WHRHS BOE MEETING | 6 - 5 - 18

001good evening this is the Board of Education meeting for which adequate notice under the open public meetings act was provided by written notice On January 8 2008 een - The Courier news the echo sent the star-ledger tapping to Warren and the clerks of the borough watch on and the townships of greenbrook Long Hill and Warren roll call please mr. Sky's Ms Brown here mr. Colin here the museum yeah - babe yeah hey your huntzinger there tomorrow yeah Morrison yes for those of you who are not familiar with the way our meetings are set up we now go into an executive session for a half an hour and we'll be back out at 7:30 to complete the public portion of the meeting so now I will entertain a motion in accordance with the provisions of the

002New Jersey open public meetings act we hereby resolved that the board move into executive session to discuss confidential personnel and legal matters after which action will be taken it is expected that the matters discussed in the executive session will be made public as soon as the need for confidentiality is no longer exist we'll be back good evening we're back in public session now we now have reports and presentations resolution I do I'd like to we have five people who are retiring this year all of them are big losses to the school we're lucky enough to have very special Julie come with us tonight and I'm going to ask the superintendent to read the resolution for Julie so before I start reading this I just want to say a few words about Julie I tried to

003hide from her when she was trying to find me in my office to give me her letter of resignation because I figured if she couldn't find me then I would not have to accept it Julie has been an instrumental part of us actualizing the strategic plan and particularly the first full centered on Student Wellness everything that Julie does is about the students and she has played such an important part in really just spreading that awareness among our faculty and our students and has made everyone comfortable with talking about all sorts of issues but I don't think everyone you know had that same level of comfort acknowledging before and she's cultivated conversations between adults and the building and students and and one of the one of the key ideas that came out of our initial strategic

004planning session several years ago was that everyone wanted every student in this school to have at least one trusted adult in the building that they could go to and I think that we have made so much progress on that particular goal thanks to Julie's work so I am she's a model to me and I'm really grateful to all that you've done for the district and your losses is certainly going to be felt however I do think that you've made such a tremendous impact that it's starting to become systemic so that it will last even you know after your you're no longer here every day so so I'm going to read the resolution now this Proclamation regarding Julie Kampf shall be read at the public meeting of the Watchung Hills Regional High School Board of Education

005on June 5th 2018 whereas Julie Kampf was first employed by Watchung Hills Regional High School in 2002 after working as part of the Child Study team in Summit and whereas she utilized excellent skills in crisis and counseling for both students and faculty during her tenure at Watchung Hills and whereas she successfully taught lessons and health classes and presented at freshmen orientation and even evening parent programs and whereas she developed and participated in the municipal Alliance County sac meetings challenged a diversity day week of respect served as the co-leader of the intervention and referral team core team and crisis management mindfulness program wellness committee strategic planning developed our healthy edge program and whereas she always tries to find the silver lining along with a positive lesson to be learned and she finds the best way to

006make a situation relevant to each individual and whereas she has remained a professional and a friend to both students and staff she has held our hand in theirs and guided us through whatever crisis we had in doing so she has created a circle of friends which will not be broken and whereas she has served as a mentor to all of us now therefore be it resolved that the Watchung Hills Regional High School Board of Education extends its heartfelt gratitude for her years of devotion to our school and upon retirement which Julie comes a most prosperous and healthy next stage of life [Applause] all in favor and I've known Julie here both professionally and had the good fortune when my daughter went away to college Julie's daughter was randomly assigned as one of her suite mates

007we also had a bit connection there and that was great as well okay there's a lot of people here we never have this many people so we have a very small cake anybody wants to help themselves to [Laughter] report on progress PLC's mr. principal George Alexis and Mary Ellen Phelan good evening everyone well it's hard to believe it's June 5th and when I was thinking about this presentation it reminded me of opening day back in early September because I was very anxious to share with the faculty when I returned from my seven-day Institute in July the board was kind enough to send me to at Harvard's Graduate School of Education and what what I highlighted there in the opening day remarks was this experience I had when you know not only was it a great

008opportunity to work with 136 fellow principals from around the world but there was one particular professor in that shared his his research and his insight into what he calls deeper learning he talked he works a lot with with faculty high school faculty and professional learning and he explained what he likes to promote and what the Serg supports is that promoting teacher agency through autonomy and ownership makes learning more relevant and it made perfect sense after hearing his talk after returning home after doing more research if they're talking with members of the leadership team that what we are trying to cultivate what we are trying to strengthen what our vision is guiding us towards is this and I talked about this two weeks ago is an authentic inquiry model that is supported by collaboration and so

009what he was talking about in terms of best practices for faculty and professional learning was exactly or is exactly what we've been working with here at the high school you know with our students so what we did was we repurposed faculty meeting time we repurposed department meeting time and we created opportunities for teachers to guide their own learning to take ownership of it to have the autonomy to select ideas and members of the faculty they would like to work with so over the course of the year we had groups of three to five teachers from different departments and you'll see tonight we had math teachers working with the school medias especially specialists and social studies teacher you'll see that we had biology teachers working with a theater arts teacher all with the common purpose all

010with the chief aim of advancing student learning but what we were doing was modeling authentic inquiry for our students so we can't just ask them to do it and not show that this works for adults too that this is a model to aspire to because it makes learning relevant what we also did was we engaged our leadership team or vice principals our supervisors or directors and they became advisors to each of these groups and so throughout the year on Wednesday afternoons teachers got together they identified problems of practice they identified areas of interest and focus we had them looking at the topics such as steam and project-based learning mindfulness social emotional learning and raising rigor in CP and unlevel classes together they collaborated they researched it collaborated some more they experimented in their classrooms they

011brought back results to their group meetings they had a mid-year reflection where they favorite they wrote responses to reflection questions as groups and then in May we celebrated their good work by sharing it at our after school meetings in a sort of a conference group presentation format and it was open for people to select based on the descriptions the you know the synopses of the presentations and it worked very well it's a very successful first year as you'll see so what I'd like to do right now is and again this is a multi-year commitment but I know you'll be impressed by this work so I'd like to introduce Doug Eaton and Carol anda to begin to do their presentation all right so what we did was we used to deny any questions to improve understanding

012which seems a little simple but it's really hard to get students to ask questions sometimes that are generated by themselves so this was a collaboration between science and film when influenced our choice of approach we had we all what we all shared in common was would that we have professional development workshops at the beginning of the year both of them work within the inside out and we also had a book called make just one change Doug's wife actually was using this in class at the time and she was kind of using the approach to that too so we couldn't have incorporated those all together so our goals were to increase critical thinking and analysis to get the kids to focus on big ideas less than memorization or little tiny datas student directed learning to allow

013them especially the CP classes to verbalize key concepts and to do active versus passive learning we used the similar methodology across all team members but we built upon each other's learnings so Doug actually started with juniors and seniors I piloted what I wanted to do with my CP classes with my honor as first because they're a little more resilient and then we moved from CP to the inclusion classes that Henry and I both had and what we did was we customized within each class and adjusted as we would Charlie it's really great that everyone came to see us so from that from the book that Carl just showed you it's also in my classes its freshmen sophomores juniors and seniors but we follow this idea of Q focus and and my particular lesson was music

014and meaning in film in the class we watched but a sequence from Alfred Hitchcock's I man to man who knew too much and I showed it once with music and sound and once once without it and their assignment was as they were watching and I we had facilitators student facilitators in the groups and they and they worked with the other students in the groups and I gave them rules you need rules for this Q focus and they were to write their own questions and prove their questions and try to prioritize their questions and this is from both viewing the film and looking at some requirements some criteria of film terminology and then using your question is he used the three most important questions to elicit these responses they had to they had a chart they

015they went they listed all these questions I would say ten or twelve questions on their sheets and then they came up they had to work that down to three important questions here is what the students generated and what I was trying to do was not ask the students these questions all the time because I usually ask the same questions I wanted some new questions that come out of this [Music] they came up with it from the terminology what was the birds I shot used to show uniformity of the objects in the frame we talk about music scene and what's in frame and what director is due to to use that what's visual in that so they came up with this using bird's-eye and and we discussed this uniformity of the objects in the scene the

016scene takes place in Albert Hall in London what did the lack of dialogue do to build the sequences tension I thought this is a very interesting question by them because they this is what I want them to do I want them to realize that film is a visual medium obviously but it's not all based on dialogue and the third question that we got out of how does the constant cutting cutting again as a terminology that we talked about cutting from the assassin back to the main character create suspense and then we talked about that why the cutting did that the timing of the cutting the movement of the characters and the scenes how fast they were they were cut together mm-hmm so what this did well the outcome of this the student questions encouraged deeper

017discussion as Carol said I wanted them to discuss these things and make them more important to them not just looking at this so the questions these questions that the I think five or six groups came up with we're really good we started discussions the next day in class they developed interest in visual meaning which is incredibly important if you're looking at a film and increase rigor and critical thinking I always tell the classes I believe Carol also in her biology classes critical thinking is important because that's what they're going to be doing in college and for a lot of their life and allowed group collaboration which i think is important do that in the in the theater classes also so the instructional outcome is least the way I see is expand and include cue focus

018and more lessons next year and in also my theater classes not just the the cinema classes okay so we did key chapters and science and what we were trying to do I teach ninth graders so ninth graders come in with very concrete ideas and they want everything really spelled out for them and they want everything in black and white we wanted knife courage to take ownership of their own learning by analyzing text by understanding processes that biology has a lot of processes and relating results to a process so we started with new cell articles this is a current events adaptive reads they have multiple levels we can use them it doesn't matter what the reading level is we have the same article at different levels and so it helps us to let them read at

019their own level and generate questions so there were three types of questions this the right there questions were okay for the ninth graders author's purpose reflective questions did not work so well even the ninth graders have problems with this so we had good modified the activity to focus more on generating questions around visuals and we took a cue off of Doug to do that so we use diagrams of biological processes graphs that kind of thing I piloted this with the honors because I didn't know what to expect and my kids they're pretty resilient so I used two contrasting diagrams to provide opportunities for them to ask complex questions and to put ideas together they again refined their questions came up with three good questions to ask and then what we did was we actually utilized

020these questions to create a review guide for them to study from so they were studying from their own questions and a lot of their questions actually showed up again in the exams so it's a bonus we got out of this I'll talk about that in a minute so this is an example where I had two apples and I had a graph and I labeled them and I just kind of told them what they meant and from there they asked questions and so these are the questions that my kids generated based upon the results what can we tell about the enzymes responsible for browning how can the knowledge gained from the enzyme the optimal pH be applied to assessing way Appl decompose faster than the other and so on bonus I got really deep questions from

021these kids some of which I could not answer I actually had to go to one of my friends at Roosevelt University to answer one of the questions that dealt with protein chemistry so and this was the winter question because actually it's a kind of a tricky one because you have to create inhibitors to have two inhibitors so for my CP class I did an example for us where I mala for the class I had a diagram I kind of went through what I would do with this diagram and then the student pairs were asked to generate questions and I gave them four diagrams to do in each diagram had a prompt to start the questioning so it looked kind of like this the prompt is up in the left hand corner and I got fairly

022simple questions as we went on I got more complex questions and this is these are different types of cells and they were using vocabulary but we actually prompted them to use the vocabulary and to go back and look at their notes we simplify this further when we went into the IEP classes with only generating questions and improving the questions only and the teacher prioritized these I got a lot of pushback from my classes at first they it was too hard they didn't want to do it they didn't know how to do it and I was like just try no it's too hard so we kept at it alright so so these are the a little bit simpler diagrams that we gave them and this is for an IUP class and again you know there's several

023different things we did cell transport but we always did diagrams and these questions are the questions that the kids generated so and then this is an energy diagram so we got them to the point where they wouldn't just look at a diagram but they could look at a process and this is really important for the ninth graders because they haven't done this before and for them to generate questions and to ask questions and to know that they could ask questions that didn't necessarily have the answers that they could have was important because we could help them to answer them our challenge is finding the right visual prompts moving the students from right there to reflective questions getting to yes we have pushback from the CPS and we have engagement by about 75% of the kids

024but there are about 25% that watched so another issue or nothing we need to think about for next year is how we measure success so we had come up with a list of things that we might be able to use to do that aha moments so visual what's the key for questioning a four question generation for the freshmen at least they see these wouldn't read this is too hard so that wasn't too bad students like creating questions for a purpose so this idea of getting a review guide out of it and you think some of the questions on the test really appeal to them they started to consider the whole picture and they started to really look at diagrams versus trying to memorize words all right and they helped to define areas needing work or

025misconceptions for us so that we could see what they really didn't get so our next steps we're going to use they are ducks set news videos to summer to reflect um a Marie and I are starting with an introduction of the technique in smaller doses very early in class so that the kids get used to using this procedure anything that they get used to using it becomes a routine becomes much easier to use and one uses visual this has a stepping stone to the next text I know I know Scott they're here all right and Charlie Lavington are the next sorry good evening I'm Scott keeled media specialist Charlie lannington social studies teacher where one half of the our PLC which was talking about makerspaces in the library so basically I do lunch duty the

026first half of the year in the library and I'm here with Scott everyday so we were talking and he was always asking like showing me cool things that we could do in the library and I think that's awesome and then I would come in and I'd say something that I heard about something library and be like that's awesome so we figured this would be a great like thing to do this happened about a year three years ago so this is really a second year that we've been working on this so he pulled me into the makerspace idea and and from that makerspace we came to the idea of actually creating a Learning Commons in the library not just a makerspace to really change the library to become a 21st Century Media Center and then when

027we did the PLC this year we pulled into math teachers as well because we want to bring in all tried to bring in all disciplines so I'm gonna say tonight our goal is to fail and it's really our first attempt in learning the idea is that students do learn from failure they learn from failing and we don't and we want to give them a safe place to do that and a makerspace is a great place for them to really experiment and try things that they may not be able to in a classroom without the stress of it being graded without the stress of a teacher on top of them and so we really feel like this that creating a library that allows that to happen would benefit our school oh here's part of our essential

028questions for this how to improve literacy reconstruction literacy instruction across the curriculum not needed and then how to integrate steam principals into the school library program and Shelley was saying we believe it's the makerspace so the really are students in any there's a lot of teachers a lot of you here you know that your your kids have access to so much information right in the palm of their hands I mean I'll be in the middle of class and they'll ask me a question I have no idea the answer to and I'll just look to one of them say can you just be without on your phone and we'll talk about it from there so you know the idea of having a library like we see like we're sitting in right now is kind of changing

029because students have this access so what is it that we can create that isn't available to them elsewhere something where they can come together where they can work together and really create something new and have that information available to them and that's what this is basically talking about so Scott laid out our journey we started in last year we took many visits wasn't just Shelley and I we had a team I know Dan twist there was on one of our visits Mary Allen as well we went to Rutgers where they have a standalone makerspace which supports the whole University from there we took a visit to Randolph High School which is in a similar position as ours they're kind of making that transition from a traditional library to a 21st century library and where they

030added a makerspace and they're going more to the active learning method for instruction from there we went down to Toms River which is all in in maker spaces they have I believe it's 14 of their schools have maker spaces in their last year we visited four of them and very impressive all different sizes all different levels this year in December we went to Steelcase which is they provide a vertical furniture Technology Solutions to libraries corporations they are really at the forefront of active learning it was a I would say the trip to New York was a success however the trip home was a failure we got stuck inside the road and Kearney so but we made it we made it back we were able to so that's that's failure but we were able to learn

031from it and her last stop was danker and danker is one of the two new jersey distributors of Steelcase they're a local company and we went to their showroom and they also came here because it took a great interest in our library and what and we did really shared ideas which we hope to share with you soon all right so this is Centennial High School which is a very similar high school to ours in terms of demographics and size and they've actually gone all-in and they have a Learning Commons with the maker yeah it's gonna show you the transition and I'm a student person yep Man Thing Freddie you'll save [Music] Oh [Music] so we just kind of want to show you a little bit about the Learning Commons itself and what the ideas and

032this graphic just kind of generally explains what it is um I'm going to kind of go through what's not hot what's not what's hot and what's not and you'll see that our library is sort of at the what's not so libraries are standalone centers of knowledge consumption right that's basically what we're sitting in right now but what's hot would be a physical virtual libraries as hubs of creating new knowledge and educational innovation which you saw a lot of that in that video that the its integrating technology and the furniture together to allow students to interact and what's really good about our school is we're a regional school so we have kids especially when you teach freshman you see that they're coming from four different towns and it's very difficult for them to collaborate unless they're

033using technology or there's a place in school for them to collaborate rushing students all day so Aris knows that would I have library duty that's what I end up doing all during library duty is shashing Aris so he will attest to that that is absolutely but what would actually be better is if we offered a place where Aris and his friends could actually talk and collaborate and work together there are noise cancelling headphones there are also these cans that you can hang that cancel noise so if we are create white noise so that if you're over here talking in your group people over there will not hear what you're doing so you're not interrupting the silence that someone else needs to study on their own a library where students feel there are too many rules

034with no purpose I actually arts probably asked me a hundred times why do you do that why can we only have four people at a table and they're you know their reasons because that you can't you have to do that in a library like this but if we create a welcoming student-centered library that supports learning and curiosity that these ability to do this and is is flexible we won't have to answer questions like that so here's just real quick what things are in a Learning Commons very few physical resources would be in it you do have more not getting rid of the books right books are still important they're still useful but there are other things that we can do comfort and collaboration you can see in that it's technology that's being used but not

035just that they're in the video you saw like there are pods at places students can can discuss on their own in their groups there was a cafe like really what we want but that kind of idea it's flexible the furniture is able to be moved it's not constantly in the same position it's moved to fix whatever to fit whatever it is that that teacher or that class or that group needs support and then also wireless connectivity an outlet out access obviously we have wireless connectivity but we are limited in our outlet access and there are ways that we can improve on that in a Learning Commons integration of academic support services I've mentioned this before but the big thing is to create in the library something that does not exist in our classrooms you want

036to draw people in here so if it's something I can just do in my class then there's no reason why I would come to the library but if we can create something where you can integrate different departments different curriculums together in the class in this one space then that will draw more people we're going to what is a makerspace its place in which people with shared interest expression computing computing or technology can gather to work on projects while sharing ideas equipment and knowledge the makerspace is equipment can be 3d printers laser cutters virus milling devices and more it doesn't have to be just high-tech stuff that you can use sewing machines bot makers as well a lot of people see maker spaces is being very high-tech but it's like robotics and it's all like things

037that you would only need to do you would have a high level of knowledge to use but makerspace can be everything from low tech to in-between to high tech and we want to draw all departments yes steam is the big idea but we also want to bring the humanities in the English department the history department and everybody to use this makerspace yeah where you can train yourself to anywhere in the world and we have two Mac computers that rock band so you can earn more videos and make music okay this is really this slide up is kind of self-explanatory but really this is why do we want the makerspace in the Learning Commons why should it be in the library and part of it has to do with having access to information and what they

038go through so you want to recognize what it is you need the information for you want the access to the information and having it in the Learning Center allows for that evaluate that information and use the information to create what it is you're you need to create and it integrates all different disciplines right so I'll give you some examples of things we've actually done in our school that would have benefited from a makerspace so the big push right now is project-based learning which is awesome like having students actually create something that has real-life application and here's the fail that we talked about so you know they wanted to create what was in the middle they failed the first time but they tried again here's an example from our school of interdisciplinary learning this was done

039in another PLC mr. McCullen from music mr. paws iya from engineering and mr. Mulligan from wood arts they got together and one of their students that they all kind of knew was able to design a wind chime that had very specific that plays very specific notes a very specific octave and that they had the guidance from all three departments but one thing that they said was difficult was they really couldn't do it within class time because they didn't have the ability they didn't have the space for it and it was very difficult for them to collaborate with each other so it would have been great had we had a Learning Commons and a makerspace it would have given them access to that this is by our special services department and they there's a we call

040it the courtyard sorry there's a courtyard over there and the other building and they have the special services students have created a garden where they grow vegetables and then use those vegetables but they cook from them and it seems like oh that's just outside but there's a lot of things that they can create within the makerspace things that they can do to actually help them make this a better place they've created mulching but you know and then this was another great one that another PLC depart group did Laura Sultan and Karen Gilman who are geometry teachers worked with Chris Gibson and Darrin mount and engineering and the geometry students actually kind of hired the engineering students to create popcorn holders that hold exactly one cup of popcorn and they had to design it to be

041like creative or whatever and that would have been a great place to where they could have all come together here and worked on this together as opposed to one group did it in their class and then they sent it to the other group and made it but this would have allowed for more collaboration on some things I didn't put up here in terms of the humanities our history department the AP students right now are running elections fo presidential elections there's one of our presidential candidates right there and they had buttons made t-shirts could be made like mock t-shirts could be made the video like they were running around the school they made some amazing campaign videos but to have that green screen and to have the makerspace to be able to do that would have

042been fantastic as well so it hits all departments just want to give it just an overview of the library currently there's there's actions pictures taken I think it was last week at lunch we have about a hundred students in here during lunch time doing studying printing and so forth socializing we average about 50 classes per month about 1,700 students per month just for lunch and fifty seven hundred students visits per month not including lunch and then about a hundred students or in the library before school even begins so it is popular it's a place they want to come and and but we can be so much more to do this to have a space that will enable them to collaborate and to work together would be very helpful especially with the makerspace as well there

043have been studies done this is obviously a university study where students have actually who have a Learning Commons do you feel that they're more comfortable now asking questions and being creative and and being and they do feel more valued and the faculty as well feels that there's a lot more to collaborate one thing to that I just wanted to mention was like kind of brought was that war in Middle School has a makerspace as well so we have our students are coming up here into the high school from work from war and middle school which i think is about half our students may be ill more than half of our students who are coming up having how to how to make your space and then they come to a school that does it so it

044would be kind of nice to play off of that as well so where are we going from here and what do we need going forward staffing tips like smiles professional development for teachers and how they can use the makerspace is great to throw it in here but to really train us on possible ideas of how to use it because a lot of people are scared of that term makerspace they think it's all high-tech at all robotics and it's really not creating student leaders who could actually help with others and there's also what's currently being used as a micro badging there they watch videos or take a little test and they become student leaders and they train other students on using the equipment whether it's drills or or me what I call it laser cutters or

045something high-tech you want to keep up with the new technology so we need to have in place a way to like constantly update the makerspace and that would require Tim and I actually just want to build upon that I'm good not just Tim like keep it up keep it up with the new technology that's the difference but from a makerspace being a trend to something ongoing you can't just buy and just last something that has to change us confident students want to do new things and it's something that's always ongoing and you always have to keep it fresh so we don't to keep pulling the students keep pulling the staff as we have a makerspace to make sure that we're always meeting their needs and what they think is necessary and maybe create a makerspace

046committee that would be in charge of that I'm not volunteering high tech low tech both like what do we want out of this do we want to just have a high tech space we want you know somewhere in the middle would be great I liked what Centennial did with the three different spaces we're going to continue researching top-notch schools that are that are that have maker spaces and also we're gonna explore a more active learning and active learning has been around for a couple years it's starting to filter down to the high school level and that's what we're gonna be looking at toward in our next phase of our PLC integrating manatees that's pretty much why I'm here um so bringing English and bringing history into steam and really showing them that it is useful

047in those disciplines as well it's not just steam that were worried and we'll just leave you with that thank you very much Carol and Doug Shelly and Scott thank you very much you know they're setting the standard for you know what we can do when we you know put the ownership on the teachers and allow them to lead the way in their learning and growing process but I want to introduce Dan twizzler in a moment because he's going to tell you a little bit about some of the student-led interdisciplinary events we've had in the last well this past year and also last June and the students are going to talk a little bit about their experiences but you're going to see the parallels from what the teachers are doing and how they're strengthening this culture

048of inquiry and collaboration and how that's giving kids an opportunity to learn and grow so Dan all right so we've just heard a lot about what the staff is doing to promote interdisciplinary learning and we thought we'd invite some kids to hear a little bit about what they are doing in that field as well hackathon and TEDx at first glance it seems like these things would have absolutely nothing in common but they actually have two really interesting connections one is that both of these events were student initiated students approached administration and asked to have these events at the school because they thought that it would actually be better for the students and enrich the classroom experience secondly they both really exemplify this whole student communication both of these groups had significant student contributions which are

049about to hear about and the students work closely with the staff and administration to try and help these events come across so without further ado on by Kevin Huong to come up here and talk a little bit about the hub Hills hacks so as many of you probably know this year watching Hills hosted it was acts and it was a six hour event this January where participants got a chance to spend the day exploring computer science many for the first time ever a lot of beginners joined they got a chance to attend workshops at the event where they learned how to code many people who already had some experience could come and learn new skills at various workshops and if people wanted to people who wanted to apply what they learned or their skills they

050could actually got a chance to form groups and develop a project idea for example an app and presented and have a chance to win prizes the theme this year was at Tech or educational technology which is exploring how education can improve the classroom experience and we got a ton of great ideas and presentations and I would consider it a pretty fairly successful we got positive feedback and many students felt that Hill's axe was a very enriching learning experience and it really allowed them an opportunity to explore and develop their interests and many people were excited to see the future of computer science at watching Hills and future events like Cossacks pulling off an endeavor like this was a really long and difficult process it involved the collaborative the sustained and collaborative effort of dozens of

051students and as well as many teachers and administrators and it's not just computer science people it was the students of all sorts of different talents contributed to this so I just want to start from the beginning where this idea originated change this ok there are some pictures from the event so as you can see there are many workshops where people taught new students how to code and new skills with computer programming so it all started and last year around the same time I was co-president of the computer science club along with Neil a and I wanted to really broaden the appeal of the club computer science was skyrocketing in popularity and importance around the world that continues to do so it certainly will continually play a very important role in society in the future and

052I really wanted watching Hills to reflect that excitement but I realized that although many people may be interested in computer science not just in watching Hills but everywhere but I think that a lot of people who haven't been exposed to computer science report might think that's a bit intimidating to get started people might think that the barrier to entry might feel a little bit too high people without experience never program before him I think you know it's not for them or it might be too hard and for that reason I think a lot of people who would really be interested and really would really be good at computer science never never really get the opportunity to kind of get their foot in the door so I wanted to host an event that would make computer

053science and watching Hills as accessible as possible and a friend suggested to me that we should host a hackathon of washing hills and I thought it was a great idea because they really bring together everyone with a common interest but at first you know it was a really daunting task because hackathons the fair hosted by colleges usually and they're like 24 hours summer 48 hours long so it would really be a new type of event it would be very different from all the other events that watching ills but you know we decided to go for it anyway Kevin I'm just gonna tell some of the people in the audience who were as old as I am that a hackathon doesn't involve trying to break into anything that's just what they do when they're coding they

054call it was a collaborative programming event where people like we're getting to groups and like work on projects together hack is really like a colloquial term in computer science that just rapid computer programming basically so during the summer we gather together maybe like five people and I contacted the exec board for the computer science club and we kind of like drafted like a basic outline of what we wanted to the event to look like and then we present it to mister twizzler and Miss failing and throughout the summer we had a couple of preliminary meetings to basically discuss what we had to do the feasibility of the event and you know the general like idea of what the event would look like we thought you know the 24 hours and 12 hours might be a

055bit long for a first time attempting it so we decided to make it six hours and we also like established all of the different roles that we needed to make it happen and this is actually a pretty big challenge because none of us really had experienced hosting a hackathon before so we didn't really know the details of what we had to exact roles so the roles ended up being a bit fluid and a lot of people like left roles and entered ones and process was I took like many months so some people left the team some people entered so it's something that it's a good lesson that we learned but now we had the experience to define very concrete rules and we also also contacted the Rutgers undergraduate computer science club through email and I

056asked them if they would be willing to help us out and they said you know that's a great idea because they were actually looking to help encourage computer science among K through 12 students so they decide to they said they would provide mentors and staff for the event and they would help organize workshops so it was very promising and that was all before school started so once school started we decided we had to go into the you know the nitty gritty details we had what we had to do and first step was really getting the finances in order and and for that and reached out to the accounting club with mrs. Krotz and her accounting club and for that I think forum and as each of you come up if you can just introduce yourself

057that would be great hi I'm forum I'm a senior at Watchung Hills and for hackathon we worked on me me and a couple other students including Gillian worked on the accounting so what we had to do was firstly to create a budget based on what we thought the event would look like so we had to estimate how many people were coming and then accommodate for the kind of food people would want and then we have to decide how many t-shirts they want all right and how many t-shirts and what kind of t-shirts so our first challenge was definitely estimating how many people are coming because we decided to allow some middle school students to also come to this event but obviously didn't know how many people would actually interested in it and then you soon

058that a lot of people coming to the event would be from the comps I Club so we first estimated around 150 people and but that was like a rough estimate and that was kind of the biggest challenge because we also had to go find the food for the events me and Connie from the culinary Club went to shop right actually to figure out like the number of sandwiches we need what kind of sandwiches people would want and that kind of stuff but it was a difficult task to talk to them when we didn't really know how many people were going to the event so after so we just we kind of put them through know like the backburner for a little bit and we figured out that you're gonna have that same which is catered

059from shop right and then I have my culinary Club make the desserts so the next challenge was the t-shirts because there is based on a company that the school has worked with worked with before there were two options so we can either use digital printing or screen printing and some printer scripting is you plug the digital printer was actually cheaper option because they needed more colors that there was a more complex design but after looking at the numbers and everything we decided that screen printing was cheaper fridge for the hackathon event they cut down the design this was really more mr. size part when they talked about you guys are great so we decided that if we went down a couple colors you cheater for the screen printing and then yeah so the t-shirt wasn't

060that big of a deal but again we had to still people were coming but there was an issue with the website I went up late so the ticketing was extended and then we also didn't know we were gonna charge for the tickets or not so there was a debate about whether or not admission should be three or what we should do so we ended up charging ten dollars for admission which include admission to the event food which is a sandwich some desserts and then Pesci shirt so yeah so yeah we just worked on the budgeting and we met almost probably like once or twice a week in mrs. Crossley's room during lunch so there was a bunch of us from the accounting Club and Kevin and Neil a and Mister twizzler so I was a

061just want to show that it's like a collaborative event and beyond that to work together during lunch to figure out the financial side of this aside from the logistics part of it thank you the accounting Club was certainly very helpful to organizing but we need to spend money on but actually getting the money me and Neil a I think it was in December as members of the board probably remember we wish their idea to the board and aside from the entry fees had to cover the rest of the cost so that was very helpful and so there's also on this event is pretty long it was six hours so we really need to feed all of the participants and not just snacks we did like an actual meal and at first we thought we had

062to get like professional catering but uh you know then I thought why do you need professional catering when we have a culinary Club right at watching Hills and I'm not is there any spokesman my name is Victoria tardy Vita this is to be a camper and where the code vice-president of the culinary Club next year we will be the presidents but we were approached by the computer science club to cater their event like like he said they didn't need a professional catering and so the person we did was get subs from shop right there are tons of options like Italian and so then we also collaborated to come up with some attics snacks and treats that kind of went with the hackathon so carotene grapes were like nuts and bolts we also had keyboard brownies

063with like a keyboard print on them then we also had homemade vise krispie treats with Watchung Hills hackathon words on them how these were all made at home this was before we even had the new kitchen so then we had to uh throughout the whole process with the designer logo this was all done by Zach young he came up with the hills ax logo and the t-shirt and the poster which we'll see soon and it went through many different drafts and revisions he took a lot of feedback it took a lot of time so it really shows the dedication he put in to making this event happen and after the t-shirt was designed mrs. cross and the accounting club ordered the t-shirts and after all of the decision process that went along with that and

064we also have to be design of website Cossacks comm which you can still access it was designed by Zach and Peter Linder the vice president with a science club and it looked really professional and it wasn't done by a professional web design software like Squarespace or Wix it was actually programmed from scratch and it looks very nice so that was very impressive thanks to Zach and Peter and on the website it also included the sign up and for people who want to register and pay we ended up using optics for students who wanted to pay for the event as for advertising here is the poster again designed by Zach the advertising really took the effort of everybody involved everyone involved basically reached out to everybody they knew try to really spread the word and involve

065rid of all the students all the teachers and administrators involved and I was doing morning announcements every day with Isabella from the computer science club and we put up flyers all around the school and classrooms and we really got the word out there so we actually only had up because the website went up late we actually only had about a week to advertise so we really had to scramble but I think we got the word out there and I think we ended up getting I think over 80 people which was a lot better than we expected then we also had to find keynote speakers for a keynote panel Neela a Miss Chester and miss Phelan reached out the people that would be willing to participate in the panel and one person of note was miss

066Phelan reached out to Matt Carbone who was a Washington Hills alum he is now a PhD student at Columbia University and he came up to us and he said you know he was very excited that watching Hills was hosting this event he had no idea that this was happening any guy was you know a great direction for watching those two tape and I think one of the most important parts of this hackathon is the workshops since we're really catering it to beginners we need a lot of workshops to introduce people who had no experience before and teach them how to code and Rutgers they originally told us that they were gonna provide all the workshops but it turned out that college students they have finals and breaks and all that so it was pretty difficult

067to stay in contact with them so we had to and we ended up having to create a lot of the workshops ourselves for me I had to make the I was well one person was assigned was responsible for making and teaching a workshop I was responsible for making like an introduction to programming workshop where I taught people without coding experience the basics of coding using Python and it for me that was like one of the most time-consuming part since I basically had to come up with a lesson plan then like a week and it was like pretty difficult but uh I got a lot of good feedback and people said you know they a lot and a lot of people said they weren't that interested in pursuing computer science further so I really enjoyed that

068and there were a bunch of other workshops such as robotics there was integrating coding with science and math there's a Rutgers Q&A session about you know what it's like to be a computer science major in college and career opportunities so it really gave people a good sense of what it was like to you know explore computer science and we also had to us because we had a ton of different workshops they were aimed at different skill levels so really it was really difficult to organize all of the different workshops into a coherent schedule so that you can see that was a diagram of the schedules way convoluted with all so it's a different link scheduling arrangements and we have some creative event program and mean Eli and miss Phelan stayed after school until 5:00 like

069two days before the event trying to print out like a hundred colored copies so we were like scrambling at the end like everything finished so that was an interesting experience and it was again at the end we were meeting pretty much almost daily at lunch and mr. Twizzlers office trying to get everything sorted out so at the end he was a lot of words and so some takeaways what we learned was that student-led initiatives can have a real impact on the community at first I thought you know there's hackathon there's no way we can get this done it's a huge time commitment it's a it's a very large-scale event but with everyone working together we really met we got max get it done a lot of people said they've got a lot out of it

070so I think that was very good and I also learned that they can also strengthen the community because students teachers and administrators are given a rare opportunity to work together again this really involved the collaborative effort of so many different people and finally you can also teach students involved practical experience working on a relatively large scale project outside of the classroom it's really this took like I think maybe like seven months so it's a lot larger than a typical classroom project so students really got practical experience especially because I think a lot of aspects of this was pretty professionally done so it was very enriching learning experience for the students involved and certainly a lot of the lessons we learn from this we applied to the TEDx event which I'm Matt and I'm a sophomore

071watching Hills and since its founding in 1984 the Ted organization has been committed to spreading ideas on technology education and design but not long after they realized that a single nonprofit nonpartisan organization has physical limitations so they came out with the idea of the TEDx where x equals independently organized event the TEDx is really what allowed the tech we need to spread globally and it's this and it's since its creation in 2009 they've been over 15,000 Ted events with over in over 100 different languages with over a billion viewers worldwide and partly what makes this so popular and so unique is that it's not a competition it's not a debate where people are arguing to try to prove something to the audience there are no prizes there's no winners or losers and there's absolutely no

072limitations on subjects that can be presented there's a simple mission statement of TEDx is to give people an opportunity to spread information worth sharing and that's exactly what we want to do with our TEDx event add watching hills with an event like this there are a lot of different moving parts so the teachers and leaders realize they're going to have strong leadership to control this and to make sure that we'd have a successful event but on May 21st so mrs. cross at mrs. Carranza asked Alan and Marilyn to be project managers hi I'm Ella Walsh and I'm a senior here for the TEDx I was Co project janna German airline business cruds introduced to us project Microsoft Project so we could assign people to specific tasks and estimate the duration of time it would take

073to complete each one the hardest part was trying to consider everything that had to be accomplished and who would work together although we had about three months until the event it was so important to be as efficient as possible so Microsoft Project was great because it highlights how like for each task there was different a different combination of people working on each task so one important deadline we had to make was writing the application in Maryland hi I'm Marilyn and I'm a sophomore so to start off the application which Kevin L and I worked on first we had to create an introduction to inform potential applicants of what a tax event is and also to interest them in applying to be speakers which we were able to do by showing them the significance of what

074it means to be a TEDx event so next we had to decide what was important to know from speakers such as like their qualifications and the topic of which they were talking about so we formulated questions in a Google form that we sent out to club advisors and sports coaches so they could send it out to their club members and like team members so we could get speakers from all different aspects of our school and then for the selection process we actually had like a slight issue not having enough speakers but we were able to overcome this by personally reaching out to people who we knew who we thought would be interested in order to get the number of speakers we need so we wanted the TEDx to be a watch on Hills community event

075so all the speakers were from our high school specifically we were looking for 10th 11th and 12th graders to share their ideas and we also had one teacher we reached out to clubs and specific individuals like Marilyn said so it resulted in this group of ten talented speakers once we chose them we Co them through the entire process and gave them suggestions on how to improve their talk and that's okay so for the sketch I worked with Nicole and Megan so for this poster Nicole and I wanted to incorporate imagery for the word empower so we started with a handshake to represent the connection between the people during the event and then we thought about a person who's on the mountain how like they're showing how they feel empowered and then the microphone just because

076it was like a public speaking of it my name is Megan Krotz and I took their design and I put it into Photoshop and I tried to take what they had originally sketched out and make it more themed with the TEDx program I used the red called the red and gray color scheme from Ted and I traced over what they had a drawn on paper and I added in some of the different colors and effects later on I thought that maybe we should have it be in the school colors so I changed up to be a more gold with the TEDx logo in the corner once we had our official TEDx license we looked over some of the different requirements and ended up fixing up the fight so after successfully getting the TEDx licensing like

077we realize that this after looking over the late licensing agreement realized that this wouldn't work with just a little TEDx in the corner so there's a ridge like pages and pages of rules for sending young and this is us working that night had enlarged Oh working to try to get something together that would have liked to workouts actually follow the licensing to make sure that we can get the licensing again for next year because if you violate any of their agreements you can like jeopardize having it again so this is what we came up with with and like you had to be the TEDx had to be central and had to have nothing surrounding it had to have its own borders and there can't be a lot of things distracting from the fact that it's

078a TEDx event but we also want to keep our in power design because we thought that really spoke to what we were doing for like marketing this event we decided that we don't really want to use social media a lot and so we created a snapchat filter and what this does is that it for people that don't know snapchat is a social yeah and nine out of ten kids probably have it and what this does is that when someone took a picture in this area it created a geotag this would pop up on the screen and notify them about an event that was happening and also some like just to grab their attention towards it we also had like putting up posters in classrooms like the more traditional method putting them around school around the

079school but once we got the successful it successfully got the TEDx license we use that and we put it on Instagram and snapchat and we use might reach out to other people to put it on their Instagram snapchat to try to get the word out for it again I'm really on point again and this is Namita again we're juniors chauffer so for this event we decided to try to contact local businesses instead of going with the chain so we contacted with shraddha's and I called them and we talked about what the subs prices were last year because sonali who graduated last year used them and she used to work there so we already had a relationship with them so we were able to get a really good discount on the subs that we got and

080they provided us with a lot of things that we would have had to provide ourselves so we had like a lot of the condiments and like the plates that they had to give us we were able to use all of those things and then for the other food things that were in our menu we chose a lot of the choices that were really popular from previous events so we did the art show and events in between the hills hacks event and TEDx so we were able to use a lot of our options that the students really liked so we had the puff pastry pizzas and then we did skewers with pesto tomato and mozzarella and then we did chocolate mousse and that was basically what we did for this event all right so from doing

081those hacks event we were able to learn a lot that isn't as like easily obtainable in a classroom setting or like they could learn easily from a textbook so one thing that we were able to learn was how to troubleshoot shoot many issues such as like not having enough speakers and also with the licensing at first not getting it and then being successful in getting the licensing also we had to learn how to adapt which was important especially in like the poster when we switched to like the school colors and then we had to meet the requirements for a TEDx event we all taught to work flexibly with like all of our schedules and we had to make sure that we could all work together in order to get it done which included both like

082meetings out lunch and also out of school we did like online and then also we were able to learn how to work more professionally by working like in a more businesslike manner also with administration so what I learned about watch I'm hills and so organizing a project like TEDx taught me a lot about the entire Watchung Hills community I knew that there were many talented and passionate students but it was great to see them taking the initiative and speaking about ideas that matter to them it was also amazing as a coordinator to see firsthand the willingness of Watchung Hills students in wanting this event to succeed which I think makes this school such a special place whether was asking speakers to send their biographies or updated speeches I was always met with enthusiasm and promptness

083so it made my job easier lastly it was great to see how the connections I made throughout my four years here helped in our efforts for example I contacted my friends in the photography club to take pictures of the speakers during the event and meanwhile other friends who heard about TEDx and wanted to become involved offer to spread the word about the event to put on an event like TEDx we needed a variety of roles from the lighting and sound crew videographers photographers and an announcer so it was great that everyone could come together and show like sharing what they had the beside but the behind-the-scenes effort of watching Hills students surprised me and was definitely a large contributor to the overall success of TEDx and I'm really glad that I got to meet and

084work with Matt Marilyn and Megan who will be able to be the voices of experience for next year [Applause] as I mentioned before we made chocolate mousse for the event so we have some for you guys today and also just to mention another thing that really helped with the TEDx thing that we didn't have during hill's hacks we had our kitchen completed so we were able to use that and it really helped a lot something that would have taken five hours if we'd done it in our own kitchens took about one hour with everyone coming in in one space and it was really helpful to have that so please enjoy your mousse I am I am always blown away when the students come and present you guys are amazing I'm not even gonna say anything

085more eloquent than that it's just you're all so bright and creative and innovative and what's so nice to see that there's underclassmen involved with the seniors so that there will be some continuity I actually have one request for the TEDx folks I have a task for you can you look in those big lists of rules and find out if we can post for example that picture on our website with the TEDx logo I just wanna make sure that's okay with them if we use some of those to put on our banner on the website so we're up so we can okay fantastic I do want to also acknowledge mrs. Kratz and Miss Chesbrough who did not speak but were very involved in these events mr. Koretz is a member of our business department and Miss

086Chesbrough is a volunteer from our community who has helped our students with a number of these events and now that she's part of our community she's been sucked in and we're going to keep utilizing her but it's it's just such a tremendous outgrowth of all of the collaboration and the teachers that presented earlier tonight you know the the work that you're doing with with rigor and the questioning and classes and the research that you did on the Learning Commons and the makerspace and coming here tonight to speak to us about it it makes it real for everyone here and I know the makerspace in particular something we've talked about but it's hard to visualize for a lot of people what that actually looks like it means so that was really a nice example of that

087so I just I want to thank you all for coming and while everyone's here I do want to I don't have an official report tonight we have all the presentations but I can't not mention our group for Championships we've got in this spring that were in the midst of right now our boys lacrosse team is going to be playing tomorrow night they're in they're in the second round of the tournament of champions after having won the group four titles so they're playing tomorrow night at 7:30 p.m. at Kean University against Al Barton our girls track team and our boys golf teams also took home the group four state championships so we've had quite we have students that excel in all areas so congratulations to everyone yes just a couple quick questions for mrs. letting Tanana

088Sturkey land here still here oh great just a guys who come up to the podium if you want I know you're dying to just the as you look at some of the the models of these programs I just wanted to suggest taking a look at what's in the kipapa they are the first district in the state that actually has a distance but an Innovation Lab and I think it may be worth you know as you're doing your research to see how they've taken the approach they've even gone so far as they actually have a steam coordinator for the entire district to help make sure that things are integrated appropriately so I just wanted to offer that to you as a suggestion so you didn't have to then related to that just two other things what

089year are we in TEDx this is the second year that this is the second year in TEDx and then this was the the first year that we did the hills hacks and I think that it was interesting to see the growth of TEDx from the first year to the second year kind of the improvement in the programming and everything that went on with that so you know congratulations to you for that but I also wanted to point out the investment that we made into Hills hacks when it was brought to us in December and they were just working on it at the time was really not so much about the fact that it was going to be fantastic or great out of the gate but to give them the opportunity to to experiment with it

090for the first year with the eye toward how the program would be implemented for the second year so I think the investment that the board made in helping bring that to reality this year is beneficial for how that the hill tax will evolve in the future so just want to thank you for that I congratulate you here coming somewhere all right by the way staying up you know staying late to get programs done the night before an event you're gonna be doing for the rest of your life so just be used in addition to thanking the teachers and administrators who made the presentations yes the students did a wonderful job I want the rest of the public to know that in inveigling the students to come and present tonight we told them oh our Board

091of Ed meetings we usually have between three and five members of the public so so this was a little daunting for them to get up in front of a crew this large and I want to thank the public for your courtesy and respect for them throughout the presentation so thank you very much students if you want to leave you're welcome to we're gonna now get on with the business of the rest of the meeting oh sorry [Laughter] okay and I I know that nearly all of you are here to address the board concerning the book tonight we will get to that I do have to tell you that there is no agenda item with respect to the book so we will be taking your comments during the second set second opportunity for public comment after

092I and the superintendent address you concerning some of the the matters related to the book for now in our agenda I do want to mention one piece of worth correspondence amazing especially interesting to people from Warren the board received this this week a Planning Board notice of hearing from the township of Warren and it is a notice that there is going to be a Planning Board meeting on June 11th 2018 about the property across the street from the high school because there has been an application by the applicant PIR HL acquisitions LLC they're going to be putting in five residential buildings containing 80 low and moderate-income housing units together with the associated common and amenity space it's going to be a 100% affordable housing development and the applicant is proposing to construct 13 one-bedroom units

09347 two-bedroom units and 23 bedroom units on that property located at six Lindbergh place directly across the street basically between the high school and woodland school next to us so that's a that's a hearing on June 11 2014 now we're going to move on Thank You Education Committee the Education Committee met on May the 30th and you're the full report is in your packets so you can certainly refer to that but just quickly the highlights related to the dance program the administration asked the committee for some guidance which we provided them as far as directing them to do some research in other regional high schools to identify ways that we can strengthen and the approach that we take to the dance program moving forward we also discussed the music tech lab mr. Stein's provided us

094with a review of some of the plans discussing some of the locations budget and timeline on the agenda tonight is the approval of the new hire for that particular tech and once that's approved he will become involved in the development process of the technology in that space we also reviewed the summer curriculum writing which is on preview agenda for the 19th for the new courses and revisions to existing courses and also discuss the summer enrichment offerings which will also be on your agenda for the 19th including what those offerings are and the faculty that will be providing anything from committee that they want to add questions mister stars our business admit administrator we do these operations I sure will we met on May 22nd we talked about things that are on the agenda the annual

095appointments that we make typically this time of year such as the treasurer position we talked about one of the new resolutions that we're putting on its d20 in the preview section of the agenda we added support maintenance contracts we usually don't put all those we have there's no requirement to get them approved by the board unless it's over $30,000 but we felt the need to be more transparent and provide everything this contract that we do so that word knows and the public knows that and it just shows how much maintenance we need to put into the building into the software and whatnot so I thought that was important we talked about the Murray Hill Chinese school annual contract we had talked about either a 0% increase or a 2% and because we moved them out

096of the music tech lab room and put them into a larger space we did add 2% onto that contract we talked about our urine transfer current funds available to our reserve accounts we were looking at because we had some savings this year in healthcare and in some of the salary physicians and in the maintenance area we were able to we believe it's going to be somewhere just shy of two million dollars we have to put into the reserves the lion's share will be in the capital reserve and one of the things that we're working on with our architect right now is the master plan one of those items in the master plan is thing we talked about tonight it's the makerspace so so more money we can put away into this capital reserve the more

097we can put into projects like makerspace so you guys will be we'll be talking to you soon with the architect and then we talked about Care Plus program the renewal at 0% increase same as last year $98,000 it's been a popular program it's worked out well we have three bids that were out trash removal on the agenda for preview custodial bid which came in today and I'll talk about that later and the broker of record which we pulled and deferred and we're going to do that in the summer I'm gonna have that as a start as September 1 we talked about in with the broker that's it any questions the next report is and council met tonight right the Education Council met before the meeting the educational council is composed of teachers administration and board

098members we discuss professional development the faculty has requested more training opportunities and technology and subject matter professional development guidance has also asked for additional training possum in assisting them in preparing for college visits we discussed professional growth and evaluations the system mandated by the state a few years ago is causing stress with our faculty and we discuss ways that we could reduce that stress and add to professional growth the Diversity Committee which was formed in furtherance of our strategic plan administered a diversity survey to our students and those results are shared with our faculty and the goal is is to make everyone feel a part of the community here and some very positive results in the survey and that's all thank you any questions okay we are now at the point when you please two

099resolutions represented for them so that they can lobby in Georgia School Boards Association to lobby on it one was the more controversial one that took like about an hour and a half to go around in the circle and they come back to the proposed resolution was about ensuring student safety through lobbying for enhanced and consistent state and federal gun laws and firearm laws there was a proposal to make it a more specific resolution that specifically would say outline this type of military weapon or certain types of ammunition bans and various specific things and eventually that amendment did not pass and the more general statement resolution passed which allows us which the School Boards Association was the ones who recommended so that it gave them leeway to lobby for these laws without limiting them to specific

100types of issues the second resolution that passed and have a lot of controversy was trying to create and I think there's now legislation regarding this or at least it's coming up change or maybe this is what Sweeney is talking about changing the school funding so that it's more based on now present changes in the school president Sweeney's yes so basically the School Boards Association is in favor of that and passed and the delegates passed the resolution to allow them to lobby for that as well questions there any other board reports just related to that the all of the county school words Association met this past weekend and one of the things that did come up is again the you know the unsure outcome of school funding and if you've been reading to news reports of

101the past week there's obviously issues related to that that could lead to a government shutdown regarding you know the approach to education funding and again I would take us back to when we first learned about this several months ago when we were prudent with the way that we budgeted so that we would be protected regardless of what happened with the the state outcome on this and I think that at the time we were concerned that the dollars that were allocated from the state are promised from the state may not actually come through and I think we're now beginning to see that the realization of that and I just think again you know to mr. Stein's credit that the way that we budgeted for this upcoming year ensures that that our instructional programs here at the

102district are not in jeopardy regardless of what happens at the state so I think that that's really important to be aware of so even if you hear news about school funding coming from the state we've taken proactive measures to ensure that our funding for next year will be stable and none of our programs will be disrupted thank you we're now at the first opportunity for public comment this public comment period is limited to agenda items only for today's meeting if you wish to address the board on any of the agenda items on today's meeting please step forward identify yourself from the town you're from and addresses and gallic here Lauren you mentioned Planning Board not too long ago during this Bank I was playing board chairman and Stan for the last 20 years or vice

103chairman I want to encourage all of you to come out and have if you have any concerns and although I can't speak to that specific application I'd be happy to talk about affordable housing and how the townships dealing with it someone and then number two so our agenda at the planning board used to be just like this we used to do nan and Jen items at the end when I became chairman I changed that putting on agenda up front so maybe would the board would consider that give me everyone a break now close the first opportunity to public comment it's now time for board discussion of the agenda items which appear on pages 12 to 15 of the agenda the action items for tonight and board discussion on action items a 1 Greg Tim on

104D 2 one of our discussions was on filing timeliness and a specific date this resolution doesn't include that is it's somewhere referenced in a document of this or not shipping issue so we talked about a 60-day timeliness because the way this is written it really has no specific date on file whether that that's the day we talked about when I read this resolution it doesn't include that date so if it's referenced somewhere else that may be okay I don't see a reference all specifically here the date isn't but 60 days it's 60 days from the employees being provided which theoretically could be provided three years from now so my recommendation would be either for modifying the language to say timely filing as defined by something we're specifying the August 31st state that we discussed correct

105like in other words the end dates was the August 31st correct not specific it isn't a communication that we had so what a references obviously is the change in the database that's being used but it's not specifying what a timely filing is and so I think that leaves open enter open to interpretation and the possibility that very likely it's actually a simpler change than that even I think it's not invoiced it's because if somebody fails to provide an invoice this is where Greg this is where it's rendered Curt claims made again can be a delay okay the reference I think on the date it's not in this agenda item but what it says and the second bullet point that's what a copy of such procedures Randall Brown gave us procedures that we passed up the

106employees and it says a copy of such procedures on file and the office of the business administrator that's where the also state so as long as it's yes that's what that's what the August sorry thank you thank you mr. Starr's other board discussion on the action items for now we'll move to board discussion on the future items for the net for the meeting two weeks from directors question to mr. spies on I believe d12 d13 the renewal of initial application temporary space and then the resolution related to the designated classroom for the music technology lab I was just curious I mean one of the things we talked about in Education Committee was a you know concern certainly that I had about the location of the new music technology lab away from new the music thing

107and I was just curious on if there was any consideration given to actually utilizing room ninety-four or the music technology lab since that is in the music wing and it was designated as a music space didn't know if that there was any merit to looking at that or considering that or were if you have why and why not put it there versus 11 yeah there was there was we we had the architect look at the entire room actually and the two spaces that they brought up where 111 and 94 the configuration of room 94 had made it a little more difficult to get as many desks and chairs and with the electrical configuration of that room it made it more difficult to utilize the entire room so they may recommend they felt 111 was a

108better place for that for that program usually with your music programs you do want a higher ceiling and that sort of thing but this is a different music program because it's all on computer and headsets so you don't really have that sounds issue in the room that's why they thought that 111 was probably the better space and has it's a large room so it seemed it seemed to fit better it's not terribly far from the rest of the music program so I from that point of view I think it's I mean I kind of wish it was in 94 in that area there but the 111 was that much better space for the equipment that we're going to use right thank you oh and its proximity to the server was another key issue because the

109further away from the server you got to draw a more in line to the server to hook everything up and that cost work thank you any other and what the board speak first and then I will speak you said two things that had they're okay there's two things that I just want to bring the board's attention one and this is from dr. she bill skis comments from last meeting I think it was we we are going to add on the next agenda we would like to add a trip and the reason we're doing this now it's a trip that's going to take place in January it's a coral trip to Florida they go to Disney and they sing in Disney it's it's an honor to go there and do that it's difficult at this point

110to get all the information together it's a complicated trip talking about 150 students and there's a lot of moving parts so we don't quite have the exact numbers yet but we will have them for the second meeting the trip does not cost anything to the school it's paid for by the parents sorry parents it's approximately fifteen hundred to two thousand dollars in that range and it includes a trip to Disney and Universal they'll be singing twice at Disney they go every other year and the reason we need to get it at least your your blessing on this right now is they have to get the check in to Disney to to sing so unless you guys have any problems with this I would like to go back to the group and say the board supports

111this trip which I'm okay that's one thing and the other thing is we had a bit opening today for the custodial kid it's a large big it's typically in the 700 thousand dollar range this year we did make a few changes to the specs in an effort to get a higher quality product from the cleaners and I'm not gonna disparage the cleaners I'm just going to tell you there's things in the contracts typically sometimes the studio companies will take advantage of in terms of man out in terms of equipment so we tightened up the specs we looked at a lot of different specs and I'm talking about our Director of Operations and I and we tightened up those specs with that we got a higher price which is not surprising to me I knew was

112gonna be higher to go how much it's approximately $70,000 over the budget but it's something we feel very strongly about only because it's the quality of what we we have in terms of cleaning that we really want an improvement for the fusion staff we would like to defer some of our maintenance projects to cover that cost if we're gonna put more money to make it's reserved and awaited those projects this is something it'll come up in the next board meeting as a voting item but I think it's something we've made a conscious effort to get a better product and I think it's something we sorely need this discussion operation was that we had to bid out today was the bid opening and we went to the results so we we have a larger H heating

113and ventilating project for the South cafeteria so we put two hundred thousand dollars into that project I would take divert some of that money to that so we can still do some of the project however if we have maintenance reserve which I believe we will we can deposit that money right back into the project which is one of the reasons we have manias reserve again but the custodial you know what we did is we're trying to make that the companies who are accountable we push the performance bond issue which that drove up the price there's no doubt and we also really box them in in terms of I want ten people here per day not eight I want that so we box them in pretty good and we box them in with new equipment because

114I don't I'm tired of old equipment that's breaking down not working so again the thought process was to make a better product I could again we could reject the bids because they're over budget or we could and go back and change the scope of the bed to make it within the budget yeah the budget was 750 the but the low bid came in at 8:20 now the second lowest bid was about a 50 and then it went up from there so you know I don't think the prices are bad prices if it was one bid and that was it I would tell you go back out to bed right but I got multiple bids and they were right within that same ballpark so I think the prices are right it's just a matter of what

115kind of scope we want to look at if we want to change the scope that's kind of the product is going to suffer Tim that's not to say several years down the road now with labor prices being different than what they were into the last night right yeah they brought that up to the the companies that I talked to today about the bid pricing they did say the labor costs are higher they brought up healthcare that was a big issue for them there's no doubt and I think it's that way nationally for everyone so yeah but I again this is something that I'm gonna recommend just based on the fact that I think I think we're gonna get a better product any more questions action items mr. president I'd like to move items a 1

116through 8 resolutions a 1 through 8 3 yes yes mr. hunt singer yes tomorrow yes Larson yes dr. Phil's keys yeah and it's family yes mr. president I'd like to move a for through a 6 any discussion of resolutions a four through a six mister sighs can we have a roll call vote goes bro yes Collins yes Mattia yeah Betty yes Hey yes mr. huntzinger yes tomorrow yes I push your bills yes mr. Powell yes mr. president I like to move items C 1 through c5 any board discussion of resolution the c1 through c5 mr. Stein's can we have a roll call vote this bro yes yes yes yes yes Lauren yes Mars yes I can she bills me yes mr. Palin yes mr. president I'd like to move items d1 through d3 any discussion

117on resolution 51 53 yes yes yes yes over the last two weeks we the board have received many emails and some telephone calls from people expressing their views about fun home a family tragicomic one of the books in our 12th grade English language arts curriculum some of those we heard from have expressed their support for keeping the book in our curriculum and others have made it clear that they do not want the book in our school I want to thank everyone on both sides of this issue who reached out and contacted board members to express their views concerning this book I also want to be very clear with you about two things first no one is forced to read this book just as with other controversial books the teacher tells the students that if they

118are uncomfortable with the content or the images of the book in the book excuse me they can opt out of reading the book and another book will be assigned parents are able to inform themselves of what books are assigned reading for their children by reviewing the class curriculum for the various classes on our district website the second thing that I want you to know is that approval of the curriculum for the next school year is not on our meeting agenda for tonight so I do not expect that the board will take any vote tonight concerning the removal of the book of this book from the 12th grade English language or its curriculum despite that we are happy to listen to the concerns of those who have come out to a night tonight to address us

119your use will be considered by me and by my fellow board members and depending upon how long the comments go tonight you may hear some discussion by board members about the book after the conclusion of the comment period fun home a family tragic comic is a graphic novel a literary form that did not exist when I was growing up unless you include classics Illustrated which summarized some classic literature and comic book format but regardless of whether I am a fan or you are a fan of the graphic novel it is now generally a generally accepted form of literature by their senior year in high school most of our students will have read at least 5 graphic novels in school including one in the 8th grade and as our students progress from 8th to 12th grades

120the contents of the graphic novels just as the other literature they reads gets more mature find home a family tragicomic is a memoir it tells the story of a young woman growing up in her family when she was young she had a somewhat typical relationship with her parents in that they were more likely to tell to not tell her the truth and just say to her that everything and everyone was fine in other words her parents projected a carefully cultivated if not totally truthful image as she grew up she developed a more mature relationship with her parents and she learned more about them as people dealing with their own secrets and other issues this helped Allisyn to forge her own identity independent from her parents the story is told in the context that she grows

121that as she grows into her own person allison realizes that she is a lesbian and her father who is both a high school teacher and a director of the local funeral home is gay but not open about his sexual identity during her college year her father has run over by a truck and killed in circumstances that while ambiguous look very much like he might have committed suicide and so this book also deals with the pain and damage to all those left behind when someone commits suicide it also deals with how her father's non-disclosure of his gay identity impacted Allison's discovery and realization of her own sexual identity these are themes and concepts that I know from firsthand experience that our students here at watchon Hills have had to deal with classmates of my own daughter

122we're extremely close friends with a wonderful and talented young woman from my town who struggled with her sexual identity before coming out as a lesbian this young woman then committed suicide in college so the experiences in this memoir experiences that the kids in our towns actually faced having read the book I can also tell you that is filled with literary allusions to a great many books this Board of Education adopted a strategic plan for the years from 2015 to 2020 that strategic plan included three goals one of those goals is this create and expand programs that enhance the social and emotional wellness of all students within a compassionate learning community the Board of Education adopted a performance indicator for this goals which provides Watchung Hills Regional High School will establish a district-wide Diversity Committee to

123examine and address issues regarding acceptance respect and support throughout the school community and be the district-wide Diversity Committee was established one of its goals was to prepare a list of LGBTQ related titles for possible use in English language arts units of study this led to an English department initiative to expand the LGBTQ voices in the curriculum so the decision to expand the curriculum to include LGBTQ literature grew directly out of the strategic plan adopted by the Board of Education based upon the work done in this area by the English department in November 2017 the superintendent recommended to the Board of Education a revised English curriculum to include LGBTQ literature the Board of Education then voted to accept the superintendent's recommendation to revise the English curriculum to include fun home a family tragicomic in the 12th

124grade English language arts curriculum it is important for you to realize that the Board of Education does not select books to be included in the curriculum instead we act to approve or disapprove the recommendation made to us by our superintendent as to what is to be included in the curriculum generally the board votes once per year to approve the curriculum unless the superintendent recommends a revision to it in which case the board is usually asked to approve or disapprove the revision the board approved the revised 12th grade curriculum to include fun home a family tragicomic in November 2017 since then we have piloted the revised curriculum in certain classes this means that we purchased 75 copies of the book brought in an English professor to train our teachers on LGBTQ studies and contexts for teaching

125the book and this spring began teaching the book that is why only some members of this year's senior class will have read the look by the end of the school year as far as the process going forward there is not now scheduled another approval of the curriculum before school resumes in September it is possible that after listening to your comment tonight some board members may want to revisit that and discuss whether or not the current curriculum which does include fun home should be revised if there is no revision made to the curriculum the next time this will be considered would likely be next January when the board is typically asked to approve or disapprove the entire curriculum as I mentioned briefly in my earlier in my remarks we received many emails some from people asking

126us to keep the book in the curriculum we will also received emails from people who want to book remove from the curriculum many of those people opposed to the use of the book object to the graphic hand-drew and images contained in the book others have objected to both the images and the content of the book the images objected to include a flaccid penis on a dead body in the funeral home nude women with their heads between the legs of another woman and a woman with her hand down her pants - those of you who find the images offensive I'm not here to tell you that you are wrong and that they are not offensive to you but once again I have to remind you that no one is forced to read this book and there

127are many people who are not offended by these images the board has adopted a policy number 2 - 4 0 which deals with controversial issues it is somewhat lengthy and I will not quote all of it here but it is available on our website it provides in part and among other things the consideration of controversial questions has a legitimate place in the work of the public schools the handling of a controversial question in school should be free from the assumption that there is one correct answer which will emerge from the discussion and be taught authoritative ly to the student in drought indoctrination is not the purpose rather the perp is to have students see as fully as possible all sides of the question the controversial issues policy goes on to provide the decision by the

128professional staff with the concurrence of the superintendent of schools as to whether a controversial question should become a matter for schools study should be based upon such considerations as the timeliness of the question the maturity of the students the needs of the students and the purposes of the school under Board of Education responsibilities in that policy it provides the selection of instructional materials for library and classroom use is delegated by the Board of Education to the educational staff under the administration administrative regulations issued by the superintendent and approved by the Board of Education finally the policy also provides all complaints about instructional material directed to the Board of Education or to the administration must be in writing all complaints will be directed to the administration for resolution under the policy of the administrative regulations that

129implement it now I'm going to ask the superintendent to briefly explain the rationale for using fun home a family tragic comic in our 12th grade English language arts curriculum and after that we will entertain public comment Watchung Hills is committed to engaging readers with high-quality works of literature that present students with exceptional uses of language while providing rich and varied perspectives on life and living our LGBTQ literature curriculum writing project starting with research conducted in 2014 grew from our commitment to actualize the school's Diversity Committee goals for developing inclusive curriculum we chose fun home to advance the diversity committees goals and to advance English department goals for students literacy learning we selected fun home for its literary qualities the novel is noteworthy for its presentation of characters who themselves engage with literature on a particularly

130sophisticated level both Bechdel and her father use reading as a means of self exploration and discovery as a way of understanding themselves in relation to the world around them and we have not often encountered such vivid engaged readers in other literary works additionally references to works of the literary canon as well as classical mythology european and art history and literary biography fun home demonstrates an application of academic knowledge for the purpose of enriching self awareness and self understanding the novel involves readers in Bechdel's lively knowledge rich and compelling intellectual pursuit to better understand herself and her family history fun home also helps us teach intertextuality a more complex form of literary reading we want students to understand that no literary text we read exists in isolation and we attempt to show students how each text

131exists in conversations with others informed by its antecedents and sometimes opening new spaces for other texts to emerge we want students reading to be informed by an understanding of intersexuality of this ongoing conversation among the literary works they read we want them to develop context and make thoughtful relevant connections Bek doz book demonstrates such connections among several important literary works we chose fun home to advance our goals for thoughtful contextualized literary reading and to expand the LGBTQ voices in our curriculum the concerns raised recently by some by some folks have been leveled at the novels images of sexual intimacy we acknowledge that a few such images appear in the novel but we do not feel their presence in any way diminishes the literary quality of the work thumbing through the novel and pointing to an

132image or two misses the context in which these images are presented we endeavor to create readers who can analyze and evaluate an image whether presented Vigil visually or rendered in prose and who can view this image in context we welcome the responsibility of engaging students in a curriculum of diverse viewpoints in order to prepare them as seniors for the academic social and workplace environments they will encounter in just a few months we recognize that some of the works we teach may challenge students own worldviews but as professionals with experience teaching literature we know that structured informed reading and discussion of text and image in the context of the classroom helps students to develop strategies to manage such a challenge we also know that a rigorous inclusive curriculum prepares students well for success in college and

133career thank you I again want to thank everyone who's here tonight for your your courtesy to us tonight to allow us to get through the rest of the meeting we're now at the second opportunity for public comment because of the number of people here who I anticipate want to address us we're going to limit each person to three minutes public comment and then ask you to step aside to let the next person come up you'd like to address the board please come up to the podium state your name and the town if you're from address I will mention that we the board policy there is a board policy on this that limits the total of public comment time to one hour but let's get started and see where we are I'm a watching Hills alumni

134I graduate in 2016 and during my time at watching Hills I took both danced one dance to in advance dance in addition to being part of the Dance Ensemble and I'm currently getting my degree I'm getting a Bachelors of Science and dance education inspired by my time here at watching Hill when I heard that watching Hills was cutting dance classes I was like in complete shock and completely appalled and I immediately got to work organizing my fellow alumni and trying to figure out what to do and I wrote this long speech about the importance of dance Edie and how it made me the person I am today but then I realized that like nothing I really said it's gonna bring back dance classes for next year considering that it's based on enrollment and I do

135understand that so I really want to know like how enrollment even went down in the first place because I know when I was here like the dance department was just like such a big deal for me and I know for a lot of my peers and we were just all so invested in it all the time so I just have a couple of questions I don't know if you can like answer unfortunately that this is not a time for answering questions you can provide the questions to our superintendent that she will get back I would welcome your insight on on the dance program and and any ideas you may have in terms of why its popularity has diminished so my email address is right on the website if you don't decide to wait till the

136end of the meeting I could give it to you them but it's right on the website please reach out to me and I'd love to either things be good to be email on the phone or in person okay awesome I just want to show my face and thank you hi my name is 70s I wanted to a lot in high school um I'm sure a lot of I see a few familiar faces I don't know if you guys remember the last time the dance program was there and we came here the same way you guys all are in numbers and we kind of recognized that that's not going to happen without missing Polly here who was the dance teacher who really created the dance program here but there are hundreds of girls in this area

137that are taking dance starting before years old and they're gonna be looking for a community when they come to watch on hills and that was the dance program was my community here that was what kept me grounded that was my psych center they got me through everything including my grandma passing away and so if you guys bring us back that would mean so I would invited you to do the same reach out to me I'd love to talk to you more thank you so much thank you guys for being here and and our extracurricular dance program has not been diminished in its continuing so if they were going to be able you're still going next year yes can you just say your name one more time so we can get it for the minute some

138love svv own ula thank you and I guess we're the rest of the board's benefit you know this was something that we talked about at length in Education Committee and I can assure those that are here regarding their concern for the dance program that you know where we are right now is not the end of the story we have given guidance to the administration to reflect on the practices that were you know what are the conditions that may have led to the decline in the program what our model programs look like in other districts and how might we get ourselves on a pathway to bring back a robust and fully subscribe to program in in the future so it was disappointing to me personally that we had to make that decision but it was the

139practical reality of both enrollment and staffing issues but I can please rest assured that again this is not the end of the story there's more to come and definitely a commitment from this board to try to figure it out hi my name is Steven sturckow I'm from Warren I'd like to take the board for all the time that you spend in service our community and for the opportunity to share our concerns once again occurring the inclusion of fun home into 12th grade English curriculum I'd also like to thank all the members from our community who have taken time as their busy schedules to make sure that the board understands how serious this issue is and that's not a concern of a few families but rather that of the community at large I know there are

140many other families that wanted to be here as well but could not do the family or work conflicts at the last board meeting we brought up our concerns regarding fun home being in the curriculum again contained in this memoir our explicit graphic images showing unity which include male and female genitalia shows oral sex and masturbation at the last meeting we stated we would continue to work with the school and respect the process for our request we have done so we met with mr. havea and mrs. Fallon and so the next step was to come back to this moment there have been some misunderstandings and misrepresentations from the last board meeting that I want to make sure are clear for the record I understand the school's goal to expand the curriculum to include a broad range

141of literature to reach all students not just works of portrayed traditional gender and sexual identities I also understand the school strategic plan to call for the district to address issues regarding acceptance respect and support throughout the school community and beyond we are not against the school's goals in these areas and we are not against schools efforts to reach out to students who identify themselves as members of the LGBT community I personally have relatives who identify themselves as members of the LGBT community I support them and as well I support your efforts in this area this is not an LGBT issue and never has been an LGBT issue our request is to replace fun home with another book that satisfies the school's educational goals without subjecting students there's sexually explicit images that are contained in the

142bottom we've been told by mr. krei via that between seven and twelve books were evaluated for meeting this goal I expect that one of these books would be an adequate replacement for fun home reading the book myself confirmed that the memoir was written for an adult audience and is not appropriate for a high school curriculum the sexual innuendoes anti-christian sentiment and sexually explicit images were not necessary to tell a story they were included in a memoir that was intended for an adult audience this includes a two beige Bichir two-page picture of a young boy posing in his underwear for a pedophile father this was just one of his underage partners for an adult audience this isn't necessarily a big issue but for 96 hours Oh like I apologize but with this many people I've really

143got to ask you to stop [Applause] [Music] all right my name is connie Van Arsdale I'm from Green Brook this includes a to page a to page okay down here when accessing when accessing a link to view the book online at states warning this graphic novel contains adult themes and some adult images the parents decision exposure to sexually explicit images such as those contained in this book should be a parent's decision some parents might be okay with their children being exposed to these images that is their personal decision we are not okay with it nor are we okay with our children being separated from the class when the book is discussed which I just have to add on have you had a conversation with your 14 year old or your 17 year old about going

144to the library for two weeks or more to do their up me two and it is not a welcomed request from your child you try to teach them to forge a new path and be on their own but they are not willing to do that all the time publications not allowing it allowing images when the images from fun home were uploaded to the Warren forum they were removed because they were deemed it's not appropriate for the forum similarly when asked if some of the images could be included in an echoes Sentinel article they also stated that the images were not appropriate for publishing the paper if images are not okay for these media outlets than it is a good indicator that it is not appropriate for the students so in closing we're on a clock

145here I hope you've had a chance to review the books since our last meeting some parents thought we were overreacting until they actually saw the images then their position changed completely I hope she hope yours did as well however however whether you have read the book or not whether you agree that fun home is not appropriate for a high school curriculum or not there are a lot of people in your community as witnessed by the large attendance tonight who are offended by the sexually explicit images included in the book we ask that you respect our concerns and replace fun home with another book that satisfies the school's educational goals but is not offensive to the members of the community if we are truly going to embrace diversity and achieve the goals of the strategic plan

146to address issues regarding acceptance respect and support we need to do so in a manner that respects all opinions and values if the decisions in this area create division instead of inclusion then the school strategic plan will not succeed [Applause] thank you I just want to clarify something for the members of the audience yes we do have a board policy that says people are allowed up to five minutes and it also says that we cut off public comment after 60 minutes as it compromise it also provides in that policy that the board can waive those requirements what I've done tonight is because of the number of people who want to address it I've limited it to three minutes per person but we're gonna stay more than an hour listening to you so that's why it's

147a three minute limit tonight and I'll ask you to respect it please sir Thank You mr. president and madam superintendent my name is Jeff be here I've lived in Warren for thirty years my entire life I was six month old daughter and I'm she's a long way from being a senior in high school right when I was in the fifth grade I believe oh yeah I'm sure it does when I was in the fifth grade the internet was like a new Advent right it was like a new thing to be able to do a report looking at the internet and writing a report about something I went to animal pics.com well there was a porn site and my mom was mortified I can still remember the images i saw i can't imagine somebody putting noted

148niches and for advice my daughter or someone six months old now I'm an attorney now I work at Riker Danzig in Morristown but I've had the great privilege of being a youth minister at Simmons DePaul with which my wife family is now the same rule I used to have and I've had many many discussions about for an honor fee particularly with young men and it doesn't take much and I think there's a lot of men in that room talking about I appreciate everything you were saying madam superintendent I'm on the board of education for Moors Catholic High School myself and I recognize the roles we all play and whose decision is about what's best for students and curricula but I know as a parent then when it comes to the sense of issues like sexuality

149and sex and and the role that gender plays in somebody's life and what is best for an individual I have a very strong belief in that I hoped pass it on successfully to my daughter my wife and I get to celebrate that together don't take that away from me thank you hi my name is Marian Broder just want to let you know that well I think I speak from the other side if you will there's a lot of parents who are on the other side of this issue that but they're just not here oh well some of them are here but yeah but anyway just want to let you know that we fully support the English department and teachers and the superintendent in the decision to include fun home to be reading for our seniors

150I've read this book a few years ago and I thought it was an excellent book about self-discovery how a family that your own family the place you grew up experiences and people you encounter will shape you into who you will become also how and why you should be true to who you really are I think it's solely relatable for our students whether they are straight or gay the fact that sex is discussed and depicted should not cause this book to be banned sex is part of life and what better to have a healthy discussion about all this than in the classroom and and the kids are heading to their life in college soon it's time that they should be able to have a real conversation about these issues without their parents opinions they can access

151any type of graphic sexual content on their devices anytime they please so why not actually put sex into context in the book it was the depiction of sex the you know but with two girls it was consensual and well another thing I hear are some parents who are suggesting that that this book should be discussed in health class or maybe it should be just for LGBTQ kids but I think that's totally missing the point because the so-called you know the graphic pictures it's only like a few pages few panels out of three hundred and five pages and you know like you said before an alternative book is available for anybody who who it's not comfortable with this thank you I'm afraid I have to ask you to stop [Applause] [Music] hi good evening my name's

152Ken Miller eighteen year Warren resident and thank you for the thoughtful response think beaver lady really did appreciate that I want to start off and we're gonna do some audience participation here so I'd like I'd like those that are in attendance to that agree that fun home is not a toy I'm sorry comments have to be addressed okay okay okay no problem no problem so I want to be I want to go on the record to say that I was the person who put the pictures up on the Warren Forum to put my reputation on the line by doing that and took a lot of grief for that and I'm very proud that I put those up and have those removes secondly secondly I mean the comments that were made I do want to also

153mention that I do have a sister who unfortunately could not be here tonight who is part of the LGBT community and told me personally that they really should pick another book I just want to make that there are some studies and I'll cite the impact of pornography on children from the American cut American College of pediatricians from June of 2016 and in that it talks about the impact that these images do have on children and there's really no way to predict how these images will affect children we've heard a story just earlier you or I or not the students can predict that impact so you need to be aware of that as well the other things I want to mention I don't want to spend too much time on it things like child abuse statutes

154need to be looked at and considered as part of your discussion as well as you're warned you're watching Hills internet policy which also states that that there are that child pornography are in our harmful to minors including any pictures images or graphic image files that is in your policy seems to be a little bit of a disconnect there relating and lastly lastly I do want to I do want to say that you know as far as the opting out that was mentioned earlier I understand that part of it I do want to mention that I've already heard of a case where somebody's been bullied or or been challenged that they did not want to they were pulled out to not read that book and you're you're creating a situation where now you have the opposite

155going on so I want you to be you can do that there's the possibility that you're going to be alienating those students who may either parentally or themselves may not winning want may not want to read to both the book and then lastly I just want to ask the question because I heard you mentioned it earlier about teaching the English teacher on how to train other people so it asked I'd ask how you how do you monitor that situation going forward to ensure the continuity of that and that the appropriate messages are being done thank you I do I do need to address something in that comment that was just made I'm not sure if there isn't been nobody that has opted out of reading this book or requested to opt out of reading this

156book so making an accusation about bullying is very serious and if there is something that you want to address regarding that you need to contact mrs. Angela or HIV coordinator but I can assure you that we have not had any situation like that so it's very irresponsible to say something like that in public so if there is something you would like to report then you bend all of the information is on our website and you need to reach out to our anti-bullying coordinator good evening April Larsen I'm a resident of green Brook I had to edit mine because I didn't want to go over them thank you I find a book like this to be insensitive and disrespectful to the religions and cultures that prohibit sex before marriage and visual pornographic material I do not

157want this or any other book banned or censored I would like to see the book be available in the law or offered at a college level ap or college level preferably so that it has an opt-in and not an opt-out student participation no student should have to choose between their strong beliefs of their family culture or religion to fulfill a required reading or to be ostracized for refusing to read the book in front of their classmates I also feel if the school suggests that the only option for a student is to simply read the book in the library and miss out on valuable classroom discussions and participation it denies the student the free and appropriate public education our tax dollars fund books of this nature books of this nature normalize I'm sorry yeah books us

158need to normalize dysfunction trauma and sexuality within the teen years for students who are not sexually active it can make them feel as if they are not normal for not being ready yet or not having met the right person to engage in sex it also causes stress and undue anxiety which does very little to support the mental health of our students I would like the English department to choose books that are appropriate and inclusive for everyone and allow them to read books like fun home on their own summer reading or pleasure reading but not curriculum based reading I do not feel explicit sexual illustrations are appropriate or needed for preparation for college or needed to reach the benchmarks of our school's curriculum while I'm supportive of books that are inclusive and introduced non-traditional roles allowing

159LGTBQ students to feel they have a character they can relate to I strongly feel that we must look for more positive role models instead of focusing on the physical aspects of relationships finding books that speak to the emotional level of a relationship and allow a student to view a relationship in a non sexual level is very important in suppo supports the appropriate paths for students to follow a book like fun home does not support our students mental health and the legal age of consent is it 18 we have many students under the age of 18 and will be 17 in their final year of high school this book has not been wildly recognized or even required at most college levels it was controversial at Duke and at or sinus college I have spoken to the

160curriculum supervisor here at the school and she seemed very sensitive and supportive and did not share my concern for the reading material or its content she feels most students are mature enough my am I am I have three minutes oh can I just finish this one little part somehow we did not have a graphic illustrated novel and we turned out just fine there are many other good and inspiring books to choose from which could also be uplifting adult themed novels and support all students with characters without suicide and without graphic sexual images for students I'm asking the board to consider removing the required reading and having this book available at the library and it hi I'm Robyn Schneider Warren thank you for letting me to address you I haven't read fun home I will read

161it I recently learned about it the 12th grade required reading I do have a 12th grader and I know that this book is a popular book and the author is known for this work and many other books I'm an analyst by trade and I decided to go on the internet to understand about the book and to get some more information about it and to see what reading lists it's on is and like the one but before said it is on this summer reading list for for Duke University but there is controversy there regarding the book it's been pulled by by libraries it's been pulled by other universities and controversy about it exists as well I could not find it on a high school reading list and their lives my below well this book makes some

162kids uncomfortable based on their experiences religious beliefs and values yes do my kids know about the sexual issues raised in this book I would say yes can they see these types of graphics on the Internet yes can i screen their lives no do we have rules and standards at our high school that protects appropriateness yes I think this book based on the graphics goats against these standards on many levels it is an LGBTQ which is said before that's the issue here it's the graphics and I'll say it again it's the graphics at this age and institutional level it isn't appropriate reading material a short story my nephew went to a sweet 16 party about two weeks ago I dropped him off I went and picked him up and yesterday he called me and told me

163that the girl who sweet 16 it was she killed herself on Saturday and this girl was struggling with her sexuality and this is kind of sort of like a taboo thing for people you know and I hear people saying how you know this isn't good for our kids this isn't on the level of our kids but this who does a lot of things that are not primarily what some other schools do for the good of our kids I believe that this book hits some very cue points and if we can just get past the graphics part of it because that's only one small portion of the book and really get down to really understand there I can't are dealing with some really real issues that probably none of us in this room had to deal

164with when we were their age and I know what the expectation I have for my kids I have a 19 year old he read this book he understands it my 13 year old maybe not but maybe by the time she get to 18 or your she might if we could just be a little bit more open and I'm not expecting anybody to take my advice or be on my side I respect time everybody feel but there are some of us who also don't mind this book it's again touching on some subjects that these kids deal with on it everyday I would rather for my kids to to be involved with something in a controlled environment versus being an environment there's snapchat there's Facebook I opened up my son's phone the other day and what I

165saw on his Facebook I'm like he's 15 our kids are exposed to things that we don't think they are exposed to but I'm here to tell you they are another parent called me crying the other day because her kid is smoking jewel pies and she never expected that her kid would do this our kids are exposed to these things then you cannot police them so you should educate them [Music] [Applause] hi my name is Megan I am a resident of Long Hill township grew up in Watchung the mother of two wonderful children who are now in sixth and fourth grade Thank You Megan we have a last name I'm going to hold on that if that's okay is that okay that's fine okay I'm also a creative arts therapist I've been working in Pediatrics for

166the past 14 years and these are six research articles that were put out by the American College of pediatricians the American Academy of Pediatrics Psychology Today the American Psychological Association and the Childline Institute which is one of the leading resources out there for mental health with children and adolescents the effect of pornography on children is far-reaching it is absolutely appalling to think that kids are exposed to this and there are direct correlations between exposure to pornography and over-sexualization depression suicidal ideation suicidal behaviors and risk-taking factors it's there the research is out there so we all know that suicide tendencies are on the rise we actually just had a Grand Rounds in Pediatrics last week where it was also mentioned that suicide among adolescent females is on the rise if you look at the correlation of

167everything it is their laws and policies are in place that protect minors from this and again somebody made a comment about looking at the definitions of abuse and what is happening out there the definition of sexual abuse does include coercion into watching pornography as a parent I find it appalling to think that my kids could be in a classroom where this is going to be in their face as a therapist I can tell you over the past 14 years I have worked with multiple hundreds hundreds of adolescents who have been admitted due to risk-taking behavior yes there are multiple issues that are coming out there but this is not an LGBTQ issue it's not this is an agenda pushing issue this is a we're going to put something in the face of children that would

168otherwise be restricted if I would have pull up these images on the hospital I would be fired [Applause] I that you're taking into consideration the needs of all of the students and trying to see what is best for them we are the parents ultimately we are the ones who decide what is best for our children and what is not if I want my kids to see it I help me to finish up over three minutes I apologize for being over three minutes but if I wanted my kids to be exposed to this I would do so if I don't want them to I don't want them to that is my call as their parent in knowing what is best for them I [Applause] wasn't planning on speaking tonight my name is Kristen alaskey I'm from

169Long Hill and I have a student entering ninth grade next year I learned about this controversy through social media and on Sunday I happen to have time to look up the book and found out it's free on Amazon if you're an Amazon Prime member to download it as an e-reader so you can actually read the book and I read the book first I saw the pictures that were being passed around but then I actually read the book and I just want to say well it may be debatable that whether this is an appropriate 12th grade reading material this is not pornography and my opinion if you read the book the context the themes the unbelievable story of this girl's life and her relationship to literature and her family was really astounding and I urge everyone

170to instead of just passing around pictures to take the time to read the book now whether we debate this is the right time for them to read the book in 12th grade I just want to also say somebody just said before that it makes children uncomfortable I want to say that the purpose of Education for my kids is not to make them comfortable I my nights open suppose things and maybe not feel so comfortable sometimes I want to be there for them to discuss it with them and that can only happen by being engaged in what they're reading and being part of it and I just want to end one one the last thing I just want to say is there's a line in the book which might be a little ironic but one of

171the pages of the book says Ulysses of course sorry my eyes are going Ulysses of course was banned for many years by those who found its honesty obscene you've changed the rules on me so I'll try to keep it down to three minutes thank you I wanted to firstly say I agree with everything you said about LGBT about gay at the emphasized my concern is not with the diversity program I have gay family and friends as close to home as you can get I'd like to make it clear that I've been altogether satisfied with the education that my children have received thus far at watchon Hills it's been a very inclusive environment and it was so even without this cloth a few facts the sexually explicit images were deemed appropriate in various adult mediums forums

172voluntary not required just voluntary adults such as the echo Sentinel the images would be considered sexual harassment in the American workplace or you referred to training and preparing our children for if I had those images in my workplace I would not have a job right so we have discussed these images are not allowed I think under your internet policy and I would imagine they would be against your obscenity policies as well for student behavior so all of these things are clearly examples of generally accepted social standards right that we expect ours students to follow given the choice the school should follow the highest of those standards I understand the administration's view that these explicit sexual images are necessary in this context to accomplish the diversity goals I disagree I think that teaching diversity should be

173done with dignity and self-respect and does not require sexy what this is not after the last meeting the warrant app titled their opinion piece banning books and warned in an article that was 95% Pro book this is not about banning books this is about choosing the right one it's not about a beauty contest about books without regard to what the contents of those books are it's not pro or anti LGBT it's not a health class and it's not about students having to access this in other mediums because that material is not required to be read as part of the curriculum and it does not have the school seal of approval I'd like everybody to clear their minds or the board I guess have to address and realize we are an American Board meeting and we

174are talking about what is and isn't pornography and what is and isn't sexual harassment and whether this should be available to minors right this is an American born meeting and we're having this discussion it's is this really necessary a substantial portion of our community finds these images offensive now that these community concerns are known to you right continuing to push this book knowingly alienates people and by is definitionally not inclusive one can not only inclusive by excluding people I believe the school should work with the community not against it definition I think your decision as a board is to isolate a large swath of our community and violate accepted social norms or repair the rifts in our community and acknowledge these social mores [Applause] my name is Tamra bank I live in Watchung I shared

175excerpts from the book with about two dozen people and every single one of them said oh you have to go to the board of ed tech support of Education meeting everyone said that I've not read it in its entirety as I don't want my name associated with it in any written record or library database I shared excerpts with my language arts colleagues educators who have high school and college students they were stunned I shared it with my superintendent and principal who are in disbelief I shared it with fellow parents of middle school and high school students who asked why our Board of Education members approved it I shared it with Watchung Hills graduates and college students who agreed it had no place in a high school classroom and there are better ways to teach diversity

176most importantly I shared it with Watchung Hills juniors who found it disturbing I've read nearly all of the books my children have been assigned here at the hills over the last five years both summer reading and classroom reading upon reflection I don't know why but I have tolerated books here filled with the f-word c-word rape scenes violence sex drunkenness I'm not naive I know our teenagers are aware of these things but you've crossed the line with this one it's he really wanted to it's quite possible to teach about sexual identity acceptance respect without delving into salacious descriptions that just distract from the deeper themes we wanted to I urge the board not to dig in their heels and reject the voice and call the parents here tonight mr. Fallon stated if students are uncomfortable with

177the images they can opt out well to be uncomfortable one must look at the images first and it's pretty hard to unsee them at that point it's I want to get the beginning of the meeting there were so many comments about the number of people who turned out for this meeting then then there's something big going on and if it's debatable I urge you to err on the side of caution this is not about censorship it's not about book banning or helicopter moms and dads plain and simple it's about decency and guiding our young adults towards what is best for them thank you thank you good evening my name is Christine Doherty and I spent my entire life in Watchung I have two beautiful daughters what is it junior here someone is an incoming freshman

178and I'm not you know in the interest of brevity I'm not gonna reiterate what has been said here tonight about what this is an issue of and what this is not an issue of the dictionary definition of pornography his movies pictures magazines or writings that show or describe naked people or sex in very open and direct ways there's a couple of them that interestingly put with the intent of arousing a sexual response I don't know how you would show this to teens that have raging hormones are in a dating setting without intending some sort of elicit response all of that aside someone brought up about putting sex into context the context is Mike it is a minor and it is my decision whether she will see images like this or not it is no one

179else's decision to decide what is best for my kid okay I am all about inclusion I am all about diversity and in diversity and inclusion are for everything okay someone else brought up the fact that it violates religious beliefs that needs to be looked at to offer a book and to give students the option to opt out of it does not generate inclusion it does not respect views that I find it offensive and it does not cultivate true diversity I think you know maybe is something to look at is I don't know if suddenly suggested this is putting it on me reading list the optional reading list and not a part of the curriculum thank you my name is Jenny DiMaggio I'm from Millington many friends here tonight on both sides and I submitted this

180to you I extremely respectfully and I love you all just just a few responses to some of the things that people said I think that if people posted pictures that their kids in health class in freshman year on the wall of their office they would also get fired and I think that the echoes has a readership of people who are under the age of 12 graders and that's part of the reason that they don't publish certain types of pictures I think it's important when people talk about scholarly literature they need to ask you to address okay yes say that when people talk about scholarly literature they need to do they need to be clear that there's a difference between children and teenager all kinds of scholarly literature and recommendations and guidelines for sexual education is

181leveled a ten year old a twelve year old is not the same as a 17 year old and finally the Supreme Court definition of pornography requires an examination of an entire body of work not one-fifth of one percent of a body of work which is what those images constitute in fun hum I've been teaching a comprehensive sexuality education for about ten years at the Unitarian Universalist congregation in Summit we use a curriculum that was developed by developed by the United Church of Christ and the Unitarian Universalist Association the curriculum strictly follows guidelines for developmentally appropriate sexuality education as outlined by caecus which is an acronym for the sexuality information and education Council of the United States caecus is based in Washington DC it was founded in nineteen nineteen sixty-four and it is a secular institution

182as is our high school and among the many initiatives it in service to the promotion of sexual health it provides comprehensive guidelines to national and international policy makers for sexual education based on extensive scholarly research CDC recommendations input from the National School Boards Association Rutgers Education Department and many other major health and educational institutions caecus provides sexuality education guidelines that encompass the vast breadth of sexuality in our lives I'm just going to in the interest of time skip down to tell you that key concept number six topic seven in the seekest guidelines for sex ality is sexuality in the arts and this is specifically leveled for 15 to 18 year-olds the messaging for sexuality in the arts for this age group is number one the next are the messages the nature of sexual images in

183art changes throughout history to what one person might consider to be erotic art another person may not number three and perhaps the most pertinent here erotic images in our reflect society's views about sexuality and help people understand sexuality can I have a friend to read the rest it will be about two minutes I know but you had I know but somebody asked I'm just asking [Music] art with sexual images that reflect one's cultural norms may be considered obscene in another culture some try to regulate or eliminate sexual images in art these guidelines are intended for use when sexuality and art is the topic for 15 to 18 year-olds whether on a field trip to the men pursuing ancient statuary of say the God pan a naked homo erotic embrace with Olympus or passing through a

184gallery with African fertility statues or erotic Japanese nest dux these guidelines are for use in the discussion of sexual passages in literature that in traditional books stimulate mental imagery through literary experience an inner graphic novel will likely present as an actual depiction while caecus does not make recommendations for high school English curricula it is informed by educational authorities such as the National School Boards Association of what national public high school curricula covers and therefore makes recommendations for developmentally appropriate messaging if sexuality and art is a topic in the seekest guidelines then the basis for that is that 15 to 18 year olds encounter visual artistic sexual images in public school and elsewhere and then an educators lead will be a pathway to intellectual spiritual and ideological growth thank you [Applause] my name is Dan but

185I'm gonna withhold the last name Thank You mr. Galan just two points number one we heard about no one opting out and one of the aspects of opting out is to be ostracized if you opt out you then become a hater my son did not opt out I told him that was his choice but if I were him I would just fail the class because that was better than being a hater and that's what Freddy that's what you're doing to Emmett that's what you're doing John to my son berry that's what you're doing yeah that's what you're doing second part it is there when he when he opts out he becomes a hater I'm sorry Dan you got to address the comments to me second part is controversy doesn't help home values controversy like this

186is unneeded I've spent 20 years trying to create along with the Planning Board a quality community as as I'm sure watch on greenbrook and and Long Hill have done also this doesn't help this is unneeded there's plenty of other books there's plenty of other aspects that you can go to you don't need to go yeah we don't need to have this meeting you can push the agenda without the book hi I'm Christine smart I taught ten years said Immaculata high school yes it's a Catholic high school so I may be biased but I know as a math teacher drawing a stick figure on the board they could take it sexually it didn't matter it was a stick figure they were teenagers and I taught high school freshmen through seniors and I know that you know

187showing them sexually explicit stuff maybe not the best way to go if you put it on the boys room wall would you take it off would it be maybe obscene or you know graffiti that is inappropriate I think immediately the next day it would be painted over so I really don't think that it's the best route for these kids they are still kids even though you think that they are adults they told me themselves when I taught them as seniors and I gave them very difficult work they said you know colleges next year we're still kids they really are so there's a big difference between that summer between high school and college and I think at college it would be appropriate but in high school I worried for them thank you my name is Jeanie

188I'm from Brooke I have two boys being in this one senior and one freshman they are both under 18 so are they are they voted minor I was very disturbed here especially today because I heard about this yesterday I was even more disturbed today hearing that there is already a pilot program that some of students or it has been through this pilot program because to me there is a bigger issue because for the coda because when I saw those graphics I imagine if put on a big screen in a theater and it's going to be x-rated and I know with my kids they go to theaters the theater would not allow them to go into the movie to watch this movie so I figured there must be a law somewhere to prohibit him [Applause] because

189the school does not have my concept to expose my kids to those graphics I'm very extremely disturbed by this and also in order to push the inclusive agenda and you're excluding my people and we have this traditional family very oh so you are you are excluding people by pushing your agenda [Applause] [Music] [Applause] speaking today but I feel like I have to talk and I wasn't wanting to get maybe some of the audience and some parents for you know legal profession I would also like to get some advice from there because I'm totally not comfortable with this thank you thank you hi my name is Bree and I'm from Long Hill and I'm watching the hills alumni and I just want to keep this sweet and simple and I just wanted to say that in

190no way shape or form with this book have bettered my transition into college or my education plain and simple I don't think that this is something that my brother who's a junior who will be a junior she'd be exposed to [Applause] [Music] I wasn't planning on speaking either but I would just like to tell he said could you give them your name oh I'm sorry my name is Lisa kara so you know when I live in Warren I have two sons they both graduated from one chunk Hills and I'm horrified about this book I really wasn't going to speak about it I think there's a time and a place and I do believe that in college it's great subject matter it's a whole people have courses on this debatable but you can take a course

191you could pay your money take the course I don't believe this is high school material nor does our public libraries our librarian warrant does have the book I went there today and the book is in the adult section adult adult as an adult hood they described as 20 to 21 years old it goes on to say that's when you come up age if that's good enough for the whole of Somerset County Library System's I believe that that should be what we're going by I absolutely don't think this is high school material [Applause] I also believe that if we're going to be doing so much graphics I wish that I would have been able to take my phone which died I would you love to show some of you if you did not get to see

192the graphics you cannot put those in the Statue of David in the same context one last thing if you look at the pictures you really have to look at what's subliminally being given to these students there's a lot of subliminal stuff for example take God walk your body that's for all of you that's Buddha that's that's our Jesus that's that's all up that's every God take God off your body there's another line in there terrorist I'm a LESBIAN terrorist my best friend who's a lesbian was horrified and wanted to come here today but she's having chemo and she wanted everyone to know that lesbians are not terrorists and they're not proud [Applause] and I asked a board member if it would be okay if I came to this meeting for the terrorists or not that

193said I'm a mom and I'm a terrorist and I was told absolutely not and I said well what if I have the students go to school and say I'm a student and I'm a terrorist and they said no you can't go to school and be a terrorist so I don't think that we should be telling the children that they that they should read this book and look up to this woman who considers herself a lesbian terrorists which is what she wears on her shirt so [Applause] thank you thank you and I've been in contact with my name is Emil Mullen I'm from the Long Township I have been in contact with various people in the faculty administration and they've been very kind and responsive and I've been very appreciative one of the things I think

194it's a really really difficult subject it's a sensitive difficult subject and I think as all parents we want what's best for our kids on both sides of this issue the one thing as a mom and as a nurse and as someone just has community concern and the one thing that I haven't and no one's mentioned is a lot of kids come from big families and and these books don't just end up in the hands of the kids where they're intended to work a lot of times these books end up in households with much younger family members and there's curiosity and there's it's it's interesting to them because it's presented in a very easy easily digestible manner for much younger kids that left on a coffee table are on my daughter's bed can easily be accessed

195by my very curious and obnoxious 9 and 11 year olds who go in often to borrow things against their sisters wishes so I don't know what I know what I believe and I'm not here to grandstand or tell anyone else what they believe but I know that as a young kid I don't know here who read Judy Blume's forever in 1975 that was a similar piece of literature it was very new and very different and sexually open with teens which was very new my sister who at the time was 15 or 16 brought it home and I myself found it under her bed when I was 9 and I read it then and I couldn't tell my mom or bring questions to her conversely I also went to a friend's house to play and she

196pulled out really great magazines her older brother had and I encountered images that I can call to mind to this day because they were so profoundly provocative and I I couldn't go home and tell my mom because I was too embarrassed and I knew what I done was wrong by going into that kid's room and taking things that weren't mine I just I really the value of it I believe that LGBTQ issues are really important and diversity is important and and meeting people where they're active important but I questioned the value of a book that could be easily consumed by much younger children not intended of course but that could be a possibility and I appreciate your time thank you I think I'll give you two examples so I'll give you two examples same teacher

197history class 11th grade first one taught my son what happened school tonight he's telling his teachers tell him Tom that here in the US with concentration camps up until just a few years ago how many of you knew that this is it's so upsetting to me he tried explaining it so I decided let me write the teacher oh yeah that's what he's teaching he went to one point in history and then brought it back to Joseph sheriff joe arpaio out in arizona and compared and said his prisons were concentration camps to me I was appalled I was disgusted but this guy's in front my son teaching and I have a daughter coming up and I gotta be I gotta be aware that I got these teachers in here saying this crap to you to these

198kids second one this is just a recent this just happened a week ago same teacher has the kids read reaganomics killed America's middle class this article just shot down capitalism it was so dry to Tory towards the founders of America and was there any diversity no when I asked him on the first incident about the concentration camps I said did you bring up any an alternate point of view no we ran out of time but you know but he did them he brought up a video of John Oliver you know the late night comedian to prove his point of feral Ohio to me its poem it's disgusting and something should be done about it if anybody wants to see the emails that I had in the exchange with teacher I'm more than happy shared with

199Ford thank you very much hi I'm Sharon Williams and I'm from Watchung and I have six kids two that have graduated and they're doing great in college we've done a great job of preparing them for college for which I'm grateful but has the other mother mother mentioned I do have six kids and all my son brings home this book next year it my whole family's exposed to it and I have you know a 13 year old son and I would not want that he would be all over a book like that so that would be my concern and also in the past I've had concerns about other books and I've read some of them and when my kids have read these books and I asked so what was the discussion in the class about some

200of the sensitive issues it was usually nothing so I you know this book obviously I I hope it gets removed from the reading list but going forward with any of these kind of books as a parent I'd like to know how these things are addressed in the class and that they are addressed and so so far with my four two in high school now and two graduated I'm not getting much feedback of how these things are addressed so I think that would be useful going forward for parents to know thank you I am Camilla Merck from Long Hill township I read this book when I found out about it last week I thought it was a lovely story of a young woman who is encountering some very tough times in her life both for herself

201and through a family her father's death and I think it is very appropriate for our seniors and I would appreciate if the board would thank you thank you good evening my name is Doreen Libby from green Brook my kids have graduated college the reason I'm here is I'm concerned about the future of our youngsters there's many issues in our society sexting sexual harassment date rape these ideas get planted in a young age and they fester and it's getting worse I'd like to see us go the opposite way I agree with all the parents that had comments about what was said about the content of the book it's the pornography aspect that deeply offended me I couldn't even look at it I had to like put it down and they might back the next I'm like

202let me take another look I'm I've seen a lot of things at my age I'm alter than like these parents here but I'm I'm very concerned we look at your school board or your school district vision statement you mentioned through reflection and ethical decision-making I'm like ethical ethical what is ethical its moral it's conforming to accepted standards of conduct this book has not fulfilled that I'm sorry there's other books that may that could that make your curriculum advisor happy with the values that you hope to promote but this book doesn't do it [Applause] [Music] [Applause] and someone else mentioned that they have they said aren't there laws about this what are the laws why while I was sitting there I was googling it on the New Jersey Code of Criminal Justice title 2c section 34

2033-3 is called obscenity for persons under 18 it goes on to define obscene material any description narrative account display depiction of a specified anatomical area or specified sexual activity contained in a picture or other representation it goes on and all those things are in the book the the crime is promoting obscene material a person who knowingly sells distributes or exhibits to a person under 18 years of age obscene material is guilty of a crime of the third degree I don't think they thought a school district would put their seal that door spin on this although otherwise you'd be in this tube and by the way there is no mention of a sexually oriented art that would exclude them from this provision I didn't look I didn't see it so I'm not a lawyer but you

204should check it out because you are opening yourself up to lawsuits I don't think it got taxpayer pay I want to pay for your lawyer to defend you [Applause] and I have one one other comment about the opting out of reading the book it's not a good decision it's not a compromise it will create this feeling of being ostracized and I did not read the book but I looked at the comments and on Amazon I just said would you punish quickly yeah one comment from the student who was in college required to read it he said we were given the option to protest but that option was presented in such a way as to suggest a moral deficiency and educational dishonesty should be opted not to participate so I didn't choose to read this graphic

205novel but it was required reading for the college level English comp class so we were given the option to protest it and basically by no fault of the author by no fault of the author of the book I felt as if it was shoved down my throat rather than willingly embraced my name is Lee Warren I have to voice in middle schools and I'm coming here for the textbook of our home and I think this book is in very improper to picked for our curriculums it's not it's not even for a doubt when I look at this book I feel embarrassed if I show these books in my office just like Oh some other people said I'm gonna lose my job how I don't know why you think you'll be picked this book as we

206curriculum for the young kids you know I don't understand how it started so I'm gonna keep my talking sinc very short so I just want my voice be heard I'm against it thank you [Applause] [Music] [Applause] Thanks thank you sue Collins from Millington I have so many thoughts swirling around in my head I don't know where to begin and hopefully hopefully I have something coherent come out I read the book because of this discussion my son read the book and me in his class for him it wasn't it was a part of an experience and life and things that kids today are struggling with are facing and need to have a venue and an outlet to discuss it if we don't challenge ourselves to discuss uncomfortable topics we do not grow we do not get

207out of the box and coincidentally we just went to his college orientation and the whole theme was you have to go out of your comfort zone you have to go out of the box you have to make an effort to explore new ideas so that you can grow this book does that we have how can we have empathy and compassion for those who are not like us who grow up differently than us who have different experiences if we're afraid to be exposed to it and afraid to discuss it I applaud the process that our professionals and teachers and this board go through and the dedication to make sure we have challenging curriculum that forces our students to grow and we cannot as parents and a community micromanage the professionals that we have hired to do

208their jobs thank you [Applause] hello my name is Christine blocker I'm from Long Hill township and the student presentations earlier tonight were fantastic the way they incorporated all the students or many students and different extra critic extra activities was fantastic they work together as a team I really tonight listening to everybody everybody has their beliefs but we need to work together as a team this book has divided our learning community and it really took accomplish our strategic plan all together there are books other books that can do that without alienating or dividing our community I really urge the board and again that opting out is I agree with what everybody said that that's not viable that's really alienating and again we are for inclusion and the opting out does not if you really talk to

209the students and you know that opting out is just doesn't work and it really emanates people rather than including people so yeah I just want to do everybody really said a great job who said that they wanted the book out for various reasons the legal aspects the you know include somebody objects I object to the book I think for the graphics for the sexual content so I think that you're already alienating one person and we are and other people have spoke as well so our mission is to include people or other books that will support what is in this book without having the sexual graphic content that fun home has so I urge the board to please keep our community together include everybody and just pick another book that is age-appropriate and does not have

210the content as far as graphics of sexual graphics than that before thank you so my name is Luis Cunha I live in Warren I grew up in Newark so if you want to talk about diversity I think I can I do I can share many stories move to Union and ultimately came over to Warren in 2014 because I thought I was making a good decision for the schooling of my children that were ultimately in Catholic school so and and of course you know I'm looking at everyone and your body language says volumes okay I don't know if you really realize how much you're sending off of how much you're not receiving okay some of you and I don't mean for this to be pointed we do need to work together the message is being missed

211the book write as great as it could be and I can assure you that I will read it okay it's missing the point because we're already divided we talk about empathy and inclusion it's already gone and I think that's really what we need to focus on right we're here you have an outpouring right a lot of us have personal personal missions right raise our kids right I don't care for my if my kid ends up as part of the community or not I have many friends that are I have friends that are from all over the world that's not the point there's still kids right some of us want that empathy too because we don't see those images as appropriate for our children the images is what's killing it the mess hich is being killed

212just because of that and it could has a simple fix and it's not opt out right because then ultimately then you're alienating some and that goes against the whole coexist right that's the goal and I feel that we're missing that we have to find a way to cross the aisles because there's many the discussion is the beginning as a parent I feel like I didn't have an option I didn't even have a say right I'm still that limiting to the town so great with me maybe I didn't know but my kids in middle school and I have two younger ones in elementary all right and my goal is to make this a great environment for them that's why I moved here I appreciate all the effort but really it's it's the message is being lost

213and I'd like to help find a way to get that message right to bring everyone together just we're not at the moment thank you [Applause] my name is Jason Lee here I am going to say something first I worked for in many companies all the company first was saying is set up a firewall block all this image in Iowa at least are safe five companies in the US all just company have firewall gateway to proko all these of information the images here at home home is you needn't have the pent control software to privado image or sensitive images this is common value of the u.s. society not expose the improve improper limit for the children by the school for an 18 years children we will expose this in the imager book to them if they

214want to know if the school don't eat them they can get their self they are more smart the some extent this my opinion guilty one to get knowledge pickling themself so many internet so many information now is a society is not purple folk school to promote this education to children aggressively we have a value here we cannot retain the services the Seleucid Hislop Supercross is this option but why forced this content to expose all students in all this aid in school you say this the optional that means all children but a pair pair that we tried the inference decent and information everyone to read it to see improved as my opinion [Applause] and I also said if option though you were hurrying to help some people happy time during the relief put something as Aboriginal

215at the school what would that be how about other people effective we cannot say a book millions of book they are well made better book many thousands of nice books email your virtual circle book if said spook is not enough it's not a baby that you now there are so many Poe film so many knowledge to take and learn from the field normally the more efficient that's my opinion we shouldn't you see hi my name is Jennifer nosy and I want to thank you all for your time I know you guys spend a lot of time preparing for these meetings and you give a lot of your time and yourselves in preparing our children for what they need here and watch on Hills Regional High School I want to mention something that people seem to

216be overlooking and I want to make sure that it's very clear not all the children that are reading this are adult or seventeen some of them are sixteen years old we're getting you know we have kids that are advanced and they are even younger than the ages that we are we are depicting here I keep hearing kids to eighteen eighteen but we also have 16 17 and 18 year old children reading this I'm also I'm very open-minded our family's very overnighted our whole family is mixed up with many different types of people and we accept all different life styles what I'm afraid of that also hasn't been discussed is the way that these children this woman is being sexualized in the book okay we have kids who are lesbian and gay in our community that

217have so much they have to deal with they're under so much pressure and this book is making them seem like they're all over sexualized this is this is so hard for them to deal with to begin with and now you're saying oh all kids are diving down inside someone's legs because this is what the picture shows if you haven't seen it and I really appreciate a mr. Fallon and mr. Morrison I really appreciate that you got back to me you read the book you've done your research I really appreciate this and when they're describing and I'm going to say it because it's uncomfortable it's so uncomfortable for me to say this but I'm going to say it they're diving their heads in between the legs of the person and saying that they're suckling at this

218juicy peach I can't say that and I'm gonna do it I'm gonna dope that's not art that's sex that's putting it in the kids faces saying this is normal let's do this this is what all the kids in our community do these kids that are less meaning it may not even be sexually active yet they're just figuring themselves out and you're taking these kids and you're saying you're saying no now that they know that they're in these clubs and they're out there you're saying they're all over sexualized that's not fair to do these kids that are already fighting for people to understand them can't do this they know how hard it is for my friends growing up I know how hard it was to come out and now we're not just saying that we're coming

219out but this is what we do when we come out we're not reading books that are saying this is what all the heterosexuals do when they're together and let me show you a picture of it but we're doing that to these kids who are already dealing with rejection that are already dealing with the the stuff that's thrown at them because they're different you're harming these kids you're not helping them with this book and I'm so sorry I'm shaking I'm nervous I'm upset but we have to think of all the kids when we're doing this and what harm are you doing in making everyone look at those that insert and everybody's saying that insert is the small portion of the book but that's what everybody's going to look at again and again and again and say

220these children are over sexualized we're not but look at them you take them to consideration please Thank You Sean DJ Vaughn a teacher here at Western Hills and also advisor for the gender and sexuality Alliance I do appreciate a lot of the comments here and I've been listening and learning a lot as I listen to people I just want to bring to you since people have talked about I have a friend who's a lesbian I have a friend who's gay I've know someone that said this I thought you would hear from someone who actually is gay but also who works a lot with lbgtq youth and I've worked for the past decade with used at watching Hills who are LGBTQ I talked to them about fun home I'd asked if some students had read it

221in the pilot or vetted on their own a lot of them have read it not one of them had felt stigmatized by it they've all thought felt it was a very positive thing for them to read a very affirming thing for them to read so to have it's characterized as something that would be harmful for LGG LGBTQ I think I had to kind of say that in my experience in talking to the students that I've been working with that's absolutely not not the case and I do know I appreciate that people are you know for diversity but maybe not for this book I do hear a lot of people saying things like pushing an agenda and I want the board to know that I know and my students know what that really means and the

222only agenda we should be pushing is what's best for our students and what's best for our students is to understand the fullness of what people have to go through and all our students have to go through including the LGBTQ ones thank you thank you I want to thank everybody for coming out tonight we've got one more actually just before you do we're required by our policy to turn off the videotaping at 11 o'clock so yeah we are so we need to extend it no no we need to turn on thanks for for hearing me I've been standing there a long time so Michael Moen from Millington I have two graduates from the school my my but you heard my wife before my my daughter is gonna be a senior and I have two in the

223pipeline so it's an issue I care about I'm not for the book I think it was a mistake I can get undermined your message because of the graphic images images that you've heard and already I just want to re-emphasize in my workplace it would be a problem my priest your rabbi sent it to a might be a problem you know drawings in your study halls and discussions that follow would be a problem on your policy so it's about the images and it's about the impact on the environment that's why I'm against it I hope you will reconsider thank you [Applause] thank you all I will now close the second opportunity to public comment motion to adjourn