001welcome 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 in which formal action may be taken the public will have an opportunity to be heard as shown on the agenda at points in the meeting provided for the public to address the board members of the public also have been given the option to submit public comments to the board secretary via email or written letter no later than 24 hours in advance of the meeting individuals submitting comments via email or written letter must
002state their names and addresses recording or photographing other than for private personal use requires the consent of parents guardians whose children may be included in the image can we have a roll call please mr barbella here mr buccarelli here mrs harvey here mr ingrassia here mr kraft here mr mcdonald here mrs murad miss edvani here mrs scharf here ate present okay if it's okay with all of the board members i i wanted to go a little out of order and have the uh principal reports first since the students are here if that's okay with everyone okay so uh maybe we can have the bayberry elementary one first good evening everyone my name is pierce winston i'm the valley view student council co-vice president i'm happy to present the bayberry principal report for tonight's meeting bayberry
003is celebrating black history month by learning about the accomplishments and contributions of african americans throughout history our fourth graders have been announcing interesting facts during our morning announcements and students have been exploring and appreciating black history through biographies literature multimedia and reflective writing bombs on february 22nd we also had a schoolwide virtual assembly called freedom stewards i represented tahira shared stories of african-american history through dramatic storytelling and songs we celebrated valentine's day with a week of spirit activities and class parodies where students enjoyed crafts games and snacks we also participated in the local valentines full vets program donating hundreds of valentines to those in aid with the help of staff students and their families our third grade literally act club has raised over three hundred dollars to purchase telecycle collection boxes the telecycle boxes will
004be used to collect plastic bottle caps which will later be made into a bench for beyblade thank you to all that donated and remember to send in your plastic bottle caps to support this recycling project students in grade k through four have completed the mid-year i-ready diagnostic in reading and math teachers have begun analyzing their data having data chats with students about their growth and future goals our already parent reports will be shared early next week on genesis we are excited to announce our science fair is open to all students grade second through eighth more detailed information and the proposal forms were sent home via email proposals are due tomorrow and the science fair will be held on april 7th at 7 pm we hope to see you then thank you have a good night
005thank you [Applause] and then next we'll have the valley view middle school principals report good evening everyone my name is emily houck and i'm valley view student council's co-vice president i'm happy to present the valley view principles report for the month of february valley view is celebrating black history month during the month of february our school has been highlighting various black individuals teachers are infusing discussions and activities that highlight the lives and contributions of multiple men and women of color into their lessons for example in social studies and french classes students in grades 6 through 8 examine contributions and lasting impact of the harlem renaissance and the netrajude movement in the united states and in europe students explored music art literature and dance in 8th grade art classes students applied their knowledge of shading and
006value while painting grayscale portraits of influential african americans this project was inspired by the work of contemporary artist amy sherrold who uses gray skin tones to redefine concepts of race and visual art in 2018 cheryl was selected to paint a portrait of former first lady michelle obama meaningful quotes from notable african americans are also being shared daily over the announcements valley view held their winter music concert on february 2nd at watching hills regional high school our band and chorus students performed beautifully it was a joy to attend a link of the recording of the event can be found on the valley view website the second marking period ended on wednesday february 2nd report cards were made live on the genesis parent portal on wednesday february 9th valley view students created valentines for vets the valentines
007were picked up on february 11th by veteran and military representative for congressman malinowski's office and chaired with operation jersey cares operation shoebox and or the local va at lyons medical center teachers began administration of the i-ready diagnostic assessment on january 1st and concluded on february 11th i ready diagnostic reports will be made available on the genesis parent portal early next week our coding and robotics students participated in the team's competition on saturday february 12th teams tests of engineering aptitude mathematics and science is a one-day national competition that gives high school and middle school students an opportunity to discover engineering and apply their knowledge students work together to solve real world pro engineering problems and applying their math and science skills our stem students participated virtually in the science bowl on feb friday february 18th launched
008in 1991 the national science bowl is a highly competitive science education and academic event among teams of high school and middle school students who compete in a fast-paced verbal forum to solve technical problems and answer questions in all branches of science and math each team is composed of four students one alternate student and a coach this event was run by the u.s department of energy valley view suit the valley view coding and robotics club failed it held its first annual family stem night on wednesday february 23rd in recognition of national engineers week family visited and engaged in activities at multiple stem stations run by valley view students and staff thank you and have a good night you um and if it's okay with the board as well um i just wanted to jump to if
009any of the parent groups wanted to give an update now before we're probably going to go into an executive session so if that's okay with the rest of the board so if any parent groups want to get up you can come on up good evening everyone since our last report we're happy to announce that our membership voted to approve an additional thirty six thousand two hundred dollars of enrichment item events for valley view and bayberry students for the 2021-2022 school year valley view requested an author visit for four thousand five hundred dollars field day for four thousand dollars field trips for a total of nine thousand six hundred dollars community service club for one thousand dollars and the harlem wizard event for five thousand one hundred dollars bay berry requested for a field day six
010thousand dollars chess club nine hundred dollars and the harlem wizard event for five thousand one hundred currently the pto is working on various events which include our community spring fashion show with 688 boutique at wine and water on saturday april 9th from 1 to 4 p.m we have spirit wear ongoing yearbooks for bayberry are on sale the school store birthday signs amazon smiles lunch volunteers are needed library volunteers for um for bayberry are needed and we want to thank all of our parent volunteers all the time that you dedicate to our children we're always looking for volunteers please visit our website at www www.watchonpto.com our next meeting will be held on tuesday march 15th at 7 30 pm via zoom thank you thank you i don't know if there are any other parent groups here
011web or cpag um so can i have a motion to go into executive session so moved is there a second second any discussion all in favor say aye aye aye any oppose okay mr pepe can you please read the reason for us going into executive session yes uh mrs harvey can you just i missed him seconded the motion just for the record thank you whereas the 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 closed session to discuss a matter rendered confidential by federal or state law student matters and pending anticipated litigation or contract negotiations and or matters of attorney-client privilege be it further resolved the minutes of this closed session will
012be 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 i believe we're going to be moving into the media center um so if all board members could just head up there we it we're anticipating maybe about an hour give or take um just so everyone knows okay okay can we uh can we have a motion to come back out of executive session so moved a second second any discussion in favor say aye any oppose um we're gonna move on to board member comments are there any comments from board members [Music] okay i have some comments actually um in regards to the return to the in-person board meeting format a suggestion was made by a board member to hold our
013meetings the same way they were conducted before the pandemic as many know we've returned i'm sorry we turned to zoom meetings as a temporary solution during the height of the pandemic when we could not meet in person during these past almost two years but even more recently we had several challenges with audio issues such as hard to hear or low audio and audio feedback many board members complained that it was difficult to hear each other causing members to speak over one another and more importantly the comments and of concerned citizens during the public speech speaking portions were hard to hear i would like to personally thank rich pepe and rit department for trying to make this work the public health emergency that granted us the ability to hold zoom meetings by the state expired in
014january of this year given these reasons uh and most important our ask of last year that our students teachers and staff return to an in-person format we felt that it was appropriate and safe to return to an in-person format how could we as board members ask our students and teachers and staff to do something if we weren't willing to do it ourselves since we don't offer hybrid learning the majority of the board supported these reasons and wanted this to go into effect at our february meeting moving forward our public board meetings will occur in person with the meeting being recorded and posted shortly after on the district website the recording allows the community to review the meeting if they cannot physically attend it the data shows that from august 2021 to january 2022 anywhere from
015140 to 235 views were made of the recordings of the board meetings after the meeting had taken place this shows us that we are reaching more community members by posting the recording of our meetings so they can view it at their own convenience community members will still have the opportunity to email a comment to the business administrator 24 hours before the meetings if they cannot participate physically but want their comment read during the meeting the superintendent notified the community of this change much sooner than we were obligated to allowing everyone to make arrangements our board attorney informed us that many boards of education and municipalities are returning to in-person meetings i will say that after two years of being in a zoom format i am hoping more community members especially parents start to participate in
016our board meetings it has been interesting to see that more often than not the amount of teachers that are attending the meetings exceeded the number of parents and community members our board not only welcomes but wants community input as we continue to strengthen our schools speaking of input a statement was made at a previous board meeting and then quoted in the echo sentinel newspaper for the board to get referendum input from the pto an executive board member stated they were caught off guard that there were no updates to the cafeterias in the last referendum i found this comment a surprise that they were curious since the referendum has been discussed publicly for the last 18 months in these meetings and at least one or more executive board members of the pto has attended those meetings
017i wanted to thank the pto for their comment and believe the operations committee is getting information on the cafeteria upgrades to be reviewed i thought this was a great suggestion and wished it had been brought up at our previous meetings and the numerous forums and community outreach events we did in preparation for the referendum to be presented to the taxpayers for a vote i support getting more information on potential upgrades to our cafeterias the pto should feel free to continue to engage with the board of education on these matters for the school community at large there has always been an opportunity to engage with the board at our meetings some options were and continue to be through the referendum email that is still active on our website and when the superintendent and principals attend most
018of the pto meetings to provide updates that are meant to engage the pto membership finally i want to address a good amount of misinformation rumors and gossip spreading throughout our community i wanted to take the time to clarify a couple of items by clarifying these items i want to assure the community that this has not derailed our board from continuing to work on student achievement and our goals the topic of crt being taught in our schools still seems to be a concern for some last year the curriculum committee and the administration explained that crt is not and will not be taught in our k-8 school district again crt is not being taught in our school district in conjunction some community members feel that students are being taught or told to be ashamed of themselves because
019of their race this board of education administration and staff do not condone the teaching of such things in our schools if at any time a parent has evidence of such things being said or taught in our school district it is your right to bring those concerns to your child's teacher the staff and administration will deal with individual situations accordingly in addition the board of education recently approved a donation from the wachong idea community group of children's books that deal with subjects of diversity and inclusion i want to remind the community that the members of the wachong idea group are fellow parents in this district and our neighbors not outside people that don't have a vested interest in our community the administration and the staff were part of selecting the books offered for donation remember the
020same people who do not condone crt being taught in our schools or allowing anyone to make students feel ashamed about their race were part of selecting the books those books are not a part of the curriculum but are extra resources for classrooms and the school libraries the rumor is that these books are being used to make some children ashamed of their race this is untrue the wachong idea did not propose books of that nature the administration and teachers did not select books of that nature the board of education did not approve books of that nature this district is about uplifting and educating students of all races and ethnicities not tearing them down the list of books was and still is available as an attachment on our website under the january 27th 2022 meeting labeled attachment
0219 watch on idea book donation list for all to review the district is not working in secret on these items and has made the list available for all to see this board and the administration is about transparency another concern seems to be that our district uses the term scholars friends parents guardians etc to address students and their families our administration and staff are often given professional development and understanding how to become more inclusive with the words they use this language has been used for many years so this isn't anything new regardless of any new national initiatives some training involves the best ways to address a class or an entire student body some of these terms are being used in wachong and around the state of new jersey to include all students and family structures you
022could have a student raised by their grandparent or aunt and use more inclusive terms to help that student feel a part of a school community again it is the vision of the district to include and accept each other's differences not to exclude students and staff our vision statement reads the wachong borough school district is committed to inspiring learners to explore inquire and collaborate on their joyful journey towards discovery independent thinking and creative problem solving our culture of acceptance and inclusion provides the foundation for learning and social and emotional growth through reflection and ethical decision making we continue to learn and grow embrace differences and prepare for an increasingly complex ever-changing world the district's 2122 third goal is to ensure a culturally vibrant inclusive school community that values diversity equity and empathy these three words do
023not apply to just one category of student but rather all students regardless of race religion gender or identity the wachong hills regional high schools regionalization study is another topic that seems to be coming up again this was already stated at a previous board meeting last year but i want to inform the community again that none of the sending districts participated in the study it is not just wachong who didn't participate but again none of the sending districts participated if our community doesn't think any of us are telling the truth on this matter they could call up each sending district's board of education and ask them directly you can also refer to a recent article in the tap into we received an update from the wachong hills regional high school today i forwarded that email to
024the rest of the board and the administration the wachong hills regional high school district has filed their leap application with the new jersey department of community affairs for grant funding in support of the regionalization feasibility study this is the study which they have been discussing for more than a year and has been discussed at our wachong board meetings too the board the broad parameters of the application include proposing a study to investigate the feasibility of combining the lead agency together with the existing k-8 sending districts into a single pre-k to 12 school district the high school will also review other possible consolidation combinations within the existing groups and as well as also specific areas of shared services the study will review five alternative scenarios number one status quo no changes to the current educational configuration
025number two the high school and all sending districts form a pre-k to 12 all-purpose regional school district number three the high school warren longhill and wachong form a pre-k to 12 all-purpose regional and greenbrook township enters into a new sending slash receiving agreement with the new pre-k to 12 regional for grades nine to twelve number four a combination of the high school and all the sending districts form a pre-k to 12 all-purpose regional with the remaining districts entering into a new sending slash receiving agreement with the new pre-k to 12 regional for grades nine to twelve and five status quo with significant shared services between districts the objectives of the study are to explore the following areas educational impacts of new configuration racial impact of new configuration staffing impacts of new configuration financial impact of
026new configuration impact on school buildings and facilities impact on governance and legal considerations they will keep us posted as the application process progresses they expect to hear more in the next 60 days some of our community is also under a false impression that one item could distract this board from working on all other school district topics including student achievement i want to clarify that committee reports are provided at every meeting explaining what each committee is and continues to work on for the children in our school district if our committees weren't working on anything we wouldn't have items in our agendas to vote on yet agendas are filled with topics that continue to move our district forward this board is very capable of multitasking i want to assure the community that we remain diligent and focused
027on our working goals in explicitly addressing what this administration and board are doing for the higher achieving students we are prioritizing this topic our curriculum committee and administration will continue to report on and include information regularly to parents about what is offered for higher achieving students if you are concerned about your child's education the best way to get those accurate answers is by engaging with your child's teacher and administrators i have also heard an accusation that this board of education and the moderator of the meetings purposefully prevented a person or people that do not live in our community from speaking at board meetings by disconnecting them or blocking them that is absolutely not true this board has never stopped a person from speaking at our board meetings and i would question the motives behind making
028such an accusation in no way am i blaming any individual regarding the misinformation or rumors that seem to have taken root in our community unfortunately i'm sure most of what i'm saying will be taken out of context and twisted into something else that was not the intent of my words tonight or even what i actually said i have nothing to gain by lying about any of these topics i hope that the community understands that i am addressing these topics with the utmost respect in hopes of gaining more clarity the best place to engage in your child or children's education and get the correct answers for any of your questions or concerns is by contacting your child's teachers and administrators if your concern or question isn't answered then reach out to the superintendent and if it's
029still not handled to your satisfaction please reach out to the board of education we don't always get exactly what we want as parents but i'm sure you will find a team willing to work with you if you don't agree with the information provided that is different from not getting accurate information this board of education and administration does not know where some are getting their information and are not sure they are being provided accurate information back to those who are asking we can assure you that if our community engages with the school district directly you will receive the correct information following the chain of command and engaging with the board of education is best when it comes to the wachong schools i found that most of what is on social media rumors and gossip can be
030fake news inaccurate and misinterpreted information come to the source to get the correct information your voices and concerns are heard by this board of education and i want to assure all parents that your concerns and suggestions are brought into some of our committees for the board to work on one item i wanted to make sure i got more clarification on is that there seems to be a concern regarding fifth grade math maybe not being leveled for higher achievers i would like to suggest this be discussed in the curriculum committee and that the committee can then report back to the community in addition if any parent has this question about their child's math option in valley view you can contact your child's teacher for further clarification on what opportunities are available in the future we will
031do our best to clear up any misinformation brought to our attention thank you are there any other board member comments i have a brief commentary uh i know that historically i've not been among the most outspoken members of the board during our public sessions but i wanted to make a comment tonight about something that i think goes beyond just this board i thought a lot about how to say this i plan to give a deep reflection of my time growing up in this town and the reasons that i continue to choose to call watch on home but i think this comment goes far beyond the borders of watson at the outset i want to be clear that i'm not casting judgment on anyone who has said anything at any of our meetings i want this
032board to be a product of a community that thrives on our differences of opinion not one where we tear each other apart because of our differences i truly and firmly believe that everyone on this board wants what is best for our students and what is best for our town i also truly and firmly believe that each of our residents who has given their public comment also want what is best for our students and our town we're a small town and if we want our schools to be the best that they can be we have to come together and start acting as a community we don't have to agree on everything to be a community in fact we don't have to agree on anything but as a community we have to start giving each other the
033benefit of the doubt that we are all working towards the same goal and i would describe that goal to all you as a fiscally responsible but first-class school system i'm not asking you to agree how we get there we can disagree with one another without doubting each other in fact that is exactly how our country was built however we need to move beyond what the echo sentinels has termed our quote unquote schoolyard scraps if we can't start to agreeably disagree we're going to lose talent and we're going to end up with town leaders who are a product of bloodsport the loudest most argumentative and politically savvy will rise into leadership positions and our schools in our town will be all the worst for it i'm not asking anyone to stifle their opinions i'm asking you
034to come to our meetings and voice your opinions but do so in a way that acknowledges that we are all neighbors at the end of the day we're all in the same boat we're going to get much farther if we all work together i am very hopeful that the new ad hoc committee for the school bond proves to be a way forward for us all i thank you all for listening to me and i really do look forward to working with everybody thank you [Music] any other board member comments i guess i just would like to make a general commentary that that your comments are your comments personally and while you may have discussed some of the many topics that you brought out today with some other members of the board i just want to
035make it clear that this is you're not speaking for the whole board with that whole list of things that you discussed so i'm not trying to take individual issue i don't buy item but i i just would like to say that i i didn't have an opportunity to uh see even the list let alone the additional comments and so it's just something that i you're the president of the board and so i just want to make sure people understand that these are your comments it's not that we've uh as a board come up with a a statement that you're reading on behalf of the board that's that's my only yes those were my board member comments and just so you know we we don't need to provide each other with our board member comments prior
036to meetings yes i understand i just wanted to make it clear that you're not speaking for the entire board with those contents that you know it's not a joint statement thank you mr gracia are there any other board member comments i support your comments story thank you adam as do i um see that there's no other board member comments we're going to move to the superintendent's remarks thank you mrs harvey good evening everyone at the outset i just want to make sure everyone knows we will be operating on a delayed opening schedule tomorrow morning based on the weather forecast a message went out earlier this evening at 6 00 p.m i want to thank the pto for the generous donations you see on the agenda the support is greatly appreciated and it gives us the
037opportunity to provide experiences for our students that we would not otherwise be able to afford you'll see all those on the agenda under the operations section i know from receiving emails in support of a masked optional approach that the community is anxious to know about a decision regarding a masking policy that will be in place after governor murphy's executive order expires on march 7. we're pleased that the covet cases continue to decline across our area and the state the current plan is to make masks optional in school but please understand that any decision is contingent on the course of the pandemic if another surge occurs locally or statewide we would likely have to return to a mandatory mass policy i also have to point out that federal law currently requires masks on school buses so
038unless something changes all students will be required to continue wearing masks on the buses the more difficult issue for now is how to address the revised health guidance which we received late yesterday afternoon after an initial review it's pretty clear that making the mass optional and trying to follow all the state health department recommendations would be extremely challenging and impractical if not impossible we'll be working with our local health official next week to determine which recommendations to adopt as far as contact tracing and quarantine and we'll provide more information to our school community as soon as we can mrs kidd could not be here this evening so i will be here substitute for the presentation that mr pepe has just launched on the screen above i'm going to invite mrs fichner to join me at
039the podium all right thank you mr pepe for taking care of the uh the presentation up there if we go to the first slide we have our vision statement which we just heard from mrs harvey i want to emphasize a few things uh you'll see in that first sentence uh how much we value and uh emphasize inspiring our learners and learners is to be broadly interpreted for our students and adults in our community we place an emphasis on exploring inquiring and collaborating making those the key aspects of the journey toward discovery independent thinking and creative problem solving we believe deeply in a culture of acceptance and inclusion and that provides the foundation for learning and educational uh and emotional growth social emotional growth and through reflection and ethical decision making we not only continue to
040learn and grow but embrace differences and prepare our students our learners for an increasingly complex ever-changing world this presentation is going to be outlined as follows we're going to have an update on student learning and that's going to include our i-ready diagnostic results for the winter which took place in early february uh for some of you you'll recall in november we had our first update uh and we included our i ready diagnostic results from late september so you'll see a comparison between those uh results and the progress made and then we're going to give an update on the progress toward our district goals and you'll see i think it becomes readily apparent that the district goals arise directly from our vision statement and next we'll talk about steps for advancing um toward those district goals
041and so the next slide please okay so i'm going to turn it over to mrs fickner and she can go through this briefly and show you uh we're going to be mindful of your time so we have a presentation that probably has 45 slides so we're going to move through it as quickly as we can [Music] all right good evening everyone this is our school-wide reading data as you can see the bottom is our beginning of the year and then our mid-year diagnostic impressive to see the amount of growth in our in all areas but our green if you look at the on or above grade level we went from 50 percent to 71 and that's both bands of green when increase of 21 and then our yellow went from 40 to 24 which is
042a decrease from 16 and then our red which is our struggling learners from when a decrease 50 percent 10 to 5 also significant if you look at the above grade level went from 25 to 54 a 49 increase so that's the stripes all in all some really nice growth in reading okay all right and then this it's a little bit small but this is just our uh broken down by grade level we see similar patterns um just to point out some significant growth in the red or one to two grade levels below in grades one two and three we saw some really great movement there which is what we really want to see the teacher is working hard with those students and go ahead all right and here we have our math data very similar
043uh growth our green again going from 32 to 64 percent a nice 32 percent increase and the yellow 56 percent to 32 so we reduced that band by 24 and then the red going from 13 to 5 a reduction of eight percent so again some really encouraging growth in all of those areas and then this is by the grade bands um significant here would like to point out grade two their red zone went from twelve percent to four percent so reduced our struggling students by eight percent which um which is really impressive and grade three their read the students went from 19 to 2 so a 17 reduction in our most struggling learners we see a similar pattern here um with grades five through eight where we're looking for that green line to extend itself
044particularly the shaded green line which you see uh you know eleven percent difference there for uh the cumulative uh progress for grades five through eight um i also wanna just mention two things one uh the the reports the individual reports are going to be available in the genesis parent portal uh next week and you'll receive an email from your principal letting you know that's uh you know when it's when it's ready um and also uh this presentation will be placed on the uh the district website so you can look more closely at the numbers uh the next slide has the breakdown for the grade levels and we're looking for that uh similar pattern you know you see it's not always a straight line in terms of progress and sometimes there are areas where based on
045expectations uh for a particular grade level you may not see as much growth and those are items that we continue to look into the next slide is grades five through eight in math and again this is uh one where we see significant improvement in terms of the number of early on grade level and mid or above grade level performance results so you see the 50 of the of the students uh now in the green area based on the performance rising from the 42 percent and the next slide breaks it down by grade level again a pretty pretty consistent pattern the next slide just a couple of notes here one about the personalized learning approach and the idea of meeting students where they are which we've talked about before the teachers are using the data to
046design appropriate challenges for the students and it's not just about the struggling learners as we heard before ireti creates these individual paths for enrichment and practice to work on students skills based on the diagnostic performance so it's really a great way to use technology to personalize learning for the kids our sore teachers our gifted and talented teachers also use the results to assist teachers uh in the classroom and then next is just a quick note about the data the performance is measured against expectations that that already uses based on historical data that they have it's not necessarily you know aligned with the njsla but this is a skill based program that has a wealth of data based on years of experience and that's how they gauge the performance the mid-year data in february is measured
047against the progress toward i ready standardized expectations and compared with the performance as i said last fall in late september early october the fall results that were reported in november and remain on the website were measured against beginning of the year expectations next we're going to move into the district goals and we have um our first goal which is an academic goal focused on creative problem solving design thinking um through our enhanced stem and steam related opportunities along with looking at scheduling options to increase academic opportunities for students the second one deals with enhancing student wellness and social emotional learning with a focus on a growth mindset and we've talked about the growth mindset before it's an attitude uh that helps individuals look at their learning in a positive way by not worrying so much
048about what they are getting right or wrong but taking the risks to try things to explore to inquire to come up with creative uh solutions to problems and again not the fixed mindset the complete opposite of the fixed mindset which is um where you have people who believe that there was a fixed amount of intelligence and that you really can't go beyond that fixed amount we see it completely differently ensure a culturally vibrant inclusive school community that values diversity equity and empathy and then maintaining the focus on our financial needs of the district working on the referendum and the strategies for increasing our reserves so the first uh part i will take care of will be the design thinking and problem solving and the essential question is how are we advancing instruction towards this and
049we're looking at this in a few different areas overall it's it's about the teaching and learning process but where that takes place is not just limited to the classroom but after school clubs in our coding and robotics clubs uh field trips that we have planned for later in the year and even in professional learning and earlier in the year in november we had a presentation from our valley view stem teacher stem teachers who talked about the design thinking process and uh the beauty of this is that it really is aligned with our vision for learning and the teaching and learning process overall it's explained that not only do you have to exercise some capacity for empathy to understand your audience and understand what problem you were trying to um to solve and being able to
050define that through inquiry through sharp questions and then brainstorming leading to the building of a prototype and then testing out ideas and again that idea of inquiry and solving problems in a creative way and also having a growth mindset of trying things out they if they things do not work out it provides further data for people to look at the problem in a different way and you continue the process so the next slide moves into a couple of examples of what the students have been working on and it's done by grade level taking us through the process here the unit that grade 5 worked on recently was a coding project where they created these interactive digital cards they worked a couple of other goals into it also by making uh you know the project connected
051with promoting different cultural celebrations uh the kids might be doing these cards uh you know for lunar new year for eid for uh any holiday they chose or it might just be a card that they were interested and created their own theme [Music] in some cases they were just random acts of kindness focused on other students so they identified the interactive features defined the problem they came up with ideas brainstormed they've created a prototype using code.org's game lab and then tested out their their coding projects and conducted peer review sessions in sixth grade the students are working on solving uh problems in lego robotics again taking us through the same sort of process where they have an opportunity to create a robot that moves without wheels and there are certain standards and expectations that they
052are trying to meet they work together to solve these problems they build the mechanism the prototype and then they redesign it based on testing uh and come to you know the the final project grade seven uh last semester you heard about the um the project with hydroponics this is a similar sustainability focused uh project that focuses on water scarcity and how it's impacting the population of bangladesh and the challenges they face again taking them through the process of designing and building a multi-system water filtering device that can produce safe drinking water they research solutions they collaborate they sketch multiple solutions they test out the prototypes and come to a final project which they share in a group setting something else that took place recently a few weekends ago was a team competition the theme was
053entertainment and technology and this is through the coding and robotics club that is available to students this specific challenge was designing the it was to rethink the design of a baseball stadium and use technology to improve the experience of a consumer uh they had a lot of fun on a saturday morning working through this design and build challenge okay and then we have some field trips scheduled for later this this uh school year you'll see them on the agenda under the curriculum section um many of them steam oriented uh opportunities for kids to see steam in real life anywhere anything from the battery conservancy to the intrepid museum to more local trips the great swamp and also somerset patriot stadium and i'm going to turn it over to mrs fichner to talk a little bit
054about the k2 uh projects thank you fun stuff all right so for k2 i'll try to do as good job as mrs mills i know i'm not as enthusiastic but she makes everything fun and exciting we know so for her she's continuing with her stream uh storybook stem challenges which is the stem challenges have a center on a character's problem a lot of fun so here are some stories that she's been doing recently listed there she had some holiday challenges with valentine's day um but it's really nice to see her integrating the language arts with the stem as well uh next one please all right so the zipline challenge was a lot of fun this is one that i actually went in to see it was a lot of fun she had a little gingerbread
055man that the kids had to create a carrier for the gingerbread man to go down the zipline and do it as fast as they could and not fall into this little river with a wolf on the bottom and um it was so much fun and just to see the kids how intrinsically motivated they were to continue and how independent they were and ideas that were just flowing it was amazing um another one that's a lot of fun is the olympics engineering that she was working on i'm creating a ski slope for a ski jumper to jump the farthest distance so a lot of engaging projects that was for grades three and four all right next one all right so coming up soon and this is one i can't wait for the snow plow business challenge
056she is having the kids take um one of those little sphero robots oh you know and create a snow plow for it so they have to actually make one and then she's going to put um cotton balls all over the floor and they have to test their design out and see who can plow the most snow so that's going to be a lot of fun hopefully i didn't ruin that surprise for you sophia did you tell you about that one okay good all right weather challenge then you have hurricane houses and this is integrated with the third grade they have been studying weather so again it's nice to integrate with other subject areas as they can create they have to create a house that can withstand hurricane conditions that's also challenging and fun all right
057so again these are a couple of things that they'll be starting soon a google doodle design challenge so she gives them a scenario that they will be hired so this real world application by google to create a doodle to appear on the website and they're going to be using scratch with that as well the other thing is that they have to create up create an app come up with a plan for an app another real world application that uses their creativity um and then they will actually try to solve a problem that they see in their real life all right and here are just some websites and different things that she uses throughout the year virtual breakout rooms something called breakout edu which is a virtual escape room that the kids love so it deals
058with problem solving collaborating inventioneers app again they're solving problems with inventions and using google draw to complete some design challenges and then we have some apps and websites that she uses a lot and they're listed there for you they're very popular um i've actually seen the kids just go there on their own as something that they can do on their free time so that means they love it and cano kits this is something the kids love as well they get to assemble computers and they can see all the parts and understand how that works and here we go our robots we have dot dash arty and sphero these are super popular a lot of the times when i go into the coding club this is what i see the robots you have to watch where
059you walk because they're all over the place um they can do things like program them just have them do different tasks work together it's really nice to see them working with the robots and for our coding clubs like we've been mentioning um we have the coding clubs going on in the mornings which seems to be working out really nicely for second and third fourth grade and they have a lot of choices they can do coding with the ipads and the chromebooks and some more robots and different virtual design challenges and they seem to be really enjoying it all right i think this is you so i was there when they were just starting the google doodle project and they were in miss um wells was introducing this excuse me using her maiden name uh she
060was introducing scratch and the excitement in the room was palpable i mean i agree 100 with you um i i also want to mention since we're talking about coding and robots uh we had this family stem night uh last night at valley view and it was a big hit um i had a student who built a little uh what they call a brush bot for me and i have it in my office uh it's just an opportunity to engage in a lot of these activities and there were younger siblings from bayberry there and the parents also had an opportunity to go through these four four or five different stations and either get involved in a coding project or some type of robotics next is our movement towards social emotional learning and just a few examples
061that we'll go through quickly but we're continuing it uh valley view and at bayberry the second step curriculum that we've talked about before uh this is our second year with it and it's really paying dividends for us uh it's across content areas continue to have spirit activities and digital citizenship lessons for our students our school counselor has lessons and activities that she shares with students and one of my favorites is the student outreach club that's run primarily by the kids with two advisors but they've been reading stories uh and i've basically through through google meets uh for bayberry classes and they'll be reading story books to them i've seen it online as a participant and i've also been in the classroom watching the kids at valley view do this and the kids at bayberry just
062love it community service projects and upcoming assemblies are also helping us help us make sure that we are uh you know keeping open minds in our in our students we have mikey fallon coming uh soon to valley view and he does a lot of different programs on diversity of points and deeper understandings and empathy the valley view staff is also they have a health and wellness club they're doing monthly sel calendars and monthly themed breakfasts through the sunshine club uh the simple sel practices to start the day i know i've seen a number of different newsletters sent out by our school counselor and uh mrs kidd is also leading a restorative practice faculty book discussion uh during faculty meeting time and then i'll turn it over to mrs fichner okay so at bay berry we
063are also continuing our sel lessons weekly second step and al's pals in pre-k um i've seen a lot of the teachers now starting as they become more familiar with second step integrating second step with other subject areas bringing in read-alouds to reinforce and reinforcing those concepts that they taught all throughout the week which is really nice we've had our teachers supplement with mindfulness mindfulness activities have parents come as guest speakers and do mindfulness stretching and yoga and things like that helping students identify emotions and coping skills is something we're continuously working on and of course conflict resolution we do have monthly second step themes that we reinforce school-wide through morning announcements and then i have all school meetings that we do that as well and we continue with guidance lessons based on the needs and
064things that are going on in a day-to-day basis next slide please thank you okay so another way that we like to build um community with bayberry is through school-wide service projects um we were i was so proud of what the students came up with for their day of service and there's a few pictures there so we basically just asked on the teachers talk to the students and see how they can be of service to the school community and they all came up with different projects we had some students create positive posters to hang around the school we had some students clean some things in the art room we had some students shelve books in the library they really came up with some great things it was a great day we also have our early act
065club that you heard about earlier they were raising money for these terror cycle boxes and they have already started um collecting a lot of bottle cups so that they can make their bench so that's exciting and then we did valentine's for vets which was really fun and here's a few more of some of those uh positive posters we had our preschool work with our first grade on a buddy piece project and then again that's us with the valentine's work that's there all right and then for our staff we know we have to take care of our staff as well so they can take care of our students so we have been planning some things through health and wellness committee we had a better food better mood healthy breakfast um that came with a little education
066some people needed to know what was healthy so we gave them some sample items and we're starting to plan some additional events for staff as well we have our sunshine committee doing some school culture events and it's some of those just little things that give our teachers a boost it could just be a little piece of chocolate that works you know and we had a we celebrated national soup day which was a big hit things like that anything to do with food is always popular and then making sure that we are keeping our staff fresh they love to learn so that is why i put this under social emotional learning something we recently did was a behavior supports for students and i also did a training on response to intervention which helps them feel more
067confident in supporting our students and then i'm going to work on some enrichment academic enrichment training as well okay goal number three uh and the essential question of how are we ensuring a culturally vibrant inclusive school community so we're committed to preparing uh global citizens uh both valley view and bayberry uh over the past several months there has been a review of literature selections in the media center and classrooms we're always looking to expand our resources for our students to make sure that we are promoting a culture of belonging a culture of inclusiveness we've had this is really this was a great project that i was able to uh witness here in the apr the social studies teachers brought their classes down here for this engaging project the hands-on project you see some pictures of
068it on the left hand side it was during black history month and there was a study of the harlem renaissance so they studied anything from the charleston to langston hughes's poetry to historical events you see on the left-hand side the kids are taking pictures of qr codes and that's how they would access the information because it was a website that was created by the teachers together in collaboration we had social issue assignments infused into multiple subjects you'll also see in the picture some girls practicing the charleston uh and some other dance moves in the 1920s at bayberry thank you okay so now um we're looking forward to getting our hands on our diverse texts that were donated by watching idea so we're going to be distributing those excitedly um we basically any uh culturally anything
069that's going on culturally we love to celebrate it um even if a student comes to me and says i'd like to say something about something that's special to them i say great and we do that in the morning announcements we've been doing black history lessons um and then we're doing some cultural arts assemblies we had a life of lenape assembly and we just had freedom stories which was really a lot of fun um it was a storyteller talking about different stories of freedom and african-american history and it was very entertaining okay next one take care just some um to move beyond uh the instruction but also focusing on recruiting hiring and training we've talked before about cj pride we joined that organization last year and participated in the job fair this year's job fair is
070coming up uh at the end of march and we will be participating in that again we continue to focus on broader advertising uh developing relationships and partnerships with college and universities so that we can provide internships for students uh watching idea has been contributing uh as mrs fichner mentioned the books and mrs harvey mentioned uh also in her opening remarks uh about the acceptance of the donation last month as uh superintendent i've also engaged with other superintendents around the state as part of the organization i belong to new jersey association of school administrators and i'm participating both on the leadership diversity committee and also in the professional development seminar committee and just a couple of data points that we shared back in november and we just updated them this is increasing our efforts to increase
071staff diversity so that our staff better mirrors the diversity of our student body so since july 1st 2021 when we put this goal into place actually 43 and a half percent of our new hires have been of a diverse background and that's actually increased slightly since since the report in november and another key point here when we went back and looked at the data from september 2020 we had basically a 13 uh diverse staff uh compared to the rest of our overall staff and at this point we have uh it up to 19.2 percent uh again an increase from november but a more significant obvious increase in september of 2020. so we're proud of our work there and then the financial needs um i'm probably less qualified to talk about them than mr pepe but
072you're too far away from the end of the microphone so the obvious things that we have been working on are the um the referendum and exploring different strategies for increasing revenues so if you just move to the next slide um okay so we're we have the emphasis on the referendum and we were working on that for the last couple of years and we'll be uh and are renewing our work now and engaging in planning we also have the ad hoc committee that we've talked about and there'll be more of a report about that later from the committee we continue to look at strategies for increasing reserves and mr pepe has been key in this work uh we're pursuing cost-saving strategies uh to build our reserves and we're going through our budget process and we'll be
073uh sharing the tentative budget at the march 24th board meeting but we continue our work there planning for the future so then we have the next steps and i just want to make a couple of comments and i'll turn it over to mrs fichner because she is doing a great job of staying focused on this work as principal at bayberry but basically when it comes down to is if we believe in an individualized approach to learning we want to meet our students where they are we want to continue using data to inform instruction and that includes lesson planning of course it includes using data such as the i ready diagnostic performance reports it includes in class formative assessment helping to give kids feedback during instruction testing them to see where they are and giving that
074immediate feedback to help them grow and move forward summative assessment data of course you know larger tests and things like that we continue to use obviously and we also believe in the importance of communication with families through the teachers about strengths and areas for growth we are looking at enrichment activities to create appropriate challenges we've talked earlier about the sewer enrichment activities and instruction and having the soar teachers consult with the classroom teachers to help students on an individualized basis we're also exploring scheduling options and strategies for intervention and enrichment uh and we continue our math and language arts workshop at valley view in our district-wide pursuit of excellence after school program and before school program i've sat in on mrs fichner's class because she's not only the principal but she's also a pursuit of
075excellence teacher and working with five great students so i will turn it over to you to talk a little bit more about that and move into social emotional learning all right yes pursuit of excellence best part of my day and week i love it um so yeah i mean our next steps academically is a real focus on data iready and everything else that we have to plan for instruction adjust instruction and meet the students needs whether that's to enrich them or you know intervene remediate bring them up or move them up a level whatever it is we do want to create that appropriate challenge for each and every student that's what we strive towards um the i-ready data lets us look at that as a school and to say what do i need to provide
076for support in pd the each grade level looks at it and says you teach this well what are you doing can you teach that to me so i can do what you're doing and then each teacher will look at their own what am i doing well what do i need to adjust and then they will sit with their students and say this is what you're doing well this is what you need to work harder on let's set some goals because we know when we set goals with students and track their progress then academic achievement rises so that's what we're working on there so for social emotional learning we obviously we're going to continue those second step lessons and bring them in whenever we can you know i bring them in when i'm helping students resolve
077conflicts that happen on the bus or in recess and lunch but we're all talking the same language which is helpful um continue professional development we have next mark training and different trainings whenever we see a need we figure out how to teach our teachers and provide that support valley view has staff sel buddies and we will continue celebration of diverse groups at school spirit events and embedded within our curriculum for diversity equity and inclusion again we're continuing to celebrate as many diverse groups as we can some of those ideas come from our students and our families we have student assemblies we're always looking to bring in that culture piece and author visits um whenever we're looking at any supplemental resources it's always on the you know on the forefront is is this moving our you
078know diversity equity and inclusion further we have to make sure we're looking at that and then as i was talking about pd opportunities how can we be more inclusive some of those pd opportunities are job embedded so we do have a behaviorist that helps to go into some of the classes and just work with the teachers on including some of our special needs students and that's not me you don't want to take a crack at that okay so uh yeah you know we're just as i mentioned earlier we're continuing this work um there's ongoing work with the architect and uh financial professionals we're collaborating not only with the board committees obviously but with the community and again there'll be more information about the ad hoc committee later this evening our continuing focus on increasing efficiency
079and building these reserves is important work for us and developing long-term purchasing plans so that we can upgrade technology and facilities it's always an emphasis for us and right now we're going through the budget process for next year's budget and again we'll have the tentative budget presented at the end of march but it really has been a very tight budget and we're really faced with some financial challenges and we'll have another one of these reports uh in june at the end of the year if sort of like the end of the year uh look at how we did with the district goals and we may determine we want to continue with many of these district goals moving forward because you can't make uh as much progress in these large areas as you would like in
080one year i think we're off to a great start and we'll just continue our work do any of the board members have questions for principal fichner or me it's uh more of a comment uh i'm i'm happy that we have the data from iready i'm happy that that's something we're using now because a lot of districts have been using things like that for a very long time so i'm glad we're doing that and i loved hearing what was going on at both schools but i definitely wish i could have seen the gingerbread man yeah i'm going for the snow plow challenge i'm not going to miss that i just had one question and thank you for the presentation it was very helpful and informative and it looks like we're making great progress so i really
081appreciate it i guess my question would be if there had to be one focus area where we feel we hadn't achieved as much as we wanted or at this point what would that area be uh probably financial because i mean i guess that's the clearest one because just going through the budget process so we've all experienced the pain of not being able to include things we would like to include um the principals know that because we keep sending back the the budget to them and saying please cut more you need to cut more we have fixed costs that are taking all of the uh you know the the two percent increase so um yeah that that's that's the largest challenge for us but i'm optimistic i think we all are about the future and moving
082forward with the um you know the process for a new referendum thank you just like to commend the schools for their community service especially the valentine's for vets program seemed to be really great and uh appreciated you sharing that and i just wanted to be sure that i'm clear between uh as we switch back and forth between bay bay and valley view in the presentation do both at bay berry and valley view they have one period a week that is dedicated for the social emotional learning period activities is that yeah uh a dedicated period no i don't i mean i i think it's integrated into the classroom periods um at valley view 140 minute period per week at bay berry but valley view is more integrated it's integrated into the curriculum across the different content
083areas okay and just to add the 40 minute per week is for the direct instruction lesson and then the same thing it's you're supposed to each day it's like a little reminder lesson to integrate it throughout reinforced throughout the week this may be more uh started with the board comment but it there was the comment about fifth grade math being level for higher achievers and i'm not sure what the issue was that was being referred to there but it's it's only math classes that are being leveled for higher achievers or their language arts and science level classes also for higher currently it's the math in sixth seventh and eighth grade okay so in 2018 or so it was level it was math science and language arts all had level classes from fifth grade to eighth
084grade there was there was a time when there were leveling in the other areas pre-pandemic and so now it's only math um for budgetary reasons or you you could argue that budgetary reasons but you could also argue its best practices uh and that's the you know the avenue that we've pursued uh we when we had level classes in um language arts we got feedback from the teachers that it wasn't working for a lot of reasons um and uh they wanted to make sure that the classes were more heterogeneously grouped um and so that's that's the the avenue we went uh but i'm not going to say that there aren't financial issues involved in that in terms of having more classes or more teachers uh those are also that they also impact and affect how we
085schedule thank you thank you very much and the valentine's for vets was um something that congressman malinowski's office reached out to us about and it was like they gave us like two or three days notice so i just shared it with the principals and they shared with teachers and everyone jumped right in on it and just produced these valentines very quickly at both schools and so it was really a big success so thank you but i don't want to forget uh mr toto she's been waiting patiently since seven o'clock to give her a brief update you're a trooper did you leave this on it should be on it's on okay um i have a few updates for the department of special services tonight um posted up on the on the screen right now we have
086the upcoming um special services and cpag meetings on march 28th we'll have a virtual meeting um the tentative top topic for that meeting is meet the behaviorist mrs brady dylan who started in district in january um autism awareness and acceptance month planning and special education week planning we have a tentative date of april 25th for a virtual meeting to discuss esy and summer opportunities and also special education week planning um if any anyone parents um or staff members are interested in having our cpag and staff discuss any other topics there is a google form link on our special services website under parent meetings on thursday may 5th the wachong hills regional high school sending district cpag meeting is scheduled and that topic will be a transition to the high school the morris union joint commission
087has an upcoming parent workshop that is on promoting student organizational skills through technology it's scheduled for march 24th um from 7 until 8 pm online via zoom that full flyer is posted on our um special services website under parent notices and this is an exciting one the somerset patriots re recently reached out to the department um and announced that they're hosting a an autism awareness day on saturday april 16 for their 6 35 game this will be a sensory friendly day at the ballpark that's designed to educate raise money and accommodate families for a great day of fun um ctag and i will be working on creating a flyer that will go out next week in the community announcements email to all of our school community and the last announcement cpag does have a facebook
088group um the group admins and members post a variety of activities events trainings and articles that have been very informative and helpful that's what their facebook group looks like cpag watch on new jersey if anyone is interested in joining thank you mr toner oh that's fine you leave it on okay yeah okay last is the enrollment reports and uh the enrollment remains consistent we have 19 more students than we had enrolled at the start of the school year and that'll do it for this lengthy superintendent remarks section thank you for your patience everyone send your attention thank you uh so we'll move on to committee reports for human resources kevin can you please give a committee update uh yes um the hr and personnel committee met on tuesday february 15 at 4 30 present where
089myself jen dory harvey and mr alexis it was a fairly brief meeting we discussed guidance hours at bayberry the committee was in favor of increasing the council position at bayberry to full-time next year the costs are going to be funded through federal grant money because the district budget uh cannot cover the increased expenditure at this time we also received an update on um the staffing level for aids and uh the efforts to fill current vacancies and the progress that's been made so far finally we discussed the budget there were requests for new staff but currently we don't believe new staff can be added in light of the district's operating budget which could even result in larger class sizes um and that's all the updates i have thanks to her thank you kevin uh operations finance
090committee rich or actually joe yeah i'll do the first one so we met on thursday february 3rd um and at the committee meeting uh the first portion was largely um focus on the referendum for 2022 um given the unsuccessful referendum in 2021 the committee joined to see what actions could be taken to put forth a new referendum we invited gwen thornton to provide feedback and recommendations on how to make the referendum successful if we represent it to the community in large part the recommendations included greater community outreach beyond the stakeholders of the school we talked about and were in favor of creating an ad hoc committee which would include not only the representative nonprofit groups of the school but also other community members that may not have direct involvement of the school for their input
091we also talked about other outreach activities such as town halls mailers social media questionnaires really to get as much community engagement awareness involvement input so that we can reflect on the 2021 referendum and see how we can make it better and get more engagement and input from the entire community um we also started talking about the full year 23 budget um which was somewhat sobering um the budget will be very tight we are facing increasing fixed cost for the school which we can't do much about and there isn't an increase in revenues to match that increase in fixed costs just for some awareness the initial budget of request for what we need to do at the start of this process is in deficit by 1.9 million dollars so the only thing we can do is
092cut um there's no adding um so we will get there we are not the federal government we can't run deficits we have to balance so we're working closely with the business administrator and mr alexis of course and the other committee members to see what can be done to reduce some of the costs in the budget and then lastly we spoke about uh some new business um in creating an ad hoc committee for the shared services agreement with phillip field um and we mentioned going into in-person meetings uh starting with this meeting we also had a meeting on february 16th as mr barbella stated uh we were examining the budget we did come up with a preliminary balance budget unfortunately the uh the increase in fixed costs for salaries benefits and transportation uh when compared against
093the uh two percent uh statutory increase in budget allowed ate up all of all of the all the funds that we would have for any new program so we wouldn't we weren't able to add any new items such as new positions or new programs hence hence mr mcdonald's comment about class sizes you know may be increasing because we cannot fit a fund new positions or new programs mr pepe and mr alexis would continue discussing budgetary needs with the budget managers with the understanding that anything that needs to be added or increased would require an equivalent decrease from something else that's already in the heavily diminished budget we had a little bit of good news on the financial front of mr pepe brought to us a proposal from pseg energy saver program uh this is a
094program where by pseg with state funding funds up to 80 percent of certain energy-saving programs including a couple of hvac units we wanted to with with that type of uh generous uh state funding we wanted to mr pepe to go back for the next meeting we have and understand if uh if we could actually add more uh more projects or more equipment items uh even of a different nature to this uh even if the proposed state aid went down because as you they know if we do a referendum the state would pay for roughly a third of the costs and so even if we got up to a point where we could get a third of the cost reimbursed by this program and get more out of it we would still be in in really
095good shape um then we had further discussions about the referendum a new referendum committee continued to discuss the formation of a referendum ad hoc committee discuss parameters for the number of ad hoc committee members the frequency and format of ad hoc committee meetings and the ad hoc committee's role in the decision-making process the committee was in favor of holding one or two large group open meetings to present the purpose and structure of the committee as well as to invite community members to inform the board if they were interested in participating the operations committee would then select committee members from the list of interested committee members community members excuse me with the intention of including various stakeholder groups such as parent organizations district staff and other residents thank you joe and rich i actually had um
096[Music] a question i'll get to it about the second meeting that the operations committee had um i i thought it was great that um you were somewhat able to balance the budget with a 1.9 million deficit um it is a little disappointing or probably a lot disappointing that we're not able to add any new positions um especially for us to be able to sustain a full-time guidance counselor for bayberry or even a full-time librarian at bayberry or additional teachers to keep class sizes low throughout the district i know that we've also in the curriculum committee have discussed as supervisor of curriculum and then any other positions that the administration and curriculum committee and hr have advocated for um it's also very unfortunate that we're not able to add change or upgrade programs such as the
097gifted and talented source program that we've been talking about in curriculum or even the math program [Music] and any other programs that again have been advocated for um due to it sounds like the lack of funding um i'm sure the administration and the staff are gonna try and be as creative as possible but it's obvious that with some of these there's definitely a financial component um and we're in some issues here so um it was stated at the operations meeting that i did attend this month um [Music] that last year some of our supplies for the teachers and not only for the teachers but other line items were decreased in order for us to balance that budget um and these all of these things directly impact our students but i was just wondering from mr
098pepe um i know you were looking into other avenues but were you able to not decrease those amounts any more than you did last year yes i was able to return all those supply lines to the same budget line the same amount they were last year okay and then i was also wondering uh which is great i mean it would be better if we could put them back to where they were if not more um but i was also wondering if the administration could potentially engage with waff or the pto to see if they'd be able to assist the district since you know we obviously know teachers need supplies for students and it would be great to see um if we can get any additional help in those areas so that that would be just
099something i would ask for the administration to look into um but that was my only question and comment about your committee meeting i would just like to add a comment uh and uh defer to our chairman rich and also uh to joe robelo's uh reporting for the meeting that rich wasn't there for but i i just want to make sure we're not underselling the good news and also to make sure i heard correctly what um what rich said but the the pseg energy saving program it's it's more than a couple hvac units i think there's a chance uh i won't be speaking out of turn to say it's all the boilers right yeah in both schools absolutely not much equipment and i'm sorry i didn't enumerate at all no i'm just saying it's good news
100it's all the boilers and uh it's whereas the referendum was covering 30 of the costs from the state this is actually covering 80 so we're only paying 20 whereas uh through the referendum we'd be paying 70 only getting so i think it's really good news and that's what i think you know the point was that well if we can get all the boilers repaired uh for only 20 of the cost which is also on a payment plan spread out over many years just uh it's all the material here nothing nothing new just to emphasize that news and also uh see if maybe we can't find um more equipment that could go with that program as we have a professional engineer not yet hired to take a closer look at the existing equipment in both schools
101so thank you very much appreciate uh so we'll move on to the curriculum committee adam can you please give that report sure the curriculum committee met thursday the 17th and mr toto provided an update on the aid support for our students two new aides from one of our newer district vendors started uh that week community the committee emphasized to the administration how important communication is with the parents um so if there are any gaps in coverage we need to be ahead of that and let the parents know and inform them what we are doing to cover that um mr so it also gave us a preview of the agenda item that includes an updated service provider list for evaluations of non-verbal students um she explained that once the board meeting minutes from january 27th are
102approved the ell plan will be submitted to the state preparations for administering the excuse me access for ell's test this spring are underway uh esy as mentioned earlier will take place at both schools to in this summer to eight in the transition for students moving to valley view from dayberry the preschool application process will begin soon and the committee asked for an update at the next committee meeting about activities for special education month we previewed the presentation that you saw today on the update towards our goals don't need to rehash that we we discussed the proposed calendars for next year and came to a consensus after a lot of discussion you know we had taken we sent out a survey to the community asked for feedback on the holidays and took a lot of time
103really considering the best way to approach us you know as we we got more into it realized really was a domino effect and how difficult it would be to add any more holidays to the calendar and continue that from year to year um so but we do have a compromise that we were all in favor of which would be adding homework free and assessment-free zones which we'll talk about more um specifically in the future but um so the calendar that we are recommending is one basically aligned with the high school calendar but it will give one additional professional development day on october 11th which would extend the school year by one day but as i mentioned be adding homework free and assessment-free zones to acknowledge and incorporate the school community's feedback on the holiday survey
104um and the administration is going to work with the teachers to finalize the guidelines then and then communicate that with the families uh later this spring believe rita is going to have an update on the fiserv stem enrichment program um we asked for an update on the gifted and talented program we had in the past we had asked the principals to come to us with a revision for developing this further miss principal fichner had attended a department of education workshop on designing professional development for teachers and is exploring scheduling options and strategies for intervention and enrichment that can support the needs of high achieving students we had asked if we had asked for a timeline to be prepared for future committee meeting and also suggested family engagement during the process we had asked about go
105math go math is in its third year and given the disruptions from covet over the past two years more time is needed to analyze the true effectiveness of the program and in addition lack of financial resources which we're hearing about precludes a change in programs next year we discussed the bayberry scheduling options and a potential plan for a valley view elective period that would replace the second ela period for grades seven and eight um we were the committee was all in favor of it it would really help round out students education um it's a great opportunity and even suggested even a few more programs so i'm excited to see what electives are offered and hopefully sooner than later as for field trips you saw a list of the field trips for valley view bay berry
106is working on scheduling field trips and as for fundraisers valley view will hold a staff student volleyball game a volleyball game i think i saw and a family trivia night so be on the lookout that's it rita would you like to give the update on the stem after school program sure i'd be happy to so i wanted to tell um inform the whole time just talk more into the microphone okay can you hear me okay sorry this isn't the first time this has happened so i'm gonna try um so i wanted to give the whole town an update about um a brand new after school enrichment program this is quite unique that i've seen it's basically a program to enhance the stem curriculum in the public schools for both wachong and berkeley heights through a
107partnership with myself it's from k through eighth grade will have the opportunity to advance their learning in stem through hands-on sessions with engineers on site at the innovation lab both districts will be enabled to in uh operate a world-class stem program uh i know you have a lot of questions so what i did was to make it easier i just prepared a bunch of questions and i'll just walk through them um what's the north star for this project the north star for this project is to be the best stem after school program in new jersey allowing students to be immersed in the latest and most relevant stem topics customized for the age range of the children through this program children would have an enhanced interest in stem as well as experience real life applications next
108when and where will this be launched the idea is to have the first pilot launched in september of this year um the learnings through this pilot will influence the next phase of the program initial thoughts are to have three cohorts k through two three to five and then six through eighth grade with each cohort having about between 10 to 15 children between the two districts um the location program for the location for this program is uh at the location in connell park in berkeley heights how much will this cost um the children through the unit through this partnership public school kids in both these districts will get access to this program at no cost to them what will it cost the town both towns will incur um no cost to the program directly similar to
109other after-school activities parents and caregivers will be responsible for transportation to the venue and i think what are the next steps multiple committees are being set up as we speak there's a curriculum committee this is a resourcing committee which would identify the teachers and the visiting professionals including college faculty from rutgers and others would be helping enhance the learning at the stem facility there's a communications and facilities team that's been organized to set up to make sure that um it's as in you know as amazing as it is an experience for children and then the last in the enrollment and application committee also which includes the cohort sizes how many kids how will they be selected and all of that that's being formed as we speak and then the last question uh was what are
110the next steps and how will we learn more about the program all the committees that we just mentioned are being set up as we speak once the committees are set up we will ensure that there are regular and consistent updates on this topic as required happy to answer any other questions [Music] do any board members have any questions thank you rita [Music] policy committee joe can you please give us an update sure um definitely not as exciting as the stem opportunity for the policy committee um there were eight policy and regulation items which are on the agenda in section p for first reading they're all mandatory from the state and nearly all of them are minor revisions of existing policies or regulations that we have to do for statute purposes none are very material or
111remarkable so they're in the packet for your review if you want to see the items and we met on february i was not at that meeting um but i did uh touch base with mr alexis afterwards um and went through all the policies and regulations myself but the meeting was held on february 22nd thanks joe uh board liaison reports kevin is there anything as the legislative liaison the senate this week passed senate bill and if it's passed by the assembly and signed it would create a task force to re-evaluate the school funding formula and to make recommendations to the legislature and the governor within a year it's probably too early to tell how this would impact our schools but obviously any bill that deals with school funding certainly has a possibility to have a substantial
112impact on our school aid also senate bill 464 is currently being considered by the legislature um this bill would permit schools to go to remote learning when there is inclement weather um it hasn't been passed or signed but it would certainly give schools some additional flexibility dealing with weather related closures thank you kevin uh jen is there an update from the somerset county ed services commission yes i attended my first meeting of the somerset county educational services commission on wednesday february 2nd and i was sworn in i'm still learning the ropes there but they had a beautiful presentation about their career center uh that they have their that's available for special education students grades nine through twelve uh they talked about their uh shoprite learning lab which i saw some pictures of which is just
113you know really amazing their culinary arts program their building traits program and their [Music] power equipment technology class as well it's just really it's it's very impressive what they have going on there thank you jen amber is there any update from the somerset county school boards association there's no report their next meeting is in march great thank you amber and for the new jersey school boards association i just wanted to remind everyone that we will be having our um ethics training and csa evaluation training that's coming up i believe in march okay so then we'll move to um community engagement since we already heard from the pto is there anyone here from west this is kokuyata is there any update um cpag ms newsome is there any cpag or anyone here from cpac for an
114update okay so then we're going to move on to comments from the public on agenda items we welcome input from the public there are two times during the meeting when the public is invited 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 public comment is 30 minutes before you make your comment please state your name and address in the event it appears the public comment portion of the meeting may exceed 30 minutes the presiding officer may limit each statement made by a participant to three minutes duration comments submitted to the board secretary prior to the meeting will be read first our public forums are not structured as a question and answer session but rather
115are offered as opportunities to share your input with the board in instances where the board feels a response is needed the presiding officer or superintendent will address the common new jersey statutes do not permit the board to discuss personnel or hiring in public session names of students should not be used mr pepe will you please read the statement due to the recording of this meeting 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 i understand the stem program is really wonderful and really looking forward to it i'm interested
116to know more as the committees develop who will be interacting with the students are they employees what type of compliance training will they receive will they be escorted from the schools with the children i know you talked about transportation being the responsibility of the parents but who are going to be with the children at the location in berkeley heights also will they be receiving the individuals interacting with the children protection of minors safety training those are just my comments for tonight thank you any other comments on agenda items we're gonna move then to action items jen can you please move the administrative items yes i move a1 approved minutes of previous meetings a2 acceptance of school security drill report a3 approved 2022 2023 district calendar a4 a firm superintendent's hib report a5 a firm superintendent's
117hiv report a6 a firm superintendent's hiv report a seven a firm superintendent's hiv report a8 approved 2022 2022 memorandum of agreement is there a second second is there any discussion can we have a roll call please mr barbella yes mr buckarelli yes mr ingrassia yes mr kraft yes mr mcdonald yes mrs murad yes for a1 through a3 um abstain a4 through a7 and yes thank you miss savanni yes um mrs scharf yes mrs harvey yes motion's best uh kevin can you please move the personnel items uh yes i move personnel item b1 point valley view co-curricular revised is there a second second any discussion can we have a roll call please mr barbella yes mr beccarelli yes mr ingrassia yes mr kraft yes mr mcdonald yes mrs murad yes ms sabrani yes mrs charf yes
118mrs harvey yes motion passes rich can you please move operation items yes i move c1 approved payment of bills c2 approved transfer of funds c3 accept financial reports c4 except with tremendous gratitude the donations from the watchmen pto c5 approved contract for an independent engineer hvac assessment c6 approved revised agreement with delta t group staffing agency c7 approved nj edge net cooperative pricing system c8 approved service providers c9 approved agreement with union county educational services commission c-10 approve agreement with somerset county educational services commission and c-11 approved professional travel and related expenses [Music] second is there any discussion i just wanted to echo what you said rich and thank the pto for their generosity with all of the the donations for the the students for field days and community service club it looks amazing so
119i wanted to thank the pto for that mrs are we going to add one comment to that sure i just wanted to stay publicly that pto is actually even more generous than they show tonight there's going to be some more an update to that in the next board meeting i spoke with um treasurer today and there is some clarification that there's actually other projects that they had previously proved that we we need to memorialize so they have been extremely generous this year thank you that's awesome wow yeah that's wonderful i just wanted to come echo what you said i think that's really awesome thank you very much thank you i wanted to say thank you to the pto as well and just all the hard-working parents and everything that you do to bring these projects
120and programs for our children thank you can we have a roll call please mr barbella yes mr buccarelli yes mr and gracia yes mr craft yes mr mcdonald yes mrs mirage yes mr manny yes mrs scharf yes c1 to c9 abstain from c10 and yes to c11 mrs harvey um yes to all except c10 i have to abstain from that okay emotions pass adam can you please move curriculum items yep move d1 approve valley view field trips and d2 the approved student club fundraisers is there a second second jen any discussion i just wanted to say it was great to see field trips back on our agenda i mean especially in person ones that aren't virtual and i just wanted to thank everyone involved in organizing them i'm not necessarily sure exactly who organized them
121but whoever thank you so much i'm sure the kids are going to have a great time and they're going to learn a lot and you know we've seen that as teachers where you get outside of the classroom and and you have bonding experiences with your classes and they learn so much so thank you um for adding those on uh is there a roll call please mr barbella yes mr buccarelli yes mr ingrassia yes mr kraft yes mr mcdonald yes mrs murad yes ms edvani yes mrs scharf yes mrs harvey yes motion is best um joe can you please move policy items sure move e1 approve policies and regulation first reading [Music] is there a second second any discussion hey can we have a roll call please mr barbella yes mr buccarelli yes mr ingrassia yes
122mr kraft yes mr mcdonald yes is murad yes miss edvani yes mrs scharf yes mrs harvey yes motion passes okay then we're going to move on to a board business we have two items on here [Music] if the board would like to discuss one of them is about our vision statement so it was brought to the superintendent's attention a request to add our vision statement onto the board of ed agenda to be read at every meeting and i just wanted to open it up to you know board members if you have any questions or you know comments about it if anybody's opposed to it or anything like that i believe it might be added to the beginning part at the top division yeah we could put it wherever it's like on the agenda and i
123i think yeah maybe at the top of the page i think the um the purpose of it was to you know just to you know we we think we really love the vision statement and um just to kind of remind all of us as board members and our community what our vision is um maybe at the beginning of every board meeting so if anyone has any questions or comments it's open for the board to discuss it i'll just say something real quick because it was my suggestion and i do really like the vision and i think it's a good idea to remind everyone all the stakeholders everyone up here um really why we're here and why we're making the decisions that we make it doesn't have to be read necessarily out loud every week but
124i'm i just like the idea of seeing it again just to remind everyone you know what our our joint goal is here why we do what we do i would be supportive i think it makes sense and i think it's good for the community to know and to be reminded so i'm supportive is there anyone who's opposed to it being on the agenda okay if no one else has anything to talk about with that the other thing was the masking policy um i know that um rich jen and myself are on that ad hoc with um the superintendent and we obviously have the opportunity to um speak with the superintendent about this and ask our questions but um we really felt the actually the four of us felt it was very important for us to
125bring this to the whole board and i know mr alexis made the announcement that the committee is in favor of you know his recommendation and we support that of going mask optional um after or after march 7th um but we wanted to give the rest of the board the opportunity to either ask questions or make any comments about you know anything that you might have regarding this we had a lot so i i didn't i don't want to put any of you on the spot but i'd be a little surprised if you if none of you have questions about what might be happening at this point in this situation i like the idea that it's optional um just so parents and kids can have that option the other thing is i wish that this was
126something similar was discussed about whether we would have had zoom participation for parents um i know this is kind of digressing from the topic that we're discussing but i think uh i know you mentioned in your earlier statement in your opening statement that you had a consensus or no that's not what i said i said that there was a majority of the board that was in favor of it which i think in our discussion it was the operations committee no that's well well actually like we can get into this but can we just stick to the mask one and then if you look i like the idea that it's optional if you would like to bring it up i will definitely ask if there's any other board business to discuss okay um does anyone have
127any questions or anything they would like to ask i know one of the questions that i asked maybe this will help the rest of you out if you want to discuss this or not um was we do the weekly testing for students um and i know that it's optional so my question was if we're going to mask optional or we you know is that still going to happen or you know is that going to end and then um i know that the high school was not going to do maybe contact racing anymore so that was a question um that we had as well um and i know that some of the what you know some of the answers mr alexis doesn't have yet because he's still looking through a lot of the information and we
128plan on meeting again uh i think prior to march 7th um but those were just some of the things that we asked i mean there were more but i just didn't know if anyone else had anything else that they were concerned about or questions or statements whatever well it seems that many of the surrounding school districts have made the decision to go mask optional i like you said the high school watch on hills has has made the decision to go without contact tracing and so i think then the procedure is with other contagious diseases if a child is sick you know with viruses if there's a child is sick that they would be expected to stay home while they have symptoms that that's that seems to be the way the other school districts are handling
129it or at least my reading in the echo sentinel of how watchong hills is handling it so um i'm not sure if there's information that we have that's different from what they are going from but uh it seems like whether it k-12 it seems like many of the surrounding districts have already made this decision and already explained a lot about how they're going to be handling things going forward george would you like to um you did explain to the committee all the avenues that you're looking into um based on your recommendation if you could just explain that to everyone that would be great sure thank you mrs harvey um yeah no we've we said all along that we were going to be deliberate about this and wait until we got the health guidance we got
130the health guidance yesterday as i mentioned earlier i can't say it really helps and i can't say that i'm surprised but it complicates things on a lot of levels in terms of the quarantine and contact tracing because the last thing we want is to go mask optional and then be told that we have to continue with this contact tracing and the contact tracing then would expand and we'd have more students excluded because we no longer have the three foot exception when the kids are wearing masks the larger issue is that well and maybe this is a good thing to some extent the health department is now claiming that they're these are all just recommendations some are strong more strongly recommended than others um but these again this this health advice is for the local health
131departments and we're supposed to work in collaboration with them so basically the state is saying you work together with your local health department and your school board and you figure out what you want to do so we we do appear to have that freedom uh to do that uh the last thing we want though is to see it uh uptick in cases so it's not a simple thing i mean i think there are some real considerations here but that's the direction that we're leaning towards in terms of mass optional and next week i'll be working with the local health official and also meeting with the ad hoc committee again and you know we can uh continue to look at this and we'll let the community know as soon as we can um you know how
132we're going to go about it again we want to do it in a safe way we've been very successful in working with our local health official and getting good advice and you know implementing things that we had to implement and then also implementing things that make good sense and to keep everyone safe and to keep the kids in school and finding that right balance is really is critical to the success of the school district is there any other discussion on this okay is there any other board business to discuss yes i just wanted to know who the majority was because i wasn't one of them that was it was brought up to but um the other thing is in my opinion i think parents should have had we in the age of technology we have
133the option to bring a resource to parents especially in a k-8 uh district that if we bring that option to parents let's say the kids are sick and they have to stay home but there is a comment that they want to make that they are able to do so through zoom um and as i mentioned in my email i think all of us should be here because because we chose to be here we volunteered we are elected for this position um however parents that's a decision um they should be able to make it they have to stay home what if they can't get babysitters we should be able to afford that uh leniency for them and um so i i think i would just like the public to be aware who was the majority who
134made this decision does anyone have a problem with me saying yeah okay so um just so you know it was not me who requested this which i'm sure everyone is so interested about um but it was not me who requested this and um when it was requested to me it was only requested in a way that was if board members happen to reach out to you maybe about anything so i did not solicit board members in any way to discuss this if they happened to call me during the time then i brought it to their attention that this was a suggestion and if they were in favor of it there were many many different um responses which if individual board members would like to speak for themselves they have every opportunity to um but those
135who were in favor were jobal bella rich bubbarelli adam kraft jen shore myself kevin mcdonald rita said bonnie um when it was mentioned i have to thank you amber you did reach out to me to give me your feedback on it and i did make sure to let the other board members know um your opinion on the matter so i did make sure i did that and um i had i did not hear anything from mr gracia um so though that that's pretty much it could i make a comment to that was my understanding was that the uh not going hybrid was really to give time to figure out the technical issues because we did have such bad echo and things that you know if there was no comment for me it was because i
136thought that that is what we were trying to solve was uh not having that kind of echo where you just couldn't hear at all so um i haven't really heard any discussion since then and haven't uh it's not that we're voting on it here right now but i just wanted to say that that is i thought this this was a temporary measure possibly on the way to hybrid even though that wasn't explicitly stated if the board does decide at some point that they want to change the format of the meeting the board is able to do that i would just like to echo anthony's sentiments you know i for me it was very difficult to hear people um with the hybrid function even people in the room because i think our mics might have been
137turned down so you know joe was over there saying something it would be difficult for me over here to hear it i completely agree i mean that that's the primary reason i i remember getting home from one of the board meetings and asking my spouse how it was and she said i have no idea what you said because i couldn't hear you oh my god that's great right so that i that was the part i was like okay you know if we can't communicate and you have mr pepe running around with microphones half of them don't work we're on the laptops it was just a mess so that that was part of the rationale for my recommendation to meet in person as we did pre-covet when people actually used to get together yeah i was
138going to say that that was also part of my recommendation i think i got a quite a bit of a headache because of all the echo sounds that kept coming back and forth back and forth yeah i'm sorry i was just saying that i actually felt a lot of a serious headache because there was so much echo that would just keep coming and going and coming and going that it was really hard to listen to anybody even when you were in the room so would it be fair to say that um if we can find a solution that would be something that everybody would be open to going back to a hybrid meeting for just parents i don't know if you're asking me i i don't i don't mind i mean what we could do
139is uh we'll work on it and then you know we could bring it back to committee or have it as another board business discussion in public it doesn't matter to me whatever the board wants to do what about was it easier to just stream it live but not have interaction with the remote users because there's still a multiple avenues to to comment right you can email it and you can well i think it's being streamed live right now that's how i knew so right it seemed like that's why i'm asking it seemed like um just some of the the feedback that we received was more like the community or i'm going to say just some because we didn't get a lot of feedback from the community on this um but some was that you know
140live streaming but also having the option to be able to give comments live and i think that's something we have to work on because i mean it's great to see the community here right but let's just be honest before when it was just some of us here there was pretty much one person sitting here and if you didn't experience it i mean thank god you didn't experience it i mean half the time you know i have to run the meeting i can't even hear what most of the board members are saying and then i couldn't even hear of most of the stuff that was happening on zoom so even if community members were speaking it was hard for me to hear it because it it's not as if we were wearing headphones it played in
141here and then we kept saying can you please turn the volume up so we can hear it but then we couldn't because that kind of combatted you know whatever was happening audio wise so it was kind of it was pretty difficult so i mean we could definitely work on it and then wasn't that when there was interaction between remote users and in-person users i'm saying just have oh that that was like i mean i think you actually adam might have made the comment for me to not even ask board members who were on zoom to move anything because it's hard to hear what i'm saying yeah is it possible for us to just live stream but not have the remote users interact at all yeah we've live streamed before we can do that remove the
142technical issues of the headaches and the heck now they're just shaking his head now but i don't know well what how about this before i explore the opposite we're right before before we start like trying to figure out like let's let rit department and rich pepe figure they've been pretty much i mean we've asked them to try and do a lot of stuff and they've worked really hard to do it which is why i thank them for it but let's let them try and figure it out and then let's have them bring it back to us if they want to bring it back to us through committees so that we know and then if we feel we want to have a big um conversation about it and public we can do that as well okay
143if you'd like i could give you an update right now on the technology side of this sure so the just as a reminder the timeline was we started this in the fall coming the hybrid meetings december um was when we we tested out actually bringing board members back in we kind of did it as a test and there were some serious technology issues january 6 was the meeting that everyone's referring to where it was really bad it was really bad with the um there was feedback and then to get rid of the feedback we'd have to turn mike's then then you couldn't hear people and it was going back and forth uh the what i wanted to update the board on was after the january 6 board meeting we actually consulted with the high schools
144um because they have people who like this is their career they're sound people right so we consulted with them uh one of a couple of their people came down and met with our technology specialist and actually recommended a piece of equipment that we then purchased and we tested it out at the february january 27th meeting the problem was that meeting happened to occur while our technology specialist was at a conference so he wasn't here so what i felt like the january 27th meeting really was a lot better than the six but not perfect yet i do think that it we might be able to make this work if that's the will of the board i just wanted to know it's it's on the table as a possibility we could still do something and one other
145comment about the um the zoom versus in person um you know there was that imbalance if all of the board members are here i think that alleviates some of the issues we had because when members of the public are speaking board members aren't speaking we let them finish before board members respond so we don't have sound input coming from both in-house and zoom at the same time which is really what caused it so it might work i just wanted to know that we do have a possible solution for them great if you could come back to us and um committees that would be great to let us know if you're able to make it happen i i have a comment uh mrs harvey so before the public uh gives their comments uh last meeting one
146of the members of the public made a comment and this is not exact but to the effect that some of the parents may be afraid to freely offer their comments and opinions at public meetings or other communications with the board of the administration for fear of retaliation by the board or the administration as to their children this comment truly truly saddened me i have never heard even the suspicion that this has or ever would ever happen we as a board and the administrators of the schools want every community member to feel free to speak their mind and offer genuine feedback we will always listen we will always consider these comments and opinions while we ultimately might not act on them or might act on them we will never and the administration will never retaliate against
147any child for anything a parent might say or write to us if we ever thought that this was happening i would be the first to present prevent it and i know you know i don't talk for the whole board i hardly ever pretend to talk to the whole board but i know the whole board would be behind me and join me uh in assuring the public that there would never be any retaliation for any public comments made or any emails sent by any parent on their children thank you rich any anything else under for business to discuss mrs harvey i have a house housekeeping [Music] measure um so this is pretty exciting to all be here together in person for the first time since exactly two years ago it was february of 2020 the last
148time we did this so i'm glad to see everybody here um one of the things that i've been reminded of is that we do have live streaming people that are live streaming i just wanted to remind everyone if you are videotaping if you're going to live stream or post it be careful about um if students are in the videos we just have to make sure if you post either remove the portion that has the students or you need to get permission from the parents for them to do that so just just the housekeeping thank you rich i feel like i'm in a tennis match i'm looking back for seeing no other discussion i think uh we're gonna move to the comments from the public please remember to state your name and address harvey i have
149four comments to read that were sent in okay okay the first comment is from mark ferrara 45 rock avenue [Music] as i write this was an email to me that at the end he asked for it to be read at the board so good evening mr pepe as i read your response to my request for the detailed information about the resolution i felt i wasn't provided with the detailed information i was i previously requested you continuously made reference to an unknown attorney only to later provide me the firm name i am entitled to know the name of the attorney whom you consulted with to provide me with the answers that you have please take this as my second request to supply me with the attorney's name and hourly detailed billing for the bias resolution in
150question that ms dory harvey put forth against ms amber murat since your response lacks luster and is seen as a slap in the face to us the taxpayers of wachong i call for the need for an independent investigation to get to the crux of the resolution ms harvey should be worried about enhancing the learning of our children and bettering our schools rather than shaming a parent and wasting thousands of dollars on petty politics it has been come clear that ms dory harvey's bias resolution and public shaming of ms amber murad calls for a independent investigation as a federal eeoc matter i requested this email be read at the next wachon board of education meeting as a public comment number two this is from daryl eisenberg connecton oakwood road east the past two years have been
151difficult it's been hard on our schools on our teachers and at times on our sanity but like all things there was some good too new found time with family connecting and reconnecting with friends and neighbors growing a community that was there for each other and the new ability to participate at work in the community and in volunteer efforts remotely at 7 pm on thursday many of the stakeholders of this district are still having dinner with family helping their students with homework and talking about their kids day before bedtime with live streaming and remote participation now a resident no longer had to choose between their responsibilities at home and being involved with the community you could wrap up your daily i'm sorry you could wrap up your day and tune in to hear about the issues
152most important to you speak responsibly during public portion and feel engaged and connected to the district i myself have participated in board of ed meetings from florida from the bathroom at a restaurant and on my family room couch while my son watches while my son watches tv among many other places by all means meet in person allow the public to come and sit in the valley view apr and observe and participate but please do not exclude stakeholders by limiting the ways they can get involved yes there are things about these past two years that i would like to leave in the past and forget but expanding access communication and transparency is not one of them please continue live streaming your board of education meetings and allowing in real-time remote participation from this community thank you
153public comment number three from kathleen roberto ferrara good evening i would like to start off with expressing my disappointment with the discontinuation of virtual hybrid meetings leaving my home at seven pm with my eight-year-old daughter to sit at a boe meeting for endless hours is a sword it has already been over a year and virtual platforms have become a new norm for our meetings and providing education to our students why are we moving backwards isn't technology supposed to advance everything and bring everyone together it is natural for us to think of in-person meetings as more beneficial or easier to engage in advanced technology is a huge factor with the increase in participation amongst our community i believe that we need to continue with virtual hybrid meetings for a number of reasons in the past there
154may have been limitations to parents and community members being able to attend meetings for various reasons child care medical limited mobility travel work weather etc the watchon community shouldn't be penalized because they want to participate i ask that you take my concerns into careful consideration and reconsider your decision to discontinue virtual hybrid meetings thank you and finally i have a um this is a comment that was actually sent for the previous board meeting on january 27th unfortunately for some reason it went to my spam so i didn't see it until after the board meeting so i wanted to read it tonight this is from vanessa martin hello my name is vanessa martin at 115 valene i'm not sure if this question has been already posed or addressed concerning the the lunch distribution at valley view
155but has there been any discussion about hiring two lunch aides for the middle school i work at another school district where they have lunch aids that work two hours a day at minimum wage it is the problem we are having at valley view is only around distribution of the i'm sorry if the problem we're having at valley view is only around distribution of the food and not so much regarding vendors i believe hiring permanent personnel would be a plausible idea and if in the case that one of these employees is unable to work on some date the pto can request a volunteer to fill in has this been addressed thank you so if there are any comments from the public just please remember to state your name and address hi francesca scalera 75 parliament sorry
156i'm going to speak again concerning the hybrid meeting option i i would like to um just emphasize i did write an email to both of you asking that you would reconsider this option i do like having the ability to listen online when my husband's working late at night he doesn't get home until 11 pm on certain days i will try my best effort to come in person and join all of you i do apologize that you had so many challenges but those are not the community's problems that should have been in order before everyone was in person and streaming live online so i think it's plausible that you could have the technology or you know where he went or possibly get a donation to improve the room so that we could have a hybrid solution
157i know we're a two million dollar deficit so i'm not asking for you to spend any more money in here but there has to be a better solution to get more engagement from the community on a personal note i did an anonymous survey just to my friends in the community and fellow parents out of 53 responses 80 preferred hybrid muscle of meeting engagement so i also urge that you survey the community and see what they want again it was anonymous and i'm not going to share those details but again just something to consider to involve more parents thank you and have a good night thank you good evening everyone sonia woods johnston drive first i want to thank all of you for the countless hours that you volunteer because i do it as well and
158i know that it's it's not an easy task so thank you and rich thanks for bringing up my comment about the backlash that the parents are afraid to speak because of the backlash that could happen and tonight dory actually gave us a perfect example um just grab my notes because this is in reference to your president's opening remarks so i'd like to thank you dory for demonstrating tonight how parents can't speak up without being without their being backlash you're right i made the public comment about being surprised that there was no kitchen upgrade included in the referendum i actually even told you directly when i ran into you at dunkin donuts and i was i actually asked you because i hadn't looked into it and it just popped in my head because you guys kept
159saying this package includes everything so that's why i never questioned it because i believed when you said this package includes everything so my phone's going in sleep mode because usually i'm in bed um and yet today you chose to spin my comments and you chose to blame me for not speaking up sooner and for not reaching out to the operations committee that's exactly what i'm talking about that parents cannot speak up without there being backlash that's fine that you choose to blame me for you guys to not reach out to the pto that's okay i'll accept that but i'll repeat my original comment and that's that you did not reach out to anyone on the pto on the pto board for input on the referendum that's a fact but i am happy to hear that
160you guys are creating an ad hoc committee and that you will now be reaching out to the pto board for your next iteration of the referendum and we do look forward to helping you thank you [Applause] thank you are there any other comments from the public i just wanted to clarify as well that yes sonya when you spoke to me i did encourage you to engage then i guess this is going to turn into a he said she said so i did encourage you to engage if you decided not to then that was your choice are there any other comments from the public okay uh can i have a motion to adjourn some moves a second second any discussion all in favor say aye aye any opposed thank you for joining us this evening this
161meeting is adjourned