January 19, 2021 BOE Meeting

001so i'm on my regular uh web computer yeah let's let's stop that uh if you want us feel free to interject stop me if you've got a question um but unless i hear someone speak up i'm gonna move through uh the slides we do have some 2020 uh cases and information that we're going to get to um but let's get rolling all right you're all aware that the act has been around for a while came into being in 92 and the bottom line the purpose it was put into place was that as board members you had an elected officials the expectation is that you will not do anything say anything or have any type of conduct that might give the public a reason to not trust what you're doing the other piece uh the the

002the other uh premise of the act was it gave basic standards and guidelines that board members need to be aware of and school officials in general need to be aware of um and adhere to uh that that's important to understand the there are no i would like what i call ethics police out there uh these guidelines are are things that you are required to be aware of and self-police yourselves um the one thing i do like to point out is that i get this question a lot um are our charter schools under the same rules as the regular public schools and the answers yes charter schools in new jersey are public schools the act covers them as well and so charter school trustees and trustees is just a fancy word for board members they are

003held to the same standards as you as you all are uh within the act i uh one of the things too i like to tell new board members especially new board members who who come on and then it's usually a reminder to to the veterans is that if you if you have any doubt or concern about what your roles and your responsibilities are and what you should or should not be doing as board members uh the school ethic act pretty much spells that out as well as uh the ten tenets of the code of ethics so if you're if you're aware of those and you fall and you um allow your uh the way you conduct yourself to follow those principles you'll never get yourself in trouble i did as i mentioned this is part

004of cusack and it's identified in the second sec sentence of the governance indicator 13 the district board of education annually discusses the school ethics act i can tell you i had a board president um call me and because the ba was saying we need to do this and get this documented because we're going to be going through cusack we don't want to lose eight points and he called me to argue with me that you know my ba's telling me that we read the ten tenets at the reorg and we pass a resolution saying we're going to adhere to the 10 tenets and my ba's telling me that's not enough and i think they're wrong and i said well i'm going to tell you your ba is 100 right and i had to go through a

005whole explanation of the law the cusack etc before they realized they needed to get it scheduled so um the act itself set up the school ethics commission the 10 tenants that are part of the code of ethics became a part of the law nine years after the initial code came into being the act focuses on conflicts of interest it also established our our april 30th personal and relative and financial disclosure statements that were required to do every year and then it also established a mandatory training requirements mandatory training um you guys are veterans you know that you you your first three years you got to do governance one new board member orientation governance two and three the next two years of school finance and student achievement one of the things that's required for new members

006is qsac training as well as superintendent evaluation training and hip training all of those are conducted in the new board member orientation so anytime you get a new member as long as they go through new board member orientation you guys are in good would be in good shape as it relates to the statutory requirements that pop up in in cusack as it relates to those items because the training does get is a part of the curriculum that that new board member orientation covers uh re-elected members every every re-elected term the first year you have to go through governance four which is the legal update which includes uh as part of the legal update they harassment intimidation and bullying update as well so jesse i'm sorry yes no problem when we made you the host of

007this present you also uh gained control of the waiting room so i do apologize would you mind if you see anybody in the waiting room to admit them into the meeting okay i've got five people entered the waiting room so i guess i hit view you should be able to hit admit and then admit all oh yeah thank you very much jesse i apologize for that thank you no problem i will keep i i didn't even notice it popped up on the screen but i will now pay attention to it thank you very much no problem all right let's get back to this right now the sec nine-member board uh commission appointed by the governor for each member is appointed for a three-year term maximum of no more than five from any one political party

008and you can see the breakdown one of the things i'll point out in one of the uh earlier this month sessions uh one of the board members was was interested in seeing who was on the commission went to the website to look and the website was basically out of date um and um there was just about everybody's term had expired and so the person happened to reach out to the commission and and the administrative folks at the commission pointed out that yes the terms are expired but it's in the statute that the folks continue to serve until replaced by by the governor so you may see a term that's expired it may just be that those folks are continuing to serve while they wait to either be reappointed or the government governor selects someone else

009the sec has a lot of power but these are their two main responsibilities advisory opinions and ethics complaints if you're aware advisory opinion is is before violation if you uh you think you're going to be doing something you're not quite sure you need to you need to get an opinion first first first individual you should reach out to is your board attorney uh in accordance with your board bylaws and policies reach out to your attorney attorney will tell you whether they they believe your that action may be a problem as it relates to the act but you may not like the board attorney's opinion so you may say i don't like that that opinion i want a second opinion this is where you can go to get a second opinion uh request an advisory opinion

010on the doe website under the sec section it tells you how to do that they review advisory penny advisor opinions that are submitted to them they review on a monthly basis they meet monthly and then they will make a decision and we'll send you a response and that is a confidential communication between you and the sec but as the little yellow box says a public an advisory opinion can be made public if the sec if six members of the sec vote to make it public if they do make it a public advisory because they feel that every school official in the state should be aware of the decision they're making on that advisory opinion uh they they make it public but it's sanitized so when you read public advisory opinions you can't tell what district

011it comes from all you see are the facts and the sec's uh uh a judgment or opinion on on that advisory ethics complaints and that um one one other point on advisor opinions only school officials can file uh request an advisory opinion school officials are board members superintendents business administrators and other administrative personnel who have purchasing authority or have influence over uh um selection of contractors etc so um those you know only school officials can actually request a um an advisory opinion ethics complaint is just that somebody in the state believes that a a school official has violated the act they can go on follow the instructions on the sec website and file an ethics complaint if uh hold on i got some more folks entering let me hit middle there you go all right

012um if uh if uh if an individual is um has a complaint filed against them and if the complaint goes to the sec and ultimately gets to a hearing and after the hearing and deliberation the sec finds that the act was violated they can recommend one of these four penalties to the commissioner a reprimand which i call that the slap on the wrist basically you get an official letter from the commissioner saying hey yeah you violated the act don't do it again uh the next uh penalty would be a sensor uh that's the reprimand on steroids basically um the commissioner issues you a sensor that means the state board of ed um passes a formal resolution that has your your name in it um stating that you violated the act what you violated and then

013you become a permanent fixture in the records of the state of new jersey uh in addition in parallel the board uh your that the member is a is a board member on also is required to pass a resolution stating that their member has violated the act and because they violated that act that resolution gets voted and added to your minutes and is forever a part of the records in your local district uh the next penalty is a suspension the sec can recommend to the commissioner any uh length of time that they feel is appropriate for the violation and then ultimately the sec can recommend to the commissioner uh removal um this if you get to the point once a an ethics complaint is filed and it moves to the sec doesn't dismiss it and actually

014starts it into the hearing process you are now in a legal process because once the commissioner has has made an award if you if the member chooses to appeal you appeal to the appellate court division so so you are in an in an actual legal process at that point let's talk about some things that happened in 2020 uh with the sec uh there were 21 advisory opinions submitted to the sec in 2020 of those 21 advisory opinions only one was deemed uh necessary to make into a public advisory now i'll touch on that here in the following slide let me admit these two folks and there we go um as far as training violations mandatory training violations there were 22 cases last year submitted to the sec let me give you a real quick synopsis

015of how mandatory training works you all know you have mandatory training everybody has 365 days to complete their mandatory training by december 31st each year um at new jersey school boards which is the uh training organization by statute uh the sec uh has uh have has uh ngsba track we track everybody and we start to run lists of all of the um board members in the state who have not completed their mandatory training that's board members charter charter members etc who have not completed their mandatory training well we start we usually start to send heads up emails to those folks in in the november december time frame reminding them hey get your training done um but the but as always come december 31st there's a bunch of folks who haven't completed so we go out

016and start emailing those folks again recommending highly recommending hey you want to get this done the sec basically has asked our general counsel when when that initial list gets run do whatever you can to get members to get the training done because they don't want to have to deal with it basically um so we'll spend most of this month shooting emails to you know to bas and to board members saying hey get it done but at the end of january we typically cry uncle and we finalize the list so and then we send it to the sec last year there were 22 cases uh individuals who did not complete their training eight of those folks were removed from their boards by the commissioner i i i'm pretty i haven't looked these folks up or their

017situations but odds are very high that they probably were repeat offenders uh i don't think the sec takes the immediate action of removing you from the board um so it's odd like i said these are probably repeat offenders and eight of them were removed from their board four were suspended for 30 days each and then the remaining 10 received reprimands from the commissioner so you can see the sec and you know has been consistent over the last five or five years or so we've seen the numbers go up and they've had and they've basically been actually taking people off their boards uh school ethics violations 28 cases uh complaints ethics complaints were filed with the sec of those 28 24 were dismissed by the sec and then four cases actually went through the hearing process

018and ended up resulting in penalties and i'll touch on those here in a few minutes so the one advisory opinion that was issued last year uh in 2020 um is an interesting one superintendent's sister-in-law his brother's wife was a lunch aide in the district and was hired before the superintendent actually became superintendent in the district and the person was actually selected by the principals as the finalists for a secretarial position superintendent asked the sec if it was fair to prohibit a qualified invented employee to move into another role only because her brother-in-law is the superintendent well the sec took a look at it advised that if the superintendent recommended his sister-in-law for a promotion remember the finalists are recommending to the superintendent superintendent ultimately has to put that person on the agenda and make the

019recommendation to the board if scc said if the superintendent recommended his sister-in-law for a promotion he would violate the act and they decided a couple tenants and uh the the public uh paragraphs i mean and the public would would reasonably perceive this action was securing an unwarranted privileged privilege advantage or employment for an other type relative and would leave a justifiable impression that public trust was being violated so sec said based on um yeah the the fact that a relative can't be hired into the district and the fact that the person is your relative there could be a an impression to the public that well you know why the principals um recommended the uh this person for that position because they were the sister-in-law to the superintendent so that potentially could be perceived as an

020unwarranted privilege or or favor super else the sec also pointed out that because of the sis the sister-in-law being an employee in the district the superintendent must recuse himself from any discussion on the sister-in-law's employment as a lunch aide i said that this is a kind of an interesting one because uh my fellow fsrs and i have talked about this uh one of the things that was pointed out uh when the uh past advisories and the nepotism law talked about the fact that a superintendent can't recommend his relatives or board member relatives uh to employ uh to a position in the district but it said that if you were if they were already in the district they could continue before a board member became a board member or a superintendent was hired they could enjoy

021employment in the district like any other employee that means they could apply for other positions within the district etc this advisory opinion kind of throws uh throws water on that basically saying yes the person can stay employed in the district but it kind of uh poo poos the ability of that person to move into other positions or potentially you know get a promotion or anything of that nature so that this is an interesting one from our perspective because we see potentially a companion advisory opinion because coming from a board member somewhere down the line because if you think about it if let's say for example the board president um his you know brother worked in the district uh was it was in the working in the district before the the board president became a board

022member and became board president applies for a hey um you know they're they're a supervisor in the district and decides they're going to apply for uh an assistant principal position and that person ends up being the person that the superintendent is going to recommend to the board is there not also the possibility that the public could perceive the only reason this person is being recommended for that assistant principal position is because he's the board president's brother that same potential perception is out there so so we think that possibly somewhere down the road line there may be a companion to this coming from a board member um because you got the same kind of scenario whether it's a superintendent or or a board member um board member's relative so so just something to think about but

023that's the only um that's the only uh advisory opinion that was uh issued last year as a public advisory uh the ten tenants of the uh code of ethics gonna just flip through these first tenet as the elected officials you got to obey the laws you got to adhere to them whether you like them or not the second tenant basically gives you your marching orders what you do should be focused on the children your decisions that you make should be based on the educational welfare of children i tell boards all the time it's not about adults it's not about taxpayers it's about the children and the tenant b is is is the tenant that tells you that nowhere else in the uh code of ethics or the school ethics act does it say as board

024members you're responsible for uh answering to the taxpayers or the public in the decisions you make your your responsibility is to do what's best for children uh tennessee uh talks about three of your roles of function your roles and functions as a board policy making planning and oversight appraisal responsibilities tenant d car yeah yeah that you're going to carry out your responsibility not to administer the schools you hire your superintendent to administer schools but as a board you're responsible to work together to ensure that the district is being well-run senator e piggy backs on that and says authority rests with the board of education as individual board members you have no authority one you your authority comes from a legally advertised legally opened meeting such as the one that you're sitting in tonight you have

025power and authority to make decisions once megan adjourns the meeting you become john q public again and and your authority you have no authority as individual board members so it's important to remember not to make personal promises or take any private action individually that could potentially get you you in trouble and compromise the board lieutenant f um you're you're you you should not be surrendering in your independent judgment to any special interests or partisan groups and it this talks about not doing anything um and using your position in the schools to gain any any personal gain for yourself or friends family members lieutenant g addresses confidentiality uh obviously you know what wait whatever happens in the executive session you guys have a lot of confidential information that that you're privy to it's it needs to

026stay confidential until such time that that item becomes an action on the public agenda and the second half of that is the two-way communication responsibility to ensure that your district is providing the appropriate information to those who need it the stakeholders out there as well as being board members and having the pulse of your community understanding what the aspirations are of your community and bringing that back to your fellow board members and to your superintendent tenant h says that you're going to appoint the best qualified personnel available after the consideration of the recommendation of the chief administrative officer your superintendent so just um the bottom line is you can't do anything in personnel without the recommendation of the superintendent but i get get questioned a lot well don't we automatically have to say yes to

027personnel recommendations the answer is no you don't you have to have the recommendation of the superintendent before you can can consider it but you must make an informed vote and vote based on you you having done your homework and and making the decision that you feel is appropriate at the time but you can vote yes and you're allowed to vote no if you feel that that's appropriate but but any time you're voting no against a superintendent's recommendation we always warn board members make sure you're not doing it in an arbitrary or a capricious way it you've done you're doing it doing so based on your homework and and you're making an informed uh decision and vote and that i support and protect school personnel the proper performance of their duties i always remind board members

028board members should never be heard saying anything negative about staff school district staff um in public or anywhere else if you do have a concern you should be their cheerleaders basically promoting your staff if you do have a concern about a staff member then the appropriate uh vehicle is to use the chain of command and the chain of command for the board is one-stop shop you go to the superintendent provides your concern and then you're then you've done your duty as a board member superintendent is your personnel manager in the district he will handle any concerns you bring to them as he feels appropriate as the personnel manager um you should not expect the superintendent to double back and give you a report of what what he did if he invoked discipline etc etc that's

029out of your swim lane so your your responsibility is to bring the concern forward to the superintendent and then it's up to the superintendent to deal with it in the manner that he feels is appropriate and then tenant j refer all complaints to the superintendent act on complaints at public meetings only after failure of an administrative solution and i tell boards all the time that failure of an administrative solution it kind of be kind of is misleading language what it means is the chain of command has to has to have an opportunity to address stakeholder concerns and then if it gets to the top of the chain of command which is the superintendent and the person uh the individual is still not happy with the results then they at that point can request a hearing

030before the board and then at that point um you have an opportunity to hear the situation and then to deliberate and make a decision but it's important to understand that you should not be trying to solve individual problems you should be working to help them understand how to use the chain of command and um what your policy says on it as it relates to complaints and disputes and and every district has a policy board members should be very familiar with it so that you can help direct individuals who have it who have a concern or an issue on the proper way to to get their complaints handled use that instruct them how to use the chain of command all right let's talk about some of the sec commissioner's decisions a board member employed as a

031teacher in another district failed to disclose income received as president of that district's education association so you've got a board member who's a member who works in another district as a teacher is also the association president in that district and the district association pays a stipend to their board to their association president on the financial disclosure statement the board member failed to disclose that as a source of income um somebody filed an ethics complaint and the sec found that the member was in violation of the act as it related to the financial disclosure statement and recommended to the commissioner and the commissioner issued a sensor to that board member the second case a teacher parent sent an email to the full board about the superintendent's handling of an incident a board member intending to email

032the board used reply all so the parent teacher also received the email that included detail of the board's executive session discussion of the incident in this case the scc uh determined that there was a violation of confidentiality but they also noted that there's a potential violation of the open public meetings act obviously because by replying all you are by replying all you are and and you basically now have a dis board discussion taking place you have a quorum if uh assuming that the full board was on on that or at least a quorum and so there's a potential that if someone wanted to uh file with the state an open public meetings act violation that you might have additional issues that that district would have to deal with and potentially revolt resulting in fines that

033the uh that uh the district would pay we would be paying using taxpayer funds sec recommended uh on a reprimand uh as of as of this publication uh the commissioner's final decision hasn't yet been made available all right so the next one happens to be where there's actually if you remember i said there were four cases for 2020 there was also a late 2019 case that did not make our training last year we that we decided to include this year to make make sure you guys were aware of it a board member this is and this is it the 2019 sec case a board member posted content on a blog that contained deliberate repeated and unnecessary attacks of the qualifications salary and general employment of a tenured teacher in the district so this is a

034social media issue the sec found a number of violations uh you can see the tenants there this one resulted in a six-month suspension to the member basically uh there were some gross misrepresentations that were meant to interfere with negotiations um the board member did you know did a bunch of smearing of the staff member which you know drastically um compromise the board from the perspective of its its integrity remember as a board member you are what you say on in social media um does have an impact people know if they especially since they know you as a board member um it also harmed the uh staff members ability to properly perform uh the staff members duties i mean you know being attacked on social media by a board member really doesn't do a lot for

035your credibility with parents etc so um the one thing on this case the uh the member excuse me during the hearing tried to argue that his rights that he had rights as a private citizen right and that he did put the required disclaimer if you remember um that when we talked about social media there was a there's an advisory opinion an old advisory opinion tied to letters of the editor and what what you're allowed to do that's that disclaimer is the disclaimer that he's talking about where if you're going to say something such as writing a letter to the editor or posting something on on a social media site that you're required to identify yourself as a board member site that you uh you are not not speaking on behalf of the board and that

036you're not authorized to speak on behalf of the board and that what you're what you're saying is your opinion as a as a private citizen and then your sec has said you're required to also then anything you say must not breach confidentiality and must be the truth that's the disclaimer well this board member claimed that i did use that disclaimer and that when i was i was exercising my rights as a private citizen but um yeah and that he wasn't speaking on behalf of the word but the sec in looking at all of the blogs and the and what was stated noted that the board member routinely referenced that he was a board member through during throughout the blog so really wasn't convincing to the sec that he wasn't speaking uh as a private that

037he was speaking only as a private citizen so so here's a good example of social media getting somebody in trouble and the things that they said uh on on their posts and got getting themselves in trouble so so just this one happens to be a good one that folks need to pay attention to as as a reference point uh when dealing with social media and as i said commissioner issued this person a six month suspension they uh i'm sorry can you let people in oh i don't see anybody on my screen okay nobody popped up okay i must miss understood thank you yeah i've been hitting them as they popped up so let me let me do one quick thing i'm going to minimize just to make sure there's nothing sitting here nope i don't

038see anything saying admit anyone so all right now the next case the commissioner revoked a district's send receive relationship with an out-of-state district identifying an in-state district to instead receive the district student so this district had an arrangement with an out-of-state district for some of their students for whatever programs they were that the students needed with that district the commissioner stepped in said that yep you need to do that in-state and and identify the district that could take their students this decision the commissioner's decision impacted the board president's child so the president fully participated in actions that resulted in the passing of a board resolution to continue the relationship with the out-of-state district with tuition to be paid by the district a blatant disregard for the commissioner's decision and a definite conflict of interest in

039this case the uh the commission the sec found the violation but they only recommended a sensor in the r and the reason was because by the time this case was heard the board member had resigned and had left the board and was no longer on the board so because the person was no longer on the board there couldn't have been a suspension or a removal um but so the highest recommendation that they could make to the commissioner to put it into the official records was a sensor but the sec did make it clear that if the member had been still on the board they would have been recommending removal uh to the commissioner and this the commissioner's final decision isn't yet available so we're not sure where the commissioner's head is at on this one

040yet and then the last case a board member attended an all expenses paid conference offered by a potential vendor that the member introduced to the district based on a pre-existing relationship fcc found a definite violation member took actions that were unrelated to his duties there was no reason for a board member to take an all-expenses-paid trip to go and look at a product the actions were potentially compromising to the board because you know you may have made it tough for the board now to be able to actually contract with this vendor and the board member used his position to gain a benefit for himself right a free out of state trip uh this uh the sec recommended and the commissioner uh award well actually the sec recommended removal but they uh s the commissioner uh

041ended up um providing a six-month suspension the sec recommended removal because they wanted to send a message to deter other school officials from accepted accepting any kind of gifts commissioner amended it to a six-month suspension the board member is appealing but while he's appealing he's um serving his suspension so uh here's a an ethical question there is a board resolution to approve the hiring of the architecture firm that you work for can you participate in the vote hopefully everybody's shaking their head no because you're correct you work for a firm and if that firm is a pl has submitted a proposal to be to be your architect of record you definitely do not want to be involved in the discussion the review of the proposals or the vote um so and then if they do

042hire them you definitely will recuse yourself from any activities associated with the firm and the work that the firm's doing ties to conflicts of interest which the act primarily covers these are those key areas that if any if any time you look at a an action or that you're going to vote on if it if there's a potential that any of these may cause you a problem um to you or immediate family members or relatives you should recuse yourself step away or definitely get an opinion if you think you want you can vote verify that with your attorney but like we always like to tell folks when in doubt you know step out step away from that vote don't don't be involved and it's better to not vote than to be to actually take a

043vote that's a violation or take a vote that's perceived by the public that you have a conflict right and the uh the immediate family member definition by the sec by the school ethics act the spouse or dependent child residing in the same household but we also know that over the years uh the sec has in their reviews of advisory opinions have taken on and to expand the the definition of relative and they are using the nepotism law as the basis for what qualifies as a relative and as you can see quite a few more people are involved uh related to you that could cause you a conflict and it's not just you you you and your relatives but it's also your spouse or partners by blood marriage or adoption so as you're aware that aperture

044is pretty pretty large and wide on the number of uh relatives individuals that potentially who may be involved in education somewhere that could cause you a potential conflict or relatives based on a conflict of interest but uh uh situation could get you in trouble all right all that i got to admit you all right um okay um another ethical question the district has an opening for a guidance counselor it would be a perfect job for your nephew who lives two towns away can the district hire your nephew hopefully folks are saying i don't think so because the answer is no the board is meeting to discuss the superintendent's performance evaluation your spouse is an aide in the district can you participate in the discussion the answer to that is no you have a relative in

045the district you are out of any personnel actions related to um the to anyone in the chain of command of your relative it goes back to the hiring of personnel uh superintendent may not hire a relative of a board member or of the superintendent so that's the premise if the relative already works in the district then you've got other conditions that have to be met you know an administrator can have direct control or authority over a relative board member may not take part in the employment matters of the superintendent or any other supervisors in the chain of command of that relative and then if if if there's a search for a superintendent involved and you have a relative in district you as a board member are totally out of a superintendent search any aspect of

046it including the actual vote to hire the new superintendent so so relatives potentially especially those in living in the district can cause you a conflict board member i'm sorry the board is voting to approve the memorandum of agreement with the local education association you are a teacher in another district can you participate in the vote i had a board member tell me that this is a trick question once they saw the answer the answer is no um for the vote on the memorandum of agreement and so if you remember there's a advisory opinion a a2417 which has a nice chart it talks about relatives as it relates to the collective bargaining process so in this case the board member him or herself works out of district it's the second a line in the chart works

047out of district the basic premises can't participate in the negotiations there's a no in that column but this the last column vote to ratify the contract has a yes but the yes also has um that below it that double asterisk you can see the double asterisk talks about after the memorandum of agreement the salary guides and the total compensation package are attained those are three different pieces that go into the actual contract that ultimately gets ratified so the memorandum of agreement normally establishes the percentages you agree to the language you agreed to etc and the board the association of votes on that the board votes on that once the memorandum of agreement is agreed to then based on the percentages the salary guides get developed then once the salary guides are agreed to any other

048compensation package items are finalized and then that's the entire package memorandum of agreement with language changes etc salary guides all the compensation that's what makes up the final contract that gets ratified so as a board member who is a teacher in another district you should not be voting on the memorandum of agreement the salary guys that get presented and any other compensation items that may be presented to the board that the board votes on what you're allowed to vote on is the ratification of the final contract so like i said someone said that's a trick question i saw a memorandum of agreement i said yeah i can i can vote no the issue is you've got to have all those other pieces done before you can vote on the contract um one of the only

049thing i'll point out on this chart is that if you have a relative in education and they're in another district um the real the question that you need to answer is what is their role in that association in that other district if they are in some type of quote leadership position heightened involvement position such as president vice president grievance chair building rep um you know those type of positions where they have they're more than just a regular ranking file member uh then you need to discuss that with your uh with the attorney because you may have a conflict as it relates to uh your collective bargaining process in your district doctrine of necessity bottom line here is that if you have there are certain votes that require the full membership uh and uh to vote

050and a certain number of the full membership for that to be a legal vote if you have too many conflicted members that you can't get to that type of a legal vote then you have to invoke the doctrine of necessity and your be your attorney has to pass a resolution get it approved by the ecs and then all of those conflicted members can now take that vote and only that vote volunteerism as you all are aware over the years the advisory opinions have impacted the types of volunteer activities that you're allowed to participate in as a board member um the biggest thing is this next chart gives you hopefully the cheat sheet or checklist to help you if in determining if any volunteer activity that you're doing in the district is appropriate for you as

051a board member these seven questions have seven answers in green there if you ask these seven questions and you get the same answers your your your your volunteer activity is a safe one that you can do as a board member if you get a different answer then the seven answers listed here then you need to have a conversation with your board attorney uh to determine because it uh what your situation is because there's a high probability that that's a volunteer activity that you can't do as a board member so use this as your guide and it will help you determine which which volunteer activities in your district you can and cannot do interviews um basically the fcc is frowns on any boards being involved in the interview process there is one interview process that you

052own as a board and that is the hiring of a superintendent but they have made one advisory they've issued one advisor that does make an exception and it says that if you are if the boy if the district is looking to hire uh executive type administrative positions such as assistant superintendent business administrator uh even a principal those are upper level leadership positions if um the superintendent desires to have board participation then up to two board members may participate in that process um but the bottom line is it has to be it's only at the invitation of the superintendent uh the superintendent owns the hiring process if the superintendent chooses not to have board participation in in those types of position um uh uh hot uh interviews etc then that's the superintendent's choice uh you can't

053make the superintendent include you um but the other piece is if the superintendent does invite board members to participate the board members must follow the processes that the superintendent has put in place for the hiring of that position you can't go rogue and do your own thing and then last thing on this chart exit interviews people leave the district typically these principals and superintendents hold exit interviews bottom line is board members are never included or involved in any exit interviews and then wrapping up um the this time of the year is the time we tell boards hey i if you've i you should take an inventory of your relatives who are in education or employed in the district and then you should also take an inventory of your volunteer activities within the district and provide

054those lists to your board attorney and ask for an opinion and the board attorney will will let everyone know you know where the land mines are so that you don't step on them um so we recommend that that's a good thing to do uh reorg time on that way once you've got an official um recommendation and opinion from your board attorney the entire board knows where everyone stands and you're able to help each other stay out of trouble if you do have concerns or questions ethical concerns ques and questions uh your first the first person we recommend that you contact is your board attorney following your board uh process for who can and uh who can uh contact the attorney and how board members get permission to contact the attorney um and then if you're

055not happy like i said with the opinion you get from the board attorney you can always reach out to the sec and and submit an advisory opinion request and then the last thing i'll point out is if you guys get a ton of information from school boards uh something i get i get comments on routinely i can't read everything that comes from school boards i end up dumping a lot of stuff one thing we would recommend you get when you get your school board notes uh in the in your email take a look at the table of contents to see if there's an advisory opinion update because our attorneys attend every sec meeting and to see what's going on see what cases get get addressed as well as are there any uh public advisory opinions

056being issued anytime a public advisory opinion's issued our attorneys immediately do an article for the next school board notes so that everybody all the membership is informed uh hey there's a new advisor opinion out there we all need to be aware of because remember the minute the advisory public advisory opinion hits the scc website all of us are accountable to it whether we know it's there or not so so at least read check the table of contents and look for an advisory opinion if there's no advisor opinion update st i would still recommend reading the rest of the document but don't dump don't dump it until you at least know there's no advisory opinion update and with that that's my story i'm sticking to it uh the last page here has a links to the

057um the cases that i talked about and to the advisory opinion website i will be sending pdf version of this to to your ba for distribution to the board members so you'll have all these links if you actually want to see the full cases uh on that that that i discussed during this evening and with that i'm done i will open it up for questions any questions that you may have and i'll stop sharing my screen anybody have any questions first for jesse all right all right well i appreciate the opportunity yes jesse before you hop off could you just if you could right click on my name uh there's the three dots in my little box and then can you pass host back to me sure can thank you sir thank you jesse thank

058you jesse make the host yes all right thank you all right hey guys thanks a lot have a good meeting and hopefully your your new board year's getting off to a good start thanks jesse thank you take care all have a good night all right that was fun um i saw in the um email there was this thing that we gotta sign and send back to patty right yes yes how do you want us to get it back to you patty do you want to decide it and scan it some board members okay yeah i think if you want to electronically sign it and send it back that's fine too um whatever you guys want to do i can run out to the sidewalk and meet you whatever you want you just let me know

059all right well i plan on scanning mine and sending mine back that's fine that's absolutely fine all right that was fun okay next presentation everybody ready for round two we have a presentation on stop it solutions the anti-bullying software and our presenter will be casey mckean thank you miss chamberlain good evening board of education good evening tabernacle community members as well as uh educators who are here tonight there's a lot of you here tonight good to see you so i'm going to take a little bit of time like megan just mentioned i'm going to review some of the features of the stop it application as well as potential benefits if we decide to adopt it as a district also the second half of the presentation you'll be able to see i was able to reach

060out and highlight some feedback that i obtained from other school districts who have utilized stop it for a period of five years or longer so that'll be the second half of the presentation we'll get some of the feedback from those districts so first what is stop it obviously it's an online reporting tool it's mobile app based our students will utilize this to report incidents to school contacts and it's fully anonymous so we know from previous board of ed meetings and we know the anti-bullying bill of rights you have to have that mode of anonymous reporting within your school district within the buildings in order to be in compliance so stop stop it does satisfy that obviously there's other ways to satisfy that stop it is kind of a you know a technological way to satisfy

061that requirement but perhaps and this is my opinion perhaps more importantly if you do not have a mode of anonymous reporting that's effective you may never know the issues that may be present or possibly even plaguing your school district so it's a way to really be in tune it's a way to kind of keep that pulse of your district and your building so you're able to respond effectively to reports next you'll see there's that messenger feature so two-way so what happens is administrator school contacts will get that anonymous report from a student but then we have the ability to reach out to that anonymous reporter in order to gather more information utilizing the two-way messaging feature and again this is a way depending on whatever that report may be we may want to utilize this

062to get more information and this will drive the way that we respond to that report so the goals the goals of the stop at application obviously you want to deter and mitigate if you institute to stop it application the thought process is you know the entire district knows it's out there maybe we're going to be able to uh kind of deter and reduce potential negative student behavior also we want to remove potential barriers that students may face for reporting so we all know students say the student language is snitch students don't want to be snitches they don't want to be that individual that classmate that tells another classmate so stop it is a is kind of a seamless way to report and take away that aspect that barrier another barrier especially now with our hybrid

063learning style students are alternating days in the buildings they're here for a half uh half school day they're here they're in they're learning and they're out there may not be that avenue to report as there would in a traditional school year so again this is just another avenue to make reports if students feel necessary provide an avenue for students to reach out for help if necessary so either for themselves or peers they may want to report that for a peer who's in crisis or general assistance or maybe experiencing a personal struggle the one that sticks out of me is that in crisis we really want to be there for our kids now more than ever given our current situation with the global pandemic also the goal you want to continually enhance that school culture and

064climate when i started in september it was easy to see that there is a a very positive school culture and climate here in tabernacle however you can't rest on those laurels you have to be aware that school climate and culture is continually changing it's continually shifting and again the stop and application is a potential avenue to keep that pulse of the district and provide interventions when necessary some other features of the application we have that real-time reporting and that allows us as school personnel to react in real time gives us that real-time awareness students have that ability to upload screenshots videos text messages and again this just aids in our ability to respond to incidents very seamless seamlessly uh student privacy pledge so stop it is a member of this so this is uh educational

065platforms and applications they become members of this and it's a pledge that there are strict standards regarding the use of student data uh can only be used for authorized educational purposes so it's not like facebook or some internet websites that are going to take that information that data and then share it with third parties stop it it's an educational platform part of the student privacy pledge that will not occur then you see we have the all day all night 24 7 365 reporting hotline and incident management center so this is managed by trained crisis agents through the stop it application they're available to review reported incidents inform school contacts like sean melissa or myself and escalate if necessary to law enforcement enforcement or a counseling service if that student may be in crisis so when

066these incidents get escalated school contacts are were emailed where texts were called they may send smoke signals if they have to but they find every way possible to contact us and let us know so we're always on call we stop it we're always there to react to student issues and then provide interventions and if we're not there then that incident management center is there that is uh that is managed by trained crisis agents and lastly you have that ability to deactivate account um so there may be a specific account that maybe you misused the application maybe there's a flurry of false reports from one specific account we're able to two-way message that account reinforce the appropriate use of the account if it's still not used properly we can deactivate it and then reactivate it any

067time [Applause] this is the portion with feedback from other districts so this is feedback from stop it facilitators in order to get a deeper perspective in the stop it and its use in schools and again these are various districts i was able to get a hold of um and they've used the stop it application for five years or more it has been around that long i was surprised so negative experiences is one thing i ask this district says there's initial false reports but they were handled quickly if we received multiple from a single source they were shut out so that highlights that deactivation feature second quote here make sure administration is on board with responding to messages that come in at night and on weekends reports increase at the launch and then level off so

068this is that again that 24 7 365. we have to be there for our kids and respond when necessary whether it's saturday night sunday morning whatever it may be and lastly there you see knock on wood we have not had any negative experiences and if we do choose to adopt this i would hope that that would be our feedback if ever asked false reports this is a it's a worry of mine as an administrator i'm sure shawn and melissa as well with this application because there's not that face-to-face reporting there's a worry there's a fear of these false reports so one that's one thing i asked so this district said there were very minimal false reports we reinforced and emphasized appropriate use throughout the school year we only had to deactivate one user and six

069years of using the application so here this district um took it upon themselves to teach and then reinforce throughout the year the appropriate use of the application and i foresee if we do adopt it that's something that we would do next after the initial launch here we see the trend there was a flurry of false reports but it stopped quickly so that in my opinion that may be the novelty aspect when something new is instituted to students they test the boundaries they want to play with a little bit try it out that could be one of the reasons for the false reports and then that last quote here from this district initially we had some false reports in the middle school things like mr l does this really work i utilize the messenger feature to

070remind students to use it for its intended purpose so again this is that teaching and learning this individual the school administrator utilized the messenger feature to teach students the appropriate use of the technology some benefits so our first district here said we were surprised at the number of reports relating to student well-being so not only is this a tool for hib it's a tool for student well-being it's a tool to report whatever it may be it allows for the school to be proactive student surveys tell us how they feel how they feel safe by having another avenue to report issues or statements of harm and you're going to see this word proactive this is a trend here in these benefits uh we've been able to prevent conflicts by responding quickly it allows you to be

071proactive at a higher level so again you're responding to incidents before they get to that escalated level that's the whole concept give us some information let's run with that information and then stop these potential incidents before they get escalated some more feedback on benefits there is accountability when things occur we were able to be aware that students are having issues which allows us to be again proactive rather than reactive and lastly here stop it has helped on a number of occasions we were able to identify a student who was in a very bad time in their life with the info we were able to step in and assist and i think now that more than ever we really need to be highly in tune with our students psychological and mental well-being there is environmental trauma

072out there due to covid due to the pandemic and stop it could potentially provide another avenue for us to serve our students and now i will open up to questions i will do my best to respond effectively to your questions mr mckean um what um size districts and what grades were they for the ones that you're comparing to here uh one district was a k to eight uh the other three i had four districts who gave me responses were k to 12. uh size fluctuated small like us the k to eight and it went up to about two thousand students max and then for the ones the one that was the key to eight what kind of answers were you getting for them since that's a better comparator for us answers you got they had

073all positive feedback all their answers were positive in fact they were one of the ones who who mentioned administrators kind of have to be uh very ready on the weekends to get reports that was one of their feedback uh pieces that they gave but it was all um it was all effective feedback positive feedback they did mention the flurry of false reports as well so we're realists we expect that that's going to happen but we're equipped to respond to it okay thank you i have a quick uh two quick questions um what grades are um are you looking to use this with obviously with our you know it would be district-wide implementation and again that would be showing an administration's decision after sitting down and really talking through it right now we're at the beginning

074stages but obviously it's more effective with our older students okay and what involvement will the parents have in this as far as giving permission or whatever so stop it provides a ton of parental resources it provides a kind of an unrolling plan for you to utilize as a district if you choose to there's parental feedback nights informational sessions for for parents that would be held virtually obviously mailings that could go home things posted on the website so parents are fully aware of all the information and all of the features of stop it prior to instituting it thanks um casey just so fast i went to double check or maybe sean i'm not sure which um this was brought to you one from our gif so our joint insurance fund and as a result if we

075were to adopt it there's no additional cost to the district and it's being recommended by the jeff am i remembering correctly that's correct yep in fact uh one of the questions we had a liability question right we don't want to put ourselves in a position where we're exposed to any type of litigation so obviously stop it promotes it they say it actually reduces your liability but we didn't want to stop there because that's the company's opinion so we reached out to the gif they basically said our our insurance coverage is not restricted in any way from using stop it in fact our reinsurer promotes it to all 45 of their school pools across the country as a highly effective risk management tool so that's our local that's our gif that's their statement so it actually

076reduces our potential for litigation casey how many hip incidents do we have on an average school year tabernacle is amazing not many at all brian that's a great question i believe last year there was two total both unconfirmed sean i know i'm new to the district but i believe that's my recollection we had three last year i believe but i think one of the things with a lot of districts have said is that sometimes it takes something like this to get people to be willing to come forward on issues so those are the ones that have been brought up to administration brought to our attention um it doesn't necessarily mean that there aren't things that are going on that people haven't come forward with as well so what is our current process for anonymous saber

077reports there really isn't a true anonymous hib reporting system right now that's one of the problems does this app track ip addresses or where they came from or it just goes kind of as casey talked about it handles all their anonymous things on their end um into their privacy pledge so you say privacy pledge is that is that in compliance with federal and state privacy laws or is it simply a pledge like hey we promise we'll do our best while we feel compliance in a pledge or is it is it in compliance with the law i mean the same privacy pledge implies to me that it's it's less than a legal standard it's a it's a marketing employee no it's it's in compliance with the law that's why it's recommended from the gis and the

078other districts that use it as well so so it doesn't track ip addresses nothing gets captured on where it comes from or now a lot of the a lot of these uh this these uh platforms they use things there's no resale there's nothing like that they keep it only there's there's nothing like that in terms of tracking of what's going on or what's going on for that perspective so and the reviews on like common sense education it says it's unclear whether the product displays personal information publicly and it's unclear whether user-created content is filtered for personal information before being made publicly visible i i don't have the the comfort you guys have that this is truly private i mean you have the ability to deactivate somebody so you must be able to identify a user

079somehow you want to be able to deactivate them so you have you have a one-to-one relationship between the applications back-end and the user interface to be able to deactivate that user so there must be some identifying means of knowing who to deactivate and what's to stop that person from simply reactivating that same account or reinstalling it without that sort of tracking mechanism it defies logic to say you can deactivate somebody without knowing you know by some serial number some ip address some mac address what's there i mean mac addresses get passed across networks openly i mean i can open up my browser right now and tell you every single device my network what its mac address is these are these are published and a mac address is unique it's a you know the kind of

080a dna for an electronic device or a social security number so they're the fact that it's purely anonymous i find hard to believe in this day and age when nothing's really anonymous um and also the phrase logic that it's hardly anonymous you wouldn't be able to block it out because you wouldn't know who you were blocking them there is the ability within the system even though there is the anonymous aspect you can use you can create a user-defined field to allow someone to put their name in if they so choose so i'm not sure when they're talking about that aspect if it's from the people that have identified themselves um or if it's the anonymous aspects i'm not mr mckinnon or talk to the other districts i'm not sure if that was something they made

081clear to you yeah but i mean just the overview tonight talked about you know ability to deactivate an account that means it has to be identifiable um what if something comes across here yeah is the people who are running stop it are they mandatory reporters yes so at what point do they have to vet something before they turn it over to the law authorities legal authorities they actually have a system in place where they tried as soon as they get something it comes to us if they can't get us um at night after they cannot respond to one of our phone calls they see something they have to then go to the police department with that and they do have the state police a lot linked into their account as well so so if a

082report comes in it says uh you know mr so-and-so touched me in an inappropriate manner how is that vetted i mean so you've been now a mandatory reporter you know has to call the state police and say we we have a report here on mr so-and-so that uh you know some inappropriate behavior happened uh who's the accuser we don't know what are the details we don't know i mean what point do you have to turn that over and we all know today it's not about the the end results the accusation you know especially if that gets into you know the press and accusation is made it doesn't matter what happens on the back end we're talking people's reputations livelihoods everything else on some completely anonymous app combined with a mandatory report of status yeah it's

083just to that i don't believe is truly anonymous because it's truly anonymous you wouldn't be able to deactivate it or track anything but to follow on to what what brian is is asking about sean last month i think it was last month it's all a little blurry um last month i think i had asked you if you could get an answer about the ability of the local police to unmask the anonymity if necessary did you get an update on that i i did not i'm sorry because i i think i think that will get at the crux of what is being asked here i mean there's an additional add-on here just out on here i think we're guessing a lot here and i'm not saying that that's on us to know how this all works

084and i don't really expect casey or sean you to have a 100 on this yet but maybe there's we should be bringing in someone from the company to speak to the operations committee or to speak to a smaller group so these questions can kind of get answered because i mean i know you guys aren't tech experts that's i don't expect you to be but maybe that would be a better way to get at some of these answers as opposed to kind of wasting our time here i mean the additional issue i mean you guys are mandatory reporters so if somebody says something it turns out not to be true we've now put ourselves in a position as a district of perhaps being the publisher of that information and from a defamation point of view we

085now joined at the hip with the person who did it brian i'm just going to say if they get an anonymous note in a dropbox in the school making an allegation against a staff member they are mandatory reporters you know i i think maybe to kevin's point maybe to bring them in to talk to ed tech um or something like that might make sense but once again um you know the district itself is a mandatory reporter um any staff member is a mandatory reporter if it hits an administrator's desk as a board member i expect them to take appropriate action to investigate and to protect our students that is their legal obligation period this application overall just seems to be a a wonderful solution in search of a problem that we don't have and it's

086right we do have a problem with that because we don't have sufficient weight for mandatory reporting or for anonymous reporting so we do have a problem so just kidding and we also this is one of the things you're harping on one issue but i want to make sure that we're being very clear the other aspect that casey was talking about the other districts mentioned that's a big part of this is also providing an avenue as we talked about last time for students in crisis there is 24 7 365 support for students in crisis they do not currently have we are right now dealing with a situation where all of our students aces level their trauma scores are growing based on the situation that we're experiencing with the pandemic this provides them immediate access to someone

087who is a counselor enables us to put additional resources on there enables them to get them help if so needed so i know under you know we can focus on the what if negatives but i think we also think about the what if positives those students that are out there that could be needing something like this a way to get help that they can provide that for them at any point in time so i understand your concerns in terms of the anonymity aspects but we also have a requirement going back to the megan's point anything that's reported to us the the liability the requirements for a school district and for anybody is to report ours is not to investigate ours is to report so if somebody has a claim or saying something to us about

088some sort of going back the idea of an institutional abuse situation it is our job to immediately report that it is not our job to investigate that and that's where other districts in a handful of districts with their comments you know there's thousands of districts in the uh you know in the region how does shimon do with south hampton we keep talking we have a problem with the the ability to anonymously file these um i i don't believe in my heart that this is the this app is the best way to do that what are the other towns around us doing it what are the olympic summit districts doing uh does this lenape regional use this kind of application yeah and the brian the following to that is this is not going to solve our

089problem no this is going to create more problems this is this this is not going to meet the entire um you know all the students this is if we don't have a system in place that anybody can do it we have kids that don't have smartphones until they hit sixth seventh eighth grade so does that mean we're going to train them and how to do it on the chromebooks that they have um also the younger kids that don't aren't as technologically savvy this is a this i think it's it's a it's a i mean taking out brian's concerns i think it's a great tool for helping our kids uh report but it doesn't solve the undermine issue which is we don't have a holistic anonymous way for kids to to and that's where the counselors

090come into play and that's where all that so i think we need to solve our first problem then we can also look at this to enhance a program that we currently i guess don't have but currently we have a website where anyone can go and file something correct casey like have you looked at that yeah i believe there's a pdf document or i don't believe there is a pdf document on the internet uh you can print that out from home fill it out and then submit it anonymously there used to be an electronic version there's an electronic version you can go it doesn't work i tried it right we fixed it doesn't work that's what i'm getting at because we've got it it's not working so add in an app to it's not going to

091make the other one work any better or different when i agree with steve's point a lot of our kids are not going to have any access unless they're using their chromebook or excuse me their macbook in order to utilize any form of this website or app they just don't have it so i mean i i'd be on the other side here but so we're saying we have a possibility of an a program that will provide our students whether it's saturday morning over the when there's an emergency what access to it or at least some students and instead of providing an opportunity for a subset additional opportunity for subsidy of our students at no cost to the district at the suggestion of our insurance group we're going to say no because our kindergartners and first graders

092may not have access to do this no what we're going to say is let's get a program to fix our problem and then let's use this to enhance but don't come at us and say this is going to solve all our problems we haven't solved the core fundamental problem you know of that we don't have anonymous reporting i'm tired of we're coming up with technological stuff for bad problems bad processes bad programs fix the program fix the process put something fundamental that takes care of all our students and not just some of them and then give me a follow-on go oh by the way i'm gonna enhance this and make it better at which point now we're reaching more people but what we're going to do is get so focused on the app that we're

093going to forget about a whole section of kids and we can't do that and we're saying we'll get to that later no let's fix that first i i would say even the younger kids they have chromebooks they would have access um but more importantly to me we're looking at cutting off our nose to spite our face like you're making a video experience and we're we're worrying about whether it's mast or not i i you know that's what our insurance company is saying they find it to be protective of us have we consulted the board's attorney about this i know it's coming at the recommendation of the insurance company but that's a different conversation and and i'm looking at this and i see a lot of liability i see solving a a problem for part of

094the student body for part of the part of the district not touching another part where there's still a gap you still need to address and in solving it for part of the group i think you have exposure for other issues by bringing this in for instance 24 7 reporting and access to an admin who there's there's going to be time that is um for lack of a better word burned in trying to reach someone perhaps on a weekend and what is what is the cost of that time it's going to be situation dependent and outcome dependent and you know we all want to be accessible we all want to do the right thing we all want to help but i i just i personally feel like there is risk to the administration and to the

095district by doing this and i think you need i think you need to get an opinion from the attorney also consider even if we save one child isn't it worth it i mean you could use that scare factor to justify almost anything i mean let's be uh a little more thorough in the evaluation but we're making a video game uh experience out of you know making potentially very serious accusations against people in an anonymous fashion in a in an app that i don't think practically addresses two-thirds of our students anyway and to say they have access on the chromebook so that gets rid of the anonymity because now using a district device to do something that can be you know tracked it's it's right how many of how many of the young students have the

096availability to get on you know if if they that uh form becomes uh electronic that you can fill out anonymously how many of our young students have the ability to do that or even know that it's there well how many would be doing it on their own i would think some of our students are going to be talking to mom and dad right and but if it's a crisis situation where a child doesn't want to go to mom or dad how are they going to do this i don't think it's just i don't think we're just talking about hib incidences i think we're talking about a lot of different incidences you know i have a grandson right now who is suffering from depression and this pandemic and virtual learning is not helping him he may

097not go to his parents but he might go to something like this and reach out for help you know it's not always going to be the parents that are going to be doing the reporting if you'd like we will reach out to stop it to see if we can get a representative from the company to answer your questions in one of our committee meetings because it seems like there's a lot more questions that board does have you know obviously we're doing research to figure out something and i do not think that the representation of this as a video game platform is fair at all too just because something is online doesn't mean it's a video game or making any sort of uh joking light of this this is something i'm not making any joke in

098light of this whatsoever shown i mean i i have serious concerns about this being used for to to conduct bullying for nefarious purposes and it's a that's not being proper uh accord and there are methods available and if we're looking for a an app or a solution for a child in distress that's very different than an app where we can report stuff anonymously um one of the different functions you're trying to marry together to sell it and it's uh the two different functions sean can you clarify i think earlier before a lot of the q a happened here i think i heard you say that while it is an anonymous system the student does have the opportunity to enter a name you are correct there are there are fields that the school district can create

099when you're putting in such as your name so you can enter it anonymously but if you decided to so put in that your name you could do that yeah so i i to me that is just ripe for abuse well that is actually part of the hiv thing because again when you're doing a harassment intonation bullying investigation you want to find out and meet with individuals that are witnesses um to said potential alleged situation so having those names in there isn't necessarily alleged isn't right for abuse as much as i look at it as that's a way to help you in that cost but again like i said there are multiple fields that they talk to us about and the like well here's my scenario sean is i i submit an anonymous entry that says

100mr henski was mean to me we're mean to another student and you signed it as but you signed it as brian lexus exactly right you're you're opening the door for abuse and bullying by per by having that field in there right it's either anonymous or it's not and i think you need to kind of come to grips with that part of it okay and it was a history in this district of you know uh bullying under fake names and false names and doing it and uh you know i mean i have the the glitter bomb still um this is not lost on me that uh you know you're making it easier i think that the fact that that wasn't it that was an adult i don't know i think you're you're reading into this more

101than what they think the return received from the other districts indicates that they had a quote flurry of activity early says that maybe maybe the kids maybe this is not the right system because they're going to want to abuse it they're going to want to test it and look to vicki's point because i think we've kind of glossed over a point which is we really what are we holistically doing this is a great tool it could be a great tool but what are we holistically doing as a district to help our kids get through the tough times that they are right now and to provide them as many opportunities to get help not just one not just a nap not just you know i mean anything possible and and that's really what that's that's what

102we i think we need to be focusing on if we get to the point where we talk to stop it and we're satisfied to a certain degree where we can move forward with this fantastic but you know like i said going back to vicki's point i think we need to just holistically be looking at how we're doing it i know you guys started out the school year very much um engaged with with the with the children and talking about um getting school schooling and pandemic but as we're going longer and longer in this and now us being out of school again um there's no end in sight you know when you know how are we going to continue that's the kind of stuff i think we need to be talking about and sean i'm sure

103you and in casey melissa are dealing with that all the time you have a plan that's the kind of stuff that we need to keep reiterating to everybody is what we can do to help our help our kids so in previous years there was uh i don't remember the exact term but it was basically a peer mentoring program or like a buddy type program is that still active and and if it is how is it being run under hybrid schedules that is something that is has been one of the challenges this year dan on running a program the way that right it would have been um so we've done some modifications and different things and we do a lot of it has been um the amazing job of our counseling team that they really have

104taken a lot you know i know even doing like we've done every week or most weeks at least as our families check in that's really helped us to also identify those families that need at times is there for the parents who are identifying their children who need additional supports and therefore providing it that way too um and then therefore the counselors can link those students up if case by case basis perhaps with another peer or things like that um so the support's not always coming just from the counselors as well okay but john is there any time in the daily schedule i know it's a it's a it's a half day session but is there any time in the daily set schedule to do um directed sel activities or is it kind of built into

105the you know the daily lessons how the lessons um only because i've had i had the opportunity i had one of my grandsons with here and did his schooling from here and now they they went to or nine to two so they have a lengthier day but they started out with a home room where 20 minutes of that home room was seo and every day they had a something they had to respond to like um they had to take a picture of themself and then list positive words to describe themselves they had to another day they had to tell a place where they would go if they they were upset or angry where where would you go to you know some of them went to their bedrooms some of them one of them even said

106they they crawled in the bottom of their closet with a book you know things that that kind of help them and then they discuss these things they shared each of the things and they discussed them um is there anything like that you know where there is a particular maybe 15-minute time where it's just seo yes actually we have our guidance counselors and cst team have done a lot of what they call the night your shine lessons so they actually been pushing into individual classes throughout the year giving small group lessons on different things like you're saying we also invested in a phys ed mindfulness program that we're integrating we're also going to start uh very shortly um beginning a mindfulness monday or meditation monday i believe is where to call start embedding some things into

107our morning announcements they're gonna carry out so there's a lot of different activities we've done um even though we have the short period of time we have within the day uh vicki we've done a lot of very creative ways to make sure that we're hitting um those things and not just starting off the year as steven mentioned with a lot of the cell things but making sure we're continuing that throughout the year making sure we're enforcing that with our students so we have our every day we have a virtual session of our guidance counselors available that was usually done obviously when the students were home the hybrid kids remote kids could jump on um but our guidance counselors have done a lot of those sessions with our students as well okay thanks okay all right

108so if you'd like we'll see if we can get a stop at rep to at least answer some of your questions in the committee meeting but obviously we're not moving forward with anything at this moment in time and thank you mr mckean for your presentation no thank all of you and that is a lot of constructive feedback um and i do have a contact at stop it that i can reach out to sean and i'm sure he'll be willing to do a presentation thank you all right boy this has been a fun night how about we go on to approval of the minutes regular meeting december 21st can i get a motion vicky kevin second any comments or questions patty this is mrs corey yes mr dilks yes colonel henske yes dr jones yes mr

109lepsis yes dr mccoy yes mrs shoemaker yes mrs saylor yes mrs chamberlain yes the re organization meeting on january 4th can i get a motion so moved brian second steve any comments or questions patty this is corey yes mr dilks yes colonel henske yes dr jones yes mr lepsis yes dr mccoy yes mrs shoemaker yes mrs saylor yes mrs chamberlain yes thank you thank you superintendent's report sean i'll try to keep it brief um i do first of all obviously want to thank everyone in the community i know it's been a very tough uh week last week and obviously this week continuing with our remote learning um obviously as we came back and we tried as hard as we could to get our students back for for in-person learning throughout the month of january as

110was our intention um obviously that we were unable to continue with that for a period of time um we are very hopeful that is a very brief time despite i know that we sent home some of those cove notifications the past couple days um obviously as although we are in a remote status there could still be others that are coming up as positive members or positive cases and we do want who have had connections with our building and we do want to at least keep the community informed of that obviously as well i know i've received some questions as to how it is possible um based on your remote status but uh you know we feel it's important to keep everyone informed especially if someone has been in our building uh for any length of

111time that it is showing that status and that's what we're intending to do with these notifications um but um as i said it is our intention right now and we're hoping that nothing else comes into our way to having our students grace our buildings halls again uh next week next monday as i know it's one of those things it's it's you know you walk in the building during the school year without the students in it it's clear that something is missing from our classrooms uh and look forward to having those students join us back very shortly thank you before we leave the topic of superintendent reports i just wanted to again thank sean uh melissa and casey for their their weekly and monthly reports and the detail you guys put into it it's really a

112pleasure to get a peek at what you guys are doing each day so thank you thank you dan okay liaison reports uh new jersey school board mrs cory nothing uh burlington county school board mr shoemaker uh the next meeting is february 4th at 7 pm you can go to the website to um register okay thank you vhsa there was a meeting on january 14th the holiday shop feedback was okay they made about 100 bucks the clothing drive did very well 436 dollars they'll probably be another one in may the boone fundraiser which replaced the yankee candle fundraiser raised about 305 dollars box tops 186 dollars there was a couple of purchases they purchased mugs for christmas and pies and coffee for thanksgiving i believe and that came out of the teacher appreciation fund and then

113everybody all the students should should have received socks that came out of the student activity fund uh their new business the yearbook they need help with the yearbook so if there's any parents on here that are creative they're they definitely need help with the layout they need third grade pictures preschool pictures i think they even said fifth grade pictures if you have pictures send them in please for the yearbook this is this is only going to make the yearbook better if you send pictures in the education foundation we re the hsa received their 200 2 000 contribution and these funds are available for special projects for the teachers there was a discussion on the oms playground about making a contribution to the playground further discussions with administration uh were going to happen last week week

114for more details and i believe there will be a vote next month at the february meeting the panzerati orders just closed that was the last day the 14th they had about 130 bags there is a book fair that will be happening it's online only it'll be um february the 15th i knew i had a date sorry the 15th through the 22nd it'll be online only they're going to um offer the kids hopefully free ice cream cones for every order uh we're hoping that what is it called out there yum yums uh viewers what is it leo's leo's that's it i couldn't think of it thank you brian leo's will be back open we can get some kind of gift certificates for the kids to get ice cream cones there's a fun a pound cake fundraiser

115coming up and then there was a huge discussion about the bingo the whoa whoa whoa whoa that's not just a pound cake fundraiser that's stocks cake fundraiser yeah well i don't know what that is oh my gosh am i i'm from philadelphia that's because she has ice cream at yum yum yeah that's right i can't give him so i don't need stocks whatever anyhow stocks fundraise uh stocks pound cake fundraiser gonna be coming up sorry uh back to the bingo the bingo bingo bag that we had to cancel stop laughing steve i can see you turn your camera off so that's being rescheduled thank you that's being rescheduled for april 23rd with the rain date of april 30th it'll be like a drive-through raffle so there was a huge discussion about it but that's that's

116the take off from it was the dates so mark your dates for the bingo raffle there'll be information coming out it's for the um designer bags it's for the um the door prizes everything so next meeting thursday february 18th okay uh education foundation colonel hansky yes ma'am uh so the foundation received another five thousand dollar um donation from a private donor um they also received another thousand dollar grant for social emotional learning pd from investors bank foundation um they're going to be working with admin to start planning and fundraising for the playground at oms and they have no date on the next meeting but they're going to get that scheduled soon so opening any questions that's all i have thank you cpag mrs shoemaker you're muted no meeting no me wellness um man you guys

117act like we're in a pandemic or something township council i emailed mr barton today and uh let him know once again that as soon as he's recovered we're willing and able to meet sean was cc'd on that so hopefully he will get back to us soon gotcha all right thank you um before i turn this over to public comments we recently went back to um individual meetings uh committee meetings instead of doing the committee as a whole i don't have anything on my agenda for when we're supposed to report on meetings that we have where do we fill those in at now anybody patty shawn used to go under reports didn't they like what we just did under liaison i think that happened before we took action so that people knew what had been discussed

118they should be at the beginning of the meeting right after we approve the minutes so probably right after the liaison reports or before so that then anything that would be actionable later in the meeting um the public would have a chance to hear and then comment okay so so would now be a good time to do reports yes yes let's do the reports now okay so i'm going to fill this in committee reports we'll come after liaison reports and since we just switched back to this we've only had um well i had two two but one was just 30 minutes well not 30 minutes ago but all right dr jones just if you could just report on the edtech meeting you had sure so the edtech committee committee met on january 12th um with myself

119miss corey mr delks mr banning and ms gallagher three major topics one is curriculum updates which you will see part of on the agenda so um two main things have happened the state has released um update it as of june 3rd 2020 updated uh new jersey student learning standards and there was also a state statute that mandates the incorporation of contributions of people with disabilities and lgbtq people into the new jersey student learning standards into our middle school curriculum so uh number one some of these are for the 21 22 school year some of these changes are necessary for the 22 23 school year the administrative team identified three funding sources the first was the money originally budgeted for curriculum writing additional monies have been identified which we did not use when moving classrooms from

120tes to omas and then additionally because we have not had lunches in the building we have not been paying the lunch duty stipends to date so we have some funding there as well that they are looking to possibly move to bulk up the curriculum section so the request for today has to do with the curriculums that will have to be approved for 2122. so that includes science that lgbtq and disabilities incorporation are visual and performing arts world languages and career readiness life literacies and key skills more than likely in february the administrative team will be taking a look at the kind of the big picture and then looking to see about possibly starting writing on those ones for 22 23 to take advantage of funding as well as a little bit of an advantage of

121planning ahead those subjects would include social studies health and pe and computer science and design thinking so you will not see the 22-23 ones on today's agenda we also talked about winter map testing so for those of you guys who've been around long enough we used to do map testing three times a year fall winter spring we stopped doing the winter one for most students because of losing class time in a normal year testing let alone in a pandemic however there's four groups that the administration has identified that they are planning on doing winter testing um the first one is the algebra one and geometry students for mathematics because that is a key indicator for high school to make sure that they are on track the second is special education students this information is helpful

122when creating ieps in the spring the third is having these specialists identify students in our basic skills interventions who may benefit from having that additional data point and then last but not least our kindergartners so that's going to be i think they were talking february but that would not be every student it would be a subset of our population and then finally we talked about counseling so and i know steve you kind of brought up about the counseling end of it and that sel from vicky first of all the district has started having home visits done by some of our counselors to work with families to identify what really is their need where where are they struggling and in some cases it might just be technological support of how to deal with the online learning

123but really to kind of talk to families about what they need um there's been some additional resources i've been shared to staff about how to help students through trauma and then last but not least one of the things that staff identified is for our youngest students who are fully virtual is the need for social interaction with their peers nothing academic purely social and they have created specific opportunities for those students in the k-5 grouping to get together as an optional uh meet for the purpose of providing that to support our students social and emotional growth and that's the highlights if anyone has any questions please let me know okay anybody have any questions for dr jones all right uh we're gonna move on to public comment on agenda items there's a lot of people here

124so i have a feeling a lot of people have stuff to say please state your name and address each speaker will be allotted a maximum of three minutes no one may speak more than once on the same topic please keep your comments respectful and non-defamatory keep in mind that it may not always be possible or appropriate for the board to directly answer questions during public comment periods and at this time you may only speak on agenda items we have any hands mrs eagan's got her hand up mrs vegan hey guys lisa egan i just had a couple things i just wanted to comment on casey's presentation it's such a you know it's such a hard thing to really understand and i volunteered for the hip committee since the very beginning because i felt it was

125really important and i listened to what the board members have to say and i agree with all of you because you're the parents that would go online and fill out the reports and do everything that you needed to do and you're the parents that would see oh you know so and so is making it up and whatever it may be but we have a lot of students who don't have that kind of support and although i don't think casey's thing is the duo end-all be-all i think why not have another avenue for kids to report these things it doesn't have to take away from what we're already doing or the options that parents already have but what vicky said and thank you vicky for sharing that is more common than people think there are so

126many kids that are really depressed and that don't have the support at home to voice it and that maybe are afraid because of repercussion from peers or that people may know so i'm thinking maybe we could view this as just another avenue not to replace everything else just a thought and again i've been on this hip committee from the very beginning it's a volunteer committee and it is really important but i think we have to try to reach as many students as possible and um yeah so i i guess that's all there was wait there was one other thing what was the last thing what was the last thing you were talking about meg refresh my memory we went through the edtech all the liaison reports um all right i guess that's all for now

127if it comes back to me i'll i'll step up again do you have a question about pound cake oh that was it that was it thank you so much oh my god that is the best and you're right that's not the pound cake that is like the duo and all be all of pound cakes so you can't just say like oh yeah we're going to sell pound cakes you have to thank you you have to say that where'd you go to yum yum i'm going to yum yums i'm sorry guys and i will be buying the pound cake so have a good night i will but i will definitely have to buy one of these pound cakes you have to buy one and you're going to enjoy it and you have to say the name

128you can't just say pound cake what is the name what it was the name oh your mouth is worse than mine we're getting old meg we're getting old i know oh my gosh okay okay anybody else any other comments i see three hands raised on the app the carbons tylers and lampkins all right carbons go ahead good afternoon good evening forgive me for not turning on my camera so um krista carbone 113 flight road how are you good how's everybody so i just um i'm speaking about the app but i'm not really referring to the app because i don't have i basically don't have too much of an opinion about for the app without the app one thing that i just don't want to lose sight of in just um my experiences our family's experiences

129with the peer mentoring group peer-to-peer that was available at olson obviously pre-pandemic um so many programs that were available at olsen that i'm sure will still continue i just don't want to lose sight of the um hands-on life skills for the mentor the mentees all of the work that went into those programs um teaching our kids leadership communication working with adults being able to talk out problems and i know that all kid kids are all definitely different and they come from all different backgrounds some are used to speaking up some are not um i believe that those skills not only become apparent in middle school but also you gather them and take them to high school grades and then maybe you learn more things to to try to be outspoken and i just you know

130the the i feel like i'm getting old when i constantly say i don't want people to be hiding behind a computer and apps and um it's so easy to just hit a button rather than knock on somebody's door and try to have a conversation and i i know that that is obviously not for everybody but i just believe that the school tries so hard to keep communications going and i don't want us to you know go into this ab world and forget that we have a human side to us that we need to build in our kids and continue to teach these life skills that are definitely lacking and getting further and further away from all of us um you know so that's just it i i know that some people might not even know

131about the peer-to-peer our administration is very new um you know they may have heard of it or you know heard about it down the line but i'm talking from um you know experience and how peer-to-peer held on to student council and and just all of those programs that i don't really want to see lost um you know i want them to just continue to grow and not hide behind computers and apps and the expertise that our school has and you know miss bauer put a lot of time into that program and teaching some kids who those kids weren't the ones that were always gonna come up and and have ideas like i think she gravitated to the kids that weren't the talkers um and just built a lot of life life learning skills so i

132just had to say that positive comment and i'm not against the app or for it or i don't really have an opinion at this time i just don't want to lose sight about our great programs at tabernacle and our teachers and administration who's you know always been there for that growing of those kinds of kids so thanks for just letting me you know talk about that and um you know i appreciate i didn't even expect to speak tonight so i thank you and i know it's been a long meeting so thanks krista about jennifer tyler jennifer you there your hands up oh are you able to hear me i can hear you yep okay um i have two things the first one is about the app i just think whether it is thought it to

133be valid anything that comes through it or whether it's you know nefarious i think was a word was called it's gonna go through the proper channels to be vetted to see where it ends up before it's not like it's gonna be automatically on the local news for everybody to see and i think if this is even the smallest way to help to the kids i think it needs to be done especially right now i think it's so important and if there's a tool like this that can be utilized to help the kids and they can do it without you know because god forbid if it was something at home it gives them a way to do it and feel safe so i just think you know it will do way more good than it would

134possibly do harm because it either way when it comes through it will be vetted um and then the second thing i wanted to ask is more of a a comment the email when we get the phone calls come through please check your email for a notification from you know olson school systems i never get the email and then i go on the app and it's never on the app yet and it's very frustrating because it feels like with everything going on it's just another shoe you're waiting to drop and then you have to wait and wait and wait for it to actually the email to come through to find out what now um is there any way and this is just a question that maybe it could be so that the emails are completely out

135and then the phone call goes out to hey check your email are you eventually getting the emails of miss tyler i am eventually getting the emails um my husband usually gets the calls about 15 minutes before i do 10 to 15 minutes um and the email usually comes about 10 to 15 minutes um is the soonest it usually comes through after i receive the call which is second okay so it's just kind of you know and it always comes in the middle of dinner um so i just would be you know instead of having it come through and then you're waiting waiting waiting and you know the whole time what now and there's less than a week away before the kids are supposed to go back to school so it's kind of like oh great

136you know is this another extension you know just the it would just be nice if everything came together nicely for just one time in life yeah i know that some for whatever reason it seems like the um messaging service is not always sending out the the email and the phone call at the exact same time um i know that has definitely been uh something you bring up that i i've had happen to myself as well uh so it's something we'll look more into for you mr thank you for bringing to our attention from your perspective it was it was just a thought i mean i don't know if it's you know i get everybody you know it's generated but if there was an option to choose for the calls to not go out until after

137the emails went it would make it a little easier because it's just very nerve-wracking wondering what now when it comes through understandable miss tyler thank you for your address please i'm sorry oh i'm sorry uh three elmwood drive thank you everyone thank you laurie lamp i guess lampkin laura lampkin it's uh it's jim lamkin jim sorry about that well lori's here as well i had a question regarding the uh stop it representative wanted to know if that representative would be taking questions from the public i do have a number of concerns with the app in particular i think if i heard the presentation correctly videos and pictures are able to be uploaded and um you know no one has really talked about where that data goes how long that data is stored for we're talking

138about pictures and videos of miners um pictures could be taken in you know things that shouldn't be taken and all of a sudden they're up on the world wide web the company can say all at once that it's private and all but we've all experienced with experian or other websites you know things happen things get out so once this data is uploaded to a site you know where is it stored how long's it stored for uh how safe is it again these are pictures and videos of miners i'd like to go back and support something this sailor said as well if we have an a a way it sounds like we have a way already in place it's just broken um let's fix that if all the students have chromebooks and there's a way to

139electronically report something then why are our first priority should be to fix that um and and last i'd like to i i think i'm hearing um bullying being lumped in with crisis support and the two may be a little connected but if we want to get crisis support there are ways to do that without running out and getting this app i'm all for crisis support i understand students are going through a tough time now but i don't think it's i don't think we say we're going to get this app and oh by the way you know this is a great thing for the kids well if that's a great thing let's search for that greek thing we don't need the app to provide crisis support um thank you for your time i'm sorry mr lam

140can i have your address as well i didn't hear the first time yeah 17 washington way thank you miss houston hello can you hear me we can hear you hello it's jen houston 23 goose pond road um i had a couple of questions uh or comments rather about the app um i share the concerns that mr lampkin and mr lepsis and mr henske and and the others brought up um i i definitely would um be interested to hear a presentation from the company and would like for um you know the parents and the public to have access to that and to ask questions as well i think that would be really helpful um my my other comment kind of pings off of what um mrs uh carbone had said um related to the app and

141and to kind of the the the crisis that we're in and the bullying and all of that um i'm wondering what kind of um additional resources our school would have to manage some of the information that might come in through the app should we get it so um stuff related to behavior management and you know i know socioeconomic uh or not socioeconomic social emotional learning has been and social emotional wellness has been a big thing this year um but you know you open something like that up i would want to make sure that we had the resources to be able to handle whatever came through i think it's really important especially um this year um and there was another point and i knew i was gonna forget it and i should have written it down

142and i can't remember no it was a pound cake although i too am a fan of stocks so i will be purchasing um i can't remember but i just wanted to say that um i i definitely oh i remember see if i talked long enough i knew it would come back one of the questions i had was related to kind of the logistics of the app should we you know should we get it um and we're saying that the kids can access it through their chromebooks correct me if i'm wrong but i think that our teachers now have um software where they can monitor what each student is doing on their computer to make sure that they're not you know listening to music when they're not supposed to playing games or whatever so i'm just

143i can see a scenario where kids fumbling around looking for this app or looking for a way to report something and you know how's that going to be handled in the moment if a teacher sees them and doesn't know what they're looking for you know obviously um just i think some some logistical things that we need to think about um if we were to go down that road so that's everything thanks very much thanks jen mr finding did you have something to add i did thank you very much um erica vining 12 jessica court um so i do also share the same concerns my daughter for the app my daughter does has been involved with the peer program so i absolutely echo mrs carbone's sentiment on that wonderful program i do hope to see that

144come back i saw much growth with my daughter and my maturity she was a ment a mentee so i think there's also a ton of benefit for her to grow into a mentor if it were to happen that way for children that could use that extra help um i will tell you that there are a lot of gaps i think with this app that i do share the concerns of miners being having access to upload information um the anonymity issue um and then i i have to be honest with you i don't love the fact of further driving wedges between family members whether that be in their home or outside their home and helping in crisis modes now don't get me wrong i do think there's places for crisis management for families that need it

145and children that need it but in general the general most parents and most family members and the educators are there to educate their children on how to and where to go to trusted adults and not hide behind an app having that interaction being able to address something that is hard to do um i don't i would rather see that be done in a personal manner rather than through an app because let's be honest it's just one step before they get to if it's vetted then someone personally has got to handle the issue anyway so i don't understand why you know that that makes any sense i don't like the um and then the security issues i will also say the other comment i have is regarding the lgbtq curriculum in all curriculum i know it's

146standards i know they're starting they're obviously starting in science next year my can my questions still continues to be how do we how do you all as a board and as a district abide by the state's curriculum updates right but also keeping in the mind that many parents have serious concerns now not only just in health class now in all classes so this is being in you know hit by every angle and with families that may not want their children to be taught part of this curriculum how are they going to be notified and how will that be um situated i know we're at the beginning of this i know that um congratulations mrs tune for taking on the project wonderful but i'll tell you that there's going to be concerns that my kid goes

147to science class and something is taught to them without my knowledge that might not be in the core tenderness of my faith so i have serious concerns on how that will be addressed and you know this has been a concern for me in the past i still haven't really gotten a solid answer on um i know that you could opt out for specific lessons especially if it's health but now that everything's being rolled into all curriculum you can see where people who do have concerns about this would want to speak up and i'm not sure if any other parents [Music] implore other parents that have the same concerns to email or contact you guys um so that they know that it's not just you know mrs vining that has this concern i appreciate all right

148thank you very much mrs vining is there any other comments at this time questions or comments if just a quick one if i could uh in regard to a lot of the feedback from the the parents who are on i think earlier it was suggested that the representative from stop it would potentially give a presentation to one of the subcommittees um i'm wondering if it would be possible to do it at a full board meeting so the parents can also hear the information and also have a chance to ask their questions i'll certainly reach out to the stop at the rep to find out what their availability is if that works with what they can do thank you no problem anybody else now that i figured out how to look for raised hands all right

149staying done i'm going to move on to a recommendation to the superintendent under personnel we have items one through can i get a motion don't move vicky uh vicky and who kevin devin any questions or comments uh just just one from me uh just to be very clear the statute on the implementation of people with disabilities and the lgbt persons state that we shall have instruction on the political economic and social contributions of persons with disabilities and lesbian gay bisexual and transgender people that is what it is required is that we we show their contributions to society so just to be very clear it is not um going everywhere um so you know but this is the same thing that we've seen before with including uh people of color including women um we're now expanding

150that to include people with disabilities in the lgbtq community okay thank you for clarifying that hey can somebody elaborate on number two are we bringing back uh after school banned course and having concerts again and i'm very very happy to hear that i'm happy to tell you about that one mr lepsis we had such success with mr ipri pulling off his fall conference or winter con concert i should say uh in a very virtual setting and he came to us to talk to us about his plan for continuing his uh virtual band lessons and eventually having the students perform again in a virtual spring concert and certainly want to work with him and our students to provide activities when we can so was this a full stipend it was on an hourly uh basis or

151it is well it's an approved statement that was in the the contract but we didn't approve any of those positions this year because we didn't have any extracurriculars and mine is the um i guess yearbook uh oal and one other so this would be an additional above and beyond what we've approved as a board already that's something the board had already factored into the teachers contract we already had budgeted for so it's nothing more than we had already uh figured out for the year we just hadn't uh tapped into this fund at this point in time but it's it's akin to the you know basketball coaches that we did in the point this year and everything else correct that is correct yeah so we so we haven't approved it yet i mean it's built into

152a budget into a collective bargaining agreement but this is a new a new new expenditure at this point so do we have a will this be being done outside of school hours then correct i look forward to that i do on item number four um subheadings b through f are those hours individual per staff member or is that uh the total combined pool of hours that will be worked well so that is the total number of total hours okay thank you um i'll note that in the in the minutes any other questions or comments one through five personal uh roll call please patty mrs corey you're a muted gail thank you um mr dilks yes colonel henske yes dr jones yes mr lepsis yes dr mccoy yes mrs shoemaker yes mrs saylor yes mrs chamberlain

153yes thank you under financial 1 through 12. negative motion so moved brian brian beckett vicki nikki any questions or comments saying none patty mrs corey mr dilks yes colonel henske yes dr jones yes mr lepsis yes dr mccoy yes mrs shoemaker yes mrs saylor yes and mrs chamberlain yes thank you okay our enrollment 664 under unfinished business anybody under new business okay we'll have one more public comment please state your name and address each speaker will be allotted a maximum of three minutes no one may speak more than once on the same topic please keep your comments respectful and non-defamatory keep in mind that not that it may not always be possible or appropriate for the board to directly answer questions during public comment periods and at this time you may speak on educational matters

154not of a personal nature any hands no hands up meg no hands very good all right uh at this time we're gonna go into executive session whereas statute allows for a public body to go into closed session during a public meeting and whereas the board of education of the tabernacle township school district has deemed it necessary to go into closed session to discuss certain matters which are exempt from the public and whereas the regular meeting of this board of education will reconvene at the conclusion of the closed session at approximately everybody want to give a guess nine no oh geez nine yeah come on holy cow you guys are killing me now therefore be it resolved that the board of education of the tabernacle township school district will go into closed session for the following

155reasons as outlined by statute any collective bargaining agreement or the terms and conditions of which are proposed for inclusion in any collective bargaining agreement including the negotiation of terms and conditions which with employees are representatives of employees of the public body you further resolve that the board of education hereby declares that it's discussion of the aforementioned subjects may be made public at a time when the board attorney advises the board of education that the disclosure of the discussion will not detrimentally affect any right interest or duty of the school district or any other entity with respect to said discussion and be it further resolved that the board of education for the aforementioned reasons hereby declares that the public is excluded from the portion of this meeting during which the above discussion shall take place and

156hereby's directs the board secretary to take appropriate action to effectuate the terms of this resolution say uh make a motion we have doctor jones as a first second all in favor all opposed all abstain all right okay log