goes outside on thanksgiving so we have all of september all of october most of november part of april all of may and june so when you're telling me oh well we don't live in florida so it wouldn't benefit us that's ridiculous we live in a place where we can go outside at least five or six months of the school year and that will raise our test scores literally do a simple google search it will show you it raises test scores it builds kids self-esteem it makes bullying in the schools go down it's not rocket science i there's there's no you're not going to find a single study that said oh it's

107terrible we took the kids outside and all our test scores went down it's not gonna happen so and i know i sound like a dog with a bone with everyone that knows me about the outdoor learning annex because it's all i talk about i know it may be a second part on the referendum i think it's essential when people say there's nothing on here to actually get our test scores higher to actually help kids learn i think people are being very short-sighted and don't see how this would benefit the students in our school so that's it thank you thank you thank you any other comments from the public on agenda items good evening lisa craft 63 hi tour drive i just want to make one comment regarding the referendum um i also am 100 in

108favor of the referendum i think it's been a long time coming i commend you all for your hard work that you've put into it um i do read comments i do hear things and so there are just two things i just want to put on the record one with respect to folks who say oh our taxes are going to go up and that's going to be a problem yes our taxes are going to go up but is it really a problem i urge the public to not be myopic about this you move to this town because of the schools i was one of those people 10 years ago who moved to this town because of schools people come here for that reason if we have and continue to invest in our schools our property values

109go up so that benefits everyone second to those folks who say i don't have children in the school system i'm not vested in the school system well you may not have children in the school system but they're children they're the future of our world number one and number two you don't know what's going to change you may not have children in the school system as of today but someday you could have grandchildren or great grandchildren in our school system and so i just again i urge folks to look beyond the scope of what's in front of you think bigger picture and just not be myopic our children need this our schools need this our teachers need this thank you thank you hello lindsay goodlow 16 upper drive i'm here in support of the c7 authorizing

110a referendum on the school improvements this referendum is about supporting our kids our teachers fixing a failing roof and hvac system and renovating the outdated learning spaces classrooms and interiors many of which haven't been updated since the 60s much of these costs are simply deferred maintenance and they are long overdue repairs and as for the cost we're going to need to do this regardless of whether we can do this by a referendum and if it isn't a referendum it'll cost taxpayers almost 30 percent more as we'll lose out on state funding but most importantly we need to give our educators teachers principals and staff the tools they need to provide our kids with a high quality education students and teachers need spaces that are welcoming and modern spaces that will encourage learning these factors have

111been shown to improve test scores and increase workplace satisfaction for our teachers a lot of the criticisms criticisms i've heard from our residents have been hyper focused on cost and the impact on our property taxes but incurring bonded debt to fund capital improvements is the norm statewide what isn't normal is to let the quality of our buildings and schools decline simply to save a few pennies on our tax bill let's do what's right for our kids thanks thank you good evening molly hartman 140 oak ridge lane um [Music] i'm resident of the town and i grew up in this town uh i went through the watchon school system in its entirety from bay berry valley view um through the high school and next week i'm uh sending my older son uh on his first day

112of kindergarten at baybury and to find out that there have been uh required uh modifications at that school that have not been made since i was a student there is appalling to me um and it upsets me deeply and it concerns me uh that i'm sending my child into a school uh where the environment from all sources are telling me that it's not safe in some respects um and that it's not been updated um to assist our children in their educational endeavors and i'm in full support of the referendum whatever it takes that's not really even why i came tonight um the reason i came tonight um i've i'm an attorney i've represented public boards boards of education i understand how the process works i understand how bidding works how rfps work i responded to

113them on my own um for my own services and all that i can ask i i am not asking for uh accountability to blame anybody i understand that these processes are extremely difficult there are a lot of moving parts but all that i ask all that my fellow parents ask is as transparent as you can possibly be it's not that anyone wants to blame anybody it's that as a community we could have spent the last two months figuring out a community system to get our kids to and from school and we have two weeks to do that now and i don't know about the other parents in this room but i work a full-time job of two kids in two different schools and you can throw anything at me any type of schedule any type

114of craziness but you gotta give me enough time to figure it out and without enough time to figure it out i can't get those resources in place because just like not enough bus drivers those extra resources don't exist at all anymore for any of us to use and they're taxed as well so all that we parents ask is when you know let us know none of these busing issues were subject to any of the oprah exceptions they were not from what everyone's you know saying part of any ongoing actual negotiations i understand now they are um and so of course those specific negotiations are not going to be um you know public clutter but just let us know as much information as you possibly can that's all we're asking thank you daryl eisenberg connection 115

115oakwood road east uh i'm here to speak on two topics first is to wholeheartedly support this referendum uh just like jackie is a dog with a bone regarding the uh outdoor learning commons i say the same story that molly just said i was a student here bayberry valley view and watching hills the last time this district went up to referendum i was still a student in the district as of next year i'll have a kid in all three schools mayberry valley view and watchum hills and the notion that there have been no major investments in our infrastructure in these schools since i was a student here is alarming and i don't believe that this list is extravagant is inflated is above and beyond what my kids deserve because once we get through this list we're

116not going to have another opportunity to improve this school until potentially my grandchildren are in this district so this is it if we're talking hvac's an outdoor learning commons and a field and maybe a nice art room and maybe a nice teacher's lounge and that is it for the entirety of my children's education to see any movement towards the future in this district i think this is the bare minimum that the school can be doing this referendum i trust this district with my children they come here and they spend six hours here seven hours here maybe more i hope more if there's before and after care i trust you i trust you to educate my children i trust you to get them ready for middle school and high school and whatever is beyond that for

117them so i trust that the administrators and the educators here when they say to the public this is the list of projects that the school needs that this school needs to stay open and to stay safe and to help in some way get our kids ready for the future i trust them and if i didn't trust them with my kids all day long how could i not trust them to say yes this is the list this is what we need and it's nothing else until i'm a grandmother so please please vote yes on this referendum and the public when it is your turn to vote please vote yes on this referendum our kids deserve this this is the future these are our children and it's nothing else until they're out of this district and they're

118considering moving back into watching the same way so many of us in this town move back in to watch them it's interesting i look out here and i see kids i grew up with kids i looked up to when i was a kid in this actual room and we all came back here why yeah because our circle so much to do there because of route 22 no we came because we got big plots of land and a really cool school district well okay we have our land but what about our schools so please vote yes please support this i believe that this is the bare minimum that my kids deserve the bare minimum that your kids deserve and the bare minimum that my grandchildren are going to inherit when they enter this district i hope

119a generation from now regarding busing i'm thrilled to hear that you're considering before and after care i'm thrilled to hear that you're thinking about opening the doors earlier and keeping them open later for students sure going into a pail spin about not having a bus show you have to take my kid to school and how we're gonna arrange that with three kids in three different buildings it was horrifying a week ago it's still horrifying today um and i came here to bang on this podium and say please open those doors to our kids i don't have to do that because obviously you know that would be a great solution so i beg you please offer that opportunity for our kids and if they're in this building let's do something more than just babysitting them if

120there are enriching after-school clubs we can offer in the afternoon or homework help or tutoring or supervision that is just above and beyond just the basic here's a basketball here's a hoop go that would be wonderful my kids are going to spend some time here i'd like it to be purposeful um but i'm hoping that i can save the banging on the podium because it sounds like we're moving in the right direction to at least alleviate the issues we have morning and afternoon without busting in this town bussing is again what i would consider a bare minimum and here we are not having it so i trust this board i trust this administration i wouldn't have my kids in this district if i didn't and so i'm going to carry that trust through with your

121choices with the referendum with your solutions to solve the busing issue and so please vote yes on this referendum and whenever this comes to the ballot to the public please support this our kids deserve this thank you thank you i'm just waiting to see okay it doesn't look like anyone's going to get up so we'll move on to action items anthony can you please move the administrative items for us sure i move administrative item a1 approve minutes of previous meeting a2 i believe is uh you could just read it through we'll do um another motion all right uh a3 accept school security drill report a4 approve annual appointments revised a5 approved contract with the new jersey commission for the blind and visually impaired a6 accept district goals and action plans a7 adopt evaluation instrument for

122certified staff a8 approved therapy dog for the 2022-2023 school year okay is there a second second and now can someone make a motion to postpone a2 to the next meeting i'd move to postpone a2 to the next meeting okay can we have a second second uh any discussion okay we're going to take a roll call on the motion to postpone a2 to the next meeting mr barbella yes mr buccarelli yes mr ingratia yes mr mcdonald yes mrs murad yes mrs charf yes mrs harvey yes okay just to clarify uh a2 is now postponed and is not going to be voted on with the rest of the items so is there any discussion for items a1 to a8 excluding a2 can we have a roll call please mr barbella yes mr buccarelli yes mr ingrassia yes

123mr mcdonald yes mrs murad yes mrs scharf yes mrs harvey yes motions one and three through eight pass hey uh kevin can you please move personnel items uh yes i move personnel items b1 ratify appointment of special education education teacher valley view school b2 ratify appointment of leave replacement teacher bayberry school b3 accept resignation b4 appoint district substitute coordinators b5 appoint before and after care staff b6 approved certificated staff participation in iep meetings revised to include 504 meetings b7 approved speech therapist externship b8 approved general and special education practicum b9 approved watch on hills regional high school student for work based placement b10 approved leave of absence b11 approved special education and related arts staff for the 2022 extended school year program revised b12 appoints student information system liaison 2022-2023 b13 appoint valley view co-curricular

124that's it is there a second second any discussion roll call please mr barbella yes mr buccarelli yes mr ingratia yes mr mcdonald yes mrs murad yes is scharf yes this is harvey yes motions pass okay rich can you please move operation items i move item c1 approve payment of bills c2 approve transfer of funds c3 accept financial reports c4 approves shared services agreement c5 authorized amendment to coronavirus response c 6 authorized amendment for the application of american rescue plan c7 authorized certain actions in connection with a proposed school facilities project this is the referendum and i'm just going to read two separate parts the first question is estimated at 12.8 million and the second question is estimated at 2.9 million eight approved before and after care program and c9 approved professional travel and related expenses

125is there a second second kevin is there any discussion yes i'd like to say a few words about why i'll be voting no on the referendum question uh c7 the the issue is is a complicated one but there are some some primary issues that i think um just to explain my vote um professionally most of my career was was spent renovating or building additions or building new school buildings i um appreciate the need for safe for safe schools for schools that are attractive places for students and teachers to spend their time here i i dedicated myself to making those plans come to fruition on time and on budget and that could be anything from the initial uh bidding process and uh putting together a team of subcontractors and trades people that uh i and my

126family members that i worked with and other colleagues felt were going to do a good job and meet all the commitments that we had made to any school district and that could also mean walking through and seeing a very small detail in a school that wasn't right and and trying to get that corrected as soon as possible so for me it was very difficult to see a facilities assessment for each school that had so many items that were left un unattended to for all the time from the time the assessment was done with photos to the time uh that the first referendum failed to the time that i became a board member and um it was really uh you know a lot of what's what's been said uh it's it's very upsetting that there would

127be uh students that are in classrooms with uh hvac that's not functioning properly um but there's things that we could be doing to address that the school district has replaced a lot of the rooftop units over the years we had a program for that that was progressing and it was stopped because of the the failed referendum we had quite a bit of um you know other work that um i think we could have done and because it was put in a referendum and the numbers were put at such a high level it took a lot of that off of the table then for getting it done over this last summer things like that so there are a lot of things that were suggested at different times in the ad hoc committee um why don't we

128get the company that handles the controls for the hvac to come in and and do a real you know thorough review see what can be corrected now and in the process of correcting that now they'll also be able to identify better what what needs what work needs to be done going forward so right now the plan seems to be that there'll be a new equipment uh available in in the summer of 2024 or later that uh and until then what what's going to happen in those classrooms it's not clear to me that there'll be much of anything so it's been very difficult uh you know being the member being a member of the operations committee where uh virtually uh no uh repair work is being done for the last you know three years and now

129this year that i've been here so that's that has been frustrating it's also um very concerning as someone who grew up in town and went through schools k through 12 here and um having great respect for all of the people in the town but uh you know for for us to uh not do what a board is supposed to do when it comes to reaching out to the community and having their input before we vote on a scope uh a project list and the costs uh that that are involved here it's it's disrespectful to the community and um you know i think that uh we did have uh some positive things come from the ad hoc committee we had uh hans jouett for example was able to uh while taking um taking quite a few

130shots along the way he he found the million dollar mistake on one light on there was the chiller replacement over two million dollars was in the last referendum was submitted to the state for funding was approved came through the failed referendum and was right back in up until basically a couple weeks ago when that when it was finally acknowledged that that was a million dollar mistake and a two million dollar line item out of a 6.5 million dollar you know hvac project and so uh it's very dismissive to say well the public doesn't need to go through these uh these costs and things because there there could be errors there could be um things that uh maybe if we're going to be saying that we can't know the cost of something until we do uh

131get bids and do work well maybe we don't do seven or eight bathrooms at a over a hundred thousand dollars a piece that are the the size of this table or smaller and maybe in the process not only do we find out that uh the cost uh but we also find out whether the teachers and students are benefiting benefiting from those changes if the push for to spend that that kind of money is for moving a sink into the toilet room instead of having it outside the toilet room if we did two of them first maybe we could see that there was uh do the teachers prefer seeing the hand washing inside that room or out where the sink is now there's there's things that could be done in parts that would be i think

132a benefit beyond just the cost and so that's uh you know i i tried to bring some of those insights i know people on the ad hoc committee all you know brought different insights but the original purpose of having the ad hoc community one of the primary functions was to come up with a way to reach out to the community so that we didn't skip the steps that we did on the failed referendum and not get the public feedback and the presenting to the public before we had a vote like we're having tonight and so i thought it was fell so far short to not do a survey but instead put an email out with a link to the old referendum information and we did get some feedback uh most a lot of it was

133uh saying maybe we should look at coming out with a little lower number or maybe a lot lower number and so that's another thing to consider you know that when you have a failed referendum to come back to come back out at a higher number and not have the kind of outreach that we should have i just i i can't support that either um and one of the reasons it's a higher number we did save a million dollars thanks to hans duet finally ferreting out of major error uh but then we with just weeks to go decided that we're going to add uh two more million dollars for air conditioning the gyms and um you know that was something that was uh not really reviewed very closely at all not really explain what the real

134benefit the function of that over time what programs it would allow us to have that we don't have now but it also went against everything when it came to the energy efficiency discussions that we were having about rather than repairing hvac equipment if there would be a benefit to efficiency and then we decide we're going to air condition thousands of square feet which are end up being tens and hundreds of thousands of cubic feet of uh air conditioning that will uh cancel out a lot of that so um you know i i have the project list i have i've gone through it uh i think that the public deserves to have the list to go through it to give their input uh before we vote on this and so i i cannot uh vote to

135go ahead and and move forward with the referendum at this time i just wanted to correct some some information when you said there's no repair work done and during our walk throughs with the referendum ad hoc committee our former supervisor of buildings and grounds stated that on any given day about 50 of our classroom units might not effectively manage the appropriate air quality or temperatures in the classroom and i really just hope everyone thinks about that for a minute that 50 of our units aren't adequately working we even experienced while we were on this walk through listening to the extreme noise from classroom units preventing students from hearing their teachers instruction he also informed us that it was challenging and difficult to get the units fixed due to lack of resources staff and or money

136[Music] he also explained that they were trying to get some of the units fixed but sometimes it's impossible to do that when the class is already there we can't have people repairing the in classroom units while children are sitting in there uh so i'm i'm really not interested anymore in any of the stall tactics that i have experienced from mr and gracia or from anyone affiliated with him especially from someone who chooses not to have his children attend our schools and i know mr ingrassia has heard me say that a couple of times and i want to remind everyone that the members on this board who don't have children in the district they have already had their children graduate through our school district or they don't have children and they intend to send them here

137unlike mr and gracia so maybe mr andrasi is okay with waiting and putting band-aids on problems instead of fixing them while children and staff continue to sit in classrooms without adequate temperatures or air quality but i am not in favor of that and i am in favor of voting for this referendum i have a statement as well all right um i went to these schools as well as some of you know so i'm fully familiar with how they were back then and how they are now um just give me one second here this is going to be a little bit tedious but i think that it's important to understand what i'm about to say as we all consider this referendum according to the center for evaluation education policy at penn state a large body of

138research over the past century has consistently found that school facilities impact teaching and learning in profound ways yet state and local policy makers often overlook the impact facilities can play in improving outcomes for both teachers and students while improving facilities come at a financial cost the benefits of such investments often surpass the initial fiscal costs policy makers thus should focus greater attention on the impacts of facilities and adopt a long-term cost-benefit perspective on efforts to improve school facilities a study of public school spending and housing prices published by the harvard kennedy school found that a one percent increase in school spending increases home prices by 0.95 percent the authors found that the elasticity of the house prices with respect to per pupil school spending gave a national measure of how households value spending on schools

139which answered their question of whether school spending matters and it does that study also cited another study from the quarterly journal of economics which found that a one percent increase in school spending increases the adult wages of a student by point seven to point eight percent the harvard studies authors concluded that taken together their findings are consistent with the notion that households value the causal impacts of greater school funding on the lifetime outcomes of their children and are willing to pay higher prices for homes that provide access to better funded schools our hope is to use this referendum to make much needed repairs to our schools these repairs will make real differences to our students educational and social and emotional outcomes the data show that school facilities impact teaching and learning the data also showed

140that school spending has a positive causal effect on property values as well as on students future earning potential to me all this suggests that there is a cyclical directly correlated effect between and among property values school spending and student outcomes in other words either you want you are on the upside of the swing of this cycle or you are on the downside i like to think that watching is on the upside and i would like to continue that trajectory however our schools are dated our modern technology-based world requires modern schools we need facilities that empower our students to learn in ever interconnected world while we have had the benefit of some recent upgrades to our school including our stem lab we need to ensure that the rest of our facilities measure up to the standards

141of surrounding districts that can compete with us for home buyers the true drivers of property values otherwise our students will suffer as will our property values according to our outgoing buildings and ground supervisor as dory just said based on his experience with our schools on any given day approximately half of the classroom hvac units are not functioning efficiently making classrooms too warm too cold or too loud i can't think of any districts like wachong that would tolerate such conditions for their schools and for their students after the defeat of the last referendum a question was raised as to whether the hvac work was necessary since then we have worked with the community we've sent out notices to join our ad hoc committee we met numerous times over many months and we also solicited opinions from

142the public via email at the behest of community members who chose to join our ad hoc committee we hired additional engineers the facts are in now if they were not before and every single expert we consulted advised us to replace rather than attempt to repair these hvac units if we continue to roll the dice with systems that are past their useful life we are playing with fire in terms of not only our school infrastructure but the educational outcomes of our students and our property values not to mention if we do not bond for them and they fail we will be on the hook for the entirety of the replacement costs of these systems which at present we likely would not be able to afford this would leave our district with some very difficult decisions replacing

143the hvac system will provide better circulation and filtration for the schools which will improve the health of students should lead to fewer absences for illness increasing student achievement the new system would also benefit the general public as it will help decrease the chances of the rest of our residents getting sick through contact at places that we all go together by renovating the bathrooms at bayberry to make them ada compliant we are investing in our community on a strictly economic level we're increasing the potential pool of home buyers which all things being equal should lead to increased property values but as importantly on a human level we're indicating that we are the type of town that welcomes everyone to be a part of our community the referendum includes security upgrades which i don't think that we

144can emphasize the importance of enough in today's environment we need secure schools and just as importantly we need our parents students and community members to know that no expense was spared in ensuring that our schools are as safe as they can be the referendum reimagines our underutilized libraries media center which can educate the next generation in all of our modern forms of communication not to mention this would serve as a place where students may actually want to gather and socialize many of the remaining improvements and repairs would enable our district to no longer have to worry about the infrastructural piano that is hanging over our head on any given day our district could focus spending on teachers and expanding our curriculum offerings this will be vital in the years to come based upon what we've

145seen we have the classrooms to house additional students but we will need additional teachers i am supporting this referendum because it will help us to fill these gaps it will lead to better student outcomes and it will increase property values i of all people understand the urge to vote against the tax increase nobody wants to pay more taxes many people consider taxes to be a loss especially if they do not have kids in the school or if they do not see a return on their investment but a wise person once told me it's only a loss if you pay more than you should what would truly be a loss would be to forego the bond referendum and be faced with impossible choices and outcomes if our infrastructure or school security were to fail the result

146would be worse educational outcomes lower property values and even higher taxes and the district would have to foot the entirety of the cost i.e we would be paying more than we should in every regard a true loss with the prior referendum the state had previously offered to contribute a large portion of the cost the only thing that has changed since the prior referendum is that inflation is struck and interest rates are off so instead of looking at this as a tax loss i look at it as a way to recoup some of our tax money that has been sent to trenton i look at it as a way to preserve and even increase our property values and i look at it as a way to invest in our community to not proceed with this referendum

147is pennywise pound foolish thank you for listening to me and i'm sorry that took so long i'd like to also make a comment regarding the referendum so firstly um i wholeheartedly agree with mr mcdonald and everything you said so i won't repeat everything uh therefore i wholeheartedly disagree with mr ingrassia and pretty much everything he said with regard to the referendum we've been speaking about this for two years unfortunately all we do is speak about it we have had continuous discussions about the referendum and my concern is that in with all due respect if we don't start taking some action this will be a discussion next year and the year after and the year after they'll be different board members potentially different administration and the can will just get kicked down the road so let

148me explain briefly my views on this no one has ever said i support wachong school excellence through under investment right simply put that means the referendum is an investment for some context we haven't had a referendum in 20 plus years our capital budget is less than a million dollars look at certain comparable school systems where you like to think they're comparable like warren next door and see their percentage ours is a pittance right and it continues to go down so i asked the question when i first joined the board three years ago as i'm sure you're asking why don't you just add more money to the capital budget once you fix things as you go you need money for that and after you pay all your expenses and your fixed costs and variable costs roughly

14980 85 percent of the budget's gone before you get to any of these things so while periodically we do get some additional funds unforeseen like we did this year roughly three hundred thousand dollars from the state you can't count on that and you can't automatically add it to the capital budget because you may have other expenses like potentially paying double for your bus service so that's part of the rationale behind that and as also mentioned as part of the referendum what are we talking about here school safety and security please let me know if anybody wants to debate me on that one clean hvac systems we're not talking about two systems outside your personal home we're talking about two school systems with multiple integrated hvac systems that are constantly failing right that's pretty important especially

150in a covered post covered environment that have clean air to have appropriate heat and appropriate air conditioning right how about ada compliant bathrooms right 20 22 i think we should have bathrooms that are renovated and capable of supporting any child okay and also a learning environment it is important for students to have options not only externally which we put as a separate question in the referendum and i'll get to that for outdoor space of learning but just the basics having appropriate lighting not having broken cabinets it's embarrassing what are we sending our kids into this is it's a travesty okay so that's clearly the benefits to the students and the teachers and and individuals that have students um in in the school system but what about for the other watchung residents well as mentioned property

151values are inextricably linked to your schools i came to the school district 10 years ago i came to watch them with a five-year-old and a two-month-old i didn't come here as other parents said because the center of town or the wachong train station right these are other things that other towns have that we don't unfortunately but i came because it was a quaint town school system was great i didn't believe that things could deteriorate so fast and um ultimately for full transparency i have two kids in the school system likely neither certainly one but likely the other one will never see any of the benefit of this referendum they'll be too old but i'm not doing it simply for my kids i'm doing it for the community and for other generations of kids [Applause] what

152i'd also like to say is i don't want to kick the can down the road to the next administration or other board members i want to take action uh i understand the referendum failed last year and i'll get to that point but there's so much need for this referendum and it's important for us to act as board members and to take action responsibly sadly if we would have passed the referendum in december it would have actually saved the taxpayer an immense amount of money you know why because since that time interest rates have gone up which means your debt service goes up goes up to support the bonds also inflation has risen greatly so the more you kick down the can down the road guess what's going to happen you're going to keep getting less

153and less for every time you want to do something so that's why it's so important to actually get things done i also want to remind those parents and people in the district that may not have been here at the time we've had issues in the schools and these are red flags in my eyes last year we had a pipe burst in in the school bathroom remember three days we had no school right basic maintenance right sure but this is an ongoing neglect over time because capital infrastructure is beginning to fail it's not rocket science you may have remembered before the pandemic we had mold in bay berry school didn't open on time my kid was going there i remember we had to delay what happened how come well one of the things we found out

154with these hvac units is that it creates excessive moisture because they're not they're not working properly so the moisture goes potentially back into the pipes and in the system which can cause these kinds of situations right so these are contributing factors why it's important to make the changes now of course at the time that was completely remediated and thankfully we constantly check and haven't had problems since but these are problems which will continue to fester and get worse last points i wanted to make just for purposes of cooperation it's not lost on me that the referendum failed in december so you should reflect on that and say why why did it fail what were the things that made it fail first of all it did fail but not by a large majority it was low

155vote voter turnout it was december it fell 55 to 45 percent secondly here were some of the post-mortem items from that failed referendum lack of community engagement lack of transparency uh on the costs of items uh double check the hvac system because we believe the cost is too high go get another contractor independently pay for that to double check that you actually need the hvac systems during one of our operation committee meetings and i'm not an expert in this field but you don't need to be a rocket scientist here the second independent contractor was asked well what if we retrofitted all of the 25 year old hvac system with 25 year old parts got the labor to do that and then maintained in that way would that be a good idea or should we just

156get new units now the contractor obviously said no the cost would be the same or higher if you did that plus you wouldn't get a warranty why would you try to retrofit 25 year old hvac systems that are falling apart right would you do that it makes no sense you would want new units that can talk to each other logically that could be connected with the appropriate equipment the ad hoc committee i want to thank members of the ad hoc committee be completely candid with you this was an idea from mr ingrassia at the time i had reservations about it i said listen my concern is if you simply go out to the community and ask 10 people what their recommendations are you're going to get 10 different opinions i felt it was going to

157be very unstructured i thought that it may make us cause more delay or that people wouldn't come to some consensus on the referendum to my surprise that's not the case generally speaking the members of the ad hoc committee coalesced around the same topics that we need these things it's not very difficult to figure out i understand there's some dissent that's fine not everyone has to agree but i do feel that overall the community and the ad hoc committee felt it's necessary that we begin to take action here because we've had no action for two years what i'd also like to say is that it's untrue that the referendum cost more as mr ingrassia stated than what we had last year as part of the ad hoc referendum changes we're added two questions to the referendum

158what we did was we broke out aspects of the referendum that maybe some people would consider as being extras okay some people say no those are necessities but nevertheless we broke out some of those items like the softball field like the outdoor learning okay we did so purposely to give the community an option i don't think security and hvac systems are luxuries so that's why they're in the first question but certainly if the community wishes they have a vote on the second question as well depending on how important it is to them so in conclusion i just want to say i think it's about time that we take action i appreciate everyone's efforts i understand the different voices and different opinions but this ultimately benefits the entire community um so i'm 100 supportive of this

159i was two years ago i am now and i will when the referendum ultimately comes up for a vote thank you hi right i have a few words i'll try to keep them short after all the words that have already been said uh i supported last year's referendum i support this year's referendum and i knew when i ran for this seat three years ago that this district would need a referendum last year's referendum failed by 51 votes that was not a landslide it should be clear at this point that every vote counts none of our problems identified in last year's referendum or this one have aged well they have gotten progressively worse and have cost the taxpayers 100 percent of the cost to repair or replace our failing infrastructure out of our minimal operating budget

160which is capped at a two percent tax levy yearly increase this board agreed to hire additional professionals to provide recommendations to the board regarding the hvac system those experts told us that we needed to replace our hvac systems immediately i support the guidance of the numerous professionals hired by the district and the recommendations from our community representatives on the referendum ad hoc in replacing major building systems which have exceeded their useful life prior to taking my seat on this board the district had a very expensive mold issue at bayberry which was a result of the aging hvac system i've heard from parents about their children needing to wear coats in the classrooms in the winter and having fans run in the warmer months this is watchon i find that to be unacceptable i am in

161favor of creating healthy well-ventilated learning environments with improved hvac filtering systems in the way the operations committee has proposed and structured those projects for us today i support investing in improved security of the buildings to keep our children safe and our staff and enhancing facility accessibility for people with physical disabilities i support updating technology infrastructure to complete the 21st century learning spaces all of these will enhance student achievement in such places as the indoor learning commons the outdoor learning commons the art room to provide our students with the technology and skills which will allow them to be competitive when entering the next stage of their educational careers i fully support preparing our students for high school college and a lifetime of learning and working in a global community i am voting yes because i don't

162want the taxpayers in our community which includes every board member sitting here at this table to pay 100 of these costs instead of using state aid like other districts do which could save us almost 30 percent i don't know about you but i don't like playing paying full price our tax our state tax dollars go to other districts to make their school districts better why aren't we utilizing that i'm voting yes because i want to be physically responsible and increase student achievement i'm voting yes for the children that attend our schools i'm voting yes because i believe in supporting our public schools which all of my children have attended and continue to attend i'm voting yes because i support our administration's vision for the students attending our schools and i'm voting yes because i don't

163feel our community should continue to pay 100 percent of the cost while subsidizing other districts projects for their referendums when state of aid is available i'm voting yes because i want the children of wachong to enter school buildings that are stimulating and culturally vibrant i'm voting yes because i support our staff working in a healthy environment that boosts morale and creates inspiring instruction and lastly i'm voting yes because i understand that when we invest in schools we're investing in the children of this community thank you so um i have a question for mr pepe um this agenda item today we're just voting for for drg to send it uh to see whether what we qualify for state aid correct that's correct okay um and i think you will have the votes to pass this today

164which is great i cannot vote on it for a couple of reasons and i'll tell you why today it was updated at 2 43 p.m and i did not have enough time to review any of these items and the changed items so that's that when we are talking about upgrades i am fully in favor of that i think our children do deserve the best and when it comes to safety i've brought this up many times we've had an unfortunate event take place in an accident since the bayberry playground was put in unfortunately on a county road valley view is off of county road as well we have outdoor commons and i've asked you multiple times please reach out to the residents that are of the area please make sure that they're okay with the parking

165please just get their thoughts and opinions i can tell you right now when the county has kind of told the borough that what they should do is bring down instead of trucks coming down hillcrest they should go down high oaks and then come down through sterling sterling is where our children pretty much will cross over onto getting into vale you know to come to valley view unfortunately that's not safe so during five or six o'clock last week i took it upon myself i was walking down sterling around a busy hour and with a stroller and i can tell you how many people almost hit me it's scary that was not considered so when we talk about safety think about safety that comes with children that will come to learning commons outdoor commons after school hours

166it is important that ariel will be open and i have brought it up to you that please ask the residents around that's why i don't think at this time the fact that i have not had enough time to review the material the updated i don't know what has happened it's going to say that the questions that you asked especially during the policy committee meeting you said those were answered and we asked if you had any more and you had none so and that was the question i have asked plenty of times have you we've we've answered your question which is no right okay that's fine and that's that's why i'm voting no because that question was not asked to the surroundings for the second item thank you i think your question had to deal with

167parking spaces i liked it i've asked that question i've asked i wanted to affect the community and that was the question that we answered right and i've asked that previously as well will the gates respond will they not be close i just want to be honest about what we're saying here and the question you had asked us in policy was about if the parking spaces were taken care of so that there wasn't parking in the neighborhoods to affect the community members and we answered that question for you multiple times that was the question all right i wasn't going to speak tonight um really wasn't uh but i heard the word taxes a lot and uh so i want to get back to talking about the referendum actually uh maybe people don't realize this but when

168i joined the board it's uh three and a half years ago now more more than that uh the bonds had just been paid off right so the bonds by the way let me just say something personal because you know people are talking about how they love this district just about to the day 30 years ago i bought a home in wacho and uh my oldest son the next month got on the bayberry bus with his red apple you know around his neck he got married friday and my other two children went through these schools they went through the high school too and they all got married this summer and i want that i want the children nowadays to have the same environment they had they had fantastic schools they came home happy and smiling they

169had new equipment three years ago i got on this board the bonds had just been paid off and this is why i just talk about taxes and i'm going to get in trouble because you know the lawyers tell me not to talk about taxes until we get all the calculations right and everything but everybody's talking about taxes the bonds went out over 20 years ago they were paid off three years ago we were paying 800 a year and the board at that time did what joe said we shouldn't do they kicked the can down the road they kicked the can down the road and they gave the people of wachong a sugar high of look your taxes went down 800 bucks aren't we a great board of education we're not going to raise your taxes

170that's when you should have gone out with another referendum every dollar we've spent on capital improvements since then has been a hundred percent you know we're the suckers that pay state taxes for other school districts to have improvements that's what we are now last year's referendum i don't know what it's going to turn out to be this year last year's referendum would have raised taxes by 300 bucks less than 300 for the average so you talk about 800 and you talk about that going away then you talk about oh my god tax taxes are going up 300 if you like really do the not so long term math they went down 500 right in the meantime we're pen we're spending all this money trying to fix stuff our kids are uncomfortable they're in they're in

171classrooms half the time where the ventilation doesn't work and we keep talking and talking and talking and talking i would think that we had a free ride for a bunch of years our kids didn't have a free ride but the taxpayers did they talk about a stem lab you talk about a playground those were all privately funded we probably would have had four million dollars more in this referendum if you wanted a stem lab and you wanted a playground that wasn't paid for by a private citizen so people want to think about the big picture on taxes and what's happened over the last four years you got a big tax reduction when you should have just fixed the stuff that was deteriorating now it's going to go back up a little but it's still a

172lot less than you were paying that's the real story thank you for listening i would just like to and we're having the boilers replaced in the schools and what percentage of that is covered by that program that's not through a referendum so over 70 percent so we were the referendum failed and the first thing we were able to do was replace all the boilers in the school for 70 percent of the cost of being picked up by the program and not by us we had brg architects working from before this referendum came to be on other programs like that so you know the 30 it sounds good but then and then you have the 40 soft costs and contingencies and things that go on and so that 30 percent kind of goes uh cancels out

173a little bit but uh you know there's other there's there's ways to uh get new equipment um we just did it for with 70 of the uh cost being picked up through that program and so uh you know i just think that as we just went around the table talking about how important things were it's even more evident how unfortunate it is to risk getting any work done again because basically just wanting to validate that the last referendum was a good plan you know that we're just going to stick to that do it all the same add add more to it and and that's that validates what we did the last failed referendum actually it was so close it's not it wasn't a failure really you know uh and so now because of all the

174the security and the hvac the things that were mentioned but we're not willing to break some of these other things out into a separate question to have a second and third question we're going to keep it with very little broken out into a second question except that we're adding something that was never in it before so i i just think that uh you know to to risk having nothing done um and to talk about the capital reserve and not budget anything to add to the capital reserve um you know i abstained on the budget vote uh earlier this year but um there are there are um things that if we can do like we did for the boilers that 30 percent doesn't seem um you know like the thing that we should uh think is

175is the answer to all our problems so i think that um you know we shouldn't risk a failure again by by being uh so interested in validating the last referendum and making the same mistake all of you have just had a chance to explain what you think is important but you won't give the taxpayers and the citizens of watch on the same opportunity until after we vote on this it's being sent to the state but there's very very little room for any changes to be made um after that and so uh we're going to make the same mistake that we did the last referendum not give not give the information before we vote not get feedback before we vote and uh so it's just very disappointing and uh sorry that it's gone this way i

176want to i want to address that thing so one i can't completely disagree with you more again mr ingrate first the boiler program was a pseg program that came out after the fact so we didn't know about it two years ago when the referendum was being done so it's nice to have but it's a timing issue if you don't know about something you can't take advantage of it wasn't in existence at the in the first place the second thing is with regard to the community engagement why the first referendum failed the ad hoc committee was your idea we support that we got the community engagement these are stakeholders many of which sitting in the audience so i thought that was the whole point of addressing some of the issues with the failed referendum to get

177input now that input has been provided now you're having buyer's remorse i believe right because the community wants to actually fix the hvac system the community wants better security systems right so i don't understand the hesitation to support the ad hoc and what they've subscribed to and and to support the referendum i appreciate the aspects that you mentioned about ensuring that numbers are accurate ensuring that we're fiscally response responsible of course the community and taxpayers we're all taxpayers but i would say it's it's it's fiscally irresponsible to continue just to talk about this for years and expect things to get better analysis paralysis we'll keep doing the analysis we'll hire a third consultant we'll ask somebody else we could do this forever and things will still continue to deteriorate i don't think that's a good

178long-term plan in my opinion well i think that the consultant was mishandled unfortunately and uh you know we still only have a draft actually we don't we didn't get the report that we were uh paying for and you know i we're we just disagree on on what is uh our duty to uh to the to the people of the town i guess on uh what it means to actually uh have consultation with them on these on these type of issues and it and it has been frustrating um to have people uh you know like joe barbella on the and uh and rich boccarelli where you know you bring up uh something just well you know in in my business we round to the nearest billion so you know it's something that we don't need to

179go we just round to the nearest billion you know that we don't need to really look into these costs you know what you want to talk about costs again what you know it's it's that kind of attitude that i think has uh that that uh really can um is a road map to failure for for the referendum and for uh you know getting getting the most out of our uh out of our expenditure so uh that's that's that's unfortunate that's disingenuous we never shirked the idea of looking at costs however you want costs these are estimates by default you want perfect numbers for two years from now and i understand the due diligence we're all doing the due diligence but that's it's improper to say that we're just saying oh just do the referendum like

180we did last time we've had eight months of analysis and it doesn't seem like anything will satisfy you well i'm not looking we just perfectly disagree i understand oh i'm not looking for perfect numbers but having a million dollar mistake and a two million dollar line item it was an estimate and and it was it was already in the last referendum and it was about to be in this one it was an estimate that's just one example you know so if i could please uh have some time to make a comment um you know i've heard a lot this evening from mr and gracia about community engagement and and collaborating with our community and anthony you said you would only support the new referendum this time if it were only done your way and you

181said this i was putting words in my mouth story i did not see you said this multiple times in front of community members in our ad hoc and ignoring the advice from professionals such as our bond council architects engineers board council and most importantly the community representatives recommendations maybe you were unaware when you joined this board that we are here to listen to our community members and professionals even the ones that we might not agree with and work with our fellow board members all of which i have yet to see you do you only speak with community members and board members that agree with you and that is only a small but vocal group of citizens i please ask you to stop creating a false narrative and misinformation between the district and the community all

182of which to settle personal grudges you have against members of this board and this is all at the detriment of the children who attend these schools who you are supposed to be here to represent so please stop with the lies and the rhetoric and all of the misinformation that you keep trying to convince members of our community to believe i couldn't disagree i'm sure you wouldn't yeah and you know this was uh another example of you know one your misinformation your horrible leadership of this board the road map to failure that you helped create the last time and are perpetuating this time and uh vilifying when someone asks a question of a consultant to get more information to vilify them to try to say that they don't care because their students aren't in the school

183at this particular time that those were the kind of tactics that you use to try to silence dissent and i i think that that is uh throughout more than just the operations committee and more than than just this referendum and uh it's a very serious problem that that um i moved to close the debate and vote i again you just proved my point about your grudges and i respectfully disagree with everything you said and let's move to a roll call please mr barbella yes mr buccarelli yes and get your community friends to vote the same way mr ingrassia uh yes on c1 c2 c3 c4 c4 c5 c6 no on c7 and yes on c8 i think uh there were nine and yes on c9 thank you mr mcdonald yes mrs murad yes on everything

184except uh c7 which is a no because lack of timing to review the material mrs scharf yes get out and vote mrs harvey absolutely yes okay motion's fast jen can you please move curriculum items yep d1 approved 2022 2023 field trips d2 adopt curricula d3 approved textbooks that's it is there a second second discussion yes um i would recommend taking out the social studies curriculum just because it mentions a comprehensive health and physical education curriculum on that and then personal and mental health social and sexual health on it until the parents have an opportunity to review it roll call please i'm sorry i i also um want to explain why i will be voting no on the adoption d2 of uh curriculum and um this is something that i i don't understand for the record

185i don't agree with the board's approach to the new uh health and sex ed curriculum uh there is also what appears to be we're not voting on that this evening what's that i know i know but there also appears to be an error in the um in the social studies curriculum where there's been uh health or a purposeful change of putting the health curriculum into the social studies curriculum to is everyone aware of that has everyone reviewed the social studies curriculum and see that it's actually has a label within it that um that has added the standards of that policy that we passed so i'm sorry what's that it meets the standards state standards for a sexual head and and it's it's in there in the policy that we passed i think those two or

186two two um so i would recommend taking it out once again until parents have an opportunity to review it what i'm sorry i'm confused it's just social studies so the social studies pro curriculum has sexual education content in there yes so i do not know what's being referenced here and this is the first time it's been brought up by anyone and what we did was have the teachers and the principals work on the curriculum and make sure that they adopt the standards and then make it an an age-appropriate curriculum for the kids so i don't know what you're talking about with and you're talking uh the health standards into the curriculum i think you might be confusing with someone else i can show it to you in the curriculum right now mr across when did

187you when did you find this and notice this uh well after the uh curriculum was uh just you know basically with no uh no explanation of what changes were being made what uh was being um adopted you know what was required what was uh you know otherwise uh thought an important change there was a large folder of these documents which i uh began going through and it was uh it was during that study only recently that i that i saw that there was at first looked like a misprint and then i realized that you know maybe it's not because was it prior to this evening uh not long before so like five o'clock or like four o'clock or like yesterday because i'm the chair of that committee and you could have emailed me i was

188traveling this weekend and i found time to read it all and i didn't see it but if you were a collaborative board member you would have sent me an email and said jen take a look at this well i don't know what the obsession is with having every discussion behind closed doors we have a forum here to discuss it's not that it's an obsessive committee to be efficient well all right because this is not efficient this is what it is why do you have the other thing i mean and i should i would it be better if i just had everyone until a board meeting when this was provided to board members in advance it just it's grandstanding and it's just you know we're running for things decide to wait until our board meeting to

189discuss this and again not do your job as board members and collaborate with the rest of us and work within a committee it's just odd this is what we constantly see i cannot get a response to my earlier question on monday bringing these things up until 6 21 p.m until and i'm sorry that that question i that you asked me had nothing to do with this it had physical education and yes but it had nothing to do with the social studies okay and that at that time that was the curriculum that i was reviewing i only had three days before that i i was i had an opportunity to ask you anything i'm not going to sit here and look through every single item like you said i have a life as well i i

190i had the floor and you interrupted which is not uncommon at all and i'm glad you want to accuse me of of operating by personal grudges i have the floor dory i i understand but when you keep continuing to state misinformation that needs to be corrected mr anderson whether you like it or not whether it's an ad hoc committee an operations committee meeting when we have consultants people that we're paying for their input and i ask a question i usually don't even get through the first question before dory rich boccarelli joe barbella start shouting over me constantly and this is what and then i'm the one not working with the committee this is what happens almost every single time it happened with our bond council when i and our drg architects when i said guys

191my first question is just do you have you ever recommended to a a school board that when a a referendum fails that you go out at a higher number and add things to it we stay focused on what we're talking about we're not talking about the referendum all right all i'm saying is there is what is being called the social studies curriculum here it's not a big packet actually but it's it's multi-page and for which school this is elementary school it says grade three social studies and then when you get all the way to the bottom of this multi-stage thing it's it has uh this it says grade three but then you get to and it says grade five end of grade five personal uh and mental health social and sexual health all individuals should

192feel welcome and included and this this is what's in the social studies curriculum right now so it's not my fault for finding it late and bringing it up to tell you why i'm going to vote no on it and and this and you've just provided a great example of why it's so difficult to move forward and that's that's referred to as stalling a referendum that's that's the kind of thing that's been i would say behind closed doors what i've been dealing with and remind board officers that when we're dealing with curriculum it is not our place to tell the professionals such as the administrators and teachers how to handle the curriculum it is our place to make sure that we have the state standards in the curriculum we can make suggestions we can offer you

193know advice but after speaking with gwen thornton our new jersey school boards association rep it is not our place to dictate to our administrators what needs to go into a curriculum i personally trust the teachers in our district and i trust that they are going to teach age-appropriate curriculum to all of our children there is no teacher that i know as a professional teacher who wants to have any of the conversations that the two of you are possibly insinuating with students that is not the case and i trust that our administration has looked through the curriculum we have all looked through the curriculum i i i really am just you know i'm just gonna say it again like i just feel this is just you both of you bringing in national politics it's right here

194in the curriculum yes amber yes is it a mistake or intentional that's really my first question and as i'm explaining why i'm voting though and it's very interesting that you bring up the njsba who we pay thousands of dollars to for each year for our uh for their advice and the njsba and its member boards of education believe that parents are most important partners in education and we welcome parent input and communication in fact state regulations require boards to encourage feedback from the community as per njac 6a golden 8-3.1 which states district boards of education shall encourage the active active involvement of representatives from the community businesses industry labor and higher education in the development of educational programs aligned with nj sls we're not doing that i we are not saying that we should not

195hear from our community what i'm saying is our role as board members that's what i am looking for when you look at the article on the patch about what chatham's doing look what bernard's township is doing look what tom's river has well it sounds like you did a lot of research yet you never collaborated with any of your board members as usual yeah any other story look what you consider corral this is collaboration for you is to accuse you of something guys can we stay on target here what are we doing we're talking about the curriculum though we're talking about you're honestly raising this now yeah because we're not doing anything you individually came up with it on your own right now oh well we can't if you're just into a board member you both

196saw the same thing at the end of a curriculum for right prior to the vote no i've been reading about chatham and i've been reading about burners with the superintendent we can ask him if if that has anything to do with with the sex ed curriculum and then it could be tabled but let's i don't know why we're pontificating for 20 minutes on this because i know you want to be the superior consultant you disagree with the first consultant you disagree with the second question with the understanding look at that time of i would like to hear from our superintendent board members thank you if it's a simple error of a standard that made its way in there and i have to say i have trouble with the insinuation that it was done intentionally it's

197a correction we can make and janelle can we can they can the board approve this if we make a notation uh that we will update the curriculum to fix it if it's just an oversight or an error where we can do that um okay thank you so can we go to a roll call please well so i'm just assum so that confirms it was just an error it wasn't at least that that question has been answered but uh was that the only place you found it that is can we go to a roll call please mr barbella yes caveat that it's validated correct mr beccarelli yes same mr ingrassia for item d1 field trips yes d2 adopt curriculum no and uh might i just say that this uh please there's the gifted can we please

198move to you had options to speak during discussion it's you're voting now thank you uh no not mr and gracia point of order please you are voting and you're not giving speeches during voting i'm explaining that mr and grandpa all of this discussion takes place during discussion it is time to vote so you can vote yes or no d2 is a no due to social studies and gifted and talented d3 approved textbooks yes d1 sorry mr mcdonald uh yes with the same caveat that uh mr barbell and mr buccarelli put forward earlier mrs murad yes for d1 no for d2 and yes for d3 mrs scharf yes with the caveat mrs harvey yes with the caveat okay d2 passes five to two d one and three past seven zero joe can you please move policy

199item sure move policy e1 approve policies for first reading e2 approve policies and regulations for second reading and adoption is there a second second any discussion roll call please mr barbella yes mr beccarelli yes mr ingratia yes mr mcdonald yes mrs murad yes mrs scharf yes mrs harvey yes motion motions pass amber can you please move uh under board business item a i move board goals and action plans is there a second second any discussion roll call please mr barbella yes mr buccarelli yes mr ingrassia yes mr mcdonald yes mrs murad yes sorry mrs scharf yes mrs harvey yes um i wish sorry thank you rich um i didn't receive any requests from board members for any other board business to be discussed so we're gonna move on to the comments from public no i'm

200sorry so please remember to state your name and address when coming up the art movement point of order that's not how that works no yes it does actually there's no making up your own rules it is 11 o'clock at night we have a lot of community members here if you would like to have something under board business mr and gracia you are told in advance that you can provide that to me ahead of time you did not we're going to be respectful of our community members who are sitting here at 11 o'clock at night and we are going to allow them public comment yeah well you're good and you're listening to that thank you i had a comment mr and gracious point of order again for the board i live at 140 oakridge lane europe

201conduct tonight mr ingrassia is appalling and quite frankly this is the first time i've met you i don't know much about you but the way you get up here grandstanding not very clearly collaborating with your other board members because it's it's evident it's evident in everything you say it's evident in the way you carry yourself with your arrogant point of view in a district where you don't even send your own children i get you on taxes you're a resident okay you don't want to pay any more money i got you but on curriculum how dare you you don't send your kids here you don't get to make those decisions and quite frankly i don't want to hear your voice when it comes to that you don't represent my opinion as someone who lives in this

202town and sends my kids to this school that's up to the educators who we put our trust in no one wants to hear your business and quite frankly i look at the rest of this board i look at the heart and passion and care that they put into their positions which is evident in the comments that they make and the way that they deal with one another and you're not aligned with them you're divisive just to be divisive and it's unacceptable and i hope that the next time you are up for election that you are not in this seat thank you thank you any other comments from members of the public or again remember please remember to state your name and address hey everyone adam kraft seven livingston app warren new jersey unfortunately otherwise i'd

203be sitting up there with you um quick back of the envelope math something that rich said made me think so you've had 800 in savings on average over the last three years it'll be four probably by the time we get the bond um so that's 3 200 divided by that 270 that it's going to cost you that's 12 years of funding you just saved enough money from the previous bonds expiring enough to fund it for 12 years which for some of you might even outlast how long your in-watch on so in case anyone's worried about the money um we invest in our schools because we want the best for our children and we want and how do we get the best for our children we get the best teachers we get the best administrators we

204get the best environment for them to learn in what administrators and teachers want to come work here and stay here if we don't show that we want to invest in them we are blessed that mr alexis is here he we are if you haven't had a chance to have a one-on-one conversation with him i implore you to do so he is here because he cares about this community because he grew up in this community he also happens to be brilliant and he also happens to care more about our children than anyone else other than their parents so we are blessed to have him my fear is that if we don't invest in the schools or that our residents continue to attack his integrity in public we may lose him and that would be a travesty

205for this school district you want to talk about test scores and gifted and talented programs look at what it was before we had him and before he brought in mrs kitt and miss figner we did not have a full-time superintendent for a while we also didn't have a full-time administrator so you want to you want to get all into sorts of things with finances and the board and not renewing the i mean there's a lot of reasons we're here today but it's not because of those it's partly because of these two but it's not because of those people it's not because of this person these people are doing an amazing job so we need to give them and trust like the board members have said we need to trust that they have the best interest

206of this community in mind why am i here because i still have children in this community yes my taxpayer my tax dollars don't go to your your schools i will vote yes for the warren referendums though because i believe in education i believe in funding education guess what my kid's mother still goes here and is passionately for this referendum so my family still pays it so if you want to have that comment i've already beat you to it so with all that said i love that molly just came up here and called anthony out because it's no surprise that he voted no we all knew that was gonna happen i don't know why i even thought there was a chance he was gonna vote yes because last year when the board voted it was eight

207to one and his wife was the only one that didn't vote yes so why would we think that he would vote yes and they do this for a reason so when you go home and tell all your friends to vote for the referendum please make sure they know that or at least tell them to ignore the the talking point that they're going to use which is referendums don't have a good chance to pass when they're not supported by the whole border that that was on that infamous mailer that they sent out last year that's their tactic that's their talking point that's it they're gonna stick to that just tell your friends and family members still vote yes this is the best interest they don't care about your children vote yes tell everyone thank you good

208evening i'm like a bad penny you know i'm back again uh hans goe from elgin or drive uh i would just like to put a little perspective on what we've been talking about uh and uh richard correct me if i'm wrong i think the current wachong school budget is 13.8 million dollars yeah the referendum is going to be 15 million dollars 13.8 million dollars is a lot of money okay now if you go back say over the 10-year period of time that's probably obviously wasn't 13.8 but we probably the the taxpayers of of wachong and and you know schools are the most important thing and i'll get into why i believe they are they've probably sent 100 million dollars in the last 10 years into the watching schools since the last referendum okay see i

209have the perspective of being 20 years before the big the referendum which i believe there were a lot of mistakes made allah no no playing fields at baybury i mean that was a very contentious self-serving referendum on that one that's why we have what we have in baber i wish we'd plant some trees in front i mean it looks like a penitentiary to me i mean it's this yellow building love to have some trees or something i think that's one thing you guys should invest in okay um my kids played softball on that field great memories but anyway over a 20-year period the taxpayers probably sent 200 million dollars to the watching schools now i hear these stories from these compassionate people that our air conditioning doesn't work i as an engineer find it very

210hard to believe in 13 million dollars of money now a lot goes to the teachers and it should that we can't find the money to repair these systems so i think you all need to reflect on that and you all in the board who've been on the board for three years need to take some real responsibility for that i think it's very sad personally now the other thing which i want to give a little perspective on we've been here since 1975. we had our last one graduated from from the high school award 2000 with less when graduating we have two of them one's a lawyer one designs cars did very well academically when we moved to wachong it was great because the schools were great that was 20 years before the big last referendum i

211think if you go back you might find that watching same thing with watching original they probably ranked in the top the watch watching schools themselves people would kill to get into doesn't seem to be the same way so we spent 25 million dollars to fix this school and the other school we spend probably 75 or 100 million dollars to fix the high school and our scores are very poor compared to where they were before we spent all of this money so this panacea that we're going to spend this money and these schools are going to be great it ain't going to happen folks it doesn't happen it happens with hard work it happens with accountability it happens by looking at the line items okay i don't know about you folks we voted on but i

212really have a problem when in this referendum there's eight bathrooms with an average cost of a hundred and seven thousand dollars a bathroom you know what it reminds me of remember them about 20 years ago when they had this big stink in the pentagon about the 500 toilet seat i hope we can get a 500 toilet seat in this hundred and seven thousand i think we need to be financially responsible i think we need to support the schools i think we need to use and i don't think we're underfunding our schools compared to melbourne anybody else we need to use that 13.8 million wisely to fix those air conditioning units now not for a referendum referendum aren't meant to keep air conditioning systems running right and then we need to spend the appropriate money there's

213no question we need a new building control system that no question would probably need some things in security there's no question that we need to spend money but being on the you know on the auto committee we never talked about what anything costs the people in wachong voted this down because of course if somebody asked me you know what do you think i can't tell them anything i can say i see a lot of numbers a lot of numbers i scratch my heads on i think that's what we need to do we need to look at where we're spending our current money and where we want to spend our future money thank you very much that's 45 years of you know it's bad to be around that long or maybe it's good thank you i

214just wanted to give our i i didn't know if our superintendent wanted the opportunity to address just the multiple comments of low test scores and if if he would like to go right i thought i started to do that mrs harvey before when mrs truett um was asking those questions um but i you know i the one thing i do have to clarify for mr jouett and we've spoken about this before um the only time the high school was ranked in the top 20 was 2016 and they were 11 in the state and i remember that i had firsthand experience with that um yeah yeah it was so yeah exactly so um i i don't know what to say about test scores other than you know we have test scores from 2017 2018 and i

215know there was some criticisms of those scores i i think um people should look at those scores and compare them to other districts because they're not um they were not bad scores but we have not had the benefit of these scores and we've been reporting every kind of data informed instructional assessment that we have through our i ready program we shared the start strong assessments last year we're going to be giving those assessments again as a state requirement and we will be reporting our state assessment scores at the appropriate time which is typically early november for the test results that were taken test results that we received based on the administration last spring if you have another comment you can come up to the podium just because if anyone's watching live streaming they might not

216be able to hear you my comments were really dressed upon with people who are going to buy a house they're not going to look at your score our scores okay they're going to look at u.s nursing u.s world news report first student or you know you they're on the internet i think what where were we now 80th or something out of the top school in new jersey i don't recall the last time they did okay i think i've got it i'm working off the previous new jersey monthly rankings which were always looked at by everyone in the state and my point was that i mean when you mentioned that the high school was ranked in the top 20 back in the early 2000's i i just i don't remember that i didn't remember that we

217were ranked number 11 in 2016. right but i'm looking at the you know what people are looking at people are going to buy a house they're going to look at u.s news and world report and we just ain't there okay i'm going to go to milburn you know i'm gonna i'm gonna go a lot of other places i'm gonna spend some money uh you know the livingstons and places like that and my point is spending money unwisely okay is not the way to go i think when we need to spend the money we got to spend the money and that's what the current 8 13 billion 38 million end with this budget that's all i say and i think we need to share that kind of facts with the residents in watching i don't think

218they're really pretty happy right now about the information that they're getting about the referendums about where the kids are and things of that nature and i think we need to pick that up you know 45 years is a long time to have seen where we've been and you know the referendums we've been through just an example like on the high school i wrote letters when they spent that 45 or 50 million to me that school should there should have been two schools schools around 13 14 100 kids you look at all the top schools not virtually none of them are over 2 000 kids but you know those are the decisions that are made thank you i just had a quick question phyllis stewart 20 also not drive the curriculum can we see that online

219or can we get a copy how can we read that yeah once it's approved as it was tonight we would be putting it on um the the website the rubicon atlas section of the website so that the public so we can read that okay thank you any other comments from the public on any items lisa craft 63 hydro drive i i'm just going to speak from the heart i was a trial attorney for very very about six years so i wouldn't say a long time but a long enough to try many jury cases where people were very passionate about supporting whatever they were prosecutor defense civil and we would go head-to-head but at the end of the day we'd be able to walk out of this room and have a drink together okay because we

220put we separated professional from personal what i saw here tonight really upset me as a mom of two young children who loves this town very much and so to anyone who's still out there listening that's staying up this late i beg of you that when you when voting comes really really educate yourself about the folks who are running are they running because they have the interest of our children at heart or are they running because this is a stepping stone for something else political or because they want to politicize something that shouldn't be politicized this is about our children period paragraph and i just hope that in the future we see more alignment and more collaboration across the board because i do believe that every single one of you in your heart of hearts really

221does want what's best for this town and if we could just put aside whatever personal grudges and i don't know if there are any but whatever there are put them aside for the sake of our children that's all and just thank you again for your service thank you any other comments from community members on any item okay can i have a motion to adjourn so moved a second any discussion i think that uh now that everyone from the public has had a chance to talk that we should be able to cover some board business since it was uh removed adjourned unilaterally um i'm going to end the discussion because i already addressed that and if you would like to have something under board business you can provide it in a in advance all in favor

222say aye any oppose thank you for joining us this evening this meeting is adjourned