001m may we please stand for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic one nation nation under god indivisible with deliverance and justice welcome to a meeting of the board of education of the borough of wachong please be advised that this and all meetings of the board are open to the public and media consistent with the open public meetings act and that the advance notice required therein has been provided this is a regular meeting of the board of education of the borough of wachong at which formal action may be taken this meeting is being conducted remotely using communication technology instructions for joining the meeting and participating in public comments have been posted on the district website and sent to the wachong borough and
002the wachong public library as well as to the school community through an email blast 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 recording or photographing other than for private professional use i'm sorry 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 mr buccarelli mrs harvey here mrs ingrassia here mr craft here mrs o'donnell absent mrs scharf here we have a quorum we have six board members present okay i think we're gonna have the swearing in of new board member okay saying uh manny is working on getting you unmuted there you are can you hear us i can hear
003you all right we can hear you too welcome aboard thank you so we're gonna read the um required oath for school board members i'll read phrases and uh mr same will repeat after me i'm michele i'm michelle pocine you solemnly swear you saw me swear that i will support the constitution of the united states that i will support the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of new jersey and the constitution of the state of new jersey and that i will bear true faith and allegiance and allegiance to the same to the same and to the governments established in the united states and to the governments established in the united states and this state and this state under the authority of the people so help me god so help me god
004i michelle i'm michelle pocine do you solemnly swear do you solemnly swear that i possess the qualifications prescribed that i possess the qualifications prescribed by law for the office of member of a board of education by law for the office of member of a board of education and that i am not disqualified and i am not disqualified as a voter pursuant as a voter pursuant to rs 19 4-1 to rs 19 4-1 nor disqualified due to conviction of a crime due to conviction of a crime or offense or offense listed in njsa 18 a 12-1 listed in njs 18a 12-1 and that i will faithfully impartially and partially and justly and justly perform all the duties perform all the duties of that office of that office according to the best of my ability so help
005me god so help me god congratulations you are now an official board member thank you ladies michelle welcome congratulations congratulations thank you is there anything uh can we fix michelle's video are you guys i'm sorry to interrupt but her we can't see her screen yeah michelle you should get a invitation from our technician to throw your screen you just have to accept it it looks like you're there now okay actually um the video was showing is live however we're not seeing your image so it might be your computer i'll try to fix it on my end michelle do you would you like to say anything uh sure um i would first like to thank connie and the board office for being so helpful through this process i'm really much looking forward to working with mr
006alexis and the rest of the team in the board of ed as well as the principals i'd like to also thank the board of ed for entrusting me with the work of this town you know i'm a parent and my two greatest accomplishments in my life are nine years old and 13 years old and i think everybody who's a parent feels that way so i'm very much looking forward to making sure that the kids of this town get to come out of our schools knowing that they can accomplish anything in this life they want to so thank you um we're going to move to a special recognition of joe matierasi so um if it's okay with the board members um do you want me to just read you know the entire resolution or do you
007guys want to go around and each person take a line we can go around and take i'll take a line okay i'm just gonna give it back so um i'll just start it off then and then if you guys want to jump in each one of us can take a line from it which which would be nice um resolution for joseph mattiasi whereas joseph mattiasi was a member of the wachonboro board of education for five and a half years serving from 2015 through july 2020 i'll go whereas joseph matthiasi diligently served and chaired board committees including operations finance and negotiations and whereas joseph mattiasi this is the one that's really important to me brought invaluable experience to board issues with his financial knowledge and acumen whereas joseph mariasi practiced independent thinking and made decisions in
008the best interests of students whereas joe madiosi selflessly served on the board with honesty and respect for everyone in our community volunteering countless hours with a mission to make this district the best it could be whereas joseph madiyasi welcomed and men toward new board members to ensure cohesive and knowledgeable board that knew the institutional history of the district whereas joseph matiasi provided interludes of good-natured levity and relief with his signature sense of humor whereas i'm sorry go ahead go ahead oh i'll go whereas joseph matsuyasi's experience commitment sense of responsibility and integrity will be greatly missed by his colleagues on the wachong borough board of education now therefore be it resolved that the wachong board of education expresses deep appreciation for joseph mattias's tireless efforts and valuable service to the district recognizes all the people
009he touched through his dedicated volunteerism on the board and wishes him continued health happiness and success in all his endeavors thank you everyone um joe do you want to say anything i will first of all i want to thank uh you guys for doing that i really appreciate that um as you all know and i know being a board member is a tough job and it's a lot of a lot of hours and you know i i uh i appreciate the recognition and i think that you guys are on the right track and the boys in and the town is in good hands and uh i wish you all the the to be safe and happy and you know don't work until midnight on the board meetings oh go ahead rich i just wanted to
010say thank you and you're really uh you've been a great partner and you taught me a lot about school finance and about the schools themselves and it's your financial acumen and your dedication but it's also you know your operational experience was invaluable and and then you know the the knowledge of the physical plant was very impressive so thank you so much for everything you're absolutely welcome very welcome rich i uh i think you've been a quick study and i think you actually bring a very uh unique skill set to this that the operations is going to be thriving with you and i think it's it needs another jolt of energy so yes thank you yeah so i first of all i've known joe for years i think it's no secret that our children are friends
011but i can say that joe is a gentleman all day long because i have tortured him for years whether it was at the pool complaining about something and he would just sit there and just smile while i just went on and on and on or if it was at a board meeting he would always come over give me a hug afterwards no matter whatever the crazy thing i was addressing the board with so and even baseball games i get them so joe just always such a gentleman and you will be missed thanks chad yeah always appreciate it joe i'd just like to say you know thank you for all your service and and years of effort including you know board meetings at midnight and beyond um all your efforts especially this past year with the
012um you know the contract um and all those negotiations um and your expertise will be sorely missed and just simply you know thank you for um a lot of us being new board members and you having some tenure with experience um you know we're a bit of like deer in the headlights and um you were very kind to share your knowledge and experience to guide us so uh i just wanted to say thank you for that thank you joe i uh i appreciate it i enjoyed you know all you guys coming along and you know everyone has to done by trial by fire that's how it is so but you know you know that's what you guys are doing and joe you've done a great job with the policy it's a lot of work in
013there and you need a lot of effort so i i everyone should really appreciate your efforts too thank you we appreciate you joe thank you thank you thank you everyone yeah joe just wish we had more time with i'll bring the cake over later are there any other uh board member comments i have board member comments tonight go ahead sure okay um joe you might want to get i don't know if you want to sit through my comments you feel free to not participate in this meeting not that i want you to but you're just letting you know i won't be offended if you log off then i will i will log off since i probably have to pick myself up from football um so real quick i just wanted to welcome um you know
014everyone back to school and congratulate the administration on opening i also wanted to acknowledge how difficult this hybrid is for parents and acknowledge that their patience and goodwill and getting through it we had talked about returning to in-person board meetings when the buildings were open back again to students but i understand the issue is an in-person capacity cap um and we can't limit access to public meetings by law they're open to all um so if no one else um objects i'd like to propose maybe exploring some type of hybrid where those of us who are willing and able to attend in person who think it's valuable to do so i personally do could come and have an in-person meeting while allowing no limit on virtual participation just a thought speaking of public participation though i
015i have some concerns about process and transparency on tonight's agenda there's a services contract with an architectural firm in our agenda tonight it's item c4 this was one of 17 attachments in our board packet which is not atypical we routinely get lots of information to digest several days before board meeting and that's our obligation to do so this attachment is a contract for services to raise capital funds through a special election bond referendum and on page two of the contract it says the board would like to plan for a referendum in march 2021 so this was news to me because that decision was not made by the full board and i also noticed that the attachment last i checked which was this afternoon was not provided or posted publicly with our agenda in advance of
016the meeting so this raises a few concerns that have nothing to do with the merits of going out for a bond referendum in march or any other time um but their concerns more with our processes and and how we communicate as a board when the term the board is used in documents like a contract it presumes majority decisions of the full board based on action taken in public sessions so the public may witness our deliberation comment on resolutions which by law must be properly noticed in advance to the public this has never happened on the subject of a bond referendum so maybe there's some nuance in this but there's a big distinction in my mind between a committee making a recommendation to the full board to take action in public which would require debate public
017notification discussion and vote or what seems to have been done in this case which is presuming as a foregone conclusion of sorts that the full board is fine with what a committee discussed in private communication that we weren't privy to and just drafting a service contract that formalizes and commits us to that assumption by skipping the important step of discussion and public vote on the matter of a bond referendum itself and going straight to a services contract that assumes decisions that were not made by the full board my concern is that the public has no way to know that this contract is essentially an affirmation in lieu of a vote i guess to hold a fund and fund because funding it is an expensive process which the community does pay for a school bond referendum
018next march i mean this is kind of a big deal the last school referendum was 17 years ago in 2000 2003 when enrollment was increasing and a construction project was needed to add space to accommodate students i don't know how that was presented on the watchful board of education's agenda back then but i wonder if it was done with more transparency and courtesy to the public and board members like myself than is apparently being shown tonight additional concern maybe this is a minor but it's worth mentioning the resolution doesn't state the amount of the contract which has been our board's practice and precedent when retaining outside firms to do work for example when we hired our superintendent search firm the dollar amount was listed and actually when we hired this very same firm drg architects
019for an eighteen thousand five hundred dollar facilities assessment contract that was listed and that became the basis for justifying their referendum services um there's just something less than transparent about not providing to the public in advance any indication from tonight's agenda that with this vote to approve the service contract the amount we intend to raise in march through tax increases to to homeowners would be up to 12 million dollars and i only say that number because that's the only number that's been mentioned as part of a committee report which is perfectly transparent um to give that number in a committee report and i appreciate that it's duly noted but again it's not a substitute for a board discussion and pres and consensus to proceed so the reason i feel it's necessary to say this in
020board comments rather than at a certain point in the agenda it's not about my opinion of the referendum or its timing which belongs in discussion on the agenda in the appropriate place it's because i committed to principles of leadership with integrity and transparency and communication when i ran for this fourth things that i truly felt were lacking at that time i believed our community deserves and benefits from them and i still do i'm committed to those principles but i'm only one member of the board who was assigned to only one committee by our board leadership despite volunteering to participate on several and i'm not a party to private discussions that occur outside of the one committee that i'm permitted to attend and in this case i was relying on my colleagues and of course our
021board leadership in particular to ensure transparency and communication with the public and with myself and just to be clear when i say private discussions i simply mean committee meetings are private because they constitute a minority of the board obviously we all know this as board members by definition my minorities of the board do not make decisions on the board's behalf they make recommendations on which the full board acts in public hence my concern with a line in a contract that says the board wants to do x y and z so maybe a majority of board members were just planning to approve this contract with little to no discussion and maybe that has been planned that without my knowledge i don't know maybe they figured the referendum process will include opportunities for discussion and public input
022down the line and i'm sure it would they always do but i felt the need to be transparent about this although no one would ever know it the train is leaving the station tonight this innocuous looking services contract once approved will spend taxpayer money to hold a special election apparently as soon as possible to raise many more millions of tax dollars in a bond referendum and in wachong that's a big deal and as i see it we will be doing so without giving proper notice without allowing public comments or holding a discussion or a public vote on the big picture of a bond referendum and i just don't think the board action that's significant should appear on our agenda as a services contract hey uh can i address that jessa i will take the heat
023on this as i am the chairman of the operations and finance committee i agree with everything you've said except the part um let me just explain what's going on so basically i was going to pull this tonight and do a new reference referendum a new resolution that simply said that we were going to engage the firm to do preliminary work now let me just tell you what happened we have had several meetings of the operations committee for a long time now really since i've been on the board saying that look you know our infrastructure's falling apart we got to do something about it we're probably going to have to go out for a bond and but we've never had any really detailed discussions about it and we have one coming up on wednesday in the
024operations committee um which is scheduled for two and a half hours it'll probably go more but it's the longest committee meeting we will have ever had and it's specifically with drg and our attorneys who are not charging for that meeting but to at least drg would not until we sign this uh the attorney might charge a half hour an hour she's on but um this is only men this is not meant to launch a bond this is meant to launch an investigation of whether we should do it it's twelve thousand five hundred dollars and it's only to do the groundwork for the information we would need necessary to bring back to the board and into the entire you know town of wacho to the public so we weren't in any way trying to you know
025do anything secret wonder-handed all it is is if we're going to start doing a referendum that we've been talking about forever or for since i've been on the board it seems like forever we gotta start and the start is at twelve thousand five hundred dollars to say what do we need in the schools you know it's just blocking and tackling that has to be done they might come back with a bond referendum of eight million dollars and might come back with one of 16. i have no idea 12 you're right has been thrown around but this is this is just stuff that would validate in great detail what we need in order to decide on how to move forward whether or not to move forward with a bond so you know on the agenda tonight
026you know we're going to be asked to approve another 150 worth of expenditures that were an emergency that was switches that were at the end of their life in 2012 eight years ago and we can't bleed like that every you know every month so that's a hundred fifty thousand dollars this is twelve thousand five hundred dollars to make an assessment of uh what we should do now the march date this is what happened we had a meeting with we called i guess the administration called grg they said this is what we'd like you to do we'd like a a proposal back they put in the march date i i have no idea whether march is good or march is bad or we should do it a different time or we should never do it i
027was gonna i was gonna say in the resolution that we should take out the march date we should put in there that they're only doing task one and when we get a proper contract back from them we'll be able to sign it in the amount of up to twelve thousand five hundred dollars i didn't want to lose another 30 days till the next meeting and i was going to have this discussion with the whole board at the time of the resolution i don't want to you know lose a whole 30 days to just sign a letter that's a preliminary investigation that we're undoubtedly going to have to do unless we make a decision without any information that we're never going to go out for a bond you know referendum so we could pull it or
028we could leave it on and vote on it if if we pull it i don't know what else you want to know before the next meeting but we'll we will lose 30 days and and we can talk about it then i'm i'm good either way but there was no mal intent there it's a small amount of money to help us get the basic information we have to we need to understand as a board which would be shared with the entire board what's what's needed at the schools that's all so i apologize if you thought that it was something that we were doing privately and that we're launching a bond tonight that is hyperbole we are not launching a bond tonight okay maybe i don't want the headlines in the echo central to read watchung launches
029school bond that would be a disservice to this board okay i know board comments aren't the time for us to discuss you know action to pull it or whatever but i do want to say i don't i i just can't see that we're going to do another preliminary investigation when in december we authorized a facilities plan and a gap analysis a comprehensive facilities review for 18 500 and we then in june received that plan as a board which we never discussed but was the basis for repeated talk about going out for a referendum without ever involving the full board that document which was which we paid for in december and we the work product of it was delivered in june says the word referendum year one referendum year two referendum year three plus and the
030dollar amount is twelve million dollars and it presumes it's many pages long and it details in great detail all of the work that is needed so to say now that twelve thousand five hundred dollars is needed to make an assessment and do a preliminary investigation it just makes it seem like what was the facilities and that was the facilities review worth eighteen thousand five hundred and i also you know to say i don't want the headline to be wachong initiates a school bond referendum for march time frame that is exactly what the contract says which was not given to the public nor was this properly noticed as an as a real agenda i don't know where we would be i i'm gonna have to miss this and gracia jessica i mean honestly i feel like
031you're painting this like they're doing their job did you reach out to mr bucharelli to ask him what went on in operation reached out to the superintendent yes but did you reach out to mr bucharelli because i was told that we should always reach out to the head of the committee if we have a question i would like to finish let me say i do not like the way that you're painting this that ever all of us on this board we're all taxpayers you're making it like we're just going to go randomly spend this money because we feel like it i work my husband works and we pay these taxes too and i think the operations committee is actually doing their due diligence and really really being thoughtful about this and i do think that
032i feel like you're trying to spin this that there's no this is not something really spin this is my opinion why are we talking about it now instead of when it's on the agenda because i think so i think you brought this up with a long time well no i made a distinction that my concerns about transparency on the agenda but you're right if we're discussing what to do with the action item that's more appropriate for the agenda and i said that i said that when i made my comment but that's how it's transparent it's on the agenda for discussion um i mean i tried to make that distinction there to me there is a big distinction between having an agenda item for a services contract that is not made available to the public and
033an agenda item saying should we go out for a bond referendum in march that has a price tag of 12 million dollars so to me that's very different it might it might be helpful to have some history too on the referendum that expired can we move can we discuss this when we get to that item and we can just move on if there's any other board member comments i just i want to tackle her for the first comments where i think the administration has done an amazing job getting ready for the school year the kids are so excited those first few days and and there's seeing stories of outbreaks where people are being careless i mean i have to commend everyone for really being careful and thoughtful and i'm you know so far so good
034so thank you for all the hard work um i i also had some comments i just wanted to um say it's with regret um that we received the resignation of board member mallory morales and she has resigned due to personal reasons and family obligations it has been a pleasure working with her as a board member and she was an instrumental member of the operations committee especially during the district's budget planning her service to the district won't be forgotten and i'd like to thank her for all of her hours and effort that she put in um which will improve the educational experience of the children wachong and i just wanted to take a second to ask george if he could please give the board members and the community just some idea as to the timeline um
035to fill this vacant board seat thing mrs harvey um now that you've announced it what we are planning to do is to uh post it on the website and send an email to the school community letting them know this vacancy exists uh we would have to go through the same process we were we were uh planning on putting october 15th as a date for any interested candidates to send a resume to uh mr pepe uh the interesting part here is that this is to fill a vacancy that's only until december 31st so um candidates who have already filed for a position in the election may be interested and would be encouraged to apply everyone else is encouraged to apply but the again filling the vacancy would only be for uh probably the november and december
036meetings thank thank you george are there any other board member comments before we move on okay announcements from the superintendent yes thank you uh good evening everyone first of all welcome to mrs posain thank you for making this commitment to our community michelle we look forward to working with you it was great seeing joe mariasi on the zoom call again we thank him for his many years of service and all the fine work he did in the name of serving the kids in the community watching to mrs harvey's comments i want to recognize mrs morales service on the board during a very challenging year i enjoyed working with her and wish her and her family only the very best i'd also like to thank chief cena for being so helpful as we transition to in-person
037instruction officers have been present at both schools during drop-off and pick-up times and i wish chief seen all the best in his retirement which is coming uh on october 1st i also want to thank the pto for its constant support and its adaptability in terms of new fundraising efforts thanks to the gracious support of the pto the staff enjoyed opening day breakfast treats from starbucks and the students enjoyed some thoughtful welcome back messages drawn in colorful chalk on the sidewalks we're thrilled to have the students physically back in school thank you mr craft for your your kind remarks the staff is doing a great job juggling multiple responsibilities and adapting to the hybrid model we're off to a good start despite the emergency water main break on that friday september 11th and the challenges posed
038by the connectivity issues and on that issue as everyone knows we've made adjustments to improve the wi-fi in the school and though those adjustments helped to a degree it became increasingly clear that the planned upgrades to the network cannot be delayed it isn't a bandwidth issue rather we're dealing with worn and outdated infrastructure that has to be replaced so that our remote learning platform can function as designed the work began today and will continue through monday as i said my message to the community earlier this week we know how valuable the in-person instruction is and are sensitive to any imbalances between the cohorts we will try to maintain a balance over the course of the year the plan is to have the upgraded network ready to go on tuesday when cohort a returns after the
039holiday if anything changes i will let the school community know we should have a better idea as the work continues tomorrow and over uh the weekend on saturday i want to emphasize again that keeping everyone safe and healthy as a team effort and we are pleased that students and adults are following the protocols and being responsive to reminders regarding the daily screening form in genesis remember the most important thing parents can do to contribute to the safety of our community is to keep their children home if they're sick in school the three most important things we all can do as recommended by the cdc are to watch our distance wash our hands and wear face covering our commitment to the education of our students remains as strong as ever the hybrid model is working well
040and will improve over time students and staff are adjusting but we also are seeing that it is taking more time and effort to plan in the hybrid model and monitor remote learning while conducting in-person instruction we originally had hoped that we could transition to phase two with full-day in-person instruction after four weeks which would bring us to about october 5th but as we all knew at the outset we are in a new paradigm and are learning every day we'll continue to evaluate the progress in phase one but at this point we do not believe rushing into the full day model in october is the best path forward for students i say this for several reasons we have teachers who are working extremely hard to adapt to this new model of teaching with students in person
041and remote their planning is taking a lot of time professional training has been delayed at times because of the connectivity issues and more time is needed to provide professional learning for the teachers and for the teachers to apply that learning and practice the afternoons also are used for professional collaboration to ensure consistency across grade levels and to provide office hours and follow up with students who need extra help that time would be significantly reduced in a full day model our concerns about lunch remain also we would have to put grade level cohorts together in the apr and though we can maintain social distancing the students would be removing their mass while eating and one of the largest concerns right now is the impact on on the all remote learners we currently have 35 percent of
042our students on a full-time remote model we have concerns about putting those students on a full day which could lead to as much as six and a half hours of screen time i'll add that no district in the county currently has plans to move to a full day hybrid model now as for the more immediate plans please remember that the four day weeks will not have a remote wednesday and that includes next week and the week of october 12th also we have been directed by the state to close for in-person instruction on november 3 for election day but we are allowed to conduct all remote instruction and count the day toward the 180 day requirement so a reminder will be going out about that before i introduce the new teachers that we're very proud of
043are there any questions from the board members um first of all i just wanted to thank the administration and staff and everyone parents students everybody for this situation that we're all in um i know it's difficult for everybody and i and i i believe that the work that was done on the plan over the summer um there was a lot of hard work and effort that everyone put into it and i just wanted to make a suggestion that maybe um you know this was you know this is a plan but now we're actually in the this experience and we're seeing um what is working and what isn't working so i would just like to make a suggestion for us to have a survey go out to parents to just get some feedback on how we're
044doing and then maybe how we can improve uh going forward and i think hearing from you know our parents in our community would be a great way to get some of that feedback i'd also like to recommend and this can you know always be discussed in in committee but i'd also like to recommend if we could maybe move to the high school schedule i know that they have their hybrid plan as cohort a that goes in monday tuesday and wednesday for two weeks and cohort b goes in thursday and friday and then for two weeks and then it switches the the next two weeks it's cohort a monday and tuesday and then cohort b wednesday thursday and friday so i just like to make those two recommend recommendations i was just going to say certainly
045we can consider that um you know we did uh have have talked about it um you know when we went through the restore plan and mrs harvey's right when we were doing this over the summer we were trying to project what it's going to be like having the students back and we were basing our our decisions on that um without having the experience so as we gain experience we're learning uh we we can make adjustments i mean i think that was the whole idea that this had to be a flexible uh kind of plan and that adjustments would be made maybe not immediately but we can certainly talk about those um ideas watching hills is on a rotating wednesday schedule and so is uh warren um township school district they are both um on a
046half day schedule just like the rest of the county yeah i i would say professionally speaking uh being able to have uh have them in the building as often as possible in their cohorts uh particularly this time of year with getting the assessing done um i think it's it's invaluable and the way that the heist and i'm not sure if warren does it this way as well the high school uh you actually go my kids went two wednesdays in a row so they went wednesday thursday friday wednesday thursday friday and then it'll start over for cohort a and they'll go monday tuesday wednesday and monday tuesday wednesday but i think uh these kids they they need to be they need to be in the building george i have a couple of questions about the the
047plan uh could you clarify i think there's still some confusion a little bit about wednesdays are wednesdays a professional development day or should instruction be going on uh on wednesdays um and two could you give some clarification um as to what's happening when a uh homeroom teacher or teacher is absent what is the situation how are we covering that sure i i can address that briefly but also we're going to have principal reports and they also can okay elaborate on that also but you know the uh when we originally designed uh the plan there was in the restart plan uh wednesdays were going to be a less structured day but we made that change uh at the end of the summer before the um the plan was approved and submitted to the county to have
048uh a scheduled half day you know bell schedule uh even though we were all remote um and that's and that adjustment probably is taking a little bit of time to take hold but that's how it was and i know what we experienced some differences between the first wednesday and yesterday um but you know there is a schedule that we we follow and the second part of that was about the homeroom teachers when they are absent and yes uh they've been assigned buddy teachers uh that can assist uh the teacher who will be in the classroom will be more responsible for the students in person but there will be check-ins by the buddy teacher and each principal has a different way of doing that to make it work best for the school and the uh the
049situation checking in with the uh to all remote students thank you so i i have a procedural question for the board since this has been raised how do we handle it right so pandemic um changing conditions i think we're going to be living with this for quite some time i think we have board meetings once a month uh i heard mr alexis say well we can address that at the next board meeting which means that wednesdays won't be addressed for the next month um it's an interesting question because the board has to approve the restart plans and we all even in the restart plan say you know we're going to have to change this from time to time does the board then have to approve amendments or suggest amendments to a restart plan does the
050board withdraw its approval for a restart plan and approve a new schedule i'm i'm putting this to the board members for their um you know for their views on that because clearly this is not the first time something's going to come up like this and we should know how to treat it i think it's written in the plan like george said that we can make adjustments to it but if it's something um maybe as big as as a schedule change or something like that um maybe it would need board approval but i wonder if we could change it prior to the board meeting and then retroactively approve it if we needed to i think it's really a question for the for the county superintendent um and i can reach out to him but i i
051don't think we have to wait till the next board meeting uh um what i said was i don't think it will be an immediate change but we also have to go through steps and make sure that we can work this out in a way that makes sense for everyone and we can discuss it in committee uh the curriculum committee and with the principals and we can discuss it also with the faculty but i don't think it would be something where you would have to approve it before we were allowed to do it um but i i'm just basing that on my conversations over the course of the summer with uh the county superintendents and the county superint um you know the actual executive county superintendent so i can look into that certainly in terms of
052process well that's the one side of the point the other side of the coin is i i you know i hear some concern from board members about having virtual wednesdays and do we want to adjust the plan to say that we're going to have in person wednesdays how does that process you know get started and maybe i don't know joe i don't want to put you on the spot from the joe barbella chair of the policy committee is do you have any views on that yeah i i i do rich i i i think well and i agree with mr alexis we can certainly recommend and go through the proposed changes if any in the policy committee um i do want to get input though per mr alexa's comment um from the county or state
053just to see what other districts are doing or what's the appropriate protocol because i i don't think we're in an environment where uh with these documents which are predicated on the state guidelines that the board has to approve every change but certainly material aspects should likely come before the board for consideration but i'd like to get the guidance from the county just as um you know for consistency and and then rich my recommendation is we can run it through the certainly the policy committee uh for proposed changes or modifications um likely we'll have to lean heavily on mr alexis's uh input and because obviously there's a cascading effect to the teachers and everything else and then share that more broadly with the board for consideration if a vote is needed i'm just mindful because we
054do have as you said you know board meetings typically once a month that we have to be more nimble and flexible and to make these modifications and changes and i also don't want to have you know two three board meetings a month just simply to have votes on this so um i think it should be limited to only the most material changes um understanding that there's going to be uh flexibility and discretion given to the superintendent thanks george does that sound like a reasonable approach you know first getting the guidance and then it's absolutely reasonable job okay and then i don't i mean certainly we we should for material if as required the board should have input because it it does it does impact the community sure and i agree about that i think that
055like a material one certainly would be the move and some districts had to do this when they had to go from the planned hybrid uh to an all remote one uh that was something that had to be approved but i think under the circumstances it's understood that and we put plenty of these caveats in the language and the appendices and in the uh policy that it's a fluid situation and that additional considerations may be added um so yeah so i think that's all good advice joe thank you i i just want to stress too just to you know i don't know if other board members are in favor of it is just getting that survey out too and hearing from the parents um because they're partners in this as well and i'm not just talking
056about for the virtual situation also for kids who are in the building just hearing about um you know their experience i know some um surveys have gone out from some districts who the kids are in person where you know they might even ask a question if there's any level of anxiety with them physically being you know in the building so depending on how the survey is sculpted i mean just getting that feedback from our community i think is really important for us to also understand areas that we might need to adjust in that we haven't we haven't considered and that they find are important yeah that's a good point dorian and you know one thing i would i would like to add you know we we have the road map here as as part of
057the the restart plan um and obviously most if not all of us are parents so you know i i think it's also very important and just the right thing to do uh wherever possible to provide as much advance notice of proposed changes so that families can plan um you know either their their home life or their work life um accordingly and and and dory i think the survey is a good idea because it does take a pulse um in addition to the committee meetings where where more people are free to speak um to understand you know some of the challenges people have which may um give us the appropriate input before making these decisions any other comments questions or anything for george well so are we going to do a survey that's the question do
058we have to vote on whether to do a survey or what's the resolution of this issue i don't think there has to be a vote i mean we certainly could put together a survey just like we did over the summer okay could i ask you to send questions just to the boards in case we had any feedback for you individually sure great thanks appreciate it so i'm gonna i'm gonna move on to the to welcoming the new teachers um we'll begin with our new valley view stem teacher diana bachis diana comes to us from somerville public schools where she was a stem teacher there for four years she has a degree from the college of new jersey and we're very pleased that she's joined us she was working this summer on along with mrs pistorius
059on the the curriculum for the stem program at valley view we also have special education teacher stephanie barrios she holds a degree in english and special education from wagner college she comes to us from longhill township we're very pleased that she's joined us samantha fox is our new district behaviorist she graduated summa laude from kane university and holds a master's degree from monmouth university samantha is a board-certified behavior analyst and has worked with students ages three through twenty one welcome samantha sarah greensweek graduated from montclair state university with honors she is a special education teacher in the autism program at baybury she also has an m.a in special education from concordia university sarah comes to us from parsippany troy hills amanda johns special education teacher at bayberry she graduated with honors from caldwell college amanda
060had worked as a student teacher a teacher's assistant and a substitute teacher while earning her degree we're excited to welcome amanda kristen reed has worked with us since 2017 as one of the preschool instructors at bayberry we're very happy to have her as a kindergarten teacher this year melissa richmond is a new art teacher at valley view melissa earned her degree in art education sumo laude from indiana university of pennsylvania she comes to us from berners township public schools where she was ceramics and sculpture sculpture teacher at william anne in middle school and lancel palerno not new to the district leanne is starting a new position though as a full-time preschool teacher in our enhanced preschool program as many of you know leanne lives in wachong and is a longtime preschool instructor here she receives
061her early elementary education degree from montclair state we're very pleased to have her in this new role kristen schmidt special education teacher at valley view kristen is a new special education teacher at the middle school she comes to us from new providence public schools where she has been a special education teacher for 13 years kristin earned her bachelor's degree from the college of saint elizabeth and her master's degree from walden university she'll be joining us on october 26th and we look forward to that erica seale is our new district psychologist she earned her ba in psychology from kane university and her eds from ryder erica comes to us from roselle park where she was the school psychologist for a year no stranger to the area though erica completed her internship in longhill welcome erica and
062though not new to the district i also want to congratulate danielle mareska on her relatively new position of ldtc she transition transitioned to this position quietly last spring those are our newest members of our staff we're very proud of them and before i uh move on to the principal's reports i would like to just recognize mrs petrinick with a resolution in her retirement the following resolution is to be read into the record by mr alexis the wachonboro school district superintendent honoring mrs trudy matrunick for her 16 and a half years of service as the bayberry school nurse in the wachonboro school district at the board of education meeting on september 24 2020 whereas trudy matronic has been the bayberry school nurse in the wachonboro school district for 16 and a half years hired on january
0631 2004 and whereas trudy matronic touched the lives of countless students over the 16 and a half years helping men cuts and scrapes bumps and bruises doling out countless bandages and ice packs with a gentle hand and comforting smile on her face and whereas trudy matrunic monitored the blood sugar levels of many students and communicated constantly with their parents and whereas trudy matrunic performed yearly health screenings for all bayberry students in kindergarten through fourth grade and whereas trudy matronic made sure all bayberry students were current in their immunizations and their records reflected the same for the overall health and safety of the district and whereas trudy matronic spent much time and energy making sure all bayberry school field trips have the appropriate medical staff or equipment needed for students health needs and whereas trudy matronic
064worked with parents of bayberry students to make sure their children's allergies were identified and created individualized health plans and whereas trudy matronic maintain a clean and very organized office allowing for the efficient treatment of students and staff alike and whereas trini petrudek worked deliberately and collaboratively with the faculty and administration at baybury school and whereas trudy matronic's boundless energy experience caring calmness sense of responsibility and fun but most of all her friendship will be greatly missed by her colleagues in the watching borough school district now be it resolve that the watching borough board of education and the entire school community extend deep gratitude for trudy matronic's leadership and service to bayberry school and wish her continued health and happiness in retirement congratulations trudy on your retirement next real quickly we have the biannual student safety
065data system reporting this is for period two of the 2019-20 school year which covers january 1 through june 30th 2020. for this period we had six unconfirmed hib incidents two confirmed hip incidents one violence incident which involved a minor physical altercation that arose out of one of the hib incidents as i've said before though we are fortunate our numbers are low and we continue to use these incidents as opportunities to teach students the power of acceptance and strengthen our culture of diversity equity and inclusion and with that i'm going to turn it over to principal's kid and fichner for their reports see do we have principal kid unmuted yet can you see me can you hear me we can both okay wonderful good evening everyone um for my principal's report i just want to emphasize
066how wonderful it is to have the kids back whether it's um in person or all remote i love seeing their eyes or their entire faces so our teachers returned to school on monday august 31st for the first of four in service days on the first day of professional development our staff was greeted by inspirational chalk art on the school sidewalks and a cafe breakfast all generously provided by our pto the professional development days included presentations on our new student information system genesis teaching strategies and planning for the hybrid and remote instructional models safety protocols and procedures regarding covid social emotional and digital citizen topics and also of course training on new technology platforms to be used with the students and as is done annually teachers also reviewed building safety procedures ieps and 504 plans our
067staff has continued participation in professional development during their afternoons in september we are extremely grateful for the time as it provides our teachers with ongoing opportunities to reflect and build on their practices in order to further enhance teaching and learning valley view students began the 2020-21 school year on tuesday september 8th they too were greeted with welcoming chalk art and a very excited staff we were thrilled to welcome our students remotely and in person to start the new school year the opening weeks of school were packed with lessons focusing on students social emotional health how to navigate the google suite of online tools how to be responsible digital citizens safety protocols and of course class expectations our eighth graders even created a welcome to valley view words of wisdom slide presentation for our newest valley
068view members our fifth graders important to note our hybrid students have impressed us with their adherence to our safety guidelines there have not been any incidents where any children have failed to follow them or have given any resistance so we're very grateful for that thanks to the generosity of weff and the bizignano family we received 30 new chromebooks to supplement our inventory the chromebooks are distributed to some of our hybrid students and we are closely monitoring the devices to help inform our future purchases our reimagined back to school night was shared via e-blast and posted on the valley view website on thursday september 17th staff members rehearsed and recorded their presentations which were then organized on a google site for families to peruse i am truly impressed with the amount of helpful information and the
069quality of the staff's presentations i hope that all families are able to view each of their child's teachers presentations the back to school night link will remain active on the valley view website until this weekend as an added bonus representatives from the pto west and cpac joined the valley view staff in welcoming families to the new school year with their own personalized messages thank you for taking the time to do that at valley view we believe that the end of the academic day is only half time we are excited to announce that some of our clubs will be up and running in the next few weeks the list includes student council community outreach photography world cultures yearbook drama and the environmental club please stay tuned for more information but before i close i would like
070to take a moment to express my gratitude and appreciation to my staff for their endless dedication to delivering a high quality education to all of our students i have been blown away with what they have accomplished in such a short amount of time they have definitely risen to the challenge i've been contacted by administrators and educators from other districts who are still all remote to find out what makes wachong so successful in this unprecedented time and my answer is my staff so of course their strength comes from the endless flexibility and support of our board in our community so i do want to say thank you to all of you thank you my turn yes okay good evening denise federer principal at bay berry school i'm actually excited this is my first principal report our
071school year began with four days of valuable professional development and collaborative planning on august 31st through september 3rd utilizing google classroom as our learning management system the staff received training on the hybrid teaching model lesson planning as well as coveted safety protocols and procedures genesis lesson planner and social emotional learning in collaboration with their teams teachers learned how to optimize their technology equipment for the hybrid learning environment and participated in self-paced google tutorials based on their needs teachers were also given time to meet with the child's study team to review iep's m504s prior to school starting allowing them to plan to meet their students needs on september 3rd teachers held a virtual meet your teacher where students were introduced to their new classroom teacher and classmates it was well received and helped our students feel
072more comfortable coming back to school it was great to see our students come back to school on september 8th since then they have adjusted well to wearing a mask and following the new safety protocols in school and remotely they are learning how to navigate google classroom with their chromebook or ipad our kindergarten and first graders received their new ipads this week they were so excited to try all their new apps as for their teachers and we are so grateful for the donation in collaboration with staff our parent drop off and pick up procedure was revised to manage the high volume volume of cars and abide by covid restrictions as you may know all cars enter in the upper lot and loop around past the all-purpose room it is running smoothly and efficiently with help from
073our dedicated staff members wachong police and cooperative parents who arrive with signs in their windows and lots of patients bus arrival and dismissal is also going smoothly with social distancing in place over the past month staff have been working together to reflect upon their instruction adding new strategies and innovative tools to engage their students our first step was to establish google classroom as our platform for consistent communication organization of classroom materials and workflow teachers have provided students with a daily or weekly planner with quick links to their google meets and google classrooms the planner has been invaluable for assisting students and parents with following a schedule and quickly joining the google meets with less clicking around guardians have also been invited to the google classroom so that they can receive automatic updates and summaries of
074their child's progress we had our third and fourth grade virtual back to school night on tuesday september 22nd the teachers and educational specialists created informational engaging presentations for families which have been posted on our website our pre-k to 2 back to school night is next tuesday on the 29th so finally i would like to thank the dedicated dedicated bayberry teachers and staff for their hard work perseverance and cooperation they have all gone gone above and beyond our expectations to create a safe welcoming and engaging environment for our students thank you very much okay the uh the last item under this portion of the agenda includes the enrollment reports um we have those um enrollment numbers as of the first day of school since the first day of school we've had seven new students we also
075had increased enrollment particularly in kindergarten which at one point raised the possibility that we would have to move to a hybrid plan because currently the kindergarteners as you know are on a four-day schedule fortunately we were able to balance the classes and keep kindergarten on that four-day schedule for now we're pleased about that okay enrollment yes rich could we do this i know we're supposed to have comparisons and we do it during the school year but for september 8th the comparison would have been the last day of school in uh in june so i don't know what those numbers were so if we could always have a comparison i think it's good so this this would be the baseline for 2020. right yes we were trying to create the baseline for this year the numbers
076last year uh they vary from 619 to 623 for the most part throughout the year our eighth grade class was larger than uh the current kindergarten class and i think that's what's created this bit of disparity but we're back up to 611 so we're very close to where we were in the um in the spring okay and we will use this as a point of comparison going forward thank you sure um george i have a question on the technology piece um i know we had uh received a donation in terms of ipads have all those been distributed over at yes they have been and um you know mrs fichner if you're still unmuted you can you can talk a little bit about the process but um the uh they were distributed they had to be
077programmed and set up with the apps we wanted to make sure we got them you know done correctly we tested them and then they were distributed over the last uh five or six days you know by cohorts and so all the students have them now um and there was also a question i had about consistency i know george you'd mentioned in your comments uh in the beginning that you were the administration was working on consistency across grade levels um what about consistency across subjects uh the same idea that's the goal to whether it's a grade level or whether it's the subject subject matter at uh at the middle school the goal is to have professional collaboration and to work together so that there is uh that consistency there's articulation horizontally and there's articulation vertically between
078the grade levels and also consistency in terms of how those subjects are being delivered matching up with other subjects uh can you repeat that in terms of the delivery of the subjects or maybe the the the method of teaching in those subjects the mode of teaching yeah well the method of teaching is always going to be uh within the discretion and professional autonomy of the faculty and collaboration with the principal but yes we are always trying to make sure that things are developmentally appropriate and that the you know the instruction matches uh the students needs i think um somebody has their hand raised because they're muted is that oh okay can you guys unmute her sorry yeah i'm sorry to interrupt go ahead george thank you how was it that was it oh okay um
079[Music] committee reports uh gail asked me to give the hr committee report because she wasn't going to be here tonight so let's see in hr we discussed we received an update on the the nurse before an aftercare additional staff mentors student teachers i believe we're going to get another student teacher which is great news leave replacement uh for the business administrator uh the secretary of the business administrator i want to clarify that sorry uh we got an update on ffcra leaves of absences and and some other leaves of absences bus runs for the special education paraprofessional district substitute coordinators home instructors appointment of student information system manager and we went over some of the board goals action plan so that was the um pretty much what we did in hr this month rich can you
080please give the ops committee report sure we had a meeting on wednesday since september 16th uh the first thing we discussed was a meeting that we follow up to a meeting that we had with the town about a possibility for how the district and the township can share services to you know to the advantage of each um you know i we're getting together a list of services that rich pepe and is getting a list of services that um might fall into that bucket and uh be more efficient for both entities there was discussion about phillips field and uh there was some interest by the members uh representing the town council to commercialize the property in some respect at a certain point i'll remind you that we tendered a lease for i think three years and
081um it was sent back with a a term that ends in in december so before you know the start of the new year we're probably going to have to decide you know what we want to do mutually with that you know the board will have to decide what it wants to do with that property and we will be listening to the town i think the uh the the feeling of the committee was that the primary use of the space should be for the benefit of the children and the members of the community as it has been for years used as athletic fields so any proposal to commercialize that um i i think that the the feeling of committee and you know i'll talk for myself and others in the committee can say if they disagree
082but i thought the feeling we'd have to have a pretty attractive uh proposition that would be like significant revenue and minimal corruption to public use of the property for for us to really think that that would be a good solution um so that's still remains to be explored with the town uh mr pepe presented a pandemic cost analysis estimate which was basically a worst case scenario um and and then uh compared it with funding that we would have that would be pandemic related funding and uh the dealt uh the additional cost that the district might have to bear um would be it looks like in a reasonable case less than a hundred thousand dollars and uh mr pepe and the committee were and and mr alexis were fairly confident that we could find that money
083um somewhere during the course of the year on our 13 million but um the committee also discussed um a referendum timeline uh for planning for whether we when and whether we should go out um as i said we've been discussing this for ever since i've been on the board and um and things have been deteriorating in the physical plant of the district i.e the schools and we've been putting band-aids on on things from a very old referendum the you know the proceeds of which we used to build you know plant and equipment that are well beyond their useful life now so we can i think discuss that further when we get to the uh operations committee action items um and then technology issues uh based on recommendations from tech support um wi-fi connectivity is temporarily
084improved um and of course the administration is monitoring the system but it would determine that we need new network switches to be obtained immediately so that we could enable um virtual classrooms and distance learning um so uh that will be part of what the action items are also we can discuss and then um the committee also discussed the process of searching for new tech support services because i think that nobody's been very happy with what the tech support services that we have right now and uh it's really critical to you know name on being able to provide uh technology products and services onto the district that's all i had thanks rich uh jen do you have a curriculum committee report yes i do i'm sorry i just got unmuted i had a quick question on
085the phillips field did the town or are you did you somehow become aware of what the commercialization idea was i mean uh you know that's uh that's why i didn't really bring up anything specific people were just going around words like you know events or you know gatherings um i think somebody said a wedding an outdoor wedding or something like that these are just things that came from the um the town council representatives and so you know until i hear anything more concrete jess i didn't even think it was really worth mentioning other than the fact that there was the thought that it's an asset that's being you know under utilized as far as its potential to generate income right okay i just i didn't know i hadn't heard that and i wondered what commercialization
086meant in that yeah no oh you well should wonder because i can't figure it out i mean i think you know this was just a i guess they were just brainstorming with us but um i definitely asked them and i think the whole committee or the representatives of the committee at that meeting asked them to uh you know we are open-minded people but you know what do you really mean so um there's more more to come on that i mean originally that land owned by the board of ed was intended for future expansion if we ever needed a third school that was i believe that was the intended purpose and why the board still holds on to it um but i don't know that the board of ed has ever undertaken like complete separate revenue
087generating side kind of side businesses that are outside the you know educational parameters so that's an interesting yeah it's the same thing i wondered jess and i actually looked up the law on it rather than asking our attorney to and it pretty it's very broad i would surprise me it said that we you can use it for school expansion school purposes um athletic use playgrounds or and basically don't quote me on this but it said basically anything else you want to use it for okay so i was surprised at how broad it was now i didn't look up any case law and if we ever get to that and we ever want to do something um different than you know sort of fields for the for the children of the community and we want to
088start having a commercial venture that we charge other than a hot dog shack then uh you know i think uh we'll we'll get a better reading on that but i think that's a long way off obviously it's a board discussion when we have any information that constitutes any kind of more specific proposal okay thank you for that information rich if i may um and i think this is something that mrs ingrassia and i can agree on that both of our husbands are past presidents of the league and i would definitely say i think little league has uh literally continues to do a beautiful job with that property um i also you know i just kind of going down a road of venues and generating i'd like to see things like signage by bayberry on valley
089road indicating that there's actually a school tucked back there um and perhaps the lights replaced in the crosswalk by sterling by valley view that i actually saw today still after i've been discussing it for a year still not lit so maybe you know we could steer back to getting smaller stuff done oh i also um wanted to mention that i think that the meeting too we discussed um crossing guards still to work with the town on that and we also mentioned or they probably mentioned shared services with grounds keeping and stuff like that so that was also discussed briefly not in any detail or in depth just those items were brought up um jen can you please give us the curriculum committee report the committee discussed technology issues uh with the network and the steps
090that are being taken to improve the wi-fi connections uh at both schools uh concerns were expressed about instruction on wednesday and perceived disparities among classes in terms of the amount of synchronous instruction that's it uh okay joe can you please give us a policy committee report sure we met on september 14th and the material aspects of the committee meeting were continued discussions on the remote learning plan and restart plan which are on for second read this evening um and as discussed earlier if um once mr alexis does some additional um research with the county um for what may be necessary as part of ongoing modifications to those policies and procedures or regulations as we call them for future policy meetings we may want to continue to have it on the agenda just simply uh for
091consideration of of modifications which will become um more likely i'm assuming as as things develop so we have an eye for uh for those changes okay thank you rich is there any update as the legislative liaison you guys can hear oh he needs to be on youtube um thank you uh yeah there was uh um rich uh there were there was uh some legislation passed that i think is the most important that impacts the district and it's about uh the district's ability to subcontract for services and uh rich pepe if you'd be kind enough to just summarize that for us i think it's uh it sounds like very onerous um restrictions have been put on our ability to subcontract certain work which we did not have before and apparently reading the the comments on this
092this is legislation that um various lobbyist groups have been trying to get past for 30 years and never has been and just was and the ngsba opposed it but it was signed by the governments and law now right um so basically what the law says is that in the past districts could outsource various non-instructional um services things like custodial services cafeteria services um related services child study nursing services i don't know of anyone who does that but it could be those kinds of services you have the option to outsource instead of hiring your own people bringing in a vendor to provide those and the one and only reason for doing that is saving money it almost always saves district money to outsource this has been a hot topic for many many years people on both
093sides of it um it finally got passed so basically what this legislation does is it says if a district is going to outsource they can't do it until the current contract is up the union contract and they can only do it with negotiations with the union those are that's really a summary of a lot of the little details but that's the key is that it basically has to be negotiated so rich is there anything that's grandfathered because i didn't understand the legislation they have a summary of it obviously it's new we haven't had council's advice on it yet but in your mind it's like do we automatically have to stop doing any outsourcing we're doing doing now and negotiating now this is only about if you're going to change from what you've current from currently
094having an in-house to outsource okay and it also is only for each district it's a change in status quo which could be various various things for various districts right so some district does a lot of outsourcing some district does none they're all just kind of frozen there right they right if you want to take something that you currently do not have outsourced you want to outsource it you have to go through the union it does say in the legislation that it it only applies if there is an association which is a good this an important distinction for us not that we've had any discussion about outsourcing or that i want to go that direction that's not what we're talking about we're just saying what the law would allow us to not allow us to do
095in our case because we do not have certain staff members in an association uh if that was something we wanted to discuss we would be able to move forward it would only be if there is an association then those members could not be impacted negatively by outsourcing without going through the negotiation process thanks rich that was all i had that was a material story okay thanks uh jen is there any update from the town council uh no just cut just to get again to reiterate what i said it was something discussed months ago um perhaps getting something as simple as bulls changed over there and that crosswalk would be awesome okay and then jessica is there any report from the somerset county school boards association thanks meeting we haven't met again since our last board
096meeting and um the next meeting is on the 30th and i'll attend now okay um mrs eisenberg connected is there an update from with the borough council good evening thanks for having me tonight um so some updates from the town council uh just a reminder that uh ballots have been going out uh for the upcoming there are 13 drop boxes throughout the county for the general election the two closest locations to watch young are the north plainfield community center in greenbrook road and warren municipal building watching we'll have two police nights open on election day uh our exempt hall and wilson um a reminder to fill out your census we have been watching a fairly low response rate comparatively throughout our county um and then accurate count is important to make sure that we get
097the most funding possible for our town so if you haven't filled out your census yet i believe we have you have until the end of september um and it is looking back to a specific week uh in march for your household number so if you haven't filled out your census please do um the watch and recreation committee will be hosting music in the park this saturday september 26th from 4 to 7 pm at phillips field uh the band will be lost in police band with songs from the 60s and 70s there's no admission fee and residents are encouraged to bring a chair or blanket non-alcoholic beverages and food this past month we've had an impressive seven new members um so i thank all of our new members for their volunteerism and their spirit for our
098community and lastly as our superintendent mentioned joseph cena will be retiring as of october 1st and we thank him for his service for the past 27 years and there'll be a special meeting of the mayor and council this saturday september 26th at 10 a.m and we will have our regular meeting first at 6 30 pm thank you thank you uh mrs coquiata or anyone from west is there an update i don't see any hands raised okay i'm gonna move on mrs newsome or is there anyone from cpag with an update i don't see any hands raised for that either mrs eisenberg connected is there a pto update that miranda's raised manny please unmute her hi thank you um so the pto has been uh very absolutely uh we have our food truck fridays returning starting
099tomorrow through october 9th so four to eight p.m in february um for the next three fridays we'll have three entree trucks someone desert trap or take out only a social distance for your math uh they have been a great success uh for a fundraiser for the pto um and we're thrilled that so many trucks have asked for a turn on the menu for tomorrow we've got lobster rolls and italian sandwiches and we dance my favorite so i hope everybody likes fridays every friday through um we have our fall mom sale going on another fundraiser for the pto um we're selling nine inch bums uh you can order them online on walkthrough.com and pick them up in person at our final food truck friday october 9th and a big thank you to grace forest for supporting
100the pto for this fundraiser we have spirit wear for sale um again you can go to welcome new.com and buy all sorts of shirts and sweatshirts um for both of our schools we also still have our birthday long sign rental going on as long as the ground is not frozen um where you can rent our birthday lawn sign we'll come and put it out it'll stay on your lawn for 24 hours and a volunteer will come and pick it up at the end we actually have a volunteer who's out right now who's meeting along to surprise a kid when they wake up tomorrow for their birthday um and we've launched our schoolstore.com fundraiser it's very similar to rakuten or ebates and the instructions were just emailed to the pto membership today to check your email
101and how you can support school while you do your normal shopping um we had a fun kickoff this year for our school with some chocolate inside both of our schools for the return of our teachers and then for the return of our in-person students um along with our beep and greet the bakery and we had a six-month-old back to school mini photo session fundraiser and we're not offering many more mini photoshoots future as a fundraiser um last week was our ice cream social distance uh and i encourage everyone to follow the watch on pto on facebook we have uh activities and events and fundraisers being announced almost every week at this point um and to make sure that your appreciative year is renewed on pto.com and a big thank you to our superintendent electric principals
102to all of our um to help us with um emails and messaging families uh without our friday backpack they've been really great to make sure that all of our events are getting advertised to the school community thank you bless us for all of your support and sure okay comments from the public on agenda items we will 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
103officer may limit each statement made by a participant to three minutes duration our public forums are not structured as a question and answer session but rather are offered as opportunities to share input with the board in instances where the board feels a response is needed the presiding officer or superintendent will address the comment new jersey statutes do not permit the board to discuss personnel or hiring in public session names of students should not be used mr pepe will you please read the statement due to 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
104liable for comments made by members of the public uh if you guys can unmute tanisha there's a hand raised hi tanisha sims 124 edgemont road um just two comments uh i just like to congratulate the principal and staff the teachers on their hard work i know i'm probably one hopefully i'm one of many parents that's been emailing the principals and the teachers and they've been diligent in responding almost immediately um probably in the past i know i've had this issue where response wasn't received immediately and i just want to commend both principals for really responding to my text messages and my questions immediately and what a great job they've done since the opening of school um and my girls are remote so i i appreciate all of the hard work it's it's been fantastic um
105secondly uh the nurse uh mr trunis um i just wanted to say congratulations and uh job well done but is the nurse position open i know it's a question so you don't have to answer but i didn't hear that the nurse position was open or is it being filled i'm not aware of any of that um and then lastly um i was not aware of ipads being distributed and bayberry my daughter's a fourth grader and we had issues with chromebooks it would have been great if she got an ipad especially one that was new so those are my comments thank you anybody else please make sure you raise your hand so that we can see you nope okay so i'm going to move on to action items um adam can you please move administrative items
106be my pleasure i like to move action items a1 approval of minutes of previous meetings superintendent designee three acceptance of revised board meeting schedule thank you all for your flexibility a for acceptance of school security drill report a5 approval of appointments can we have a second second any discussion i had a minor comment on the minutes that um [Music] i proposed the phillips field discussion i just wanted them to reflect accurately um i think uh cory you asked the question or but i think it came out a little bit wrong in the minutes which was you know are we going to give the field back to the town phillips field um we actually own the field just for clarity and we lease it to the town so the question and the answer in the um
107in in the then it should probably reflect something like uh you know the question was were we going to renew the lease with the town thank you for catching that rich any other discussion roll call please mr barbella yeah mr buccarelli yes mrs gracia yes mr kraft yes mr posse abstain on a1 yes on a2 through a5 mr arf yes mrs harvey yes promotions pass michelle can you please move personnel items sure i move personal items b1 appointment of bayberry school nurse e2 appointment of leave replacement for secretary to the business administrator e3 appointment district substitute coordinator b4 appointment of mentors b5 appointment of extracurricular personnel valley view school b6 approval of before and after care providers b7 approval of leave absence the eight approval of ffcr leaves of absence the nine approvement approved payment
108of bus runs for special educational paraprofessional b10 appointment of home instructors for two thousand 2020 2021 b11 approval of student teacher in bayberry school b12 appointment of substitute custodian b13 adoption of paraprofessional job description can we get a second second jen any discussion roll call please mr barbella yes mr buccarelli yes mrs gracia yes mr kraft kraft i didn't hear you if you responded uh oh i think he's frozen frozen okay i'll come back um mrs yes this is sharp yes this is harvey yes mr craft i think i hear him he's saying yes i heard again that's good motions um rich can you please move operation items yeah uh as i had planned to do uh i'd like to move everything like to move everything at once except for c4 and i would was
109going to suggest an amendment to that resolution so let's do let's do the rest of the stuff first move approval of a payment of bills approval of transfer of funds of c3 acceptance of financial reports and c5 revolution uh requesting entering into a taxi exempt lease for 120 000 for networks which is for technology can we get a second second michelle any discussion i'd like to ask mr pepe to um to go over the uh lease for the uh network switches so everybody understands what it's about sure so the this is part of the issues that we've been having um we tried delaying the purchase of all of the net network switches we're going to try a plan to purchase a few keep it within budget and move forward with um replacing them as they
110go but with the opening of school we had our tech staff dig deeper and find that this was not going to work until we have this emergency need to purchase 16 switches i believe um the total cost of these is 120 000 is just under 120 000 which we really can't absorb in this budget so we are looking to do a release purchase which allows us to pay it off over three years instead of paying upfront one time and rich is my recollection is that this is a um tax exemply spy printed uh lease purchase financing typically i don't think it's uh cost effective to lease equipment but you thought this was an attractive um offer in technology and education is a very common practice right now um and yeah i i did i get
111a couple of quotes with our um the interest that we're paying on this is very minimal um it was under the quote threshold but we're going to pay over three years of interest on this so it was really it was a no-brainer because of the need and the lack of funding to do this without it thank you rich pepe could you just refresh me again what year did these splitches expire remember are you talking about expiration date on yeah them on i have that they they're in 2000 in 2000 again what was it 2012. all right thank you eight years ago that means they must have been purchased at least 13 years ago you're back adam yeah i could use a new switch at my place apparently any other discussion roll call please okay just
112to be clear we're voting on items c1 c2 c3 and c5 only we are not voting currently on c4 which was right okay uh mr barbara mr buccarelli yes mrs ingrassia yes mr kraft yes mrs pussen yes mrs scharf yes mrs harvey yes okay motion c one through c3 and c5 pass okay now let me uh make the uh proposal for c4 but if it's okay i want to give some background first so we've since i've been on the board as i said we've realized that we can't the expenses that are going to be incurred uh by end of life end of life planting equipment from a referendum that expired two years ago i think the last payment was made a little bit less but that the equipment is in almost every case at the
113end of or past its useful life um and the uh the switches you know for 120 000 um yeah eight years past their useful life right so we can't continue to have these the situation where we get surprise failures of infrastructure and plant and technology so we scheduled a meeting we've been talking about whether a referendum was needed you know i'm only one person i think that there's really no other choice because we can't finance the schools with our um with our current budget without a referendum um but uh not presupposing anything but doing really just diligence we scheduled the meeting for i think this coming wednesday for two and a half hours to go through with uh with the lawyer with the engineers with our own internal resources exactly how we would prepare to
114to get more details on that so we asked rg for a proposal and they just gave it to us a couple days ago i guess was last week and as anybody who's ever asked for a proposal from professional services company knows they tend to over propose um and i agree a hundred percent with with mrs ingrassia that i didn't like the way that this was was written um and it was a surprise to me in a lot of respects and we never mentioned that we had to do a referendum by march and if you look at task one what we're really asking them to do is basic work on reviewing the long range plan and then further developing cost estimates for projects helping us decide at these meetings what we would recommend to recommend to
115the board about what we had to do what was what i call good you know need to have and nice to have and so they put in here a whole bunch of other stuff and i wasn't prepared to sign this letter but what i wanted to do was propose that that the board give the administration and the operations committee the authority to get drg to repropose this take out the dates and take out all of this stuff that had to do with you know and i agree it does say things like you know expedite an approval process right so it does read poorly and it's not what we wanted so we were going to ask them to come back with that and my last request was going to be that it'd be time and materials
116for now since we're taking a lot of stuff out whether not to exceed on task one of twelve thousand five hundred dollars um now the reason for not putting a fully negotiated or or um acceptable letter in front of the board now is you know i will i will say that's my fault and the reason i chose to do that having would have liked to have to give this explanation first is because i don't want to lose another 30 days you know i i want things to move along in this district and we've been talking and talking and talking for a long time we got substantive uh meetings scheduled not to decide anything but to find out more stuff there is definitely a need to have an engineer in those meetings there's definitely need to
117have an attorney at that meeting so it's going to be a couple hours work um so i'll leave it up to the board to decide whether you want to table this until next week next month lose 30 days on see what else breaks uh you know in the meantime and uh you know push it off or if we want to have a resolution that says when you know we have acceptable language without deadlines and and narrow the scope and only pay for what we use up to twelve thousand five hundred dollars we could do that um that was my intention so i don't even know if i would you know if the board wants me to put it up for a vote or not or if we wanna just withdraw it and bring it back
118in another month um i'd also like to hear if george if you can add a little bit to this well yeah i also want to say that i did talk to george about this and apparently didn't get back to mrs and gracia so in time or whatever so that's what happens when kind of the difficult situation we're in uh dory is that like rich said there's i guess the way to look at it is by approving the authorization enter into some form of contract with the with drg uh you keep your options open in terms of the timeline whether or not you're interested in the boards interested in doing a referendum in march if you wait for 30 days right now i'm based on the information i have from the architect it's probably unlikely that
119march would work uh given the circumstances but hey george i hate to interrupt you but march is not the issue i just if you listen to what i said our intention was to take march out of the letter i don't know why i don't understand why i'm just marching i'm just mistaken they're in the background rich mark's getting mistake you're making it sound like if we suck that's what i'm asking the board to prove now i am not asking the board ford listen i am not asking the board to approve march what i specifically said was we get a letter in a form that we like it not to exceed twelve thousand five hundred paid on a time of materials basis without it without a schedule in it that's what i was asking the board
120what if the difficulty with that would be what the question was well i knew because that wasn't the question that was posed to me to mrs harvey she asked me to to add any input i had so yeah i i understand that so if that's what the board would like to do you keep your options open in terms of the bottom line is we need more information from the architects and from the bond attorney uh and we are going to have that meeting next week and we'll have a better idea and like mr buccarelli said earlier we're not sure whether or not this would be uh you know what the number would come back in terms of their recommendation but i do have concerns about trying to finance all of these projects and we'll have
121to do every one of them again it'll be up to the recommendation of the operations committee and the decision of the full board but there is uh there are a number of projects that need to get done and it's uh rich pepe and i have talked about this we've talked about the operations committee we're not going to be able to finance these projects just through the normal budget process something to consider it's a great reward rich you know i'll give you my two cents my view is this is exploratory we're ultimately going to get there anyway um you know not necessarily from a bond referendum per se but to do the research so you know whether we take it off the table and have the same discussion in a month um and i think the
122fee is reasonable given the work that's necessary i don't have a problem if if you want to put it up for for vote with the board at least from my perspective i i just had a question if we if if we don't vote on this or if it gets let's say voted down um whether you know we amend the language in the resolution or whatever um do you think the meeting that's just an exploratory meeting or informational meeting that's going to be like two and a half or three hours do you think that meeting will still take place next week or is that gonna push that off like are they gonna will they not wanna have this meeting with us until something gets voted on by the board is there any concern about that does
123any anybody know i don't know so my my feeling is that drg would show up and we'd have to pay the lawyer but we have to pay lawyer anyway for you know she might be on the call for an hour an hour and a half i mean i i don't really know where to begin i feel like this is like putting the cart before the horse anyway um and i my the bottom line why i was so concerned um with the contract as it was written in that it is that it would be our first board discussion about a referendum at all and it would be tying us into a march time frame which i do not support basically because of the pandemic not because we don't need a referendum eventually i think we obviously
124do i've been tracking with every committee report that details everything that's at the end or nearing or exceeding its useful life i understand that to ensure and enhance health and safety of our students buildings need to be maintained i totally agree with that and you know just to be sure you know some of the emotion that i heard from some of the board members i'm not ideologically opposed to a bond referendum to meet those needs at all you know on the contrary but i can't support a march referendum especially a large one a 12 million dollar one considering some of the current circumstances that are going on in either of those things if i understand the conversation though we're looking to remove the march date and we don't know if it's necessarily 12 million or
125five thousand dollars is that is that correct correct but my concern michelle is that by saying remove it and let's just approve a generic contract that still gives us that does not negate i can't support it if it's a march 12 million dollar referendum and by the way i'm just cutting through it because i could talk a lot about why i can't support it you know and we could all do that and i would really like to hear from fellow board members what their feelings are about a bond referendum in the middle of a pandemic i mean let me just say a couple of things because i think that's the crux of the issue it's not being persnickety about contract language it really isn't but if there's the chance that by approving the exploratory and
126again this was a contract for referendum services it's to say go and to take us as quickly as possible into a referendum and that's what you pay for that and that's a great cost 12 500 is wonderful for all that work it's a lot of work but the exploratory work i mean i feel like they did a lot in the facilities assessment and gap analysis and we received a lot of um output and work products from that that we've never discussed so you know further developing cost estimates for projects i mean those they've put custom estimates in there so anyway i mean just in terms of a march referendum so that i may give my opinion because no matter what we do if we're approving a contract tonight my concern and why i couldn't support
127it is that that's what ends up happening we're out in march at a 12 million dollar bond referendum and i and i don't agree so that's my concern we have 833 000 in capital reserve funds that's not insignificant now i know it's not also enough to undertake all the work that's required over three to five years and it's certainly not enough to cover some of the projects that drg suggested in their gap analysis which was a you know reconfigured media centers and upgraded bathrooms you know that's i i'm not suggesting that that capital reserve that we currently have but we're not broke and in fact we've been able to do necessary upgrades last year this year and some basic planning for next year it's not everything and yes things could break and um we would
128deplete some of that or maybe all of it but to rush towards march with 833 thousand dollars in capital reserve is not something i support i don't think that's what the committee recommended either i don't know how many times i can say it but march shouldn't be in anybody's vocabulary right now because we didn't say march i was saying i'm going to take march out of this letter and george and mrs and gracia are both talking about march so i don't know i'm not doing that on purpose rich i'm just going off what was in the agenda but we're we're telling you in detail why i put it on the agenda and even after i explained it to you you're still talking about march i i guess because so fine i've been on the board
129since january of last year we'll just delay it another 30 days talking about a referendum and we'll see what breaks and you will see what breaks at the end of the 30 days after we've gone through a whole referendum and we still you know have things falling apart i you know if people don't want to act on this that's fine i'm trying to get things moving i had no intention of doing anything secretly i had no intention of saying this is going to be a march one i had no intention of agreeing to the scope of services in this other than on a time materials basis for looking at the long-term facilities plan and other blocking and tackling stuff that has to get ready before you can actually start working and making a decision i
130just wanted to start working on it okay if the board thinks that that's not a and that's going to be amended then the point is mood right if we're worried about the optics of a margin this is exploratory so it doesn't mean anything you could put any month you want it doesn't obligate us to do anything this is just getting information but i understand the concern if the concern is that it states the month of march but the understanding for any approval now if we're going to have a vote is to just simply modify that language remove the month with no timetable uh then find it joe i wouldn't issue a question also to make suggest other changes that would be taking out a lot of the things that mrs ingrassia is talking about that
131that really assume that you're going to a referendum and have that part of task 1 just be time and materials with a not to exceed number now maybe all that's too you know too much to say okay well listen you know we get what you're saying and we still want to see a final letter and we'll see it next meeting fine uh i didn't think it was that big a deal to make those changes but if if people are uncomfortable or saying we're not being transparent or what have you i'd rather quite frankly i'd rather not do it today because i don't want to be accused of you know doing things behind people's back which i'm certainly not and i'm not making that accusation you know i'm just trying to draw my own concerns about
132and i'm sorry to say this but march is and joe barbella to your point what i guess i am uncomfortable with the open language saying we're not locking into any date not locking into any date means we could still listen there's only four i mean does every i think everyone knows this there's only four special election dates available march september and is it december and and january so if we don't go out in march it's a september date or you could go in the november general election which is conventional wisdom says not to do that but could we exclude marge so that i could feel comfortable yeah i don't see why not yeah jessica what i'm saying is the the the the actual non-referendum component of it will have a completely different discussion and vote
133so this is for the purposes of just exploring the options we would have on doing that meaning the amount and everything else so for the sake of argument i'm just i'm just trying to make a point and and show at the end of the spectrum even if we we gave a specific date it would be meaningless because you can't agree to agree in a contract right there's there's another condition precedent for the actual bond referenda component which will require a vote and everything else so we wouldn't be locked into it now i i understand your point there's optics to it right because it's descriptive in the contract but it doesn't actually lock us into that date it's just informative and ultimately would be struck because you can't be forced into a component in a contract
134that's dependent upon some other condition right for which the there's no control so you know again i i don't have a real issue with it because ultimately the purpose of the contract is to do the exploratory review although again it may be misleading or incorrect to say that it's for march or that an actual bond referendum is going to take place because there's no guarantee of that so if the language can be modified again i don't have an issue yeah you know what listen i'm a com committee chairman and i i'm gonna not vote for having this letter this resolution approved today which the resolution was going to say that we get this letter in a form and substance satisfactory to the operations committee on a not to exceed basis and get rid of the
135reference to the date and i don't want to pre-judge a date i don't want to exclude a day and i don't want to name a date but i think it's also you know too early to preclude a date so i do not feel comfortable now not having a letter that we fully uh can support in front of us as opposed to you giving us authority to negotiate that letter because i do not want to be accused of doing something secretly so i would not support it as a committee chairman and i think we're then therefore going to have to address it at the next meeting and just to be clear i'm not accusing anyone of doing anything secretly i'm just saying that well you kind of did in your board member i think that's a
136disrespectful comment i was unaware that this document existed well and as rich has conceded it contained some very concerning and i don't want to say shocking but i mean it was it was big it was front page news that was buried in a contract and so i think we've we've got we've talked through that now and i and i understand so again there's no accusation of secrecy but i i have a firm opinion that i'm entitled to and i don't expect anyone else to have to agree with me but i really don't support rushing to the special election during a pandemic so my concern about authorizing something open-ended is not out of a fear of secrecy it's simply it's open-ended and it could end up in an outcome that i didn't support um obviously i
137i obviously as a new board member this evening i i was not aware of this either prior to receiving the board packet um but i don't have any concerns about this i i think that we've been kicking the can down the road far too long in this district as evidenced by the conversation on the switches tonight um which has impacted our kids experience with and and teachers experience with technology over these last few weeks so i don't have a problem you know coming into this with this knowledge only the last day or so voting on this i understand jessica's point to the date i think it is a very difficult thing to talk about march but if that was to be eliminated i i don't see a problem with it thank you i i i'm
138not going to take the responsibility of putting this letter in a form that i think is acceptable um which by the way would have been an agreement with all of all of the comments everybody has said um now without the without the without the board seeing the final form of it i just don't want to put myself in that position okay so let's move forward we'll withdraw it yep yeah we'll move oh hold on adam wants to say something i just to the procedure of everything so it was on the agenda it was in our packet it was posted on the website as an attachment which was not this is directed at you what yes i looked it up it's page 29 on the attachments on the website so what should have been done differently
139for next time are you asking me this yeah he's asking yeah because you're the one that the procedure was done incorrectly first of all i think i said in my comments when i checked this afternoon it was not on on the website um i don't i can't confirm or deny if it was there this afternoon but it's there okay i'm just saying what i you know i'm not constantly checking um the district website for updated attachments but it was not there when i checked and listen bond referendums so we don't run into this again no i'm i'm answering bond referendums are something that i really believe isn't about to be i'm sorry procedure i'm trying to answer your question may i speak sure my concern for procedure and i still think this is relevant for
140if and when we do authorize work on a bond referendum and services to get us to the ballot on it i think it's a full board discussion i think there should be an item in the agenda that the public the public sees on the agenda and is that's the proper notice knowing that the board is going to take action on moving forward to a date of a referendum i think that's a public discussion and i think it's something for all the board members we have one that it's resigned we have one that's not here i think it's for all the board members too i want to hear everyone's opinion i mean i i'm not privy to these discussions i've appreciated a lot of the information that rich has provided when that comes up in a
141few months or whenever we get down this road six months from now that's exactly how we'll do it that's not what we were doing today what we did today about six months from now so i i still don't know why this is unclear you asked me the question what should we do differently and we should have an agenda item that says we're authorized we're we're starting the process of going out for a bond reference referendum on a certain timeline that should be transparent to the public and we should all come prepared to talk about that and we should do it with the full compliment one more time that's not what i wanted this letter to say and we were going to fix it so if you want to keep looking at the letters i didn't
142want to rehash it he asked me the question no i i think it said i'm sorry to interrupt i think it's just no one from the operations committee was making any decisions for the entire board that was no one's intent thank you to the board and some of this information that was that's let me explain to to what you're saying you want to have a full board discussion we all want to have a full board discussion about this no one disagrees with that what what is being said is that you know discussions were happening happening in the operations committee to make decisions for the entire board and that is absolutely i know and rich has helped okay okay so no no that but that that was said that was said and that needs to be
143cleared up no one is working in secret no one is making all decisions for everyone else we absolutely everyone in the operations committee wants the entire board to be a part of this and to have this discussion one needs to make a motion to withdraw this from the agenda nothing's going to happen thank you can we have a second second okay let's move on yes please oh wait i don't want to even ask for a discussion about withdrawing it i'm scared to but is there a discussion okay can we please have a vote a roll call please this is a vote to withdraw motion c4 from the agenda mr barbella yes mr buccarelli mrs ingrassia yes mr kraft yes mrs harvey yes motion c4 is withdrawn um joe can you please move policy items sure
144i'm sure the board never wished to get the policy fast enough [Music] here um move policy e1 approve policies for second reading and adoption and it's the remote learning options for families and the restart and recovery plan that i mentioned earlier is there a second discussion roll call please mr barbella yes mr buckarelli mrs gracia yes mr kraft yes mrs busane yes mrs scharf yes mrs harvey yes motion passes jessica can you please move the action plan item yes oh no my google documents are not they're stalled i can't read it it's okay uh i don't know have i not called anybody mine are as well screen here it is sorry about there you go um i move action plan a1 acceptance of the action plans for board goals is there a second second hey
145thank goodness okay um discussion i i have to bring up some stuff so i'll start the discussion um in the action plan there's um i have to bring up two two things i guess there's um an item in there that says board members work with administration to promote both growth through ongoing collaboration feedback self-reflection and service to others um as you guys know i did uh let george and gwen thornton from the new jersey school board slip this over so you guys have the most up-to-date version which everyone has i agreed upon at this point um this one item underneath goal number one was brought into question not to necessarily eliminate it or anything just that um gwen thornton felt that you know it was unclear as to whose growth it's referring to and what
146kind of service to others it needs to be more specific if we're going to attempt to measure this so um i wanted to bring that up for a discussion if anybody wants to add to it or make it more specific if not then i would suggest that that we amend this and and take this item out unless um anybody can can add to it and then the last part that i think we need to discuss is just um goal number two that's on there and i know um that there is a date for us to come up with the um whether or not we're going to amend the strategic plan of 1923 or if we're going to create a new plan and we're supposed to decide um according to this by october 22nd um so
147that's something those two items i think you know we should discuss before we vote on this and if there's anything else that anybody wants to change to the document or anything this is our time to be able to amend it before um and um richard pepe is going you know we'll amend it on the uh during the meeting so that um whatever we change that's what we'll be voting on uh when we get to that point so the first thing is that first item of uh board members work with administration to promote growth through ongoing collaboration feedback self-reflection and serve others does anyone have any information to maybe goal one yeah that's under goal one it might be the last one in it right before goal two it's the it's the last one in that
148and goal one all right can i just give a general comment i you know after a lot of you know discussion and gnashing of teeth i you know i think we came up with goals that were um decidedly unambitious for this board um and now we're kind of thinking about the action plans to implement those goals and uh i think that we all ought to be focused on bringing our all of our collective experience together during a pandemic i mean i look at these goals and these are the goals that you know really you know you would have you would have had in an ordinary school year in a lot of respects so you know are we gonna check the boxes and go to all our nj sba training courses or are we going to
149put our full effort and attention not to say that we couldn't do both but put our full effort and attention to you know seeing that the schools are well run during in the middle of a pandemic when nobody uh knows what's coming next and we have to be very flexible and very agile so you know i would concentrate on that as a board that's not what's written down here and all of this stuff that's written down here seems like you know quite frankly bureaucratic you know traps to run and then my second my second comment is um you know we did not we did not deem it appropriate as a board to have any standards with respect to diversity equity and inclusion only that we have training and we view everything through a lens of
150that which you know i didn't think was sufficient either and so we announced uh what what i'd like is just the reporting that i said i was going to periodically ask for and i would request that we have this for the october meeting which would be the demographics of the student body and the demographics of the educational and administrative staff i know there was a lot a lot of new hires and i don't know what those numbers look like and i'd like to see if we're making any progress or not thank you so does anyone have um anything to add to that last item if not i would suggest that we remove it agreed yeah okay so rich pepe can you please remove that that last action item yes you're going with the last action
151item on goal one correct yes yes okay and then for goal two um you know this is up for the board to this to discuss um we have the items in here we don't necessarily necessarily i guess have to discuss it tonight um but you know we need to have a conversation in public with each other about you know what what do we want to do with our strategic plan um in here you know there was good input given from board members um about especially jessica about um [Music] you know working in com in the committee structure if we're going to enhance it that way or um you know if we're using an you know an outside party whether it be new jersey school boards or you know another another third party to conduct the
152strategic planning and what that would entail um i believe i did speak to george briefly about that and um you know he believes and i think he might be right that even if we use new jersey school boards there is some type of fee for that um in order for us to do a full strategic plan and then what that would even look like during a pandemic because we know that um we've done it in the past you know but obviously not in this situation so it's something that we need to discuss and then decide by october um 22nd and if you guys want to start discussing it now we can otherwise um you know i guess we can have that big discussion in our october meeting and then decide there what would you guys
153like to do i mean i'll just offer that i put i put most of these goals for a strategic plan because like the referendum it's something we've been talking about for three years the strategic plan we currently have is by all accounts completely defunct it literally has every administrator is now gone and every board member is no longer here and only two names are on there that were participants as stakeholders and that's me and dory so i just don't think and a referendum isn't on the strategic plan and a lot of things that we need are not on this strategic plan and you know to rich's point our board goals and i agree are vague but board goals often are because we're not permitted to take action in running the schools but your strategic plan
154is where all of those action items live and we all have input to that and i have seen many examples of district strategic plans that are like a book like a book of a grid like this that shows who's doing what when it has to be achieved by what the metrics are and you know that has been my like dream for this district to have that with that level of specificity um and it it just has to we just have to pick whether we're doing it from scratch or whether we're modifying the existing and so my point of putting it in by october 22nd that's our next meeting and we could put it on the agenda to come to a decision on that as a board have a discussion about it and vote that probably
155would be a good way to move this forward i i mean i agree with you jessica we we have to make a decision i i just have to say you know i don't i don't know if i've made my decision yet but i mean board members need to talk about this i mean you gotta we have to talk about the advantages and disadvantages of doing this and you know if nobody wants to say anything that's fine you know we can take it through a vote i mean i would presume since our deadline is the next meeting let's give board members a chance i guess to think about it especially since there are some new board members on and then you know we can have it as an item um you know if we have to
156vote on it at the next meeting um and that's where i guess because everybody's pretty quiet about it so if nobody has anything to say we can just vote on our plan action plan and and move on and discuss it on at the next meeting okay i'm going to take everybody's silences let's let's vote on this let's vote on our action plan that's all we're doing so unless the discussion's over you guys can hear me right okay i mean i think it's better to give everyone time to think about it and talk about it next meeting and then like you said dory we just have to come to a decision yeah let's do that so let's let's uh vote on our action plan um so can we have a roll call please so dory the
157i'm sorry the vote is to discuss it at the next meeting no the vote is for us to accept the action plan for our board goals right you know we just have the two board goals and then we amended um the action plan to take out the last action item for goal one but this is us voting on us accepting this this action plan that that coincides with our two board goals that were decided on during our board retreat okay okay so that's what we're voting on okay all right so can we have a roll call please mr barbella yeah mr buccarelli thank you mrs gracia yes mr kraft yes mrs yes mr sharp yes mrs harvey um i want to say yes um and i just wanted to give a little comment so my
158vote is yes but i do want to comment on what rich has said and i absolutely agree with you rich i mean i felt the same way during our board retreat that i felt that we could maybe come up with you know more more things that were a little bit more substantial um and i believe from new jersey school boards they said we can have board retreats um you know it just doesn't have to be once a year it can be more than that and if we feel i feel like if we we have accomplished these goals i mean we can if if the board is willing we can always set up another um retreat and either add on to this year's if that's what we want to do or um something like that so
159i i agree with you i i wasn't satisfied with the goals that we had but you know it's the majority of the board that rules um but if that's something that the board is interested in uh in doing i think that's where you know we can do that if that's what everybody um is interested in so my my vote is yes but that's my comment to go with my vote okay the motion passes uh okay so comments from the public so anyone who would like to comment at this time please raise your hand and um i believe tynesha has her hand raised hi taisha sims 124 edgemont road um i just wanted to make two comments um when it comes to operations and um making sure that our children are in the best situation when
160it comes to school building anything dealing with that i am all for you know moving forward because it does take time with all the votes and everything else so i would be you know reluctant to say let's press forward if there are things that are are really pressing that we need to get done and get fixed um right now in the near future so my hands raised taxpayer let's get that done secondly i'd like to from from coming from the watching idea which is the inclusion diversity equity and awareness committee resident committee i'd like to thank dory and adam for really participating in a few um new jersey tri-state council of diversity forums uh that i forwarded to both the boe and the council your presence your interaction really meant a lot and i'm hoping
161that it does um inspire and maybe uh project some ideals going forward for the entire board of ed and the teacher staff and um the whole uh education um community um and i agree that i'm looking forward to seeing and hearing about the demographics of uh the new hires and what the teachers make up and what the students make up in the next call so thank you all for um really engaging in the in pressing forward and when it comes to diversity and inclusion that's all thank you anyone else please just raise your hand to clarify in case there's any um new attendees when we say raise hand the instructions are on the screen for how you virtually raise your hand in zoom using the participants panel and clicking on the raise hand button that
162lets our technician know that you are asking to be unmuted and at this time we have anthony and gracia followed by maria biando dahl hi this is anthony ian gracia for the high oaks dry i was listening to part of the meeting where our superintendent was asked for his opinion on how he saw things moving forward with a possible referendum and he began to speak about keeping options open and was immediately shouted down barked down by a board member rich buccarelli and i just want to say that i find that uh off base and very very disturbing because for george uh grew up in this town who [Music] had an outstanding career whether you want to look at georgetown or columbia or fordham or years at wachong hills shepherding the children through that school a
163beloved principal uh at the place this where which is ascending or receiving district for the k through eight children of wachong going through and we have the opportunity to have him be our superintendent and he can't get two words out without getting barked down by a board member and i just want to say that i find that very concerning and i think that there should be a lot of reflection on how we speak to to a superintendent and to george in particular and that's that's my comment thank you thank you can you unmute maria doll hi here you go um can everyone hear me i just want to first start to start thanking everyone to my husband's in the middle of changing our verizon bios right now so i'm not sure if i'm going to
164lose you guys so i hope i'm still there but um i want to thank everyone the principals the teachers staff and all the bo members for helping making this transition for our kids um seamlessly uh my kids are beyond excited being back in school like thrilled pieces they're so happy i'm so happy but i just want to echo something that mrs sharp and mrs harvey had mentioned the beginning meeting um it is so important for the kids to be back in school i mean more than anyone can possibly imagine they need it for their health they need for their peace of mind and i think the learning as much as we're doing the best we can it's not the same being taught virtually i work in a neighboring school that does have wednesdays in school
165sessions and i have to say i'm a little less than happy with our wednesday sessions currently um i feel like it's this i guess it's quoted by my kids that it's called work at your own pace day i think we could do better than that um they're already barely getting enough in session time and to now add wednesdays as work as your own pace and then um where the other neighborhood schools are going to school i've heard teachers call it a pd day for them i don't remember hearing in any of the meetings that wednesday should have been a pd day so i'm just wondering at what point are we going to speed this up and try to get the kids in school quicker than um a month or whatever uh phase two opening i
166don't know if anyone heard me yes we heard you thank you okay it kind of went out for a second so anyway sorry that was just my thoughts i feel like if if the other towns could make it happen i can't imagine why we can't make it happen i think it's extremely important they're all going to float at the same high school and we need to be consistent i feel like we're losing a lot of time my kids are coming home and i think they're just emotionally ready to be in school i know they love seeing their teachers faces and i know the teachers are so happy to see them so if we can kind of do whatever we can to make wednesdays another option that'd be wonderful thank you maria any other comments from
167the public i don't see any hands raised okay um can i have a motion to adjourn most into adjourn jen second a second any discussion all in favor say aye aye any opposed all right thank you for joining us this evening uh this meeting is endured good night