WW-P Board Meeting 04-26-22

001hello good evening everyone thank you so much for being here uh apologies so we're we came from a budget presentation meeting so we're starting a little bit late but thank you all for for being here tonight i'll begin by calling the meeting to order and reading the following statement in accordance with the state sunshine law adequate notice of this meeting was provided by sending a notice of the time date location and to the extent known the agenda of this meeting on january 10 2022 and april 22nd 2022 to the home news tribune and the times posted on the district website placed in the board office and in each of the district schools and sent to planesboro and west windsor public libraries and plainsboro and west windsor township clerks so we will begin with the public

002hearing on the 2022-2023 budget so i'll turn it over to dr idahol good evening members of the board of education members of the community that are here this evening i know we have a couple we have some members of the community here this evening that are not here for a budget presentation but uh this is our annual hearing on the budget so just from a process perspective the way the evening goes there's an op there's a presentation to the board on the budget then there's an opportunity for public comment specific to the budget then there is a vote on the budget and then the fir then there's public comments by both the board president myself and then there's the first opportunity for public comment on any topic uh for the members of the community so

003the first opportunity for public comment is specific to the budget for the budget hearing then again there will be a first opportunity for all other matters so i know some of you are not here for this reason i i would guess that no one's here for this reason but that being said as a district um we ground ourselves each year in the budget in our mission statement to build building upon our tradition of excellence the mission of west windsor plainsburg regional school district is to empower all learners to thoughtfully contribute to a diverse and changing world with confidence strength of character and love of learning and we use this mission to ground ourselves as we talk about our mission statement or excuse me as our budget as a reflection of our values so when we

004talk about a school budget school budgets are very different than a household budget we have a fixed time period in which we can make decisions uh for a one-time budget process and then if anything else happens throughout that year we have to figure it out from within the existing budget that's been approved so it's a planning tool it has to consider contingencies we have to manage risk throughout that so if we have any time one-time expenditures or one-time costs or a pandemic we have to figure it out from within the existing budget we must be fiscally responsible to our taxpayers we talk about it as a reflection of our values and again because we don't have a district credit card we have to think about safeguards and buffers so that if there ever is some

005unanticipated costs that we're able to manage the budget within or those expenditures within the operational budget now anything that doesn't get spent within a budget cycle goes back to the taxpayers in what's called excess surplus excess surplus can be placed in two places it can go back to a subsequent budget to help build the fund balance for a future budget or can go to capital reserve dollars from a budget process and timelines perspective next year's or the 2324 budget process will start as early as the next finance committee meeting so we go through a process of reviewing our budgets budgets are multi-year processes as you think about negotiations and a negotiated settlement with a administrative association or a service association or an education association those have impacts over multiple budget cycles so we have to

006think of budgeting through a multi-year process the state outlines a budget timeline and the biggest one becomes in march when we first have it's usually late february but it's been pushed to march the last couple years the governor's address and then within two days of the governor's address we then receive our state aid numbers we then have a certain amount of time to submit our adopted and final uh preliminary budget to the county superintendent for their review and approval once we have the preliminary budget submitted we then wait for feedback from the county office once that is we're then allowed to advertise the public budget which was done a week and a half ago or so and then this evening we have the public hearing for the adoption of the final budget i want to

007say thank you to our finance department under the guiding leadership of dr russo derek mead our comptroller lou broughtman and other members of the team as they've received now 13 consecutive years of the certificate of excellence by the association of school business officials and also they've received seven consecutive years of the meritorious budget and that's only because we've applied for seven consecutive years so congratulations to their team and their staff and all our budget managers for the work that they do now each year a budget has certain drivers our salary increases are contractual in nature health care costs um are always challenging this year though we're we have a zero dollar increase in our health care costs because as we went to self-insurance we're able to find some savings for the community this year so

008we're able to manage without increasing cost to health care transportation though as you can imagine with the cost of fuel the shortages of drivers and the challenges with inflation we're seeing exorbitant costs in transportation renewals and our transportation budget's around 14 million and if we anticipate a 10 rate renewal you're looking at a 1.4 million dollar increase to transportation salaries increases are at 2.2 so just in those two categories alone represents almost our entire general friend budget general fund budget increase each year we see cost increases in special services for a variety of factors but majorities out of district tuition schools can increase above and beyond the two percent in allowances that school districts public school districts are held to we also have capital projects and technology costs and just staffing needs some additional staffing

009is built into this year's budget what i'll talk about on the subsequent slide all things occurring there we have to figure out a way to make all that happening with the confines of the existing budget or by making modifications in the budget that we have today with additional funding so some of the stressors going into next school year is we do have negotiations going on actively with our service association again because of the new jersey educator health care plan why we don't see any dollars increased for the rise of cost the contributions of our members has changed because of a bill that senator sweeney at the time had negotiated with the njea and then ultimately adopted by the legislature and the governor this is something that became a choice for our educators it's not something

010the district negotiated at something that was legislatively driven and in that the cost to the individual members went down but the cost for the district to pay for their benefits went up so while we have zero cost increase we are paying a higher and higher share of health care costs again we also have some staffing needs with programmatic growth in our special education department specifically bcbas and instructional aids special services tuition increase custodial renewal contracts are helping to drive some of the cost and again transportation with the re the route renewals and cpi and cpi is a consumer price index but transportation cpi is set by the state and it's below two percent but inflation that we're all facing is seven and a half to eight and a half percent so if you're a company

011that owns transfer transportation industry your decision you have to make is do i accept less than two percent on my rates or do i cancel the contract and re-bid and what we're seeing is companies are cancelling the contract and re-bid because why why pay for gas at two dollars and fifty cents when they can re-bid and charge us a lot more right so we are seeing um challenges in transportation and again what when you talk about budgeting you're talking about considering risks and contingencies well our risks and our contingencies make assumptions about a renewal and if our assumption is wrong the only way to meet that assumption or meet the reality of what the budget becomes is to find it within the existing budget that gets adopted this evening so as you can tell it's

012a pretty big jigsaw puzzle and if any part of the puzzle is wrong you could be in a lot of trouble so again these are some of the increases within categories salary increases of 2.2 special education increases and this is across a lot of categories of special education so it's within salaries it's within tuition it's within increased staff it's without a district placement uh increases so it meets it falls within several categories transportation approximately 1.25 built in technology again staffing licensure wireless infrastructure and then building in grounds we have a hybrid model where we have an in-house team of grounds operation foremen and management and maintenance and then we have a contractual component which is through abm which is like the cleaning crew that exists both within our day and evening shifts and then capital

013project of 12.5 million built within the budget that comes from a reserve account so some of the considerations again within healthcare within the business office healthcare it's our first year of being self-insured and it was an interesting year to be self-insured for the first time as a lot of elective surgeries in the first half of the year were not happening and they've been slowly increasing but when you're self-insured you pay for the services that your members and their families use so you can have a great year and not have as many dollars going out of pocket or you can have a challenging year and if you go above and beyond what's budgeted you have to find that and so the state then allows for some health care reserves that are specific to health care costs

014with respect to building a grounds where year three of our skilled facilities and faculty and our facility mechanics and building operation forum and what not being back in district back in the 1011 school year we outsourced all building and grounds with the exception of management as a board we've worked to reverse some of that and bring back the skilled uh team the bill the hvac mechanic our plumbers our electricians our operation foreman which is one manager on the day shift per building some of the history of the district bringing back with those individuals we also have minimum wage increases and also we've seen challenges with substitute costs as a result of high absenteeism as well as an increase in the minimum wage which also impacts the substitute fees transportation i've mentioned lack of drivers gas

015prices route renewals building grounds again year three of five in the renewal process plus we have the additional square footage as we grow the facilities for every x amount of feet you need to add a staff member insurance and salaries contractual costs drive and health care drives over 70 of the budget but on the insurance side of the house between natural disaster disasters and again because you're part of a larger insurance fund we're seeing insurance renewals happen go out because the funds going up so between covid natural disasters and believe it or not catalytic converter theft we have seen insurance at the same time with cyber uh challenges happening insurance companies are now segmenting out cyber security to an individual insurance policy and as a result of that the district is now going to have

016to pick up an independent cyber security insurance policy so and that brings with it costs two ways one is for the policy itself and two is for the minimum standard that every district or every participant has to meet with respect to cyber insurance on on the tech side um as you can imagine we were a one-to-one district grades five through twelve before the pandemic we are now a one-to-one district k-12 so that's 9000 plus devices plus staff devices plus brake fix devices so we're neighboring over 11 000 devices and those operating systems have a three to four year operating four-year operating system depending on where you when you buy them in the cycle so the nice thing about chromebook is crumbs are they're relatively cheap the challenge is that they're they're going to last you

017three and a half to four years and then when you have those kind of numbers you also need to make sure you're increasing your technology staff to support that with respect to instructional consideration uh digital tools have been used more and more over the last three years uh professional development costs intervention services and the utilization of federal funds the challenging with federal funds is these are not are one-time monies sometimes for a two-year or three-year period but they're one-time monies so you can't put fixed costs for the future costs into the federal funds or you set up the budget and the staffing for major shortages long term on the special education we have staffing again programmatic considerations covid 19 challenges and programs could be growth of programs it could be out of district tuition needs

018it could be the expansion of programs covet 19 challenges not every iep was able to be fully implemented over the over the last school year and so there are some families and some children that need additional services that are being met and then there's also the increase in age of students and this is through an iep process but some students will meet requirements that provide an extra year an additional year of education which could have some additional costs within staffing increase we have esser is the federal dollars so we have a growth nurse that's being paid for by esther dollars a floater to help our schools stay with nursing support at all times a ubhc it's a university behavior health center mental health clinicians the partnership we have with rutgers we're looking to add a

019fifth clinician based on the needs of our students and community we have two dance studio at both high school south and high school north that will be completed within the next two months both of those studios will be online and students have been allowed to select dance as an elective at both high schools and we expect to have a dance teacher coming on board for the 22-23 school year we look to add at least one bcba that's a board-certified behavior analyst that's in addition to the staffing that we have and we have a couple budgeted vacancies now that's a certification that's very hard to find so we do have some growth built in and also vacancies still budgeted instructional assistance when students have specifically identified needs whether it's behavioral and support is being added through

020a 504 process or through an iep process we need to make sure that we have dollars available to increase our assist instructional assistance and because we have an expectation to grow at least one to two classrooms for students that are currently in district as our programs are growing we know we need to add some additional teachers in special education and some of the programs associated have minimally one to two instructional aids within those programs as they grow on the capital project side we have the ecip completion that's the energy savings improvement program this is a 27 million dollar energy program that we've been working on for the last three and a half or four years we're now yielding savings on our energy bills as a result of the esep and remember that energy savings helps

021pay for the the funding to do the projects that's how an esop works the wyckoff expansion project is underway we have various hvac heating ventilation air conditioning projects occurring throughout the district and we have seven media centers that will be done over the next two school years in addition high school north has the renovations the culinary south's already completed and operational north is behind in that respect just by the way the phasing of the projects wyckoff has a fire alarm system that is planned as well as a hvac system again the heating ventilation air conditioning contingency dollars for row which is right away work road work entrance and exit whenever you impact the flow of a facility and you have to do projects within the sidewalks or within the street you may have paving requirements

022by either the township or by the county so you have to have contingency dollars for there are the right-of-way projects the wycholf renovations are need to be bid out and the media center renovations that i talked about and as you can imagine with the supply chain challenges and some of the challenges with respect to labor costs and other escalations there's some additional contingency built in within our budget parameters negotiations with the service association isn't unknown our health care prescription increases in december of 22 is unknown our mid-year health care benefits increase is unknown and whatever's going on with fuel costs and bus route renewals is unknown so these are things that we have to be very mindful of as we move into the 22-23 school year with respect to enrollment our enrollment split is our

023tax base is split also on our enrollment split also on a two-year tax cycle because our schools fall across parts of two tax years so townships operate on an annual we operate on school so you have to take part of two school years and put it together on the tax impact all this being said our enrollment is down a couple hundred students but we've also seen a reduction specifically at the elementary level wyckoff for instance is down approximately 50 students a year where we used to have 110 in kindergarten we're seeing around 60 in kindergarten families did not move into the devel into the community uh especially our international community um during the pandemic and that that makes good sense um and we at some point hope and expect to see a reversal of that

024but it's not it's not right now and it's not based on the current kindergarten enrollment that we're seeing with respect to revenues we're allowed as a district as a board to raise revenues on two percent on the general fund tax increase we also can do a healthcare adjustment but we do not because of a change in the calculation chapter 44 the school district school districts are not being able to make that adjustment anymore and the enrollment adjustment happens when you have a 10 increase and so clearly we don't have an enrollment adjustment we are allowed to have a tax authority of what's called bank cap bank cap is when you have a taxing authority that's not fully utilized in the prior year's budget what happens with bank cap is that money is held in advance

025essentially for two years or that funding authority i should say is held for up to two years and then it expires the district has 392 available of taxing authority from a subsequent year that if not utilized will expire that the board has built within this budget that's presented this evening and also a capital reserve that's out of reserve dollars in our capital reserve accounts of 12.5 million uh to help support the referendum anything not utilized out of those dollars goes back to uh the taxpayers into our accounts so by taking the allocation if 12.5 is not utilized whatever's not spent goes back to the reserve accounts and we did see a state aid increase of 1.662 when you take out a couple charter school tuitions and semi-funding it drops to 1.621 we are still considered

026an underfunded district by state formula there's over 100 districts right now that are losing aid in lifetime not gaining aid so we're very fortunate in that respect this particular slide says a lot but i think the area to look is right here that's the state aid that's the local tax impact and that is the 2.23 percent on the local fund that's the increase the net total budget increase is at the bottom of 3.56 but that what gets taxed to the local taxpayers is the 2.23 so there's a lot of different ins and outs of dollars that comes into play to get to the larger 3.56 but the tax base is based on the local fair share of the local tax funds of the 2.23 from a tax impact standpoint plainsboro had valuation decrease of 35

027million which had an impact on the average assessed property value and the increase of 4.7 cents per hundred dollars of assessed value so an average home in plainsboro determined by the market value of 457 thousand dollar mythical home has an average increase of 323 dollars on the school tax side of the tax bill for west windsor for the average assessed home of 523 for 100 assessed property value it's 3.3 again that's that different if we look back i think was two or three years the valuations had changed in west windsor when they hadn't changed in plainsboro so it's part of the valuations process as well and so for the budget in front of the board of education tonight the administration recommends the board selection of a budget to budget increase of 2.23 on the local

028the local share and that 2.23 equals the 3.864 which is the general fund amount of 2 plus the bank cap of 392 265 and with that for any members of the board i'm happy to take questions any questions from board members okay thank you dr ederhold thank you so we'll now move to the opportunity for public comments and again as dr aderhold said earlier this is just specific to the budget the board invites thoughts and reactions on the 2022-2023 budget from members of our community who are present each participant is asked to give his or her name and address prior to making a statement which will be limited to three minutes in accordance with board policy zero one six seven all statements shall be directed to the presiding officer this public comment period shall be

029limited to 60 minutes good evening my name is denise dwyer and i'm a resident of west windsor and i'm here to comment on part of the budget this evening prior to coming tonight i looked on the district's website at the user-friendly budget which is still from last year so that is the only one available that had complete numbers on it and i would urge the board of ed as they are considering the budget to remember that the individuals with disabilities education act which other people are here to talk to the board about later is a spending bill the numbers that the district received in revenue last year for special education included 8.7 million dollars from the state categorical special education aid as well as 1.6 million dollars in idea funds part b in addition to

030being a spending bill it is a civil rights bill which means that in exchange for those federal dollars that the district receives the district via the state is obligated to ensure compliance with the idea including all of its parts including the least restrictive environment requirements which a number of people are here tonight so as i said i urge the board of education to keep that in mind and ensure that other actions by the district do not put these funds at risk thank you thank you are there any other comments on the budget veronica mina 41 gallston drive while i was listening to the presentation i could not disregard the fact that uh mr article was talking about increasing salaries increasing transportation staffing needs but he is not pointing out that also today the boe will

031be asked to vote on sending 7.3 million to the capital reserves to pay for the debt or 3.5 million to pay also for the debt we already have 17.5 million in capital reserves in addition we the administration is asking for the boe to spend another 11 million for capital reserves in addition to the 12.5 million that is being sent on capital reserves it is very clear that the money is there that we already are being taxed way too much that that absolutely pays for the salaries pays for the transportation and pays for the staffing needs the other thing that i am really concerned is that mr article pointed out that a fifth clinician is needed based on the students and the community needs however the students are the enrollment is down mr adahol said that

032the student enrollment was down only a couple of hundreds since 2013 when mr radical took the superintendent position the student enrollment has been down 800 students not only a couple of hundred there was more students when victoria neal was superintendent in all wwp and there was no need for expansion of referendum however now there seems to we are all stuck all meaning all west windsor and all planesboro because we are in this together unfortunately paying for a referendum when we have less students in our school district the other thing that i don't understand is that the bank cap that is not eligible or may or not be eligible next year is 392 thousand dollars and in the previous presentation mr radical said that he just wanted to raise that just to have it just because

033so i am really very confused why we need to raise the bank up when we are already sending over 11 million dollars to capital reserves thank you there any other comments uh regarding the budget i just have a question from carol hertz from west windsor and i'm wondering if carol could you just state your name for the record and thank you um because there are fewer elementary schools in plainsboro was there a savings in the budget from needing fewer teachers over the last two or three years because don't you need fewer staff members if you have fewer students that's what i'm wondering thank you yeah miss hertz uh basically the board's practice has been and you you know this having been a board member is any questions that are asked are usually responded to at

034the end of the session so if you're not getting response it's not because noam is ignoring you but thank you any other comments on the budget all right thank you all right so now we'll now close the public comment portion for the budget and we'll move to the approval of the 2022-2023 budget can i get a motion to approve the 2022-2023 budget louisa greenland any questions or comments hey we'll start with ms bonsa yes ms genera yes miss ho yes ms krug yes miss maliga yes machete yes ms zovitch yes miss mcewen yes ms juliana yes right well so we will now adjourn the public hearing on the 2022-2023 budget and we will go to our regular meeting so i i do want to um just start by making a few comments again good evening

035good evening everyone and welcome to to this meeting and thank you again very much for coming out and being here tonight as most of you know an email was was sent out yesterday about a program that i i believe many of you are here to make comments on tonight and i know dr aderhold will will address that but before i turn it over to him i wanted to just start with some some quick comments first i know we have a number of of people here who may not have been to board meetings before so i just want to really quickly explain how the board meetings work and i think you already saw a little bit of that and some of it was already explained but again board meetings are meant to conduct board business and

036are generally comprised of presentations like the one that you just saw to the board and then the voting portion of our meetings if you want to if the public wants to address the board or raise any concerns to the board those are done through the public comment portions of the meeting and there are two of them one at the beginning and one at the end of the meeting each person can speak for up to three minutes uh can only speak once during each public comment portion of the meeting and can't assign their time to uh to someone else also while there's no requirement to respond to comments or questions raised during the meeting today we just want to let you know that we are listening and a response may be provided either during this meeting

037or at a later time i i do want to just say first of all thank you to all of our parents and wwp community who reached out to us to respectfully advocate and provide their feedback and comments we appreciate the advocacy and the time that you all took to raise your concerns so i just want to say thank you to all to all the parents and community members for that i also want to say thank you to our special services team the administration and dr aderholt for the incredible amount of time and effort that you've all put in not only in coming up with the proposed program but also for the countless hours that you all spent reaching out to individual families to directly respond to their questions and concerns so your deep commitment and

038dedication to the special education community and your tireless efforts to show that have been greatly appreciated so i want to thank you for that as well and and finally i want to thank all the members of our special services teams including all of our special education teachers and instructional assistants all the members of our child study teams for your deep commitment and dedication as well to our children i know there have been some communication circulating that have painted our special services teams as somehow not having the best intentions for our students in the actions that they take while it has been clear and we respect that there is a big difference of opinion in how our programming needs should be met any characterization of our special services teams as having any ill intent or anything

039other than a sincere desire to help our children is unfair and wholly inaccurate so on behalf of the board i just want to thank all the members of our special services team who've dedicated their careers and their daily lives to nurturing and caring for our children so again thank you to all of you and i will turn it over to dr aderhold for your comments uh thank you miss juliana i appreciate the comments i know our staff does so to members of our our community to our members of our community that are here this evening in the in the room with us and to those that are watching outline you know we have a proud commitment to meeting the needs of all of our students along a continuum of programming and we've worked hard to

040build programming for all student populations over time that commitment to meeting those programmatic needs continues and the district will ensure that no student identified program is segregated the there is clearly a failure in communication and intent and i bear responsibility for that as a superintendent and that was not the intention that brings us all of the room today and i appreciate that the community spoke up i do because it identified um a disconnect between the intent and the message and and that puts us in a position where we're here at conflict which i believe we're all coming from the same perspective of trying to make sure the needs of our our students your children are served special education services team that's sitting against the side of the room cares deeply about your children and came

041to us from a point of advocacy from the very concerns of the staff members that serve the needs of your children that we're saying that we can do different and we should do different and we can build better program and we need more support and we need more assistance and that was where we were coming from with an intention to try to find that never was it to and try to segregate now i know how the looking back at the presentation it's clear that we did not do a good job in how we messaged and presented and as i said i take responsibility for that but i'm confident that the individuals that serve your children that are here in this room and that represent our staff want to make sure that we're enhancing programs specifically

042for our tier three autism program that we were trying to meet the needs of as a district in 2015 we had about five rooms that were dedicated around the district that we brought together at town center elementary school five or six um and then when we did the re uh alignment here when this building opened and millstone river had the third grade from town center move over and we used the space at town center by moving third grade out to bring our autism programming in one building it was on this idea of a continuum of services with the idea that we could build a better program and and if you look at our out-of-district placements over time we've decreased because we've students that used to have a programmatic need um would be sent in days

043gone by out of district were now able to meet their needs in district and we believe that that was at the betterment to for the families and the children within our community but we have outpaced any expectation the programmatic growth to now when we're looking at pre-k 8 we have now 14 dedicated rooms for tier 3 autism and precision of language matters and in our presentation we talked about self-contained we didn't talk about tier three and that precision of language i think led to a lot of conflict and misunderstanding and again we don't we own that but the aim of the realignment proposal was to serve more students within the district by improving both capacity of our facilities to meet the needs of the numerous students that otherwise might be sent out of district so

044we're at a challenge while as we have decreasing enrollment in some places we have increasing student needs in other places and we are out of space at millstone river for the growth of our autism programming that's surging into the 4-5 the 3-4-5 and if we don't do something the option ultimately becomes a more least restrictive environment of out of district placement and that is not what we want to do so we we were trying to find a solution right never was it about segregation it was about trying to find a solution to keep kids in the district keep our students in district your children in district at the same time our staff is saying we need better training we need more aligned services we need improved consistency of construction we need more instructional support support

045we need to minimize transitions we need we need we need we're hearing this from our staff and we're trying to hear from them as well and try to find ways to build program so we have better deployment better training better utilization facility never was about segregation not every parent is a fan of the district or the programs right over time but there's there's some that have used this or used the change in program over time and there's been a disconnect and we didn't do a good job talking about the changing program over time and again we own that we appreciate the input that we've received we've made the recommendation to withdraw the recommendation and both town center and wyckoff will remain as is going into next school year all that's true but the programmatic challenges

046of space support training meeting needs of students meeting needs of staff remain and we're going to have to work to come up with solutions moving forward otherwise what we're going to see is students that have now benefited i believe benefited from having in district instruction with staff that care about them in the proximity of their home community we'll we'll end up in out-of-district placements because we don't have space but we do have space it's just that we're holding it for future kids that don't exist versus your children that are here today we just have to figure out how to use the space differently and so we're revoking the recommendation but the pro the challenge is still there and so we're going to have to find a solution it's clearly not going to be now and

047i respect i respect the advocacy and i respect why the the voices were raised but please know it came from a good place not because we're trying to segregate children and devoid opportunities for inclusionary opportunities or that we're trying to break some kind of federal or state law farthest from the truth we're trying to find ways to meet students needs on a continuum of programming in district the proposal we brought forward wasn't wasn't appropriate and needed to be stopped i respect that but we still need to do something for the future or we're going to find a pathway towards out-of-district programming that none of us want without all in my comments thank you thank you doctor at home we'll we'll now turn the next on our agenda as student representative reports so do we have

048any from student grads hi everyone my name is allison wu and i'm a student at high school north i'll be giving tonight's report on north so first of all we had our very last spirit week of the year and that took place on april 4th the 8th and that included pajama day monochrome day country versus country club day anything but a backpack day and class shirt day which led to our spring prep rally and this purple is not only special because it's our last one of the year but also because it's our very first spring pep rally or official pep rally in three years so it's really great to get back on the turf and play our games and that included musical chairs three-legged race and tug of war and it was a close competition

049between the classes but the seniors ultimately took home the win additionally we had a prom shop april 8th 11th and 13th and that took place from 3 to 4 p.m and that allowed any students attending junior or senior prom to come to the main office to shop for free prom dresses suits shoes and other accessories donated by the community so we want to give a big thank you to administration teachers staff and of course the community for making that possible for us we really appreciate it in terms of senior events we have senior prom of course and the pre-sales have just ended but there will be more opportunities for in-sale tickets if those still need to be purchased and hershey park tickets just ended as well and finally i want to talk about the stanley

050cup so just a little bit about that our seniors formed teams of six to eight in our gym classes in the upcoming weeks and we played each other to find like the best team in each class and then we all came together in a grade wide event that took place during the morning classes in the gym and ultimately the team yay won the title with an overtime goal so congrats to them that ends my report so thank you very much for your time tonight thank you allison good evening everyone my name is edward lee and i'm the other student representative from high school north um so i'm just gonna talk about some of the club updates um so interact club recently held their ukraine for ukraine event um on april 10th so during this event

051students made origami peace cranes in the media center during lunch and their donation for the paper was one dollar per sheet and this money ultimately went towards supporting ukrainian refugees um regarding the north boys golf team um i just want to congratulate jerry liu ethan trinh jaisal yadav and chris corpal um who won the swing against hunger tee off classic golf tournament at princeton meadows on monday april 11th um high school north's um national honors society will be hosting a spring car wash on saturday april 30th from 1 to 3 p.m in high school north's faculty parking lot and this car wash is free so um if you guys all have time we would strongly encourage you to attend um and we are we are also accepting donations for future events and for future the

052future class of nhs um so yeah we hope to see you we hope to see you there um and lastly the boys varsity tennis team is currently competing in the mercer county tennis tournament and after playing the first round yesterday um north is currently tied in first place so that's great news um and the second round will be taking place tomorrow so good luck to all our tennis players that concludes my report for the night and thank you all for your time thank you edward do we have a report from high school stuff no okay all right thank you thank you thank you both for coming out i appreciate it all right so i'll now turn to the first opportunity for public comments the board invites thoughts and reactions on agenda items and items of

053concern from members of our community who are present each participant is asked to give his or her name and address prior to making a statement which will be limited to three minutes in accordance with board policy zero one six seven all statements shall be directed to the presiding officer this public comment period shall be limited to 60 minutes do you have any public comments my name is michelle javarowski 26 brookfield way west windsor uh first i would like to take the opportunity to thank both boe members and administration for reading the emails and listening to community members in regards to the autism program proposal that was presented at the last meeting and for ultimately deciding to withdraw this unpopular plan thank you for hearing us i do disagree though and find it disingenuous to imply

054that there was a misunderstanding of the plan by the community that we didn't get it instead with all due respect i would ask for some self-reflection that the presentation felt rushed the messaging was unclear and really not up to wwp standards it contained many inconsistencies and contradictions it was vague in lack detail and many of the points just didn't make sense that being said i know we can do better we would appreciate if such major special needs programming changes are needed that the various stakeholders be a part of the process so along with administration that means families of special needs children special education teachers general education teachers students other parents and maybe even some outside experts personally i would so much prefer to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem lastly

055i would also like to advocate for more inclusivity it is true that our students are integrated into several district schools but on many occasions that's where it stops we would like to have the existing and any new special ed programming push for greater inclusion we should look to other districts like princeton hopewell and others to see how they are doing it there are chances now to do this and both our special needs and general education students are currently missing out on some potentially meaningful experiences and friendships i would welcome the opportunity to sit on a committee or attend meetings to come up with some initiatives and ways to promote this greater inclusivity as i mentioned above i'd prefer to be part of the solution and a collaborator rather than an adversary at the end of

056the day we all want the same thing for our same thing for our kids to be happy and productive members of their community and to be accepted for the unique individuals that they are thank you hi ben uh hi my name is aloo kanan and i'm tanjani lane westminster and i'm talking on behalf of my seven-year-old daughter shania she's in town central elementary first grade so she cannot speak so i'm talking on behalf of her so first of all i would like to thank uh mr alderhaul and and the the committee members for withdrawing the proposal also i would like to thank mr aldol for mentioning that the district will ensure that no identified student program is segregated but i looked into the mirror right what is happening currently and i will give you a

057specific example from my daughters what is happening with my daughter that the program is segregated that will show it's segregated it's discriminatory it's restrictive and it's not inclusive first of all shania goes to town center elementary where the kids from the general education streams are also there they go and have a lunch together in the same room but special needs kids they are not allowed to sit with the general general kids they are they sit in a separate table just imagine like any special need kid here they are not allowed to sit here probably you tell them go sit in a corner isn't this a discrimination segregation second point i want to mention is they they go to the same same school tom central elementary they go to the game they have the game classes

058right sports classes but they do not interact can you tell me like is there a single program where the kids are both the general education kids and special needs kids are in the same program third why we are sending this kid this is a very esteemed west wing school district it's known nationally not only leave alone in new jersey it's known nationally that one of the best school districts right special needs kids do not get the similar academic and teaching goals as the general ed kid let me tell you experience from my daughter she joined this program three years ago she was four she was about four years old at that time she knew upper case and i'm talking specific example uppercase abcd and one to twenty number right after three years not a single

059academic goal is added in her iep in march after my repeated request several times i sent them an email to the school special education group case manager and everything that iep meeting happened i requested them to add this thing after my repeated request what was added is to small case letters so the the thing if you could just wrap up thank you yeah so i will just wrap up with one more thing so the other thing is just was mentioned that in princeton hopewell and other these places the kids go go to the school excuse me i'm sorry the three minutes are up but you have the second public comment if you want to finish your thought then okay thank you thank you by the way i have sent this to all the committee members

060through this email so please respond to my email thank you am i about to pick this up can i pick this up okay hi my name is geeta pai dailang and i'm from two stonewall drive i've been a west windsor resident for 16 years superintendent aderhold and board of education members i truly appreciate the opportunity to share my thoughts with all of you and i am truly grateful for your service to our community before i begin in the spirit of inclusivity i brought some indian chai tea compliments of kochi indian cuisine outside so please everybody help yourself it's outside i also have eight signed copies for folks here and signed copies for all of you of high school north alumnus alex bronze's book called an autism point of view that's a special one just signed

061for you dr aderhold as well as inclusivity t-shirts designed by unified spectrum i'm the model here a group of young folks with autism who are simply incredible so are you sensing a theme here probably okay so here we go i'm going to try not to cry god blessed me with two healthy neurotypical bright and emotionally intelligent children and until last week i took that for granted a couple of weeks ago i learned about the district's proposal to pursue a two-year phase transition plan to essentially segregate severely autistic and multiply disabled students into a self-contained k-6 school in wyckoff without access to their general ed peers at first glance i was shocked and saddened to think that the school district lacked a basic understanding of inclusion principles touted by all special ed experts across the country

062then i started talking to people i spoke with five to seven local experts including a prominent local special ed lawyer a special education director in another district and many special ed parents after hearing about the terrible struggles that special ed parents go through day in and day out seeing their fragile kids struggle with activities as simple as using the bathroom or eating their lunch it was a wake-up call to me actually i felt guilty for complaining about silly things like my kids getting late for school i felt an unrelenting duty and obligation to help find a more inclusive kind and compassionate solution for these most delicate precious members of our student community superintendent and board of education members i sincerely thank you for withdrawing the wykhoff proposal yesterday i'm encouraged and grateful that you do

063respect the views of parents and experts and that you now understand that this proposal did violate the true intent of the individuals with disability acts even though it was not intentional as you said there was no mal intent and i totally understand that but the intent of inclusion is not to have self-contained classrooms we don't want more of those it's actually to enable all students to have some sort of interaction and exposure to neurotypical peers my children do not have any disabilities however i want them to be around folks with disabilities even the most severe ones because they're going to be part of our community they're going to be people that they see that work that they work with and they need to be able to love and embrace those and i have another comment

064so i can do it later but essentially i'm an analyst i was a leader at capital one i have formed a committee of experts to help me to refine a high-level analysis that i've put together and i'm i'm hopeful that you guys will be open to our proposal and recommendations because i grew up i was born and raised in america i was taught that all children are children of god and they're deserving of love compassion patience and equal rights thank you thank you thank you so much chris can you take them hi i'm short and sweet my name is emory vino and i live at 11 romanberry court in west windsor and i'm the parent of an autistic 20 year old 22 year old man i'd like to thank the administration for listening to the

065community's concerns and withdrawing their autism programming proposal the community is concerned about inclusion for all while effectively meeting the needs of all the students including those with autism and multiple disabilities the benefits of inclusive education are not reaped only by students with disabilities inclusive education is beneficial to non-disabled students who learn the value of living in a diverse society as the district already has a vision of equity i urge you to include a disability stakeholder as part of your dei team in addition i'm requesting that a committee of all stakeholders be formed to create recommendations for inclusion and the special ed program this could should include community leaders school administrators teachers parents and students all from both special ed and general ed as well as mr anthony jones the dei coordinator and the new jersey

066coalition for inclusive education staff who have successfully navigated this territory with many new jersey school districts thank you [Applause] hi i'm mark bruger i've been a resident of west windsor for 20 years my son has been in the md the autism the lld out of district we've been through everything i second what and anne-marie has said inclusion has enormous benefits i want to support your gen ed teachers and your sped ed teachers they shouldn't feel alone inclusion and inclusive practices can help yet your own sped review said 50 of your sped and your gen ed teachers don't use universal design or don't have any faith in their use of universal design for learning yes we want to support them we want improved outcomes we know for our md and autism program there are improved outcomes

067in inclusion and i complement already melissa who has expanded lld inclusion with co-teaching classrooms across the spectrum that is terrific but we want this to affect our most severe kids and those that are uh in md and autism and other programs as well we know that the it takes a village to support our kids and you will get help in the long run not only you have improved outcomes support your community values you will reduce costs because our kids will grow many of our kids like mine actually are in a total immersion program inclusive with neurotypical peers and bosses at this point in his post-grad program it can happen but you have to start early so we want more inclusion and we ask that you get like new jersey center for inclusive education which will

068provide you with free technical assistance they've done this for over 100 school districts in new jersey we want you to get some outside help to look at best practices to support you i want to support the faculty and by the way we want to educate parents about inclusion too we have a job to do too we have to educate our community when my son goes out to this day they talk to me when he goes shopping they don't talk to him my son is invisible in west windsor and that's really sad it's unfriendly and he is invisible in this community except at the walgreens on prince knightsdown road that's pretty much the only place they know him because he gets a lot of medication we make him do it himself so we want to help

069you we want the community we want business people we want to support your teachers your teachers cannot do this alone they need your help as administrators they need the training and they need the cultural attitudes because i know this is hard it is hard to include kids with behavioral issues it is hard to include kids who are non-verbal it's really really hard and we're willing to help you i'm willing to help you we're all here we're all in this together it will lower your cost and you'll improve some of your uh morale issues some of your staffing issues because it'll be a place that will be known maybe in five years as that inclusive place for people with disabilities and your teachers will want to work here and you'll they'll you will have less recruiting

070problems so anyways we want to help you and we know it's a long-term solution and it's tough that's all i have to say thank you very much [Applause] veronica mina 41 gallston drive it is very clear that we have a challenge regarding space that is something that has been pointed out several times however when we need to make this program there are certain things that they need to be taken into consideration first and foremost involved all stakeholders this cannot be a unilateral program like the one that was presented in the first meeting understand the process mr article several times when he was questioned by bi members said we are going to do that as we go along that is unacceptable it has the community has to be surveyed another thing that mr article said oh

071this is going to be well accepted by the community well here we are it has not been well accepted by the community this type of program cannot be voted during the summer when everybody's away on vacation we are a community that most of us we are foreigners me included we go back home to visit our families this program cannot be voted during the summer there's a need of transparency coming from the administration and the board of education having again neurotypical children myself although my son is has adhd and has a 504 himself but adhd is not viewed as a it's only viewed as a learning disability having neurotypical children myself i want my children to be around children who are diverse that they have multiple disabilities or they have autism my children can learn empathy

072kindness patience learn how to collaborate with these classmates all these skills are absolutely necessary to succeed in life and these are not being taught in a book all this is taught just being one-to-one and having interaction with the peers and then the last thing that i want to say is back in 2017 when i was running for boe i requested via opera request how many lawsuits the school had and i was amazed to see that there were 14 lawsuits two were labor related and 12 where because of special ed parents me when i was trying to put the 504 in place i was bullied by karen's legal this mentality has to change there is a reason that parents with special needs sue the school district if this mentality doesn't change then nothing can change thank

073you [Applause] thank you [Applause] hi i'm paul o'brien 31 prospect uh resident in plainsboro for 25 years um you know i'm not as informed as many of these parents who are you know really involved you can see by the diverse topics that you all are covering in your involvement but i want to talk about how i felt right how this whole experience made me and my family feel when i first heard about the proposal i was shocked and we know that there was no malicious intent and the word segregation was used because it's impactful right um i thought about my daughter's experience and how where she is today and she would not have been impacted by these proposed changes but if they would have happened a few years ago she might not be where she

074is today you know um and when i received the email yesterday saying that oh you know we've decided not to move forward with this i was just as angry when i learned that you wanted to do this i felt that if there was something that i believed in so strongly that i felt would benefit the students of the district that if i faced opposition and i believed in my stance i would fight i would do a better job at my presentation i you did a great job explaining your position uh and clearly you showed where your strengths are during your budget presentation but i gotta say i i feel like i was cheated on my trust is broken i the way that presentation felt fast-tracked lack of preparation you wouldn't have spent 30 seconds in

075front of the sharks that's for sure it's not what we expect this is a district of high expectations and that was not up to our expectations i don't know how i can feel confident again you know i i hear that we're going to be including parents in the decisions that that we're going to lean into how we can make these tough decisions together i hope that happens i'm just very disappointed thank you thank you [Applause] are there any other comments hi my name is kathleen moriarty i live at eight taunton court in west windsor um i'm president of the special education ptsa but i also speak for myself as a taxpayer and a parent who's had children with ieps and unfortunately have had to make appeals to the board of ed for reconsideration of what

076we felt was mistreatment we were here about six months ago right discussing the program the special education program review wasn't in this building but at that time i think special ed and some of the other groups and advocates in this district were really concerned that the hastiness in which that presentation was given the lack of information and very few questions that were provided that were asked at the board of ed and here we are again and one of the themes that occurred in that program review and occurred in the prior program review about 10 years earlier and is occurring again today is about misunderstanding lack of communication that is the theme that runs over and over and over again and in the recent program review there was a new twist to it ah people don't

077understand but that's because we have a lot of first generation non-native speakers they don't understand the language but i can tell you many of the parents who come to us and talk about their iep challenges in their meetings very little of it has to do with not understanding english they understand when their child is in need and they understand when the person across from them who has the ability to help them is not doing so and they understand when they are told well if you don't like it go to due process in other words litigation and it was mentioned just a little while ago about the stats on litigation i didn't see a line item on litigation in the budget okay i think we don't need to know every single lawsuit but i think it

078would be helpful for taxpayers to understand when the district is actually at suing the very taxpayers who are vulnerable and in need of services that is shameful and is happening and it's been happening for decades there is a reason that our district is well it was stated that we were famous i'm not sure famous or maybe infamous might be another word when you have the lowest child find or classification rates in the nation that's not something to be proud of i think i think maybe texas might be above us but i'm not sure maybe they're lower than us we also have ver we also have a very high litigation rate and i would encourage the board of ed to consider where money's going and to consider how they could be better used and we hope

079it's for the needs of the children and their families thank you thank you [Applause] good evening i'm denise dwyer and i'm a resident of west windsor and i'd like to comment on this whole process i am i'm too glad that the district has agreed to withdraw this proposal however i think it's important to note that after the proposal came out and there started to be reaction from the public the response from the district was as a number of people have said already that it was based on misinformation or that parents who objected to the district's proposal misunderstood i was not misinformed i used information strictly from the district's own publications to form my opinions that that proposal was flat out wrong i also don't misunderstand it i am an attorney who specializes in the area

080of special education law i am very familiar with the idea and it's implementing federal and state regulations and what case law says on least restrictive environment and i find it very troubling that rather that although the district has expressed thanks for uh the comments tonight uh those comments don't ring true not uh follow up on the response the original response from the district that parents didn't understand and that they were misinformed so like michelle urged earlier i think this is a good opportunity for self-reflection for the district to take a look at how that proposal came across came to be in the first place and more importantly how it was that the district staff that we rely on to be familiar with the laws governing special education missed it by so much what least restrictive

081environment is supposed to look like that it includes exposure to typically developing peers that there are opportunities out there for technical assistance from places like new jersey coalition for inclusive education that would be voluntary and then there's opportunities for technical assistance from either the state or the feds when the district fails to comply with least restrictive environment and that's not what anybody wants so i think again the district needs to take a look at both how they came up with this proposal and more importantly how they responded to parents in the first instance when they responded negatively it was not in a respectful way and seeking to engage in understanding and conversation thank you [Applause] thank you any other comments there's a sec so it's only once in the first public first opportunity there's a

082second opportunity for public comment later so you can do any other comments okay all right thank you we'll be closing the public comment portion and uh should i ask so i i know we have uh eric harrison here today i don't know if there's any um responses that he can provide to some comments that have been made sure my name is eric harris and i do special education work for the board of education because the proposal has been pulled i don't think it would help the constituents who are here tonight or the members of the board to engage in an impassioned defense of what it was to be it was vetted with me and i found it to be legally compliant for reasons that ms dwyer and i perhaps will be in court facing off

083about one day but i will make a few points in hopes that i can serve as um as an example of good faith on behalf of the board and also this folks from the special ed special services with whom i work the word segregation is an awful horrible word which cat which carries baggage with it um the word is also a synonym of the word separation the individuals with disabilities in education act is a federal act which requires that school districts have a full continuum of placements available and at the less restricted at the more restrictive end of that continuum are self-contained classes it is true by definition as one of the speakers said that the intent of inclusion is not to have self-contained classrooms but the mandate of the idea is to have self-contained

084classrooms but only for the students who need it only for the students who cannot derive meaningful educational benefit from a less restrictive alternative now one gentleman referred to the case of his daughter about her particular situation at town center the thing about the idea and the definition of least restrictive environment is it's individualized to each student so what might be happening with one child alongside another child excuse me soon sir excuse me sir we can't so what i would what i was saying regarding this example is that you're right you're right you're no sir can you wait can you wait one second you give it a second we we have a second public comment period everybody listened everybody was respectful we we asked that's the same that's all i ask that's all the board asks

085so if any parent is dissatisfied with the degree of inclusion that his or her child is getting that parent has an absolute right to request a meeting with the iep team and if the parent is not happy about how the parents concerns are addressed the parent has an absolute right to take it to another level and to ask a mediator or an administrative judge to look at it in my experience in this district however that was sending the comments about litigation i'd say about 80 percent 80 to 90 percent in a given year of the situations in on for which i'm called in to provide advice or to attend a meeting are resolved before they have to go to uh any kind of litigation but the most important fact to keep in mind when we

086talk about what's going to be done going forward as the district grapples with an increasing population of its neediest students running out of space and having scarce resources is that whatever kind of changes are made to the extent there is quote unquote segregation it would only be the sort of separation that is required by law because if we take a student who the team has determined needs to be in a self-contained setting and we shoehorn that student into a general education less restrictive setting because we don't want to be accused of segregating and that student derives no educational benefit then it is not only legally wrong under the idea it is morally wrong and that students going to suffer i have been doing special education work for more than 20 years it's pretty rare that

087the folks that i work for get applauded for their hard work on behalf of special ed kids the cases into which i'm called are those in which parents are upset sometimes rightfully so when there's a respectful dialogue and and an understanding that everybody's proceeding in good faith we usually make progress when there's an assumption that we're ignorant or that we don't understand the law or that we're doing things for convenience because we are putting kids second then we don't make any progress we assume and when i say we i'm speaking on behalf of the special ed staff we assume the good faith of parents who love their kids and want what's best what i would say to the community is a request even if you think even if you don't like some of these folks

088that you're dealing with and you think they might not be up to speed and that they need outside groups to come in to teach them about inclusion give them a chance to let them explain with respect to the personal circumstances of your child your individual child why what's being recommended is being recommended and going forward i think it is accurate and i think doctor not mr but dr aderhold was making a very good point when he said the intention was there there were obvious obviously problems in the messaging and i don't think it would be appropriate for him to put his head down and fight against his constituents and not listen to the voices of concerned parents i think it's a wise thing to do both to avoid further litigation and to ensure there's a

089community dialogue in which everyone is heard in order to come up with solutions for the future that are going to address problems that are so boring and mind-numbing but so substantial such as loss of square footage and allocation of staff that if we leave it alone for fear of being criticized of going down a path that folks might not understand or or folks might not like then there will be bigger problems in the future problems that might not become apparent if we have to start sending more kids out that's not necessarily something that's going to grab headlines or bring people out to meetings here but it's going to be deleterious to those students so all i ask the community in is that you should assume the good faith of the your elected representatives and the

090people who are working for your children as the board works on solutions going forward and i don't expect any applause thank you all right thank you mr harrison i appreciate it um so we're now going to move to the committee reports uh so can i have the administration and facilities committee good evening oh i'm clearing the room i'll wait till wait till people leave if they're leaving okay okay the administration and facilities committee met on april 12th we reviewed the um several policies and recommend them for first reading at tonight's board meeting i'm just waiting okay okay um there were four there were um high school graduation anti-hazing and biased crime scenarios yeah it i'm so sorry uh if you have a conversation you might stepping outside uh because it's it's it's just it's disrupting

091the the presentation thank you okay yeah i'm gonna start i'm gonna start from the top okay all right thank you so the administration and facilities committee met on april 12th we reviewed several policies and recommend them for first reading at tonight's board of ed meeting there are four of these um high school graduation was one another is anti-hazing then there's bias crimes and bias-related acts there was a policy and a regulation for that we also reviewed a number of other policies and recommend them for second reading and approval at tonight's meeting and they are on student surveys analysis evaluations examination testing or treatment um prevention and treatment of sports related concussions and hedge head injuries then the regulation related to the one i just mentioned and then a regulation on additional compensatory special education related

092services a policy on regulation on student assessment a policy on management of lice and a policy on administration of school surveys next we had an update on athletics spring sports are underway with more than a thousand high school students and nearly 800 middle school students participating the district continues to use the positive coaching alliance and recently held three student athlete workshops the newly formed united softball team which is a combination of high school north and high school south um softball players is three for or was at the time three for one on the season um high school south boys tennis placed second at the morristown classic and registration for fall high school sports begins on may 10th next we had an update on the referendum projects as a final punch list for the hvac upgrades

093at high school north and community middle school continued to be completed masonry work at the high school north dance studio is complete exterior windows are installed and interior finishes have begun at high school south tile work painting and ceiling grid installation continues along with other finishes at community middle school work on the new band room including ductwork painting and light insulation has begun masonry and foundation work for the wyckoff edition and renovation continues next we had an update on the district's diversity equity and inclusion work members of the diversity equity inclusion team and school administration met with community stakeholders on march 23rd to get feedback on an equity strategic plan draft equity professional development for staff continues with preparations underway to celebrate asian american and pacific islander heritage month as well as jewish america american

094heritage month throughout the month of may we also reviewed the status of the update work on the job just district job descriptions and the district continues to upgrade to update outdated language in many current job descriptions and we reviewed a number of those which i will not list our we recommend the committee recommends the revised job descriptions for a second review at our next committee meeting and we will next meet on may 16th thank you thank you dana any questions from board members okay all right so we'll go to the curriculum committee report from lloyd thanks rachel the curriculum committee met on april 12th we started the meeting with the presentation from barbara gould our director of counseling health and wellness and guide talk principal at village they shared their research project entitled effective professional

095development impacts anti-bi anti-bias practices in the classroom which is part of their doctoral work so we had the pleasure to discuss and hear that presentation next we discussed school performance reports dr nathan shared the now live school performance report for wwp a link can be found on our district's website data is limited on the report due to the pandemic and a lack of state testing there are several items to be voted on on tonight's agenda first the curriculum committee recommends the adoption of the textbook ap calculus ap calculus a b ap calculus bc and multivariable calculus uh calculus for the ap course third edition 2020 by uh sullivan and miranda dr nathan shared the vetting process with the committee and this publisher was chosen as the main text is aligned perfectly with the ap syllabus

096the materials and are used in conjunction with the ap classroom provided by the college board this text was designed for high school students taking a college level course and the students found the materials easier to read and understand the online materials are user-friendly for both teachers and students and since the calculus book is only designed for ap ap courses the additional multi-variable textbook is needed next the curriculum committee recommends approval of disposal of some of the following obsolete items instructional materials in accordance with r7 300.1 first 1264 books from high school south media center 824 books from millstone media center and 141 books from maurice hawk media center all items meet one or more of the following which is one they are so outdated as to no longer serve as a were the instructional tools

097or two are so worn and or damaged as to preclude effective use and economical repair or restoration so again the curriculum committee recommends the disposal of those materials next the curriculum committee recommends the approval of the additional um of some additional community education summer virtual camps uh which include five different hindi language related virtual camps this summer next the committee also recommends approval for the for professional development workshops and travel for four administrators to attend avid summer institute professional development in orlando florida from the 27th of june to the 29th at a cost not to exceed 2254 per person um also with professional development it's recommended uh for a professional development consultant marty chen to provide a three-hour virtual workshop during the summer this summer summer 2022 to dual language immersion teachers and aides planning

098for proficient proficiency growth and differentiating for all learners at a cost not to exceed and lastly the curriculum committee recommends for more professional development one science teacher to attend a virtual ap environmental science summer institute um course offered through southern california ap institute from august 1st through the 5th at a cost of 550 and one administrator to attend a virtual brand x educator youth coaches course during this summer summer 2022 at a cost of 795 dollars um the curriculum committee next meets on tuesday may 17th thanks any questions thank you lori any questions okay let's see all right we'll do now the finance committee report from louisa okay the finance committee met on april 19th as a virtual meeting the committee reviewed items on the agenda for approval at tonight's meeting finance agenda items include

099the monthly financial reports a request to authorize the business administrator to use competitive contracting for procurement for certain services for the community ed program several change orders for various referendum projects and a motion to award the 2223 trash and recycling collection bid also on the agenda are requests to use an es cnj cooperative bid an nj state contract and a national purchasing cooperative for needed district supplies other motions include the disposal of obsolete equipment approval of transportation routes and approval of employee professional development finally there is a motion to approve the sale of three buses that were replaced this year next staff updated the committee on the 22-23 budget the public hearing on the 22-23 budget will take place at the april 26 meeting the budget has been approved to be advertised staff updated the

100committee on various construction activities for referendum projects at community and south fire alarm projects are coming to completion at wycoff fire alarm design work is ongoing hvac upgrades at north and millstone are at the final commissioning and graphics phase the data drop and new controls for the north pool area and gym will be installed during the spring recess the north band studio is moving along with the underground storm water system being completed and bathroom fixtures and fire sprinkler system being installed at south the final cleaning of block b will be completed soon and sidewalks are being completed in block a the dance floor in the dance studio is being installed epoxy is being applied on the robotics lab floor and hvac commissioning is beginning the majority of the parking lot will be paved with the

101final top coat during spring recess at community renovations have begun on classrooms two science rooms and the robotics rooms the new music room construction continues with installation of lighting and electrical services construction at wyckoff is continuing with utilities being installed in the roof areas and what will be the floor slab the slab area will be backfilled and compacted in preparation for concrete exterior masonry walls are being erected the sanitary underground plumbing is complete electric panels are being installed in the existing portion of the building to connect to the expansion work will begin in the existing media center over spring recess meetings have been held to review the final plans for the dutchneck and millstone river media center renovations on the agenda is a change order to the energy savings improvement program for community in the

102amount of a hundred and twenty three thousand five hundred dollars to incorporate the remaining hvac equipment under one controller there are 57 pieces of equipment that need schneider controls the new chiller for town stoner will be installed over spring break under the cafeteria regional and local sodexo administration met with district administration to discuss the food service operation the food service program averaged 6 200 lunches per day and 450 breakfasts for the month of february sodexo had one staff resignation as in and is in the process of increasing starting salaries and salaries for existing staff the nj department of agriculture announced the use of federal money for the supply chain assistance funds for the 22-23 school year according to preliminary reports the district is entitled to a minimum 153 thousand dollars for unprocessed or minimally processed

103domestic food products the superintendent provided a health and safety update coveted cases are rising in our community the district has been in consultation with local and county health officials and at this time there is no masking recommendation optional masking will continue after spring break for other business the administration discussed potential updates to the ali and perdiem rate chart for media center coverage and substitute secretary positions to help mitigate the shortage of substitutes in these areas the committee will next meet on tuesday may 17th thank you luisa any questions from board members okay all right thank you so now we'll move to the voting portion of our meeting so can i have a motion for administration items one through ten uh dana and robin are there any questions or comments chris okay we'll start with geez

104i'm starting all of a sudden we'll start we'll start we'll start with miss chenery cheniere sorry yes miss ho yes ms krug yes ms moliga yes miss shetty yes mizovich yes miss poncel yes miss mcewan yes ms juliana yes all right next move to curriculum items can i have a motion for curriculum items one through four uh loy and puja any questions or comments chris okay we'll start with miss ho yes ms krug yes miss maliga yes miss shetty yes mazovich yes miss sponsor yes ms genera yes miss mcewen yes ms juliana yes right we'll now move to the finance items can i have a motion for items 1 through 26 plus the substitutions for 5 and 14 on the orange sheet and the blue addendum louisa any questions or comments chris okay we'll start

105with miss krug yes miss milton oh jeez i'm stuttering again miss maliga yes machete yes mizovich yes ms sponsel yes ms geniera yes ms ho yes miss mcewan yes ms juliana yes now move to personnel items can i oh sure before the board votes on personnel this evening i just wanted to make mention of a retirement of miss trish buell principal at maurice hawk elementary school trisha served the community for the past 14 years as the assistant principal and principal of maurice hawk before that she was a teacher in district tremendous loss to wwp into the community at maurice hawk elementary school and i just want to congratulate trish on her retirement and thank you for her dedicated years of service last seven as principal at maurice hawk thank you thank you [Applause] thank you

106can i have a motion for personnel items one and two and plus the green and purple addenda uh liz and robin any questions or comments chris okay we'll we'll start with with miss maliga yes ms shetty yes mizovich yes miss sponsor yes miss chennaira yes oh yes ms krug yes miss mcewen yes ms juliana yes so as uh dr aderhold already started so we i want to acknowledge some retirements this evening um so we have uh jane dennehy a speech-languished language specialist from millstone who's retiring after 14 years in the district andrea fox teacher of special education who is retiring from high school north who is retiring after 26 and a half years in the district marianne mcmahon nestor a teacher reading support from dutchneck and maurice hawk retiring after 34 years in the district

107peggy watson a teacher of special education at maurice hawk retiring after 20 years in the district lisa mcelroy an instructional assistant at maurice hawk retiring after nine years in the district marion sharon secretary from the central office retiring after 21 years in the district roseanne whitby secretary from high school north retiring after 25 years in the district and as dr otterhold mentioned patricia buell retiring a principal from maurice hawk retiring after 26 years in the district so just so you know if you're keeping tally that's over 175 years in the district from all of the retirees i just want to thank all of the retirees for all your years of service and dedication to the district we wish you all very the very best in your retirement so thank you [Applause] so now can i

108get the approval of the board of ed minutes for march 15th and march 29th i have a motion uh liz and shweta all those in favor say aye hi hi any abstentions okay so are there any board liaison reports any new business all right so that takes us to our second opportunity for public comments the board invites comments from members of our community who are present each participant is asked to give his or her name and address prior to making a statement which will be limited to three minutes in accordance with board policy zero one six seven all statements shall be directed to the presiding officer this public comment period shall be limited to 15 minutes do we have any comments hi my name is gita paite long still to stonewall drive so i just

109want to say a couple things because i sort of ran out of time before i think this last week has brought to light a few things so one special ed family should never feel alone i feel like this week for the first time ever there was a actual [Music] community collaboration of special ed families and non-special ed families we actually came together to try and solve a problem and it worked and i think that the administration has been very open to our input and i hope that this is a trend going forward because here is what i want to propose so i was an analyst and a leader a capital one for 17 years i have a rare talent of bringing a diverse community of folks together to solve big complex problems i'm not trying

110to be egotistical here and i'm i'm not like trying to boast or anything but i would like to offer my pro bono services to the district so i have the ability to analyze big complex problems i have the ability to interview a broad range of stakeholders with a broad range of varying and con contradicting requirements because i think that's what we're facing here we have staff we have administration we have stakeholders of all different shapes and sizes in our student community including general ed non-uh not like special ed we have the lawyers as we see we have two lawyers that very much disagree on what least restrictive environment means so i have already drafted an analysis and i want to share it with all of you guys at the earliest possible moment that you have

111time to listen and be open to me um just as a little attempt so mr harrison i respect you and i understand that you were trying to explain to us the least restrictive environment for the idea unfortunately i've done my homework and i've talked to a lot of very very experienced people in the field of law and inclusion and in our school district the least restrictive environment for a severely disabled or multiple disability child i'm sorry i'm sorry yeah we still have so many promises oh i'm sorry i didn't even know that um the least restrictive environment for one of these types of children who are very severely disabled even if it is a self-contained classroom within a general ed school they are still entitled to see and interact with not like typical students during

112recess during lunch during specials they are allowed to have children smile at them to just have kids look at them or come wave at them i've heard from parents of these very very severely disabled children that you all sometimes are mentioning are not able to speak that this is important and it helps them grow and develop and learn and feel loved and that's all that we want thank you [Applause] and i'm talking for my daughter seven-year-old daughter shania so first thing i just acknowledge listening to the comments from the the lawyer from the special needs first thing when there is a problem right is an acknowledgement what we were taught in by the lecture is oh he was debating law here sorry we are a society we are talking here right first step is acknowledgement

113of the problem that there is a problem otherwise this group of people will not come and do that i am not an advocate i do not belong to a political party i have no inclination here i come here from my child and everyone sitting here you see here they are here for the child now continuing from what i was mentioning before there are school districts here just neighboring school district princeton hopeful where the the the special need kids go in the same classes with support they need support they go to some classes but they go to in the in the the classes and those school districts are inclusive here it's opposite is happening here even if you if you think that and if you know your kid can go they have one or two areas

114in which they're strong no they will be declined by the iep team and what they will they will give it to you they will tell you no we do not disagree but this is your final ip even if the parent is not agreeing to that ip how can the iep be final this is a very basic thing right how can an ipb final without the parent agreement parent wants the best for the child nothing it's nothing i'm not talking about emotional thing here besides that besides this segregation from there are other problems in the school district last year just last year i can tell you from my daughter the case manager was they were different case managers there were different aides there were different teachers so you do not have adequate staff and then i

115look at the iep goals what i see is eighty percent of the goals i can tell you because i'm engaged in my i'm concerned about my daughter i'm engaged in that eighty percent of the goals she already is there so deliberately there's a goal setting which is low it's easy to to paint a a rosy picture that everything is working fine right and this is this is not happening right so the point is very simple my request very humble request is and i'm here for a solution is that bringing the independent experts bringing independent experts people here are more knowledgeable than me i'm not a special i'm just a parent right bringing the independent expert form a committee solve this situation we cannot allow the our students these kids to fail right now what is

116happening is a perfect recipe for failure and i'm worried about not only my kids all the kids who are here especially needs kids who are in this pool district thank you sir [Applause] are there any other comments okay okay oh yeah kathleen moriarty a taunton court west windsor um i thought it was very interesting mr harrison coming to speak i'm i'm wondering what your hourly rates are if you're going to round up that three-minute soliloquy to an hour um i appreciate your comments but i think it was a bit insulting miss murray can we keep it above board yes we would love to keep it above now i'm asking you can you please absolutely please yes there has not been but there's no need for snide insults there's no need for backhanded remarks it's been

117a very civil meeting thank you everybody has been listening to each other being polite to each other we would ask you please do the same yes i am doing the same my prior comments were about the litigation budget and i think mr harrison coming to speak who is not part of this community in front of parents who are highly concerned not about construction projects but about the welfare child every day and to have this provider come and speak is a bit insulting and i think it needs to be under that there are differences in the interpretation of laws sepsa has had disability rights new jersey come and speak to it on several occasions to talk about trends in the state and nationally on special education laws and regulations so it was a little bit confusing

118to these parents having listened to some of this including the settlement that occurred in 2016 in which the department of ed the state department of education was found to be in violation of federal and state statutes and in which they had to get involved in a settlement that included three years of monitoring and include several several districts so to make an assumption that everybody's doing things in good faith well good faith is great trust but verify and that's what our special education families are doing because they're being told across the table that they're wrong that they're misunderstanding and what sepsis tries to do is to let them know that they have an ability to research to look things up to read the law not with the use of klaus esme spending another service provider to

119reinterpret a policy but to actually read the actual policies coming from the department of ed from the federal statutes and from the state statutes and advocacy groups like disability rights new jersey the educational law helps parents to not just assume but to actual verify do they have a right we hope that our parents will not have to always do this we would like to think that we can rely on the good faith of the board of ed to manage what is occurring thank you in the administration thank you thank you miss moriarty and [Applause] any other public comments okay okay again so we will uh again close the public comment portion uh and we will uh be recessing into closed executive session so i do uh need to read the statement sure so earlier i

120didn't have the opportunity to respond to a couple comments so first i just want to say thank you to the members of the public for the parents coming out voicing your concerns being willing to engage with the board and administration we appreciate that and i didn't want you to leave tonight without at least hearing that from me that i appreciate your comments those of you that reached out directly i think the reason you're you're hearing some of us say that we felt that there was a disconnect and maybe misinformation is because when questions were raised the feedback didn't get asked to us directly and went through social media and we felt that there was a miscommunication that was being perpetuated and spread through an ongoing trend through whatsapp and peeps and other places but i

121can tell you i think i received one or two parent emails to me and to those parents that reached out directly i really appreciate that whether it was parents of graduates or parents i appreciated it because then it gave me an insight of what was happening out there i don't exist in whatsapp i don't exist in peeps and because of some recent developments i don't exist in a facebook period um so that we're not there in those settings so unless you reach out directly to us we don't necessarily know the conversation until someone sends us a petition that i would have signed myself based on the fact pattern presented that being said the pc the pcg report was mentioned pcg is the company the public consulting group that did the program review they did the

122program review and wrote the recommendations based on feedback from the community from the public from focus groups from interviews of parents from interviews of staff and they formulated it the district did not participate in the formulation of the review we we sat and we listened to and talked to the consultants absolutely and we and we had an opportunity to hear the report before the public did absolutely but those findings came from the community so the references and the attributions to the report were not things that were directly attributed or should not be directly attributed to our professional staff that are here in this room with respect to the referendum i get credit for a lot of things um i get credit for the decrease of house prices in the years gone by um currently currently

123potentially i could get credit for the increase in highest prices or the fact there's only five houses on the market in west windsor because everything's selling above value but i know that's not attributed to me yet that kind of stuff gets ascribed to me all the time as a superintendent um so to the member that made some comments and then left um i just don't want that to go out saying that there was a referendum proposed back in 2018 based on a fact pattern in time and a time pre-pandemic when all this housing stock which by the way is all happening in west windsor if it's all under if our mayor was here we could have asked him um if he left he but he was sitting directly in front of me in the back

124it was either it's either under permit or or it already has been approved by the planning board and you're going to start seeing a lot more development in west windsor already underground or starting late summer or into the fall those thousands of units of homes are going to come online in the next couple of years we are ahead of the growth but that means your kids in the future should not be sitting in massive overcrowding as that development happens by the way we did it without increasing taxes as was stated and we did it without collecting additional debt from the community which we have a right to we do build a certain amount of money into our general fund of 7.7 million per year that goes to pay for debt we have not increased that

125from the time the mayor who was the board president was on the board now we've we've made a promise when we went to the referendum that we wouldn't go for additional dollars in general fund but in order to feed the the referendum you do have to generate breakage and reserve otherwise it doesn't work and you have to if that cycle stops the taxes will rise i'm just going to tell you how the math works right so those that don't understand school budgeting it's multi-year and multi-faceted it's not a fixed one year you always have reserves that play parts in multiple years i mean and maybe that can be done in the analysis for the community with respect to our attorney he's here at our request because we did feel that was appropriate to have our

126special education attorney who is part of our school community he's not just a consultant he's part of our school community he trains our administration he trains our staff he's a trusted guide and and we felt it important for him to be here tonight because there's a lot of um litigation and legal references that have been made very loosely um through social media and i heard that some people were talking about yes we used it because it was a word because it was inflammatory or we used reference to a case truly we didn't know what was going to be stated and we felt it was important to make sure that the record is corrected granted there's always components and com parts of statements or law that can be debated and that's why there's board attorneys and

127there's attorneys for parents and there's advocates and there's then judges that's it between that and other process that help to try to find resolution when it gets there so there is always going to be a legal budget it's not a litigation budget litigation budget makes it sound like we build a war chest so that we can go to go to court with parents that is not what the district does but there is a budget that always goes towards attorney fees for consultation for numerous reasons whether it's referendum guidance or budgetary guidance or the issues that we're having with a contractor on one site or whether it's our bond council the district has six or seven different firms we work with we don't just have an attorney in conego law group we have six or seven

128different types of attorneys because we're a 240 million dollar organization with over 1300 employment three different associations and lots of different competing laws around it so yes i i happen to teach doctoral finance at the doctoral level finances and area of expertise we don't have expertise in every area we rely on attorneys and outside experts to support us mr burger your points i appreciate you've been a you've been a good partner over the years and you've always been someone who's been willing to stand up and offer support and services even in disagreement and i appreciate the way you presented and i didn't want to lose that this evening and just make that comment with respect to um disagreement just please know that when there's a child study team and an iep team right an iep

129team represents other individuals including the parent but when those meetings come to a point where maybe resolution's not there ultimately an iep is presented and there's a process for a parent to either accept or go through a process of of disagreement and we work really hard not to get to that point but parents do need to know their rights and there's that document on prize the parents rights in special education and you have every right to challenge an iep every right but when that happens there is then legal consultation services you might seek support you might go to sepsa you might go to an advocate you may go to an attorney and and then there's a process to find resolution on behalf of your child and no one takes that from you right and we

130don't come from the perspective of it being adversarial but sometimes it becomes adversarial and we work really hard for it not to be but sometimes that happens and sometimes well intended individuals can just disagree as a parent you have every right to advocate for your child no one should ever tell you different right i just want to make sure i hit all the points i want to with respect to enrollment numbers once again um had i only been able to predict the pandemic you know and i i guess i should apologize to the community for failure to project the pandemic because we have seen major changes now if you want to go back to victoria newell which is a great reference victoria left the district in 2009 june of 2009 um there's there have been

131some factor changes that that have impacted uh our school community um there have been things that happened in the greater macro politics of our nation that have impacted um individuals wanting to come to the united states um and there's been a pandemic that has definitely stopped international travel for for a period of time and yes our our numbers have decreased in pre-pandemic we were still holding around 9 500. so in fairness yes we had some decrease in numbers but it's truly the last three two and a half school years that we've seen the most significant decrease in our enrollment and to me that's directly attributed to enrollment and i can i can i know for a fact what's happening at our elementary schools with enrollment i hope that reverses course i trust it will reverse

132course and i trust our public will come back as our community grows and the geopolitical landscape shifts with respect to international travel enrollment and i'm sure once the housing market hits and new units come online individuals will move into a community that values education because if i was watching this meeting i would look and go why move to wwp but we provide an outstanding educational opportunity and i know that at times there's disagreements in program and process and experience but but i would defy parents to say that the school system is not an excellent system that can always reflect upon and improve but that we work hard on behalf of our children and our staff so the disagreement behind me at me but when we talk about the teacher it's often but i love my

133kids teacher our teachers are outstanding our principals and our counselors and our child study team care deeply about your children and i believe the parents in the audience know that so the public disagreement let's not lose let's not lose faith in the professionals that serve your children each and every day and our goal is i believe mutual and that we want to see an improved opportunity for all kids and with that i would just say thank you for being here this evening thank you dr aderhold okay so again i will read this statement since we will need to go into closed executive session so whereas the open public meetings act authorizes boards of education to meet an executive session under certain circumstances whereas the open public meetings act requires the board to adopt a resolution

134at a public meeting to go into private session now therefore be resolved by the west winds or plainsboro regional school district board of education that it is necessary to meet an executive session to discuss certain items involving personnel and student matters uh wwp essay negotiations superintendent evaluation process and a hebrew view be it further resolve that any discussion held by the board which need not remain confidential will be made public as soon as feasible the minutes of the executive session will not be disclosed until the need for confidentiality no longer exists need further resolve that the board will not return to open session to conduct business at the conclusion of the executive session can i have then a we will now adjourn to closed session can i have a motion to do that liz and

135louisa all those in favor say aye aye thank you thank you again everyone for coming out we really appreciate it you