04-28-22 Watchung Borough BOE Meeting

001okay i'd like to call to order a regular meeting of the wachon girl board of education with a public hearing on the budget on april 28th 2022 at 7 pm 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 of wachong at which formal action may be taken this meeting is being live streamed on the district website where recording of the meeting also will be posted the public will have an opportunity to be heard as

002shown on the agenda at points 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 guardians whose children may be included in the image may we have a roll call please got it all right we're in business mr barbella mr buccarelli mrs harvey here mr ingrassia here mr kraft here mr mcdonald here mrs murad uh miss edvani here and mrs scharf here we have eight presents okay can i have a motion to go into executive session [Music] is that mr buccarelli craft mr kraft i'm sorry thank you can we have a second second any discussion all in favor say aye aye any oppose hey mr pepe can you please read the reason why we are going into executive session whereas

003the open public meetings act njsa 10.4-11 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 close session to discuss a matter rendered confidential by federal or state law student matters be it 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 okay i don't think we're gonna take too long just so you know i'm hoping maybe 20 minutes but maybe i'm wishful thinking maybe less than that which would be nice motion to come out of executive session so moved a second second any discussion all in favor say aye aye any opposed uh and then

004we'll move on to board member comments are there any comments from board members okay then we'll move on to the presentation of the 2223 budget okay welcome everyone this is the public hearing so i'll address my comments to the public all three of you um at the last board meeting we have the presentation of the budget for the board of education so i'm going to run through this the introduction in the early slides very quickly uh we always begin our presentations with uh our vision statement our next slide oh i'm sorry first we also have the slide with our board of education members and mr pepe and i would like to express our appreciation for everyone's assistance and support with this process every year it's a long process every year uh that starts in the

005fall and um concludes sometime in february but their support is very much appreciated their input on the uh the decisions that we have to make especially when we have a tight budget so the next slide is our vision uh statement after the introduction and overview uh everyone's familiar with this statement uh we have it on our board agenda we have it on the website i talk about it frequently in a variety of ways um but again we're focused on that uh culture of inquiry equity and collaboration and the next slide we just have a couple of points about that because as we strive towards that culture of inquiry equity and collaboration we're placing student engagement at the forefront at the center of our efforts uh we want to create an authentic learning process or i

006should say strengthen uh an authentic learning process and improve instruction through a variety of innovative ways with a focus this year in particular on design thinking and on always on creative problem solving we believe in the importance of communication and collaboration and strengthening all of the adult and student learners in our community but of course we need a safe culturally vibrant and inclusive and supportive learning environment to create that foundation and we are emphasizing constantly the importance of a growth mindset as we approach our uh our lessons so the budget objectives have been the same for the last three years uh we've been very consistent with this we've placed a large emphasis on improving uh teaching and learning according to the district vision that's our roadmap that so provides our guideposts along the way and

007we have a focus on improving the operational efficiency of the district and reducing expenditures we're always trying to stay within that two percent cap when we go through this process each year and we want to balance the budget without decreasing our fund balance a couple of past accomplishments our first budget here we created certain special service positions that have previously been outsourced behaviorists the speech therapist and certain in-house aides for specific uh students with special needs stabilizing the special services costs was the result of that first budget and also a redesigned preschool we invested in technology and reduced the number of platforms and systems that we were using and currently used genesis for multiple purposes now and we restructure the technology support services last year's budget for this current school year we restructured music staffing

008restructured the esl world language staff at mayberry uh where and we're able to maintain all of their staffing levels and place an emphasis on continued professional learning and collaboration and so the key decisions to meet the budgets this year we have some added assistance from the federal grant funds that are going to allow us to enhance academic and social emotional opportunities for our students we'll use the federal grant funds as we've discussed at previous meetings to expand counseling services at baybury and we also are going to address the staffing shortage for the ell students pursuant to the state requirement because of increased enrollment of ell students in our district we're able to maintain all of their staffing levels and we are again continuing to focus on professional learning and collaboration and with that i'll turn

009it over to mr pepe okay so the budget is developed over a long period of time really we've already started thinking about next year but formally we sit down and start working on it sometime in october november and so this just kind of gives you a benchmarks of how the timeline works starting in november bringing us through to today which is the public hearing on the budget and the finale and then the final last little pieces within 48 hours of this meeting when the budget is adopted i will be posting it on the website and this just kind of gives you a little glance at where we've been coming from and where we're going to as far as enrollment goes um you can see for the first half of this chart we were up in

010the low 700s we dipped it down a few years back and we've been steady slight increase over the last couple of years i just want a little footnote about that is that the statewide average for enrollment has been decreasing for several years so the fact that we've remained flat or slightly increasing is actually a positive sign okay these are a lot of numbers and they kind of tell the story great by grade of of our enrollments from the past few years this is all available it will be available on the website if you wanted to take a closer look i'm not going to spend time going through every number but i just wanted to let you know the way that this is constructed when you look at the last two lines the current year is

011taken from the enrollment report from our march board meeting those are the numbers based on that and then what i do is for kindergarten and preschool there's no way to predict how many students we're going to have so i just use the exact same number then i take each grade level and just shift them over so you'll see kindergarten currently has 56 students so i'm projecting for first grade 56 students next year and that's how the projection works so if you look diagonally they all go um one thing to to note is this method um it's not perfect but i think it's as close as we can get to a realistic projection um so when you look at the the top number for grade four not the top number i'm sorry the second from the

012bottom that's 70. so that's how many fourth graders we currently have so those students would next year be moving from bayberry this is bayberry's information to valley view and then on the low end on the bottom end we currently have 65 first graders but we're projecting 56 first graders for next year so that difference between the 70 that are leaving bayberry to go to valley view and the 56 that are coming into kindergarten that's why they're showing a decrease of 14 students that doesn't mean that we actually anticipate having 14 fewer students it's just the best projection we can make without knowing how our kindergarten and first in preschool enrollment will work also keep in mind that what isn't reflected in our projections is students that move in during the year we always have some

013increase in in students at various grade levels but there's no way to project that and the next slide just shows the same information for valley view again you see that 70 number is the projected number for fifth grade those are the students coming from fourth grade and each one goes diagonally and we have 65 8th graders so we have 70 coming in from fourth grade 65 going out so valley views projection is showing an increase of five putting that all together we have a projected decrease of nine students and again these are all estimates and i explained the method it's not perfect but it kind of gives you a sense of where we might go so probably more important is how that impacts the class sizes i just want to make one note about this

014chart so i'm showing you what the current class sizes are at the top um if these are averages that doesn't mean that there's actually 16 and a quarter students in one class but the numbers on the bottom are all based on an assumption of the same number of sections in each grade level that we currently have that can change but we wouldn't make a decision about that until we have more solid enrollment numbers for the new year so for example if you see third grade is showing 25.3 average students per class and first grade is showing 14 students per class there's a discrepancy there if that actually holds true which we don't know until we we finish enrollment that holds true then there's a decision to be made where we might be need to increase

015one you know the number of sections at one and decrease the number of sections in another in a perfect world we would just add a teacher but with the budget situation right now we don't have the funds to add member so this is a breakdown of the revenues um we our total revenues are 14.9 million dollars 12.5 of that comes from local tax levies the other revenues include our preschool enrollment for our regular education parent paid tuition interest that we get from the money we have in the bank and other various miscellaneous fees that we may charge such as a technology the budgeted fund balance is an amount that comes from prior years so every year at the end of the year we get audited and the auditor tells us okay you had this much

016extra money from this year so two years from now that's going to be included in your budget the reason it's two years is by the time you get that number from a current year you've already finished the budget for the next year so it goes in two years later so the 456 thousand that comes from money that we had extra two years ago and state aid um the actual um categorical state aid is just under 900 000 plus we have an anticipated 150 000 in extraordinary aid which is additional aid the state will give us we don't know how much that will be so we just estimate it that's based on special education costs and finally we have a withdrawal from capital reserve this is for specific projects that we are concerned we may need

017to um put in place next year uh if we don't then that money goes back to the capital reserve there's one very large project which is a replacement of chillers and if that happens then we have the money from our capital reserve which that's what it's for if we're able to get through the year without having to make that change then the money goes back into the capital reserves just uh some highlights of things that are are good to know about how we try to keep costs reasonable um we look for as many opportunities to share services as we can and these are some of the bullet points of things that we currently are involved with in shared services custodial and maintenance services we work with the with the municipality with wachonboro um we help

018them they help us as much as possible when there's a project that we can do together and and get a better you know unit price because we it's a larger project because we go in together that kind of helps um we also are in a joint transportation agreement with the high school so they are able to get us um they're we're involved with their bid they actually put the bids out for our transportation and it's included with their bids and so that gets uh um it gets us better pricing than if we just went out to bid on our own with just seven rounds um we have various purchasing we have been adding cooperative after cooperative since i've been here plus there were cooperatives in place um just to understand what a cooperative purchasing system

019is there's uh some group that actually bids items out and then we're able to jump on and take their bid prices so they get the lowest bid and they put it in the cooperative menu and then because we join the cooperative we get to um to take advantage of that pricing that hopefully is less than if we just went to a local vendor and asked them um there are some cooperative pricing systems where you have to pay to join and then others that are free and free is my favorite flavor so those are the ones that we participate and then finally we also um participate in a joint insurance fund for our property and casualty insurance and by joining that there's a lot of benefits to being part of a joint fund okay so some

020key things as we develop the budget these are just the things that we have to think through on the left side we have revenues on the right side we have appropriations um so the place the only places we get our revenues from our state aid local taxes um the excess surplus from two years prior and then if we want to make a withdrawal from reserves like we're doing this here with capital reserve if we have the money available and also our preschool tuition that's that that's where our revenues come from and on the appropriation side we have salaries we have benefits we have various costs other than salaries and benefits for general education and then additional costs for special education we have our student transportation and various facilities and maintenance costs and then a small

021group of others at the bottom i list fixed cost increases this is not additional this is these are like sub groups of what's above it but they're important and when we talk about key factors this is a very key factor which you're going to see on the very next slide so this this is a very sad story but it needs to be told because you need to understand what we're up against when we set out to create a balanced budget and this is this is how uh our system our situation is so fixed cost means things that are contractual that we don't have any um means of of changing or lowering or decreasing our salaries health benefits student transportation these are all things that are required and the way the market is right now those

022are the increased costs we have in those three areas they're all estimates but um as you see it comes up to close to five hundred thousand dollars of increased costs just from the fixed things so that's not adding any new programs that's not hiring any new staff that's not uh bringing in any new supplies or resources that's just to keep operating as we currently are on the other side the increases in revenues are limited and our local tax increase levy is limited to two percent which is 245 000 this year we have our state aid increase which is actually a pleasant surprise this year we got a pretty good um increase it was like 20 percent increase from state aid so that was nice um the budgeted exa surplus is is kind of a variable

023that we really don't have control over it depends on where we end each year so as i said before we had about 400 and i've got the number 450 60 000 um from two years ago that was excess that's part of our budgeted amount this year well last year the budget amount was even more than that so we actually have 280 000 less this year than we did last year in our reserves from from the two years prior so that's unfortunate as far as total bottom line comes so the end result is that we have increased fixed operating costs that are close to 500 000 and we have increased revenues of just over a hundred thousand and it doesn't take a mathematician to know that that doesn't work right so that means in order for

024us to balance this budget we had to find three hundred and sixty nine thousand nine hundred two dollars someplace fortunately we're pretty good at this um we have looked through uh anything that we don't need anything that we could reduce how much anything that we could use grant funds mr alex has referred to several things we're doing with the federal grants that are helping to keep things running without having to increase our budget and so we were able to to get over that obstacle this chart shows you just a a visual of where the the money is this is in pretty much you can go to any district in any town usa you're going to see this slide it shows you how much is salaries how much is benefits how much is general ed special

025ed and so on um one thing i would say is you know salaries and benefits in most districts are always going to be your largest costs and usually it's somewhere anywhere from like 70 percent on somewhere in the area 70 of the total budget usually goes to salaries and then the next two are your general items special ed our special ed pie pie pieces larger than i would like it to be but i'm happy to say it's smaller than last year's pie piece so that's a good thing um we have had some efficiencies within special ed that have helped out a little bit with chipping away at that deficit that i referred to a minute ago all right this shows you just a year-to-year comparison by category so you can kind of see we don't

026have much movement nothing went up significantly or down significantly the fixed costs you know are going to go up that's just the nature of that it shows that both general ed and special ed we were able to find some efficiencies and bring those numbers down slightly to help with that deficit transportation took kind of a big a big hit this year because of the scenario that happened last year um but i think that should stabilize now moving forward and the rest is is fairly um fairly flat the one thing the capital improvement is a little misleading it's showing going from no bar to a bar that has some meat to it but that's just because we withdrew money from our capital reserve for projects that we might need to put in place next year okay

027so that's that's not your typical operating those are your your bigger um facilities projects and that's what we build capital reserve for and that's something we we are looking to um can to move in the correct direction soon with our capital reserve all right so let's end with so what does this mean for me the taxpayer um so i've done what is typical and shown what the impact is for what the town has reported as the average household i'm sure that there's probably not a single person whose house is exactly that dollar but it gives you kind of an idea so this year the ratables or the values of the properties in town have actually increased significantly there's a 72 million dollar increase last year the increase was only about 20 million so that's that's

028a pretty pretty hefty increase in home values um just keep that in mind we'll talk about that in a second so twelve million five hundred thirty six thousand nine hundred ninety three dollars is the tax levy increase or is the tax levy that we talked about before that's where our funding comes from if you divide that into the or divide that by the total values the rateables that's how you calculate your tax rate so because the values went up significantly it makes the tax rate look nice the tax rate actually decreased but that doesn't mean that the dollar amount decreased that just means that the rate when you divide how much you're paying in taxes as a town by the total values the total rate went down the the real story is for the average

029assessed home at 760 895 dollars the estimated school tax would be just under 5 000 which is an increase of about 107 about 108 dollars from the previous year if you are trying to figure out well how does this apply to you and you know your house is not 760 000 but maybe your house is 600 000 or 800 000 or anywhere on the spectrum you can kind of use that rule that 14.16 per hundred thousand to approximate um what your taxes would be increasing this year and that is that so i think at this point we open up for questions from the public my okay seeing no questions from the public um i just wanted to thank the administration and the operations committee for all your hard work on this um and then we'll

030move into comments from the public on the 2223 budget and any other agenda items so we welcome input from the public there are two times during the meeting when the public is invited to speak the first opportunity to comment on agenda items only is now the second opportunity for public comment is towards the end of the meeting total time allotted for the 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 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

031board feels a response is needed the presiding officer or superintendent will address the comment new jersey statutes do not permit the board to discuss personnel or hiring in public session names of students should not be used are there any comments from the public this is already drawing you read my part i'm sorry did you need me to read the oh yes yes yes i'm sorry can you please read the statement due to reporting of the meeting absolutely 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 make to the board the board shall not be held liable for comments made by members of the public good evening dennis

032baker's 47 book drive i got here late so i missed part of the budget presentation but i had a question about the uh in one of the attachments in this week in this month's uh meeting i noticed that there was some items and some itemization of some referendum items for drg the architect the architectural firm i'm just wondering are those numbers in this budget as well and i'm just curious also how those numbers if so compared to last year's um if it was in last year's budget um anyway that i wanted to ask about that if if you're if you're allowed to answer at this point i'm just looking around to see if anybody actually did mr pepe do you want to answer that i can provide an answer so the answer is those specific

033costs are estimates also if you look in that um that handout it's actually more of a menu it's not saying that we're going to do everything in there if you add it all up it's pretty expensive but it's more of the things that we might need them to do and they just said if you need this this is what it costs um so we're not intending to do all those we'll only be billed for the things that we actually ask them to do the money is not specifically in the budget because if the referendum happens and passes that those um costs actually are part of what are called the soft costs in the referendum if the referendum doesn't pass then we have to find money to pay the bills which we did this year um

034i can't speak to whether the costs will be more or less this time around in theory you would assume it would be less because a lot of the groundwork has already been been completed i know that our board is dedicated to try and engage the community a little more this time so we might need more services that help us with that i don't know we'll see how the year goes okay so we're going to move on to um adoption of the 2223 budget amber can you please move the adoption of the budget i'd like to move the adoption of the 2020 to 2023 budget resolved upon the recommendation of the superintendent the board of education adopts the 2022-2023 budget as summarized below np it further resolved upon the recommendation of the superintendent the board of

035education approves the general fund tax levy in the amount of twelve million five hundred and thirty six hundred thousand uh and ninety three hundred thousand dollars to support the 2022-2023 budget and then do you need me to story there's a second one b okay uh and i'm doing all the administrator i'm sorry i think i have the wrong i think it's just a and b okay sorry authorized travel related expenses reimbursement for the 2022-2023 school year was i think it was rich who was the second mr becker ellie did you second that oh mr clown uh is there any discussion i just would like to explain that i'm going to be abstaining on budget and the reason for that is a few reasons but you know as was said in the presentation that some of

036this is uh in the works for some time uh before i came on board but we did uh we did address it in the operations committee meetings but um you know some of those discussions in those early meetings are are really uh what we saw today that you know there's without getting into too much detail that if there's a deficit how are we going to bring it back to balance and uh i think it would be worthwhile to to go in a little bit more detail of how that was able to be done just for the public's information but um there was really not that much opportunity in the in the structure of the committee meetings to um after you know two meetings uh where we came back to this uh more or less balanced

037number to discuss it much further there was uh and you know without an opportunity to really be able to call and ask uh certain questions you know there's opportunity to email but there's only so much i think that uh can be accomplished uh strictly by email so i i found myself upon reflection not not feeling uh very good about some of the things the the issue with the capital reserve was a you know something that's come up a couple times um you know some of these questions again if i if i could pick up the phone and call and talk to mr pepe um i i think they could have been answered fairly quickly with some jumping around to various spreadsheets and things like that but right now we have a a position that board

038members aren't allowed to to do that so it really hampered my ability to to understand some of these things where um in november of 2020 the uh the treasurer's of the report of the secretary was showing the uh capital reserve at 1.3 million 1 million 313 000 and so we heard in the presentation today that there is a difference from year to year how much comes back from the reserve i'm not sure if we're we're referencing that but we did have then um you know other reports come in where the the capital reserve was then down to 1.1 million and uh one one million seventy seven thousand and then we uh had a discussion about uh this uh money that has been taken out of the capital reserve for this year and it's it's still

039not clear to me um if money is in the capital reserve and something comes up that we need to take care of can it be taken care of right from the capital reserve does it have to be shown as a uh a reduction to the capital reserve ahead of time in the amount of uh you know this 500 000 for a potential chiller and then all the other items that reduced it down so uh you know i'm not comfortable with the how the capital reserve has been uh presented to date and uh there really hasn't been much opportunity to go into how things have changed academically with coming through covid years and into this year getting having input from the public on what they might feel was the different needs so how they've changed uh

040so from my position right now i i feel more comfortable abstaining than than voting yes on the budget i'd like to address that you know i'm the the chairman of the operations committee that mr gracie is on we spent hours on the budget this is my fourth time doing it as a board member and as a member of the operations committee you just talked for about five minutes asked the question have no idea why you didn't ask that question in any of our meetings except to make the point that you can't talk to mr pepe directly seem to be your your reason for abstaining from voting on the budget and actually you know as a member of the operations committee if you have questions like that you should ask them and i don't think as

041the chairman i would understand why you wouldn't ask those questions in the committee and i also don't understand why be a member of the committee and then abstain on the budget for those reasons because you have every opportunity to ask those we work as a committee we work in a committee structure we've had hours and hours of meetings on this you asked a five-minute question very specific it's it's very unusual for me to hear you say that you didn't have the opportunity to understand the budget i could just respond rich you know there were uh committee meetings that we had hard stops on and there was other items on the agenda so while we did have hours of committee meetings we didn't necessarily have hours to spend on the budget and as i've said those

042early meetings with the budget were just a presentation with a commitment to get back at the next meeting so you know some of those early meetings where we had them on the agenda were not necessarily very uh fruitful for discussion and um you know we have had some members of the committee there on certain days and not as the chairman you've switched you know with uh dory taking your spot on a couple of those meetings which is understandable you know it's fine but it just doesn't uh at those meetings there wasn't much uh opportunity for discussion and there wasn't you know there was there was other things discussed but it wasn't spending hours on the budget and so i you know i felt that there wasn't uh there wasn't that much opportunity to discuss some

043of the things maybe it only took me five minutes to mention these things but to go into a deeper uh look at how we could um you know instead of fine-tuning some of the small amounts that were uh discussed with what could be added back in from last year it was very much a you know copying what had been done from the year or two before and and kind of redoing that with very minor changes and i think that you know maybe that's uh you know uh could be a mistake but like i said it was uh it wasn't for me to try to make a point it was that i i did not um find that we had very much discussion on uh on the budget in the committee meetings the way the way

044it turned out and there was absolutely no opportunity there there seems to have been a some type of whether it's an agreement among certain uh with the board leadership in the administration but that board members are not allowed to call and ask questions uh of so that really is straight right right what's that that really is your problem that's the point you're trying can i just make one other one well that was a problem one second so you can always call me you know that and if you say hey rich you know i have a couple of questions let's ask this at the next committee meeting yeah i've missed the committee meeting you've missed the committee meeting right we all have uh other things that we have to do right we sometimes miss comedians i

045think you should ask yourself whether you want to be on the operations committee to do the work or you want to just come to a public meeting and tell the rest of the members who work on this that for the first time we're hearing you're not satisfied with having enough depth of the of the budget in our meetings uh you don't call the chairman you don't talk about this in any of the meetings you wait till we have a public meeting on the budget and say we didn't have enough discussion on this i don't think that's being a partner i don't think that's being a responsible board member i certainly as chairman don't think that's being a responsible member of the operations committee and at the last meeting when the budget was presented to the

046entire board it wasn't that the time that all board members could have asked any questions and made any comments so that if you didn't think there was time in a committee meeting you had all the time in the world there just like all the other board members did so there's ample time i have a question about the budget and the question real quick is i i saw previously that's why i was a little disheveled i'm sorry i was trying to look for it earlier i do not see it on the agenda anymore but it was my understanding that we were going to pass a lease in shared services during this meeting and it's not happening the question is regarding the budget is last year since we did not have a lease were we paying any

047for any of those services that we had to maintain the fields where the borough did that for us previously mrs harvey do you want me to respond to that i i think rich was going to respond no i was going to ask you go ahead richard okay um so fortunately that we have a very good working relationship with the borough administration and um nothing that was done in the past stopped so no we didn't have any additional costs um because we don't have a written document so that there are you know we're hopeful to get all of that squared away soon um but no it didn't cost us any money because we didn't have the lease the borough still mowed the lawn on grant field the little league still did a lot of work to

048prep the fields and keep them maintained and we helped where we could we had our person who lined the field for our games um which is pretty much what happened in the past and we're looking to get back to the same that's what we're trying to get into writing is is the same situation as it was in the past such as putting into writing um the the other part of that was um lost between the thought what was the other thing you asked that i don't see it in the oh right about the two items so i just wanted to clarify for all board members the way that i always put together the operations agenda i put a list of what i call potential agenda items and the reason is when we have our operations

049committee like a week and a half before the board there's a lot that happens in that week and a half so those are just the things that at that moment i say might show up on the agenda so that's why you saw them there because we were hopeful that maybe we'd get it done in time for the board meeting it didn't happen so we weren't able to include that on the agenda for this okay thank you and um mr buccarelli you said that i can or any other board member can call you if you have any questions and [Music] i called you last year in reference to a question um for regarding the referendum it was simple it was a conversation while i was doing a walk-through i had a question regarding the bathrooms and

050i conveyed that concern to you we had an honest dialogue and it was respectful um the only thing is what concerns me is the next meeting the same conversation that you and i had i had a public member come up and accuse not only myself but another board member of trying to dissuade any thing on the referendum that would help children um so of course i am i shouldn't feel this way i shouldn't feel disenfranchised when i am conveying my personal opinions and thoughts right and i'm not saying that you did it i'm just saying this is what what exactly are you implying why would you bring up because conversation with me that you then linked to imply that i talked to somebody in the public about it because that's what happened it is absolutely

051not what happened amber i don't know where you make this stuff up i'm not making it up i i can't have a conversation with you yes it stayed with you i did not talk to any member of the public about it so where's the link that's exactly what my question is i do not talk to anybody else okay so you're saying i am saying i am afraid to call you because i am afraid that there is no transparency when we all talk i would rather get a clear answer for my questions from people who are doing it on a daily basis versus it becoming it coming back so this is another one of i want to talk directly to the administration and you make up a story i am not making it up mr becker

052wait hold on a second glad you're right you're you're you're saying you had a you have a conversation with me then you jump to and the next meeting a member of the public asked me a question he didn't ask you a question you i asked you a question the board the member of the public came up and accused board members of trying to and you think that that's because i incited that i would like to know where i came from oh my god [Music] no i am saying that when you don't say you're not accusing me i should stay within the i'm going to close the discussion on this an accusation and you're and you're impugning my integrity and you're absolutely wrong i'll say this in front of the public you're wrong i said nothing

053about it rich can we have a roll call please mr buccarelli yes mr ingrassia i abstain on the adoption of the budget on item b i would vote yes mr kraft yes mr mcdonald yes mrs murad i abstain on adopting the budget and yes on b miss edvani yes mrs scharf yes mrs harvey yes okay the budget is adopted and okay we're gonna move on to uh superintendent remarks okay thank you mrs harvey up let's let's move to the principal's reports uh because we have our student council representatives here um and despite the week off for spring recess a lot of really fun events happened in april so pierce are you going first or emily okay come on up good evening everyone my name is pierce winston and i'm valley view student council co-vice president

054i'm happy to present the valley view principles report for the month of april during the month of april students and staff celebrated autism acceptance month with spirit days and classroom activities in celebration of earth day eighth grade earth students have been creating oil pastel projects to build awareness for endangered animals around the world students tori shiffman and annabella shang submitted their urge to the national saving endangered species youth earth contest this project uses cubism to show how each species is affected by threats to their natural environment the more trees people cut down the more pieces of the asian elephant population they're taking away shiffman said the grand prize includes funding to build a garden of native pollander plants we wish them both the best of luck as we await resorts the valid view showcase a

055musical journey of belief was held on april first and second and the cast and crew did a wonderful job performing scenes from various hit musicals miss esposito and miss riley directed the musical with support from miss nestor miss walgren mr mel miss loveenberg miss barrios and several parent volunteers the cast and crew did a spectacular job scoliosis screenings took place during the week of april 4th please contact mr chesky with any questions or concerns valley view spring picture day was held on april 5th all families interested in purchasing the pictures are able to order them online through life touch the district science fair was held in the valley view all purpose room on april 7th student teams and individuals in grades second through eight dazzled the judges with his scientific experiments the thought behind the

056experiments and the discoveries our district winners are ariana and rohan patel whose project revealed how to delay the browning of an avocado our valley view winner was sally levine who taught us about why jewelry tarnishes and how to prevent it i'm also excited to share that noah santora nikhila ridley and ariana patel placed in the top 25th in the country for the team's competition that took place in february their team qualified to complete in the team's best in nation competitions taking place during the 2022 national tsa conference which will be held june 26th to the 30th at the gaylord texas resort and convent convention center just outside of dallas texas well done believe it or not marketing period 4 began on april 9th the postcards for the third american period were made available to parents

057via genesis on thursday april 14th anyone having difficulty viewing the child's report is encouraged to contact the main office for assistance the environmental club under the direction of mrs stewart's and miss husted hosted our annual fashion show on april 11th students designed and created accessories and clothing out of recycled materials classmates modeled the pieces while the designers explained that their creative process to judges liliana sanchez won first place sienna woods and aubry patel tied for second place and the emma speedy are in the third place hats off to all of our participants your designs were very impressive the band a band made up of student musicians from each sending district performed at watching his regional high school on april 12th representing valley view where matthew taylor alana voshak aj sutherland tanya mahula bennett cooperman kanalov

058kesha babapatnam noah santora kushiyadov hansa patel michael zhang emily houck and connor on april 14th valley view students were treated to an interactive performance from the hurling wizards students participated in challenges and trade exuberantly for the valley view faculty basketball team as they competed against the wizards thank you to our pto for bringing this exciting experience to our school the washington school district was closed from april 15th to the 31st for spring break i hope everyone was able to get some rest and relaxation students in grades fifth and eighth participated in the new jersey state learning assessment for science on april 26th and seventh seventh the nj sly science measures student proficiency with the new jersey student learning standards in science these science standards require assessment tasks that examine students performance of scientific and engineering

059practices in the context of cost-cutting concepts and disciplinary core ideas makeup testing will be available for students all of next week adventure learning is back in the valley view gymnasium our enhanced program will use adventure experiences as an effective tool for improving the way students live learn and work together our high five adventure course will be used to provide experiences that develop a sense of connection and excitement in a learning environment of discovery challenge and fun students will build the skiers through a leveled approach the goal is to climb and relate to the ceiling of the gymnasium and multiple high level elements please contact mr leslie or mr buglovsky with any questions or concerns thank you and have a good night well done pierce thank you very much it's great to hear about all these

060events especially the ones where we're hearing about creative problem solving and collaboration and really demonstrating how we're actualizing our district vision so thank you and i would also want to say the musical was wonderful it was excellent and i know you were part of that and emily was part of that so congratulations to you both hi i'm emily howe valley view student council vice president co-vice president bayberry has had an exciting fun-filled month third graders attended a special band preview on march 23rd the fourth grade band did a great job showcasing their instruments and their musical talent students in third grade will receive more information about selecting their instrument for next year students staff and parents enjoyed the book fair of the week of april 4th it was nice to bring the book fair back

061in person and we appreciate the pto investing the profits back into the school by purchasing books for our students on april 11th the harlem wizards and the bayberry staff squared off in an energetic and entertaining game of basketball tricks dancing and fun the noise and the energy permeated the school we are so thankful for the pto for this uplifting joyous assembly the kindergarten play my view of the earth was a huge hit parents enjoyed the performance on april 12th and 13th and the entire school attended the play on april 14th we are so proud of our students and thankful for the hard work that our teachers and parents put into this special event on monday april 25th we wrapped up our cultural events with the indian dance workshops during physical education classes students learned about

062the indian culture through folk and bollywood dancing they found it out it was a great workout and a lot of fun trimester 2 ended on march 18th and report cards were made available for parents on march 25th the first session of beginners chess for third graders ended on march 14th and the second session of beginners chess club for second graders began today students are working hard to develop their skills while enjoying some social time with their peers thank you thank you emily fun and exciting events are happening at baybury and let me add emphasis to the statement that the kindergarten play was a huge success because it really was and i can't wait till those kindergartners are up here to lend their talents to the musical so thank you again uh just briefly two um

063two notes uh on for me uh the 2020-21 school performance reports have been released by the state and are available for public viewing we have links on our website these annual reports are the njdoes department of education's way of sharing a wide variety of data about each school district in the state again please visit the website and you can take a look at the school performance report website uh and also the state has put out a resource entitled impact of covid 19 on data availability for the school performance reports we also have a link on our website for that the pto was mentioned a few times and uh by the way the energy in the bayberry gym was incredible when the harlem wizards were here so thank you again to the pto for their generous

064support of our students on the agenda tonight is a revised total of the donations and grants for the 2021-22 school year we're in great we're grateful for this incredible financial support and the enrollment reports remain consistent at 638 that's 22 more students than we had at the start of the school year thank you that will conclude this section thank you george we're going to move on to committee reports kevin can you give the hr committee report uh yes um the hr committee met on this past tuesday first we discussed the observation evaluation process and mr alexis provide an update and that process is on track committee did not have any questions next we discuss non-tenured and tenured staff and there's a list that was updated to correct the current staff steps on the guide and

065uh placed in the boards folder the staff will be approved at the current steps and salaries the may 13th board meeting and they will be updated thereafter based upon the negotiated collective bargaining agreement that will be put in place mr alexis then discussed the process for renewals and non-renewals and the committee asked a few questions with respect to non-renewals any non-renewed staff will not appear on the board attachment only renewed staff members will be listed we also discussed um the science teacher candidate for the 2022-2023 school year and um i believe that's on the agenda for today uh we had a discussion regarding the uh substitute teacher uh compensation rate and one of the big issues is that warren township recently upped their compensation by an additional 25 and we actually heard that there were

066some districts that pay as much as 150 or 180 per day uh so to remain competitive and have sub pool that can you know substitute when needed uh the committee was in favor of upping the rate by 25 per day from 100 to 125 next there was a discussion of administration contracts and um those contracts will uh be shared um with the board uh in the next board packet and we can discuss changes uh then and those i believe will be on the agenda for approval next month now we next discussed the change of assignment um mr alexis reminded the committee that he lets the staff know at this time of the year that they can make a request to change their teacher assignment uh the administration gives these requests every consideration but has to

067make decisions based on the best interests of students in the schools and then there was a discussion regarding a volunteer assistant baseball coach who i believe is on the agenda for today as well and the committee's in favor of approval and also indicated an interest in a volunteer for softball if we can find one so the administration will look into that um and i believe i their board agenda items listed here i think that i touched on all of them or some of them there's also an approval for an intern for clinical hours previously was approved for guidance hours approval for an unpaid leave of staff three and then one retroactive and another retroactive medical leave and there was no new business thank you kevin rich can you please give the operations finance committee report

068can we get it i'll give it a charity last time so we discussed the federal consolidated monitoring mr pepe explained that the preliminary findings were minor and that steps were being put in place to resolve them he stated that the monitoring process was still in progress and that the board can expect to see additional preliminary findings related to other federal grants in the coming months we did not have any questions about the title 1 monitoring preliminary findings we were in favor of contracting with mrsavacha again for this year's annual audit we discussed the health benefits options mr pepe informed the committee that market results for health insurance included a bid from the state health insurance fund that would provide equal to or better medical insurance with a zero percent rate increase from 2022-2023 so if

069the if the district remains with verizon the rate increase would be about seven and a half percent the savings with going with the state health insurance fund would be an estimated 140 000 mr pepe shared his prior experiences with changing insurance carriers and the committee discussed pros and cons we were in favor of having the administration investigate the potential impact on our staff in consideration of a potential recommendation for a change to the new program student transportation mr pepe informed us that the administration was considering the options of renewing with student transportation of america or going out to bid for student transportation for the 22-23 school year we discussed the risks and benefits associated with going out to bid and asked mr pepe to collaborate with the high school business administrator to investigate the likelihood

070of getting other bus other bus companies to bid on the watch on borough routes we discussed the referendum the discuss the next steps including hiring an architect and the structure schedule and composition of the ad hoc committee uh we were in favor of accepting the drg proposal that was mentioned earlier again just a menu of items that may come up over time committee discussed the frequency modality and agenda setting process for the ad hoc referendum committee we were in favor of holding in-person meetings and asked mr alexis to create a tentative meeting schedule both majority and minority opinions expressed during ad hoc referendum committee meetings will be reported to the operations committee for consideration the committee was also in favor of including all seven of the community members who expressed interest in serving on the

071committee and to keep the invitation to apply to join the committee open until the date of the first meeting which will be held at 6 pm on monday may 2nd the administration will pursue additional avenues to advertise the invitation to the entire committee the initial list of ad hoc referendum committee members includes four board member spots mr buccarelli mr ingrassia mrs harvey in one open spot for other board members to rotate in mr mr alexis and mr pepe for the administration and then representatives from the school community groups pto cpag left idea the valley view staff the bayberry staff and borough council and then the members of the community that replied we reviewed potential agenda items he explained that the administration was not sure if the phillips field lease and shared services proposals would be

072ready to present to the board and that these items were just here as placeholders and then an update was given to us progress is being made shared services agreement and lease agreement with the borough he explained that mr demato is in the process of reaching out to the little league to determine how they would be able to help with certain maintenance projects that would be the responsibility of the borough under the proposed lease agreement thank you adam uh adam can you give the curriculum committee meeting i'd love to um so we discussed rti direct which is an online software relief service that standardizes our intervention process and makes data easily accessible similar to the 504 direct that we use currently we're using internal processes that are not as organized the committee was strongly in favor

073of adopting rti direct we discussed the enrichment program timeline timeline you'll notice the attachments from each of the principles in your packets showing highlighting accomplishments from this year including the coding and robotics clubs which were extremely popular extended learning opportunities in the classroom collaborative collaboration between the soar teacher and the general classroom teachers and consultation with other districts as part of the research process you also see plans for the next two years as well special services committee was referred to today the community events and announcements which contain information about the autism except in spirit week during the first week after spring break which should just happen end of year activities and promotion ceremonies the updates including the planning of a first grade musical performance and the combination of classes for the third grade recorder concert

074the kindergarten play again was a huge success i as a parent was blown away by all of the students they did an amazing job sitting there perfectly still when it wasn't their turn they stood up in unison when it was their turn they all knew their lines they memorized six songs i think it was it was incredible so big shout out and thank you to mrs miller and all the teachers that helped prepare them for it and then five serve stem enrichment update in lieu of our may 5th curriculum meeting we're going to actually attend an open house as a group and new business the committee discussed the eighth grade end of year party which is scheduled and coordinated by the pto's 8th grade parent committee thank you adam since joe's not here i'll give

075the policy committee update we did have a discussion on hybrid board meetings the committee discussed the regulations regarding hybrid meetings and the pros and cons of permitting remote public comment uh the the committee decided to research a wider range of districts in the area and follow up on the technology specifications identified in the existing by-law regarding remote meetings the committee will revisit these topics at its next scheduled meeting on may 9th and then on the agenda um it's on for second reading uh policy 24-22 comprehensive health and phys ed and we just wanted to make a note from the policy committee that uh parents do have a right to opt out of any part of the curriculum and there was no new business um okay we're gonna move on to a board liaison reports kevin

076can you give us a legislative liaison report i do not have any updates for uh this meeting thanks okay jen is there anything for the somerset county ed services commission yes uh the date is escaping me but we met about two weeks ago uh and the ed services commission has secured a school bus that they are currently in the process of getting ready to ship to a school in ghana the students of the ed services commission have removed the seats and everything from inside the bus and are in the process of making shelves so that the bus can be filled with books uh and other helpful items and there is going to be something organized about donations of books and i will follow up about that thank you jen amber is there anything from the

077somerset county school boards association there is not their next meeting is may 12. okay um and for the new jersey school boards association i just wanted to remind board members of some upcoming nj sba events there's the somerset county sba hybrid meeting celebrations it's on thursday may 12th from six to nine at somerset county bow tech high school there's also a legislative and regulatory update webinar on may 4th at 11 am they have an equity conference um 2022 on friday may 20th at 10 a.m in 2018 njsba created the equity council to examine the issues of educational equity and share research and best practices with the njsba membership the council has since worked to create reports and updates which support the needs of new jersey districts a special presentation about the roles and responsibilities boards

078of education play and diversity equity and inclusion will be presented there's also a wind down empowerment series which is wednesday may 25th at 7 p.m inspired by the well-attended workshop um wine down programs these virtual evening sessions will feature njsba staff who will host live breakout rooms discussing an array of subjects give members an opportunity to ask questions and have meaningful conversations with their peers from throughout the state finally i just wanted to give everyone another reminder that we will be having our annual board goal setting occur during our june 23rd board meeting in which we will have our board retreat which is open to the public please start thinking about what measurable goals you're interested in the board creating i know i said this at the last meeting but i'm just going to keep

079reminding everyone i will work with mr alexis to put this topic under board business for discussion during our may 12th meeting which is coming up and june 9th board meetings and send all uh suggestions from everyone to glen thornton our new jersey school board rep since she is the moderator of our board retreat please be prepared with suggestions for those discussions okay for community engagement um i don't see many people here from the parent group so if there's anyone there from the pto web or cpag to make an update please now is your time okay and then we'll move on to action items anthony can you please move the administrative items make motion to move administrative items a1 approved minutes of previous meeting day two accept school security drill report a3 a firm superintendent's hip

080report a4 a firm superintendent said report a5 approved summer 2022 before and after care program and tuition rate a6 approved placement for special education out of district extended school year program summer 2022 a7 approved state of new jersey department of education special education student transportation contract is there a second second any discussion just to the extent that if we want to choose to uh vote yes on everything but one item that we can abstain on that one item as we take a roll call okay um yes uh roll call please mr beckerelli yes mr ingrassia i'm voting yes on a1 a2 a3 the first hib report abstaining a4 yes a5 yes and a6 yes i'm sorry are you you abstain from a three is that correct yes you are voting yes on a one two

081four five six and seven and seven yes thank you thank you miss uh mr kraft yes mr mcdonald yes mrs murad yes mrs edbani yes mrs scharf yes mrs harvey yes okay all motions pass hey kevin can you please move personnel items uh yes i move personnel items uh b1 appoint science teacher valley view school b2 a point clinical intern b3 appoint volunteer assistant baseball coach before approved unpaid leaves of absence b5 approved medical leave retroactively and b6 approved salary adjustment for substitute teachers is there a second second any discussion roll call please mr buccarelli yes mr ingrassia yes mr kraft yes mr mcdonald yes mrs murad yes miss edvani yes mrs scharf yes this is harvey yes motion's passed uh rich can you please move operation items sure move item c1 approve payment of

082bill c2 approved transfer of funds c3 accept financial reports c4 uh recent acceptance of donations it was replaced c5 accept donations and grants from the watch on pto for valley view and daybury schools c6 accept youth services grant c7 authorized submission and accept grant for american rescue plan homeless children and youth c8 approved disposal of surplus surplus broken and were outdated property c9 approved pse g energy saver program corrected c10 approved contract with drg architect and c11 approved professional travel and related expenses is there a second second any discussion it's it's already been discussed um in relation to the drg architect proposal but just to uh say that uh the purpose of of approving that would be to to give some uh avenue for the early uh asking of questions and to uh have input

083as we uh move forward with preparing uh plans and the outreach to the community for the proposed new referendum i just wanted to thank the pto for all their hard work and their generosity um on their donations especially i'm sure all the kids are going to be super excited with everything that they're planning so i just wanted to thank them for that amen um is there another discussion roll call please mr beccarelli yes mr ingrassia yes mr kraft yes mr mcdonald yes mrs murad yes ms said bonnie yes mrs scharf yes mrs harvey yeah motion's best uh adam can you please move curriculum item sure like to move uh d1 approved bayberry field trips d2 approved value field trips is there a second second any discussion roll call please mr buccarelli yes mr ingrassia yes

084mr kraft yes mr mcdonald yes mrs murad yes ms edvani yes mrs scharf yes mrs harvey yes emotions fast amber can you please move policy items yes i move e1 approve policy for second reading and adoption is there a second second any discussion oh yes actually um i wanted to know if we could possibly do an opt-in option for uh the health and physical education part of this well this some of the parts that could be potentially controversial instead of an opt-out but an opt-in option for parents uh that could be considered and the other thing i wanted to talk about was i would like to request that during the summer when we are writing their curriculum that it is provided to parents in advance and that we remind parents and our and our community

085that if they have any questions or concerns they can come directly to the administration the principals the teachers and have those conversations with them so they are comfortable and that's it roll paul please mr buccarelli yes mr ingratia yes mr kraft yes mr mcdonald yes mrs murad yes miss edvani yes mrs scharf yes mrs harvey yes motion passes hey uh we don't have anything listed under board business is there any uh board business to discuss yes um mr buccarelli i apologize if my statement sounded accusatory it wasn't my intent it was in a way to shed light on a broken system i feel like communication is often lost um and it's misinterpreted not saying that you're doing it it could have been a comment that was made possibly after our discussion in a operations meeting

086that was possibly taken out of context by somebody else or anything and in consideration of tonight's conversations and many conversations that's happened throughout the year uh throughout this year i think to have a more efficient committee structure i would like to move that the board adopt a committee of the whole structure this is to ensure that everything is transparent not only to board members but also to residents of wajang we must ensure that no member feels disenfranchised or limited in order to find alignment in our board are you making a motion either a second a second uh if i could just ask a question so you want to propose right now that we vote on um going with a committee of a hall yes and that that would have a effective combine yes combining all

087the committees and when we have any discussion it's we're doing board business in front of the public essentially but all of us are informed at the same time and i feel like we only have two schools so it's easy to manage it's about communication and community engagement and it's a great way to further the engagement of our community which i think it's a critical component of just board governance is there any other discussion i have a question i mean just how would that work um if we currently have one meeting per month we have two or three i'm just wondering what's what does that entail i think it depends on how the administration and the president would reside on it right it's really a board decision i've heard i'm sorry adam i've heard a couple

088ways that it's done where we have a working session and then every single committee meets and it's in public um [Music] and then there's also you know just individual committee i mean or like yeah if we're going to meet for operations then every meeting would just be open to the public i think this is a really big issue uh that on the spur of the moment we're being asked to change uh decades of how the board has operated um with really no chance to think about it i suggest this would be a really great topic for our board retreat i'm in favor of evaluating discussing the structure and the pros and cons but i i'm not prepared to vote on that today i think that uh if we do discuss it i mean we have

089to vote there's a motion on the table but if prepared to vote in favor of it right right um if we do want to discuss it at the board retreat you know glenn thornton would be a great resource for us to get more information about it and to discuss it um and it would be good to find out probably to how many boards actually work as a word of a whole um as opposed to an individual committee structure so i don't know off the top of my head i know in the first year or two of going to the um school board association um trainings that we have they do they have discussed that in individual committees that some boards do it and and some were sold it just depends on what the board wants

090to do is there any other discussion hey roll call please mr buccarelli no mr ingratiate at this time i i would like to look into it further so my when i when i seconded i was um still unsure if we were voting to explore it or to make that uh change so at this time i am not in favor of making the change but i am certainly in favor and if we can get some information on it before the board retreat in preparation for it that would be for that but at this time i'm not prepared to vote yes on that mr sorry um mr pepe can i amend the motion or after the vote we're in the middle we have yeah now that we're in the vote now um mr and gracie can you

091just clarify are you abstaining or voting no no thank you mr kraft no mr mcdonald i'm also not opposed to it but uh at this point mrs marad yes i also want more information on it at this point no mrs scharf no mrs harvey no okay motion does not mess mr pepe i like to amend the motion um to explore the idea of possibly having a committee of the whole that would just be a new motion i'm not sure if there's a need for a vote on that i think that the um board can decide that it's going i think the board's already indicated it's yeah i think we're in favor of that i just wanted to make sure i could just send an email to gwen and just let her know that um we

092would like information on it and then i'll ask for it to be provided before the board retreat and then whatever she sends us i'll send out to everybody thank you i'd just like to ask dory that um when you do email gwen can you ask her if there are any boards that do a committee of the whole with the exception of hr and personnel because i'd imagine that there are going to be a lot of executive sessions and it might not be necessary to have the public you know waiting 45 minutes an hour and a half right yes during that time okay i will thank you thanks sir um okay any comments from the i have something else for board business oh okay i'm embarrassed about how dysfunctional this board is becoming in certain respects

093i'm the chairman of the operations committee and i find out for the first time tonight that a member didn't think he had enough information about the budget and so he abstains instead of calling instead of mentioning it at any of the meetings that we had in mr pepe i think uh you know can can can can tell you how much time was spent on this and i'm also you know very very uh surprised that mrs murad look you're running for office we know that the second time you've been running for office since you've been on the board so apparently you're not really satisfied with being on the board but you do like to cause a lot of controversy and that's fine it's your right to say what you want to say but when you use

094my name and when you use a phone conversation you have with me to imply that i then told somebody in the public something which is completely false you made up some bizarre conspiracy you did you did you made it up you didn't say it in exactly those words but i don't understand the connection and you do know exactly what you were doing don't pretend that you don't know what you're doing because there's no connection between the two things you said except to imply and i'm talking that i told somebody about our conversation and had them come up and repeat something in public that is a fantasy of yours that never happened i don't know why you would say that except for the fact that you're running for office what i'm embarrassed about is we had

095this argument in front of these kids that are doing such a great job and that we're trying to help and the guy comes up and he gives a report and the girl comes up and she gives a report after all of that why act like that create this controversy that is completely and utterly made up by you that has nothing to do with the running of the school and imply directly imply that it was because you had a conversation with me then i just went and talked to somebody and said hey you better get up and say something about this in public that's bizarre amber that's bizarre and it's an it's a sign of the dysfunction it is dysfunctional i 100 agree and that is why i made that motion i am not making it

096up and in good faith there's plenty of things that i can go back and reference to and i will not because not not regarding you not regarding you not regarding you because this is what we've done throughout this entire year i didn't make it up every every meeting somebody has to be accused of something don't they well this meeting you accused me of something and i apologize so just like you accuse the administration of gaslight and i apologize to you for that the way it came out i did and i said it could have been taken out of context perhaps when you were relaying i just said that right now when you were relaying it my comments in an operations meeting that is what i said so it could have been you i don't know

097who it was because i don't talk to anybody operations meetings aren't open to the public they aren't and that's my question the only person i spoke to about it was you and you don't think anybody else in the world could have the thought that you had then accuse the board then if operations or if they're not struggling how was a public member of the public informed this is why i think we should just have these meetings in public where everyone understands and nothing is taken out of context so then when individuals are blamed for anything or anything has come forth that everyone knows where it's coming from and it's clear and i think it has nothing to do with me running for any office it has nothing to do with any of that last year

098i multiple times i'm sorry if i get energetic i just wanted to say that you know we don't have control over what the public says it's freedom of speech and right and um yeah i i honestly i don't even remember what you're even talking about amber like i i don't even know what i mean it's just amazing to me that you keep bringing up stuff from like a year or so ago when when why wouldn't you if you felt so passionately about it and you've held on to this for such a long time why wouldn't you just address these things as they're happening so it's relevant to everyone else i mean because for this that happens a year ago i mean i don't even know what you're talking about honestly and that's fine i'm not

099going to repeat anything i already did i already said what the issue was and what came forth what i am saying is this is now it's becoming a pattern where every other time somebody that happens something that happens within our board that's supposed to happen in our community meetings if they're not public then eventually ends up in the community and it it really is harming our community and i don't want that i don't i don't think um committee meetings are considered the same as an executive session no one um just so you know i mean the only one where you know members of of the board any member of the board um isn't really allowed to share that information is really hr um so i'm not sure what you mean there's a pattern it's really

100unclear what you're talking about um i the only thing i would like i would like to move past that and that is the conversation we've had plenty of times i'd like to move past that and where i would like to go is where we are working together we're working with the administration and we are fluid and we are one and that is not right i'm in the majority because we all agree that things because we might be right i don't know it's my opinion right yes i'm on two committees we work through a lot of issues very smoothly with this administration i am thrilled with the job that mr alexis mrs fichner and this is kid are doing i think they have a tremendous handle on this on this school district and i feel so

101great about the direction we're going so i don't have any complaints i'm there firsthand we are the representatives for the community we're there expressing what we hear from the community what we think is best for the community that's what we're doing and i have to tell everyone here and anyone who might be watching later or at home or tomorrow i'm so confident in in this team's ability to i think they've already brought us excellence and they are always thinking about the future and ways to improve they are so open-minded about what we bring to them they are creative in their thinking this budget process is a bear i mean i don't know how more clear mr pepe could be about the constraints we're under and yet we balance a budget we didn't have to cut

102staff like we're doing great things here i i just i except for the fact when mr buccarelli gets accused of things other than that i see great work i i just think that you know it's easy to throw around the terms you know teamwork working together and from you know someone who i'm sure most of us don't even hear from so if questions need to be answered you know there's always a way to talk to chairs of committees other board members and you know i have to say for the two board members you and mr agracia who are complaining about the process i don't really see either one of you engaging in the process so how can how can the process not work if you don't call other board members if you don't have it's

103called doing the work i i'm sorry to tell you that that's what it is to be a board member and you have to make phone calls to other board members you have to talk to chairs of committees we do that we do that amongst us i just want to clear it up because i don't know if either one of you have noticed this but we have a small administrative staff and they really can't spend a lot of time on the phone talking to everyone i mean i i as the president try not even to call mr alexis i wait until committee meetings to try and bring up things because they need to do their jobs for the kids and that's what we're all supposed to be here for but if you don't if you as

104a board member don't take the time to engage with your fellow board members whether you like them or not whether you like them or not it's called being professional and asking those questions and being engaged in your committee meetings then that's on you and that is your role as a board member to do it that way so to say that a system is broken and you haven't even engaged in the system it's just it's just crazy to me i've been on the board that's it i know and you haven't engaged for two years amber you have run for other offices for two years and you have not truly engaged in this board of education exactly my point what i'm saying is amber if you want to try and do teamwork you need to actually engage

105in this harvey when i said last year during our board retreat if we can revisit this idea and i've asked mr kraft as well i still have not heard an answer or yes or no regarding putting any information on our website that will be supplemental for students there is opportunity in committee meetings for new business there's always opportunities for you to bring things up over and over again there's those opportunities and you have to do the work there's only half personal work tonight i did i did the other thing for my other thing because you obviously are very confused after even being here for two years clearly what it is to be a board member now even if you bring up an idea how it works please just listen because i think listening might help

106you go on even if you bring up an idea in a committee or in an email or anywhere it doesn't mean that the rest of the board is going to agree with you it's happened to all of us so so you can try to be persistent which is great but it doesn't always mean that that's what you're going to get and we have to be adults about it we have so many things to work on you don't have and we have to make we have to make sure that we go with the majority it's not just one person here who makes a decision we all have a vote right and we're and you're we're a committee of nine and you're right but when any information is sent out at least send out an answer back

107and say look this is not something that we felt that was necessary at this time that hasn't happened there's only one person who's answered that's a chair currently all my answers any questions i've ever had and that's mr mcdonald and he's give and honestly i thank you for the amount of information you sent back because so amber whenever there's an issue like that and i put this in emails every january if you are having a hard time getting in touch with the chair of a committee or you're not getting an answer guess what who you can speak to is the board president and i haven't heard much from you i call you busy you as well mr gracia if you're having a hard time getting in touch with the chair of a committee please let

108me know because i will make sure to get that chairperson either on the phone and either find out the answer for you or i will make sure that they get in touch with you again this is part of the process that you have refused to engage in mrs murad i have not refused to engage in it yes you have so to sit here after almost like what a year and a half or so to say that the only one who's engaged with you is is kevin i mean the fact that you haven't engaged with the president of the board as to which committee committee chairs you haven't gotten answers let's be very clear and stop lying you have never discussed with me mrs murad that you have had a problem getting in contact with any

109chair of any committee so please don't sit there and lie and don't change the conversation okay you're talking about teamwork i'm telling you you need to engage and you need to follow your role as a board member that means talking to your fellow board members that means talking to chairs of committees if you cannot get in touch with the chair of committee i know that if there's a time where you want to contact me and i'm maybe doing something personal guess who i talk to the vice president and i say jen can you please take care of this because i don't have time to do it right now i always make sure that everybody gets a response so if you're having that problem it is sad that you have waited this long to say something

110but for you to accuse board members up here of not working as a team it is just you know i just don't understand all the grandstanding that's happening all the time i really don't understand mrs harvey i addressed this to you in january and in january after that conversation i was censored so you please tell me you accused the administration of gaslighting mrs murad i know you want to erase history and rewrite it but that's exactly what happened i mean i don't i don't know why you still can't get past that and why are you doing it and then that's meeting with somebody else and then it's somebody else i mean you just sent an email that we need citizen concerned citizens of wachang to come up and actually talk i mean when it is

111what i sent out in into the operations committee now that you're changing the subjects because i guess you haven't won the last conversation which is okay what i sent out to the operations committee was that we had a mailer that was sent out to the community that pretty much and essentially tanked our referendum so it only seems responsible if we're doing all of this community engagement for the referendum to ask those people and give them an opportunity to come and speak with us so that they can let us know their concerns so let's hope that we don't have another mailer that goes out with misinformation amber so we want to engage with them i think it's irresponsible not to want to engage with our community don't you that spent their own money to pay for

112a mailer to go out to the community that tanked a referendum for us and you don't want to try to engage with them do you really that to me is the lack of community engagement right there do you really think it was just the mailing a hundred percent please and i spent a lot of money and it was deliberate and i'm not going to i think it is just very irresponsible of this board to not want to reach out to those people and that is an opening they have a lot to say if they would like to meet with us they can they can email the referendum email address they can email mr alexis any of us and they can set up a meeting we really want to know what it is so either we

113can educate properly maybe we didn't communicate as well who knows and we're doing a better job right which is why that was an open invitation for them to come to us that's why we want to understand what our community had issues with that then caused them to send out a mailer that they paid for with their own money to stop a school board referendum that's what we want to know so i think that's the responsible thing to do is to engage with them do you have any other questions i do know i have a couple comments uh i would just like to say that what i see is the recurring issue here is that you know amber makes a comment and uh rich overreacts to it uh rich bookarelli that is uh now for the

114second time uh if anyone was acting inappropriately in front of the presenters here today i think it was rich also in public all i'll say is it's a two-way street you know if you uh took such issue with amber's comments just in my comments you uh accused me of um making uh my uh statement strictly uh to make a point about the committee rather than reflecting on really what's gone on on the operations committee pick up the phone and call me this did you pick up the phone and call me i'm looking for accurate information in a timely fashion pick up the phone and call me i all of our committee meetings it's very clear who has the the handle on all of the information that we asked and it's rich pepe what we thought

115so that's why i wanted to want to change so you want to talk directly to the administration like former board members used to do a lot you can interrupt me as much as you'd like i've let everyone speak here without interrupting but you accused me of that you further went on to accuse me of not working when i'm pretty sure i've put about as much work or more that you have in this committee uh since the beginning of the year and so those are two examples just in this meeting so for you to get so upset about a comment that may or may not have even been directed at you in some partial way it was you were part of the story but then uh you know you inflated that to now have this uh

116this argument i didn't and you accused me of those two things when i just was making a comment to explain in wanting to be uh in harmony to explain why i felt that upon reflection i had i felt it was right for me to abstain that time yeah so that's your that's what you just did to me and you didn't see me shouting about it right so let's just did i let's just use a two-way street listen anthony let's be real about this okay a former board member who happens to be your wife goes on facebook implies that i'm a racist implies that i'm a misogynist and then calls me an angry old man so talk to me about interrupting you does my wife go on social media and call you names anthony mr polite

117who oh god forbid you interrupt somebody when you're defending your name so you really don't want to work with the board you really have a different agenda not true you have a different agenda there's grievances there are there's grievances there's personal political agendas none of it has to do with getting stuff done for the kids you could have picked up the phone if you had it all you really wanted to make as a point today and all you really wanted to make is a point using my name and implying that i said something to somebody else which never happened which you totally made up as a send you the information right it's on record i'll i'll record it i'll email it to you you'll recall and like i said me telling not you telling somebody

118but that information why did my name come up because you're the only person i had a conversation with so you're still saying that it had to be you had to go into a car you're saying it had to be me no i am not saying it had to be you i am i don't even know what you're talking about so that would be bad you don't even talk to the public either the way anybody else talk to anybody in this county exactly my point i don't either okay is there any other board business yes there is just i just wanted to make that point that uh because adam you also you know um made a comment that we had the opportunity at the last board meeting so it's kind of if the comments are made

119in public then it's you know there's an accusation that there's a point trying to be made so then when i wait for the next scheduled committee meeting and you know rich isn't there again the everyone that gets on says that they have i believe there was two but that you switched but maybe that was a you know it could be wrong but i'm saying that there's only been a few meetings in between when the basically the first rough draft of the of the budget came out and yes i wish i wanted it to put some money towards the reserve to the capital reserve and we're not putting a dime of taxpayer money towards our capital reserve in this budget so yes i would be inclined to vote no but i also wanted to express that

120in this uh the last public meeting i thought we had another committee needing to take another look at things and to talk about things now that they were being more fully developed counting in the state aid and things like that instead we had uh the agenda was very full and we had people with hard stops that were cutting the meeting at a fairly short level and so that was uh that was why i was sharing that with you is that i i felt like upon further reflection i didn't want to vote yes for this budget so it shouldn't be taken personally or it shouldn't be taken uh to try to uh make a point that you know that i'm somehow being disingenuous but mister mr graffia even if the chair but i just want to

121clarify what's going on in our committees and our structure even if the chair of the committee is not able to attend a committee meeting there is always another member of the committee asked to run that committee so you you don't have to wait for the chair of the committee to ask your questions you can ask your questions with any other board member that's in the committee not if people have hard stops and to end the meeting fairly quickly and there's other agendas you can always request for addition i mean i've done it myself in curriculum we have usually three hour or more meetings in curriculum and sometimes people have to get off the meeting and i get that so if we don't finish our business i have requested through the chairs of those committees for

122us to have an additional meeting if that's the case that's what you can do to pursue that i mean it just astounds me that it's just like you you know you're waiting to so we're voting on something right and and you're using the excuse of well you didn't have time to ask a question in a committee but you didn't you didn't alert anyone to that that's what i'm i'm a little concerned about you didn't alert anyone to that and and if there was time that was running out why didn't you say oh well i still have questions right i don't need to be answered can there be another meeting and i'm not in all your meetings i'm not so i don't know what happens or not but that's an avenue you can you can ask

123for i mean it's just but to wait until the night of a vote i mean that's that's what i think is is important for all the board members to understand too is that you know we do work a lot through the committee structure right so if you have questions about things you can email those questions you can call other board members from the committee if you can't get in touch with the chair you can contact me there's many opportunities for people to talk to each other i mean i haven't had any issues even being you know not being a board president being able to reach out to committee chairs myself or send an email right and and i've seen that like you you know i've seen you send emails to the whole committee or to

124the whole board so i don't understand why now we wait until a vote on our budget to then turn around and say well i didn't have an opportunity to ask any questions every board member up here has every opportunity to ask questions prior to what's on an agenda can i just say i asked many questions but i didn't have all the answers that i felt comfortable moving forward with a vote but then that's different that's different if you if you don't feel comfortable you can vote no you can disagree but we have to go with what the majority of a committee wants and then they recommend that to a full board and then the full board votes on it i mean i i just don't understand like this is something that we've talked about and

125i know that that you're like newer but this is something that we've talked about a lot at board meetings where like the structure because it keeps getting questioned right and and i try to send out as i don't want to bombard everybody with a billion emails but i try to explain that as much as i can either here or if you call me which i don't hear much from you either but i mean or if you send me an email with a question about it i mean i'm here to try to help as much as i can too so i just don't understand why you know we're really not supposed the agenda is sent out to board members the friday before our board meetings are on thursday so you get the board packet on friday

126afternoon and you see all the things that are on it if you have questions about anything and any on any item that's in here to wait until the board meeting because you don't know how you know you're not satisfied with answers you don't know how to vote it is all and i'm sure gwen thornton would tell all of you this too it's your responsibility as a board member to reach out to the chairs of the committee myself you know and we're we're here to help you there has been some times where i don't know the answer and then i get mr alexis involved in it so that he can help because i want to make sure everybody has the a clear answer as to whatever their question is kevin does the same thing we often

127get emails from kevin saying this is what's being asked i just want to make sure that the information that i'm giving is correct i mean this is how we all have to function together right but but you need to engage in that process so when you get the board packet on friday if you're still feeling that you have unanswered questions no one is going to be able to read your mind no one is going to know that so it is up to you as the board member to reach out to those other board members and the chairs of those committees to try and help clarify as much so that you feel comfortable and you know how to vote and whether you vote yes whether you vote no it's up to you i hear a lot

128of abstaining recently and i think abstaining is being used in replace of a no vote it's okay to vote no if you want to vote no i mean we all just voted no on the other thing so that this is what you know abstaining you're you're supposed to really abstain because there's a conflict or you didn't get enough information right but if you haven't done and put the time in to try and obtain that information then you're really not doing your part as a board member which is what you have been elected to do by this community so you have to put the time in it takes time trust me i know it does but you have to reach out to those people again whether you like them or not you're here to represent the

129community you need to get the information you need you might not agree with all of it but then you have every right to vote no right you have every right to vote no i hope this clears some some things up if you still have questions you can call me you can email me whatever you're comfortable with and i will do my best to get as much information to you as i can and if i can't i direct you to the person that can are there any other questions about this not this but there's a comment i emailed mr pepe and then forwarded you that email as well this is a reference to the fcc emergency connectivity fund the 7.7 teen billion program that will help schools and libraries i emailed it to you i don't

130know if it was discussed in operations um in that meeting but if if it was bought up or anything um but the deadline is may 13th for that even though it was today with the person that had emailed it to me i have no idea amber if you want something discussed in a committee right but you can't be vague about things if you want something on an agenda in a committee i am not here to read any of your minds i need you to tell me dory i would like this to be put on a committee agenda and if you don't want to reach out to the chair which i would think you would put the chair of the committee on that email too and say i would like this to be discussed in this

131committee then that's how you would do it but if you don't directly say that how am i supposed to know what you want me to do i don't know you see a billion dollar fund you would think that next time i will but anyways it is an option that's available at this time um just wanted to let you guys know there's a couple of other grants that are out there um during webinars that i've seen and i will forward those to you as well is there any other board business to discuss okay so we're going to keep this open uh to comments from the public please remember to state your name and address before speaking if there's any comments please come on up and make your comments okay seeing none can i have a motion

132to adjourn so is there a second second any discussion all in favor say aye aye any opposed thank you for joining us this evening this meeting is adjourned you