Cedar Grove Board of Education Meeting 08-17-21

001i call this meeting to order will everybody please rise for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all the new jersey open public meeting law was enacted to ensure the right of the public to have advanced notice of and to attend the meeting of public bodies at which any business affecting their interest is discussed or acted upon in accordance with the provisions of this act the cedar grove board of education has caused notice of this meeting to be advertised by having the date time and place thereof posted on bulletin boards in the district published and or transmitted to the verona cedar grove times in star ledger newspapers tap

002into online news filed with the township clerk and posted on the district's website roll call please mrs de chara here mrs miga mr spondoria mr schoener here mr dye here we now come to the portion of our meeting where we allow members of the public to address the board in this section we allow public comments on resolutions only our board regulations allot 20 minutes for these communications each person shall be limited to three minutes there will be a countdown timer at the end and at the end of the three minutes the microphone will be shut off and the speaker will be interrupted speakers may speak more than once only after all others wishing to speak on a topic have been heard issues raised by members of the public may or may not be record i'm

003sorry may or may not be responded to by the board all comments will be considered and a response will be forthcoming if and when appropriate this portion of the meeting is meant to hear public comment not to have a dialogue between the board and the person speaking the board asks that members of the public be courteous and mindful of the rights of other individual individuals when speaking specifically comments regarding students district employees under members of the board are discouraged and will not be responded to by the board the public is reminded that students and employees have specific legal rights afforded by the laws of new jersey the board bears no responsibility nor will it be liable for any comments made by members of the public members of the public should consider their comments in light

004of legal rights of those affected or identified in their comments and be aware that they are legally responsible and liable for their comments all statements will be directed to me as the presiding officer and no one may address board members individually please be reminded that if your statement is too lengthy abusive obscene or defamatory you may be interrupted warned or your participation may be terminated please also be reminded that if any person does not observe reasonable decorum is disorderly or disrupts the meeting you will be asked to leave the meeting the board reminds those individuals who take this opportunity to speak to identify themselves by name and address and group affiliation if applicable every time you address the board and to limit your their comments to items on the agenda so the meeting is open

005to the public for comment on items on the agenda and we had a sign up sheet and we have one individual who signed up for this portion of the meeting and that's mr leo stringer [Music] good evening uh yeah i have some uh current concerns on can you please just state your name and address please leo stringer before have you terrorists you have a concern on a b-22 having armed guards at 45 an hour is that for every school or is that just for tonight can you please just ask all your questions make all your comments now okay i also have a question on b14 you have a college short film that's approved for october what is the subject of that film because in the past we've had films on black lives matter that identify

006the school we've had films on we don't know what's been filmed on commercials here it's always been retro approved and not we have no idea what the subjects are that's being filmed in the schools okay b15 87 000 for security appropriations what are they where did they come from and we've never i've never seen anything additional about that also b17 amending the appropriations for coving 19 that has no detail either so we find that it seems like we find out some of these things as they're being voted on before they're not discussed they used to be discussed in the past thank you mr grosso someone should make sure you got 14 15 17 and so i'll go backwards 22 is for tonight just for that okay yes it was it was unclear i was i

007was concerned we're having armed guards in the schools for the uh delicates now um and as far as uh location agreements go i mean i can't i can't go into detail about that i don't that's something that mr schoener if you want to just share a little bit about what that's about yes so one of the ways that we fund stuff uh through the um that the board of ed can't fund is by hosting film commercials and also films montclair state is doing a story about a kid that's in a theater production and a play so they'll be in the auditorium and doing that that's the story typically when we host any sort of film production here i'm typically here the whole time as part of my volunteerism to make sure that it and so

008that's what's going on okay thank you because i know there are at least one last year that was kind of had a lot of um back and forth which not knowing what the subject was the black lives matter was kind of controversial [Music] this is for the security of all the schools so this is appropriations that will allow us to enhance our security features for the schools more specifically cameras that will allow for for any type of incident or medical need or forbid a um a violent act of some sort so this is something that uh the district has been uh engaging in for several years now and this is just an increase with that so has it increased to the 2.2 million dollar bond from three years ago that was because that was security

009enhancement with cameras in in all the schools right so you're talking about a referendum yeah so this is through the securing our children's future bond act right okay so the 2.2 million dollars wasn't enough to cover the sad cameras in every part of the school there so just to kind of share with you there cedar grove public schools has an excellent safety and security protocol as well as security cameras as well as the entrance system as well as the door management systems so as time moves on we look and assess reflect and reassess again to see where are there areas that there that has high traffic areas that need uh attention to um you know when you start off projects you find oh there there may be a spot where you need some more coverage

010and this this is where that would go and uh participate and be part of okay that's good but now for transparency when they did the referendum we were given detail for every detail about that project we knew exactly what cameras were being put in where when it was going to happen well you wouldn't know that mr stringer where each a camera what we did we knew that well we knew that all the hardware had monitored there was going to central connect back to the police station for security incidents we knew that you could do lockdowns from every teacher's phone that was part of that referendum so it's just kind of surprising when we see now what we see in the agenda is 87 000 but no clue what it what it's entailing so that's kind

011of where where we're losing the transparency we should know kind of like more detail about what's what we're spending money on that's where that's where that's where the questions that's where it gets confusing earlier do you not want us to spend that money on security for our schools no i want we want to know we want to know what is being spent on so it's the referendum was i'm sorry but there's a difference between a referendum and a grant a grant referendum a grant doesn't cost us money so this is not costing money so what a referendum is a referendum does cost the taxpayers an increase right in money and approval this is a grant which is not is that no cost to you okay but it's so good to know so if we know

012that the original plan security plan i guess wasn't enough to have enough cameras we should know that so we were told that that was going to handle all the security and then of course that got delayed by like a year and a half because partly because the curvature department of course we don't know what with all the bulletproof bullet-resistant glass and all the vestibules all that the vestibules took a year and a half longer than they should have so we don't know the status of any of that stuff anymore we used to be we used to be given updates and knowing when things were happening so now we're in the darkness i appreciate your your inquiry about this and um i will share with you when we talk about the enhancements of our security systems

013one of the things that we talked about earlier on in the last school year uh in fact one and it's actually still up on our main web pages about the hall pass system uh we talked about the advancements of how we've finished several of those projects so there is a um clear sometimes things take a little bit longer than we anticipate and sometimes we're at the mercy of the contractor themselves so yes certain things take longer than they we would like or that was anticipated um but i will share with you when we look at um the progress of where we are those things have been announced and they've been shared i've shared in my superintendent's update as well as um there's actually a video up there of excuse me of how to operate that

014system when you first come in as is what you're referring to with the vestibule right the hall pass yes when that was explained originally that was going to be done finished about a year and a half ago and that was going to include all students being checked in as they went into school so that's be so that was that was explained to us three years ago actually that's not what we had said we we never said that all students were going to um that's how it was explained to us i was i remember the presentations okay well that i we're going to have to agree to disagree on that one because we purposely did not say that and then we did get some pushback actually from some people about why we weren't going to have

015every single person checked in and part of the issue was that that students forget their ids and how do you enforce that there was a whole big conversation about that so that was never the intent behind the hall pass it was never ever for the students it was for visitors okay but it is it is a couple years behind that's why it absolutely was delayed absolutely it was i'm a lot of things just beyond our control i mean every single thing i think we've done at this school when it involves a contractor unfortunately we're sort of at their mercy you know and and then when they sub subcontract that out then we're at the mercy of those people absolutely so definitely things beyond our control okay i'm sure as most people know who've had construction

016done in their homes that things seem to take a lot longer than you anticipate a lot of the times right that's why we need to pay them less okay thank you okay so moving on good evening everyone hello um i wanted to i was asked to point out why um mr slandoria couldn't be here this evening and uh he had a health emergency with his wife that prevented him from coming so we will miss him this evening but family comes first so and we wish her well obviously uh committee reports anybody have anything to talk about this evening no i don't so the one thing i wanted to talk about is um i've been talking to dave fletcher over at cedar beans and they are doing a um i guess a back to school um

017you know not fundraiser per se but a supply thing and uh we checked both with the elementary school principals to see what they needed and what they didn't need and one of the things that they asked for if anyone wants to drop off at cedar beans is stuff such as chalk random things like hula hoops jump ropes paddle games skip jump things and frisbees so these are things that the elementary school teachers and the elementary school principals use when the kids go outside and things like that so that was what they asked for and if you stop at cedar beans you can drop off this stuff because um they're doing that kind of quasi-fundraiser great thank you we appreciate that all right so moving on uh board presentation we have mr grosso and you're going

018to give us your superintendent update all right good evening everybody um have a uh i want to what my plan is to kind of walk you through our our reopening plan for september and um plus i want to share with you some new things that will be happening at september and how we will be uh addressing some of those needs so uh the the safe reopening um plan or the road forward plan that was set out by the department of education clearly outlines several areas of expectations so the first area of expectation is is that by no means as we move into the 21 22 school year would we prohibit students from coming back into the building at a full-time basis now i know this is something that everybody's very happy mr grosso i hate

019to interrupt i'm sorry um this is just a reminder for everybody that if you're on the auditorium in the building here that you have to wear a mask yes so if everybody could just please keep their masks on i'm sorry thank you so it is um it was clearly outlined in the road forward it's which i was sharing was is something i think we're all very excited about last year was a very difficult year for us as as families as caregivers of children um i'm included in that in that category and so moving forward we will have full in-person uh instruction uh and that means that your children will go go to school at at the same time that they did last year but they will go into a full day program so there will

020be no half days there will be no cohorts of students we are and will be able to accommodate the children into the classrooms and as far as their um other activities so i'm going to walk you through pieces of that plan um and it will include a lot of different pieces of of how we will be opening now i i shared out on the monday night phone call last night about your ability to access everything on our return to school website that was uh freshly updated with new plans and new information so you are more than welcome to go on to it in fact if you want to go on to a while i'm talking tonight and follow along on your phone you're more than welcome to do that as well so the first piece

021is masking and so when we talk about masking this is very this is definitely something that was very different very very different from what our intention was back in the very beginning of july back in the beginning of july the governor had announced that uh it was going to be left up to the local school districts to uh make that decision of how we were going to move forward forward with masking and we had made once we saw that decision and once we saw where we were currently in the state at that particular moment in time uh we were going to move forward with making masking optional on on august 6th the governor had come out was that friday had come out with a new mandate due to the delta variant and sharing that executive

022order 251 is sharing that we do not have that option anymore in fact it's not only public schools it's any school in general whether it's parochial or whether it is a charter school so therefore when you look at the plan you will notice that there is masking information on there and basically uh it means that whether it's a student a parent caregiver or a visitor must have a mask on at all times while in the building uh there are exceptions for that and i will go through those exceptions because there are definitely some questions i i've definitely received um questions and email about about that i was able to answer that and i was actually able to take some of those questions excuse me and turn them into an faq which you could find now

023which is faq is the first one when you go to the faq page which is about the 2021 22 reopening so um the one of the bigger questions because we will probably deal with that in september last september we we didn't have to because we weren't exactly in in session in person in school uh during that time because we were remote uh we did come back the elementary started to come back at the end of september but the temperatures were in the 70s in september last year the way things are going now we're we're probably anticipating some higher temperatures so uh to share with you there are several exceptions to 251 this order and that one would be when doing so uh would inhibit the individual's health such as when an individual is exposed to

024extreme heat indoors so we are taking a different approach on this this year based on the difference of the the guidelines and our expectation when the temperatures increase indoors is that number one cedarville public schools will provide students with the participation of wearing masks optional they do not have to wear the mask or they can wear the mask it's dependent upon them if the noaa or the national weather service advisory uh shares that it's a heat advisory or if temperatures inside the classroom reach above 80 degrees fahrenheit and that is taken from nj weck which is a partner uh that we've worked with last year to talk about our um our air quality so those are those are pieces you can find it on the website so i know that was always a question when

025that came by last year um exceptions would talk about when if an individual was having trouble breathing or if they were unconscious also if they were documented with an iep or 504 or if there was a medical documentation those are things a medical documentation must be presented to the students a case manager for consideration for that need we don't really deal with students under the age of two but when an individual is engaged in an activity that cannot be that cannot physically be performed without wearing a mask those are things such as eating and i'm going to talk a little bit about that in a few minutes but that also includes um it includes playing an instrument or singing so those are the times where the mask can be removed from a student's mouth um

026or nose but after they are done engaging in that uh that experience of eating or singing or playing an instrument they would be they would have to place that back over their nose and their mouth a high intensity aerobic or anaerobic activity that also includes a physical education class if if that student can be in a well ventilated location and able to maintain a physical distance of six feet from all other individuals or when wearing a face mask creates an unsafe condition in which to operate equipment or execute a task so that's all outlined in there and that is uh one of the pieces that we will be moving forward with and i know there were some questions from our from the previous order and hopefully this is all clarified with the new one entrance

027protocols a little bit different from last year each individual school will design their entrance protocols based on their specific needs what will be different is that we will not be doing checkpoints of temperature checks uh to move in i will talk a little bit about what will be done but students will enter staff will enter visitors will enter entrance protocols trying to keep as much distance three feet or to the greatest extent possible that is a language that is uh provided to us in the road forward so students and all individuals will move forward trying to keep enough space but they will also be moving forward with the masking on so that will all none of that has changed uh if somebody is sick uh if they've experienced coveted symptoms um or if they feel

028they have been exposed to an individual that that had covid that is a situation where our nursing staff would get involved in as well as administration and guide that student staff member or visitor through the next steps of how we would um quarantine that person individually and then move forward with how what the next steps would be and so that is for visitor staff and students transportation will be in full effect uh for the s x 21 academic school year uh the one thing is is that like entering a building the bus is an extension of the classroom and therefore the student will need to wear a mask if the student does not wear a mask the student made by the bus company the contracted bus company may not be permitted onto the bus and

029again all of those exclusions do work on the bus for a student as well as it does in the classroom but uh social disciplining protocols will still be provided on that bus to the greatest extent possible as well as seating arrangements in charge which charts which is a normal procedure anyway which is part of the law on a school bus so transportation is in effect um hand washing so a lot of the you you'll hear me talk a lot because a lot about the these procedures they're very similar to last year there's not a lot of difference when we're talking about hand washing we'll still have the hand washing stations in the classrooms that are available with hand washing stations we will still encourage students after eating or engaging in some sort of [Music] activity

030that does involve whether it's a chemistry or or so on to wash their hands we still do have and we will still be providing the uh the antibacterial um pure hands thank you hand sanitizing stations uh available in each of our classrooms so those will be highly encouraged by your children's teachers and and hopefully it will be encouraged from one another facilities cleaning the facilities cleaning is the same we are taking pride in what we are doing we found our uh we found throughout the course of the entire year last year we were able to streamline some of those um those abilities to to clean uh we are entering the school year by not um releasing those um those those expectations for cleaning um but we found that we can definitely streamline them one of

031the things i do want to point out is uh last year we explored the way that we clean the floors this is going to seem kind of like what's the difference well normally it was a one it was a one bucket clean and basically what we found was when you're cleaning this is very traditional very very traditional in a lot of a lot of school districts is that you you take it you you you wash it into the disinfectant you wipe it around on the floor and it goes right back in because you're constantly dirtying up the floor over and over again so we found through our distributor that we found a better way of doing this which is a two bucket um uh process where you are you're constantly rinsing that mop and what

032you're putting back on that floor is nothing but clean disinfectant and you're not dirting it up so we're looking always looking for ways to find a better way to keep their schools clean and it's this is this is something that will be it's not necessarily just for covid it's for everything whether it's rhinovirus rotavirus it could be a ton of different things uh cleanliness is definitely a big prior priority for us uh air circulation air circulation has been a priority for us from the very beginning uh we've done a tremendous amount of homework we've talked to a tremendous amount of engineers we've talked to various other um experts in the field and one of the things that we were able to do is that in this auditorium we're using a merv 13. i know those

033were big pieces to the puzzle from um last year we were able to upgrade the uh we were able to upgrade the the univents in the classrooms that were current that were that were recently working on a two and a four uh we were able to upgrade those two and eight so our our buildings when the school starts all of those air filtration systems will be working off of an eight there are some that will work a little bit higher but it's based on different types of units um what we've also done is in areas that don't necessarily have um uh univents in those rooms and they are primarily the small group instruction rooms we have purchased and installed standalone hepa filters and those will be able to provide the cleaning of the air and

034the scrubbing of the air and the filtration one of the things that we haven't had and it's which is extremely important it's important a couple different ends it's important in the control end it's also important on the financial background of how we uh provide energy and filtration into our classrooms so prior prior to uh this year what we were dealing with like you deal with in your home was a very mechanical way of opening the capabilities of opening dampers in all of our uh filtration systems and that would be have to be done on a manual basis that is very different than what you have some of you have in your home so we've upgraded that uh into all of our classrooms where there is an actual electronic control that can be controlled remotely from

035your from a phone or an ipad and that allows more control over the amount of fresh air that we're going to be bringing into the classroom meaning that we are able to you know allow a little bit more fresh air in the mornings before anybody gets there to circulate that air uh we're able to regulate that air on cold days prior to that you're leaving if you leave a damper open what you're doing is you're endangering the whole entire uh system itself so therefore this will protect the system and it gives us like i said before more control over how we can provide more of a fresh air component to the classroom and that was one of the biggest pieces that we heard from families from students as well as our staff but how we

036were going to engage in that so those are some some some different upgrades that we were doing i want to share with you uh contact tracing that's a so last year i felt that we had a extremely great system working we worked in conjunction with our local health department the montclair health department um and and just to kind of share with everybody what that what that means is so we work on a regional risk matrix so if you've looked at the plan last year and even this year you'll notice a multi-colored graph or chart and right now we're currently working in the low to moderate level which is that um yellow level so the the sorry the model the low level we were there was green so when you look at that that shares with

037us the exclusion criteria and what i mean by that is is that if a student comes into the building that is unvaccinated and we are in a we're in the moderate range what what we follow is it's a 10-day um quarantining period or a seven day with the negative test results that were collected over at a five to seven day mark now if you're at a if you're at a high level which we were at a high level very very often last year through most of our school year you'll notice there was that 14 day period it will fluctuate i can't sit here and tell you that we're not going to go back into that i don't know um but we are prepared and we're prepared to engage in it one of the things one

038of the positives of last year is that we we had a lot of experience in this um the difference is is that last year we closed down buildings for periods of time that is not an expectation of how we're going to move forward for next year we may have to close down classrooms we may have to close on individuals from from participating in instruction in the classroom but we do not anticipate closing down buildings that would have to be a complete major outbreak of of symptoms in people so i encourage you to familiarize yourself with that and it's definitely something that's on our return to school's website so you can access that one of the new things and i talked a little bit about this earlier was the um last year when children would come

039to school you would be screened with a thermometer we found through research that that screening did not necessarily um it showed if you may have had a fever but was it really showing the results of of any symptoms so we've created it's up on the website it's actually the second tab on a return to school's website it is called the daily home screener it's also in the plan uh it's not something that you're going to have to send in every day that's not necessary we are looking to families to be open and honest when they are looking at their children in the morning we encourage you at home with your children to take their temperatures if you find that they have a temperature of 104 or above we would ask you with coinciding symptoms to

040not bring your child to school or not to send your child to school it's a very self-explanatory is a very self-explanatory uh methodology because it shows you where you stop where you pick up to show those symptoms you have to have either two or more of the top symptoms or one or more of some major symptoms where you would not want to bring your children to school so i would i encourage you to take a look at that again uh and all that exclusion criteria is um on our website to help guide you the other piece is the travel uh guidelines now i know that lately there has been some talk about what what is what are these travel guidelines why where are they what are they well i'm going to walk you through exactly

041what those are because they haven't changed from may so back in may i believe it was may 19th the new jersey department of health shared out a k-12 school guidelines now here's where the confusion lies because when you go on to the state of new jersey's website and you look at travel restrictions you're going to see that there are no travel restrictions and there aren't for for us as adults but in schools there are those are restrictions that have been placed on us by the department of health so we've been following those since may and in fact if you recall uh i believe it was may 24th there was a um i gave a monday phone call and any kind of information that i share out on a monday night phone call or that's on

042that return to school's website it's archived so i encourage you to go back and look at it you may not always see it on the front page because there are other announcements that have to go on there but everything and anything and everything ever has gone out is always archived so you can take a look at that um but as far as these travel restrictions they haven't changed they're the same we are anticipating and what i mean we we as superintendents here at the state of new jersey are anticipating new guidelines that will come out we anticipated those guidelines last week they didn't didn't show up so i was on a county meeting last week i had i had the benefit of speaking to a somebody who represented the state health department and uh somebody

043who represented the county health department and basically the information that was given was there's no change so please um please put forward the the the guidelines that have been in place because nothing has changed we asked when will this when we get some new information um our fear as super as my fear as a superintendent is that we get those that information right before school starts and that makes it very very difficult because families are going to go away for the labor day weekend and people are going to they still have they have had vacations planned so nothing has changed i encourage you to constantly go back and look at that everything is there for you to look at um and it's accessible and it's nothing has been taken down like i said if you

044look for something it's there it's archived but the travel restrictions basically that fully vaccinate travelers um if you're traveling internationally they they they share that you know it'd be wise to get tested three to five days out but it's not necessarily required um but uh domestic travel there would be no quarantine or testing before or after travel now here's the interesting piece of that uh which sometimes not everything makes sense is that every state in the tri-state area a state that touches new jersey if you can get in and out of that state within 24 hours you're okay but if you go down to south carolina you go down to new mexico you have to follow those travel guidelines now that's how that's an interesting concept i don't necessarily know how those things definitely interchange

045if you go to new york or if you go to new mexico but those are the guidelines that we have to follow if you are a um if you've if you've clinically recovered from covet in the past three months there would be no quarantine or pre or post-travel tests needed but if you're unvaccinated traveler you have to defer to the travel until uh different it would be it would be wise to defer travel until you are vaccinated but that's not necessarily um sensible or or accommodating so um they would look to before travel to get tested um but then afterwards you look to get tested three to five days after the travel or stay home and self quarantined for a full seven days after travel even if the post travel test is negative if not

046test uh test it after travel stay home and self quarantine for 10 days after travel so um those are things that have been in place um it's it's there uh it's never changed uh we're hoping for things to change i don't know which way it could go it could become more cumbersome or become least less cumbersome so we will see but um if when and if if that happens i will definitely uh share with you what uh what that means so uh one of the other things too i want to share is is that i know that you can't see this but this is a chart and really what it is it's a comparison chart and i wanted to put something like this together and there's several districts that have done this in the state

047of new jersey which i liked and i you know if there's something that works i'll borrow it and um that's exactly what i did i looked to borrow this this chart from from several other districts which showed this is what we were doing last year excuse me and this is what we're going to do this year and this is the change and can this chart change it sure can because lots of things could change um but if i just walk you through some some some important pieces we talked about the fully virtual option unfortunately that's not an option next year so all students have to come to school if you do not want your children to participate in instruction in school what you would normally do is what would happen pre-2020 um school year in

048the 1920s school year you would have to unenroll your child from cedarville public schools and homeschool them but there will not be an option to uh virtually uh teach your children um next this coming school year like we did last year the caveat is uh that if there is a if a student is is quarantined then we will have to provide that student with um something that is commensurate to what live instruction would be in class the positive news is that we've had that experience last year and we worked very well through that um also if you are medically uh disabled or in need and those are those are the pieces of that um some things that i think might be on your mind maybe not right now but we'll be as we start to

049school back to school nights they will be in person uh conferences parent conferences caregiver conferences um those will be in person as well if for those conferences if you are unable to make it then we will be able to you'd have to give in advance the ability to have a virtual conference that's the way the world now there's a lot of things that we all do virtually that weren't there before so this is something that would be an option lockers are going to be available one-way hallways stairwells staggered bell schedules we're moving back into a normal schedule of how we operated prior to uh covid um quarantine uh i we talked i talked about ventilation we are on a uh so we we very and there's a lot of negatives through kovid and there's a

050lot more negatives and we could kind of pluck the positives out of this but there was there's something that is very there's a major positive to this is that a lot of school districts for a long time have looked and i know this is one of them that looked to be a one-to-one district meaning with chromebooks and with our technology due to um the grants that we got from the federal government due to our staff uh being able to utilize um due to mr davita being able to budget money appropriately we every one of our students has the ability to have a chromebook and that will be part of their toolkit moving forward here in cedar grove public schools that is the way of the world will we utilize the way that we did last

051year or back from march to to um to june of 2020 no no if that if something ever happened again we have the capability but now we can utilize this uh in the way that the expectation would be for our graduating seniors to go into college or how we in the business world or in our careers would utilize this it's a great collaboration tool there's a lot of great tools especially for our most vulnerable students that can learn through that so that's something that we will continue now and that we will embrace and invest our time efforts and money into to help move our students forward again excuse me google classroom this is everything that we've um oh one thing i do want to share is that clever is something that will be introduced to

052our students and that is really a one-time sign-in now for the students sitting here in the audience if you've had to go on and you've had to go into the multiple platforms that you've been requested to go on by your teachers sometimes you got to figure out the password you gotta go do this guy do that no longer you'll be able to use clever you go you sign in once and you get into everything it's very convenient and it's password protected and it's something that we were looking at several years ago but we're putting into place now iep 504 irs meetings those were virtual last year those will be in person or by virtue by request this is different and if you've read this and maybe you had a question i want to be able

053to explain this in our elementary schools we have traditionally had our students work in a a single teacher classroom in our fourth grade classroom very similar to our fifth grade which is in the middle school we have looked to departmentalize our fourth grades so that means your students your children will get the same experience that they've had except and i'll give you this example mr david and myself and ms dai are the teachers for fourth grade i may teach math mr davida may teach language arts but ms daimy teach social studies or science your children will be able to rotate through those teachers and get the experience of working with different teachers uh they'll be more of a focus for that teacher to work with and it will allow them to really focus on those

054particular needs of that subject area part of that also is it helps improve the students abilities in in the class and how we deliver that that instruction to the students it works with two teachers as well i could teach math and science mr davida can teach science and sorry such studies in language arts it depends on the sections and where we're going but that is something that's different we want to prepare our students a little bit earlier for the transition and expectation of going into the middle school and how how they can move forward and how they can actually benefit them educationally instructionally uh so those are that's a little bit of a different piece excuse me um after school clubs uh you know i really do praise the staff for trying to salvage a

055lot of the clubs that had taken place those will still continue they'll they will continue in person uh morning and after care that wasn't an option last year uh we have come up with a contractual agreement with right at school so we now have morning and after care we're very excited with our with our partnership with them uh they have they are well known in several other districts and they have provided uh they're providing our students with a good amount of um not just watching them after school or before school look they're looking to engage them with activities and even with um support systems that how they can support them and they're um we've had several different um i guess expos or information sessions so uh that will all be available i'm actually sending out

056a communication as well uh but either tomorrow or by thursday that will bring you if you have some questions it'll bring you right to that site and bring it to your child's school um lunch so lunch will be served we've worked with pomptonian which is our lunch provider pomptonian has primarily been in place in the middle in the high school and now they will be in place through all of our schools in our elementary as well uh we've worked with them through a point of service system to make it as contactless as possible you will excuse me get information about how to provide your child with a lunch budget and every their experience of getting lunch in the school will provide them with um wrapped silverware where prior they may have been able to pull

057a fork or or or a spoon everything is wrapped everything is as touchless as possible and we look forward to our partner our continuing partnership with with pomptonian difference is is that we have high school and traditionally you've had high school as a senior going having off-campus privilege we've increased it to the junior the reason why we've done that is because um it will provide us more room within our cafeterias here in the high school to allow a little bit more of a social distancing if we don't do that we would have to look for other alternatives and that means this room that you're sitting in that looks beautiful and clean and refreshing and it won't look that way anymore so we look to providing them with that that option they like a senior like

058a junior you're not required to take advantage of that it's something and i will tell you um you know in my experience when i was a high school principal uh it was opened up to everybody freshmen through uh uh seniors that was 2200 kids going out to lunch and when it got cold out not a lot of people go out for lunch so but it's an option and it look it looks to how how we can logistically help serve the students to the best of our abilities through this time um so those are so those are some pieces just on the um the reopening um i wanted to share with you as well if you have questions uh you should please submit them to me like i said i had several questions from families um

059today and also uh prior i put them on in the faqs if you have that question probably somebody else has that question as well so i'll try to answer them uh as best of my ability as i can some things are going to probably change it's just the reality of it we have to be very flexible we have to adapt and adjust on the fly as we go through this time but the nice piece is is that last year we were not talking like this and we were not having these conversations and it was of the unknown and we went through a very tumultuous year where um and i'll speak this as a parent myself um it's not necessarily that we had to make it work um but we're very grateful how we can kind

060of move forward with um instruction so uh some of the other pieces i do want to share with you some new new things that are going to be going on you've heard me talk about we talked about social emotional learning i want to just clarify a couple things social emotional learning has been around for quite some time i know there's some relation to social emotional learning and i want to be able to clarify that for you i'm going to read you something that comes off of the new jersey department of education's website it talks about social and emotional learning is the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge skills and attitudes develop healthy identities manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals feel it and show empathy for others

061establish maintain supportive relationships and make responsible and caring decisions students in sel programs are more likely to attend school and receive better grades and are less likely to have contact problems successful in fusion of seo can result in positive behaviors increased academic new succe department of education has been promoting social emotional learning to enhance the building positive school climates and healthy development of young people so this is something that has been in place for as long as i've been a teacher and this has been 20 plus years as well as an as an educa as an administrator uh the one thing we and we've been doing uh we have been engaging our students in in social emotional learning for years here in cedar grove what we are going to do moving forward is is that

062we are looking at seven mindsets which seven mindsets is an effort uh it is a curriculum we met we didn't necessarily have a curriculum prior to that it's all about positive reinforcement it's about self recognition of needs of individuals and that is something where our k-12 staff will be trained in but our um we now have a mental health coordinator as well as an anti-bullying coordinator and that person will be valuable because they are licensed practicing counselor which is a very um it's very unique for a school district to have that a lot of school districts when there is a crisis you'll have to call in a specialist for that and very rarely would you have somebody like that on staff so we're very fortunate to have that as well as now having a head

063nurse uh robin callie is now our head nurse she's ahead she's a nurse of the high school so she will be our head nurse of the district she'll be a point person for questions about anything medically related or health related excuse me it's important to build a team of people that are professionals and that are skilled in those areas uh those are people that can help guide and move the district into a position that is forward motion and and not continue and some practices that may not necessarily have hit all of our students uh to the best needs to the best of their abilities um so that is something that we are excited about and that we're going to be moving forward with and i will definitely give you more updates on it as they

064as we move forward with that um i talked about back to school and i took that after care i want to talk a little bit about assessment i'm sorry this is very long but i want to be able to make sure i get this information to you so um the department of curriculum instruction which i want to also share has been reformatted uh prior to that we had a supervisor of math science and a supervisor of language arts social studies we now have reorganized that department the department now reflects uh a pre-k through five as well as a six through 12 concentration uh after having having conversations with the administrative team curriculum curricular wise and instructionally it makes a lot of sense time and attention can be placed towards those particular areas and there can

065be a specialist working with those those individuals excuse me sorry um but the department of curriculum instruction has been working extremely hard over the summer and they've been working with the building principals and they've created an assessment calendar and a window of opportunity to evaluate where each student is currently performing academically this year from the elementary level to the high school level students will be identified at the beginning of the year to help support and address individual academic needs through this process a tiered level of support will be able to be administered on a school level to each individual student and progress monitored over the course of the intervention period more information will be available um but i do want to share here is that they they've created a an assessment schedule and there is

066when you look at this assessment schedule you will say to yourself wow there's a lot to be done in the very beginning of the school year and this year is going to be a little bit different because normally we've had the nj sla given at the end of may april may they the state didn't require us to do that last year based on the circumstances of remote learning so now excuse me uh now that's going to be done in the very beginning of the school year and that that will be something that um will benchmark it won't be as intensive and for the students in the class students in the classroom the students in the auditorium you know you know what this is like there's a lot to um when you when you take these

067standardized tests they're multi-days these tests will not be multi-days uh they will be subject based and it'll be a 45-minute period to take those tests all um accommodations if you are um eligible for that will be also uh provided for you uh but more information from the department of curricular instruction will come out to you shortly excuse me but this will be up on our website um um either tomorrow by thursday to let you see what those windows are we're very serious and we had and we had a little bit of a conversation uh last meeting about how are we going to know where our students are well the re the question is is that you know there's a there's a term going around learning loss so learning loss happens every year right learning less

068happens every summer there's some sort of learning loss that happens but through the course of this year because there wasn't a full day of instruction does that necessarily mean there was as large of a gap as we anticipated we don't know we could surmise we can assume based on a structure but we don't quite know we were for our most vulnerable students we did provide their extended year program and people who wanted to take who want to participate in that did and it took place over in memorial middle school but um we are uh we will be very diligent as you as we move into the new school year right from when the door is open to assess our students understand where they are then be able to tier our students into a response to

069intervention or an rti model that really will help guide our staff as to where the students are and how they will be able to support them and one of those pieces is how will we support our staff to support them and that is something that we will be engaging in making one of our goals this year to to help them because our staff is extremely important to help your children who are extremely important to you so i did want to share that little bit uh with you so more information will come about that um one of the other pieces is is that something new is that we have um looked into and we will be adopting uh bark and securely now those of you who work in a school district that do use this this

070is a a software um with software that will enable us to monitor uh what our students are doing on our google suites so that could be google docs it can be gmail it can be sheets it could be like the powerpoint version of google the rationale for that and this is specifically for bark is that there are potential issues like cyber bullying like suicidal ideation or threats of violence that can arise uh that can be communicated through those through our platform that we are providing to our students on our devices now this is not on your device and i'll talk about this and how this is really important to understand um when we provide all of our students i just got done talking about the one-to-one initiative that one-to-one initiative those are our devices those

071are district devices you will sign a release to utilize those devices and in a technology acceptable use policy um so if a student is utilizing that in a way that is not school related that will flag for us how we have to intervene and i will share with you from my experience in using this for quite some time i can't tell you how many lives were saved when i talked about suicidal ideation there was and especially during the time when covid was just starting to come about and we were having to quarantine there was a lot of students that had some very difficult times and they found an outlet with each other through our the google suites the products and we were able to go and flag that and and through our social and emotional

072learning facts uh intervene for that student uh securely is a little bit different securely and this is what i want to share with you securely looks at all the traffic the internet traffic that someone's utilizing on our search engine during the time that we're using here's the thing if you do not go if you log on on your home computer on our um accounts and then you don't log off it's gonna still see that so if my son logs on and i go on the computer afterwards and i start looking up something else it's gonna flag it so so the reality of it all is is that it's important this pertains only to our products that we give out to our students um and i will be sharing with you it will everything will be

073outlined in the acceptable use policy uh as well as as the release um as well as a letter outlining and information where you can go and find that where there'll be live links and so it's it's it's very in-depth and you can see that talks about third party we do not sell that information to third parties so there's lots of different things that people would have questions about which will all be outlined in that so i did want to share that with you um the i got two i'll get three more things i there's been a lot of conversation about um selk which is a social emotional learning committee and our edac or equity diversity advisory council a lot of questions that have come up about that and where can i get more information or

074how can i be part of that well you can find on our main webpage if you go down there's buttons the rather large buttons but there's buttons there that bring you to everything that share what the vision the mission is it tells you the story about the inception we've had a lot of conversations here in this room about that um and it also shares agendas and it wells it shares some other interesting pieces but it's each of those websites also share an application if you want to be a part of that if you feel that you can provide some sort of knowledge or assistance in that area you can apply for it and and there's a there's a very quick easy application it can be as lengthy or short as you want it to be

075it has some very simple questions and those are pointed questions to be on those committees um and to really to balance the committee but also if you've had that experience whether it's been social emotional or diversity or inclusion and you've worked in that arena and you feel you have something to offer please by all means put that in there um but it's live it's open and if you want to do that you can surely go on there tonight or tomorrow or anytime that you have free and look around and also feel free to apply to be part of that we do talk about how there is a limit it can't be uh 5 000 people uh but there's around 20 people that we would appoint doesn't necessarily mean the same people that people that were

076on it previously would get on it again um but it's we tried to limit it to 20. perhaps in years to come it can grow a little bit more but right now we're keeping it to something that's manageable and that can be recognizable at all levels um one last thing two more things i want to talk about and this is going to be coming out i want to share the importance of this it is the free and reduced lunch applications so there's probably many there's probably many people that look at that and they don't they don't they don't fill that out um i want to share with you what that really means now the one interesting thing this year is that um every student in new jersey this is great every student in new jersey

077if you want to get lunch here at school you get it for free that's pretty crazy right there's such thing as a free lunch yeah there's such thing as a free lunch so every student it doesn't matter if you're going here to see the grove if you're in little falls if you're in montville mountain vale ridgewood cape may it doesn't matter if you are in new jersey you can purchase or you can acquire a free lunch every single day if you want to purchase another lunch after that that's different you can get it at full price or you can get it free or reduced i'm going to read you something and this is something that as a principal i have always preached this out because there's things that people don't really understand what can come

078of of signing up on the free and reduced lunch uh form all children are eligible to participate in in any school lunch program so why is it important to complete this well there are three important reasons why you'd want to fill this out if your child qualifies for free or reduced lunch prices they qualify for free or reduce if we ever have to do this breakfast prices as well right so we want to help your child to eat healthy school districts want to do that for your child your child may receive other school benefits the number of applications that are returned and approved can affect how much funding our schools get to help students meet academic benchmarks including grant funding for materials like books and computers and etcetera so the more people apply the more

079the state will recognize it and the funding through grants through title one grant so on and so forth can help benefit um students that go to city road public schools and the new jersey department of education uses free or reduced prices and eligibility percentages in its methodology for determining peer groups which for school and school district in their performance report so when you're compared when you're compared to when we are compared to other school districts we are compared based on our socioeconomic our our performance status there's lots of different pieces that go into this and that's how they compare funding um balances and that's how you when it comes times for budget season you look at state aid so those are all important pieces if nobody fills that out well then the state looks and

080says okay well everybody's pretty pretty okay no problem but that's not necessarily always the case so those are really important pieces understand this please that some families they're concerned about listing their income amounts and social security numbers on the application please understand that all this information is completely personal it's not provided or shared it's reported directly to the state those meals those those reduced price meals and those applications those are all completely confidential so that's not something that a teacher would know that's not something a principal would know we at the district level look at that and we use it for reporting purposes and to help families who may need some help so when you see this coming out this year and i'm going to say this again because there's a period of time when

081you can continue to apply for this please take it seriously please take it seriously because what it does is it ultimately will help you but ultimately will help everybody in this district and will help to provide any type of funding that is necessary for us to be able like we were talking earlier through grants um so i just want to share that with you and the last thing i want to share is um you know in the summer time uh it's the district is very busy yeah you may not see it there's not a lot going in and going out because there aren't students present and some there are some students present depending on programs but our administrative team is working every day extremely diligently and one of the things that we are going to

082be engaging in tomorrow and on thursday is is an administrative retreat and that retreat is not a kind of retreat that we're all thinking about we can go to and relax it's really a retreat where we engage in hot topics and uh training and workshops for our administrative staff that would mean um we look at we if we do a law review we look at some hot topics of different things that are happening in case laws that are happening across the state anything anything new that may be coming down that will affect your children or that may affect us as a community and how we as administrators can engage in it we're we're spending a lot of time on um on assessment uh this this these two days and we're looking at how we can

083utilize lincoln which is something that we've engaged in which is something we are extremely um dedicated to investing in for your children so we're able to identify students needs and support uh it'll look at hiring practices it'll look at um oh there's there's so many things uh the curriculum instruction department will be doing major presentations on on curriculum and how we're going to move forward and just reviewing reviewing things that will help better the experience for your children help better the experience for the staff and ultimately help better the experience for us families so this is a very long talk um and i know that some of this stuff is a little bit boring to you but uh i will tell you that a lot of what i've talked about a lot of it's already

084on the website and like i said if you have other questions please feel free to contact me um i will like i said i will put that information up on the website and help um help anybody else may have the same question so thank you very much [Music] thank you for the very thorough report and as a reminder if you weren't able to write all of that down it's on our website so thank you very much before i move on with the agenda i just sort of want to remind everybody that you please put your masks on and wear them the right way even if you're napping in the auditorium you still have to put your mask on and so if you could please fix your mask and put it on the right way we

085would greatly appreciate it moving on from the office of the business administrator and board secretary under minutes can i have a motion for b1 through b3 so moved second b1 is a motion to approve the public in executive minutes of july 20th 2021 b2 is a motion to approve the budgetary transfers for the month of july and b3 is a motion to approve the board's secretary certification to the cedar grove board of education pursuant to the code that no line item account has encumbrances and expenditures which in total exceed the line item appropriation and violation of the code any discussion no roll call please mrs dechara yes mr schoener yes mrs dye yes under bills can i have a motion for b4 so moved second b4 is a motion to pay the following list of

086bills that were in our packet this evening any discussion no no roll call please mrs dechara yes mr schoener hi mrs yes under business can i have a motion and i'm going to break this up because there's a lot for b5 through b21 so moved second b5 is a motion to approve the subscription bussing contract with the parents of the student listed for the 2022 school year b6 is a motion to approve the following parent transportation contract id number at the rate listed b7 is a motion to approve the following parent transportation contract the id listed b8 is a motion to approve the subscription bussing contract with the parents of the student number id listed b9 is a motion to approve the submission of the 2122 arp idea grant and the amount listed below b10

087is a motion to approve the addendum to existing contract with e-rate consulting inc b11 is a motion to approve the 21-22 student transportation services b12 is a motion to approve the below list of transportation routes for renewal of transportation contracts with nw transport llc for the 2122 school year b13 is a motion to approve the below listed transportation routes for renewal transportation contracts with alden transportation inc for the 21 22 school year b14 is a motion to approve the location agreement with michael smith and the cedar grove board of education b-15 is a motion to approve increasing appropriations in the 2122 budget in the amount listed to account for the approval of the school security grant b16 is a motion to approve the transportation joint chair with passage valley high school b17 is a motion

088to approve the submission of the amendment to the coronavirus response and supplemental appropriations act of 2021 elementary and secondary school emergency relief fund b9 or that should be 18. yes and now i'm going to have to renumber everything b18 is a motion to approve the subscription busing contract with the parents of the student number listed b 19 is a motion to approve the following parent transportation contract for the 121-22 school year for the id listed b-20 is a motion for approval of professional appointment and b 21 is a motion to approve rosa international group to provide armed security services at the rate listed any discussion no no roll call please mrs dechara yes mr schoener yes mr dye yes can i have a motion for there's so many let's just break this one up can

089i have a motion under personnel can i have a motion for s1 through s32 so moved second s1 um is hib investigation resolution for the superintendent's report um with the second reading s2 is the hiv investment investigation resolution for the superintendent's report on second reading s3 is the hiv investigation resolution for the superintendent's report upon second reading s-4 is a motion to approve the resignation of heather garofalo mms science teacher as of september 24th 2021 s5 is a motion to rescind the resignation date of september 6 for alexa miller and approve august 31st s6 is a motion to rescind the resignation date of september 10th from michael mousab and approved august 31st s7 is a motion to rescind the resignation date of august 3rd for finale chochi i apologize and approved july 30th s8 is

090a motion to retroactively approve the resignation for the purposes of retirement of rochelle divisio s9 is a motion to approve the resignation of susan lynch a ch high school paraprofessional s10 is a motion to rescind the resignation date of september 6 for thomas mogan and approve august 31st s11 is a motion to rescind tom mugen as the high school junior class advisor s12 is a motion to retroactively accept the resignation of megan macleod north empire professional s13 is a motion to retroactively accept the resignation of christina zad taroska i apologize a south end paraprofessional s14 is a motion to appoint the following staff in accordance with the state emergent hiring start date procedures michael recemente [Music] mms physical education teacher jill rosker south end and north end shared art teacher craig pickrell mms science teacher

091alexander penna high school social studies teacher shannon king mms maternity leave for the map for math teacher carrie de tono mms maternity leave phys ed teacher gretchen bowie high school maternity leave science teacher michelle macrino north end paraprofessional alyssa minnelli high school math teacher jacqueline mill milnes south end paraprofessional and rosemary des rosiers north end school nurse s15 is a motion to approve andrea santa maria south and ldtc s16 is a motion to approve melissa rika high school bcba s17 is a motion to approve christian gerhamen high school science teacher s18 is a motion to approve karen moran as a north end paraprofessional s19 is a motion to approve lauren ocker as a southend paraprofessional s20 is a motion to approve rachel battle amenti as a new paraprofessional position s21 is a motion to approve

092teresa ardo south and maternity leave coverage s22 is a motion to retroactively approve michael tully high school freshman girls assistant volleyball coach s 13 is a motion to retroactively approve brian meisner high school jv assistant girls soccer coach s24 is a motion to rescind vincent fazio high school boys jv soccer coach at the one rate listed and then to approve the the other rate s25 is a motion to approve daniel sarasa district residency officer s s26 is a motion to approve joe lombardi district summer custodian a reimbursement of fingerprinting sorry s27 is a motion to approve gina testa high school guidance counselor the rate listed s28 is a motion to prove the transfer of erica slota from mms to the high school guidance counselor s29 is a motion to retroactively approve michelle zvelowski as employee

093coordinator s 30 is a motion to rescind longevity listed for chris kinney and improve the longevity listed at the new rate s31 is a motion to approve the following school lunch aids for the 21 22 school year at the rate listed s32 is a motion to approve the following substitute teachers for the 21-22 school year at the rate listed any discussion no no roll call please mrs dichara yes mr schoener aye mr dye yes um can i have a motion for s 33 to s 52 so move second s 33 is a motion to approve the following staff building and grade changes only for september 1st 2021 through june 30th 2022 s 34 is a motion to retroactively approve donna lafoon s 35 is a motion to approve joan ohm a high school junior class

094advisor s 36 is a motion to approve james cestefano high school detention monitor s37 is a motion to rescind s13 on the july 20th 2021 agenda and approve howie monk reassignment retroactively on july 19th from mms night custodian today custodian lrp s38 is a motion to rescind the mms esports stipend from the july 20th agenda for the individuals listed and approve the new stipend s 39 is a motion to rescind the elementary lunch duty stipend from the july 20th agenda for both north end and south end at the rate listed and approve the same stipend um at for the new amount listed s40 is a motion to retroactively approve bethlehem to provide student services at the rate listing s 41 is a motion to approve katy danelli to prepare intervention program material s42 is a

095motion to approve the second reading of the 2021 ksa kickoff classic orlando florida trip for the returning cghs football players 43 is a motion to approve the electronic submission of the statement of assurance of the district professional development plan s 44 is a motion to approve an adjustment to the 2122 district calendar to reflect the use of four early dismissal days as listed for in-staff service s45 is a motion to rescind the resignation date of september 17th for michael konopka and approve august 31st s46 is a motion to rescind s30 melissa hill stipend for set designer drama and set designer musical for the 2122 school year s 47 is a motion to authorize attendance at the following events s 48 is a motion to approve the following leaves of absence s 49 is a motion

096to approve the following students for classroom observation s 50 is a motion to approve the following stipend for the 21 22 school year for the weight room s 51 is a motion to approve an additional three days of work for guidance counselors for working in the summer an s52 is a motion to approve christopher kinney as the esea grant coordinator in the amount listed any discussion no roll call please mrs dichara yes mr schoener yes mrs dye yes i have a question so s53 it's the second reading right mr devita so we just approve that and then s54 you're going to um read that okay so for now can i have a motion to approve s53 so moved second um s53 is a motion to approve the second reading of the following policies that we

097had already previously reviewed any discussion no no rule call please mrs dichara yes mr schoener yes mr dye yes now for s54 mr devito you're gonna review that yes okay all right we have um a few policies that we're abolishing and one that we is a new policy uh just regarding covid um policy excuse me 1648 for the restart and recovery plan as is being abolished this policy is no longer necessary as the anticipated minimum standards in the road back and policy guide are not mandatory for the reopening of school for the 2021-22 school year pursuant to the new guidance policy 1648.02 is for remote learning options for families this is also being abolished this policy is no longer applicable because families will no longer have the option to elect to keep their children home

098for remote virtual instruction for the 21-22 school year for covid related matters policy 1648.03 which is the restart and recovery plan for full-time remote instruction is also being abolished this policy is no longer applicable and necessary as all schools must open all school facilities for in-person operation for the 21-22 school year policy 1648.11 is the road forward covert 19 health and safety this is a new policy and it is mandatory uh this policy is intended to replace the minimum standards outlined in executive order 175 and the road back and it contains recommendations rather than mandatory standards as additional federal recommendations from the centers for disease control and prevention become available the guidance will be updated thank you so can i have a motion for s54 s54 is a motion to approve the first reading of

099the policies that we just heard mr devita discuss any discussion no yeah i'd like to just explain to everybody i know it seems like i got a few questions um about how why do you go through things so quickly and i want to explain to everybody it sounds like we're just ripping through these procedures and and policy changes just so you guys know and everybody understands we have committees on the board and one of the committees that i'm on is policy meeting so we review the policies that are basically being mandated or abolished or tweaked or changed in a separate meeting and it usually takes about i'd say anywhere from two to three hours to go through and understand every single policy what it means for our kids what it means for us so and

100then we present it to the rest of the team during our executive meeting and explain to them what policies are being changed so just so you guys understand we're not just whipping through these there has been a lot of work put in ahead of time behind the scenes that we have reviewed these we understand what every single policy means so somebody just asked me that question i thought tonight would be a great night since we have so many policies and we read them twice um so this one is the first reading for these new policies that have been apolog um that have been abolished and what are new and i just thought it would be a great opportunity to share with everybody how we operate absolutely thank you thank you and thank you for your

101time spent on the policy that being said uh roll call please mrs dichara yes mr schoener yes mrs dye yes under curriculum can i have a motion for s-55 so moved second s-55 is a motion to approve the following curriculum guides for the 21-22 school year any discussion no no roll call please mrs dichara yes mr schoener yes mrs dye yes under contracts can i have a motion for s-56 so moved second as 56 is a motion to approve the following contracts for special education um students as recommended by the director of special services for the 21 22 school year any discussion no no roll call please mrs ditura yes mr schoener yes mrs dye yes at this time the board of education offers members of the public an opportunity to address issues regarding the

102operation of the cedar grove public schools in this section we allow public comments on all school related matters our regulations allow 40 minutes for these communications again each person shall be limited to three minutes there will be a countdown timer that mr devita has working now right and at the end of the three minutes the microphone will be shut off and the speaker will be interrupted speakers may speak more than once only after all others wishing to speak on a topic have been heard issues raised by members of the public may or may not be responded to by the board all comments will be considered and a response will be forthcoming if and when appropriate this portion of the meeting is meant to hear public comment not to have a dialogue between the board and

103the person speaking the board asks that members of the public be courteous and mindful of the rights of other individuals when speaking specifically comments regarding students district employees and members of the board are discouraged and will not be responded to by the board the public is reminded that students and employees have specific legal rights afforded by the laws of new jersey the board bears no responsibility nor will it be liable for any comments made by members of the public members of the public should consider their comments in light of the legal rights of those affected or identified in their comments and be aware that they are legally responsible and liable for their comments as i stated earlier all statements will be directed to me as the presiding officer and no one may address board members

104individually please be reminded that if your statement is too lengthy abusive obscene or defamatory you may be interrupted warned or your participation may be terminated please also be reminded that if any person does not observe reasonable decorum is disorderly or disrupts the meaning you'll be asked to leave the meeting the board reminds those individuals who take this opportunity to speak to identify themselves by name address and group affiliation if applicable every time you address the board and to limit their comments to items directly related to the operation of the school district because of the high number of people that have signed up to speak people are people to speak we ask that you ask all your questions at once or make comments and then return to your seat answers if any will be given at

105the end of the public comment thank you so the meeting is now open to the public for comment on items on or off the agenda and then there was a sign up sheet so i'm just going to go in order um again if you come up to the microphone state your name and address i'd greatly appreciate it um the first one i have on here is carolyn o'connell good evening um i'd like to start oh carolyn o'connell for bordek road i'd like to start by saying thank you for everything that you're doing to move the district forward however i'm here to ask or request that you make a consideration to changing something else and that would be eliminating the half days for preschool and kindergarten the first three days of the school year it creates

106an undue hardship for working parents number one but i also just don't think it makes sense i inquired with my son's principle as to why it was happening and the response that i was given is that it's needed to help the children adjust to school now my son missed the cutoff last year due to an october birthday however he qualified for services and so he was in school from january through june as well as the extended year there is no need for him to adjust to anything for one day let alone for three additionally from what i've learned from just the facebook page in the town there are never very many openings in the lottery so many of the students in the preschool classrooms are returning each year why do they need three days not

107even a half day but an 11 30 a.m dismissal for what purpose now beyond that kindergarten okay kindergarten may be the first opportunity that some of these students are coming into the cedar grove school system i accept that but many of them have already attended school or a school-like environment somewhere else because they couldn't get in for preschool in cedar grove i just don't understand why we would be doing something like this it's a huge disservice to my son who is ready he's excited he's willing to be there he wants to learn he needs that time especially after this past year where it wasn't the full days and i've also made use of the before and after care for him and now i can't do that so for the first three days of school i'm

108paying for an aftercare program that i can't utilize because it's not the whole school being dismissed it's just these three grade levels and then beyond that because i happen to be an educator which i understand not all parents are i'm blacked out on my contract the first two weeks of school so i can't even take a personal day or a personal half day and come pick him up so i've paid for something that i can't make use of and now i have to pay somebody else to watch him so that he can assimilate when he's already assimilated so i'm asking you to please review this i'm asking you to eliminate it at minimum i'm asking you to allow the students who have already been in school in cedar grove or in school somewhere to stay

109for the full day the teachers are there for the full day let them teach these kids and then if you eliminate it completely and there happens to be a family who believes that their child needs to take that day then allow on a case-by-case basis for the parent to pick them up early because they always have that right and the reason again why i think that it is an incredibly weak argument to tell me that it's for helping them to assimilate to school is because if you come to the cedar grove school system week two or week 22 you don't have to leave early and your peers aren't leaving early with you they're there for the full day so why start this way and why three you're not assimilated after day one like you haven't

110learned it you need three days to figure it out so i'm begging you to please consider how much this impacts not only the parents but the kids revisit this policy and please change it i would love for it to be changed for two weeks from now i understand that may not be possible but at least for next year please consider eliminating this program thank you um i know we've had that policy in effect now at least since my kids were little um so i definitely think if there could be a reason for reviewing it right i mean time's changed and i think definitely there's more children who attend you know either preschool or daycare or whatever nowadays right than at least you know a long time ago so i think that's something we can definitely

111look into um to be honest i don't think there's anything we could do about it this year i know i wish we could but it's something we'll definitely uh evalu evaluate because you definitely make a valid concern so absolutely okay thank you very much appreciate it um the next person i have on the list is myra medina [Music] medina 76 old orchard court i'm here on behalf of erin shaw i'm reading a testimony from her hello my name is erin shaw i live on northview terrace with my husband my one-year-old daughter and our dog we are a mixed race family and we find it extremely important for our daughter's education to represent diversity and inclusion for all races backgrounds socioeconomic statuses gender identities and sexual orientations now i'll be honest in saying that other than

112watching board meetings on youtube as coming to meetings has not worked out with my daughter's bedtime i don't know what the state of cedar grove schools are in this regard however based on those meetings i've watched i am a bit concerned that other parents while meaning well have focused so intently on the survey itself and how it was shared but it is important to realize that the district is trying to move in a direction of more inclusivity and celebration of diversity i have heard some parents concerned that they're being made out to be racist but i disagree even the most inclusive district can still do can still do work to improve any and all districts should want to make all children feel more comfortable in school even if they already feel pretty comfortable they should

113be this should be a goal and until all students are comfortable in school those students will have a barrier to learning according to maslow's hierarchy of needs people need their physiological needs safety needs belonging and love needs and esteem needs met before they can focus on cognitive needs and so i applaud the board for making diversity and inclusion a priority and i hope they continue working towards making all students comfortable in cedar grove schools and you all know that i always have you always have my support when it comes down to the changes and having more representation in schools and also in the curriculum so thank you thank you for your comment [Applause] next i have dr joseph dally good evening dr joseph daly 1397 pompton avenue cedar grove i swore when i retired i

114never attended another board meeting but here i am many years later uh who am i okay um i'm a retired educator over 50 years of experience in public education 25 years teaching english and humanities everything from special ed to ap english district supervisor of the secondary school district for 11 years student teaching supervisor for the college of st elizabeth and teaching school law at the college for 15 years adjunct professor of communication arts at montclair state university for 20 years two weeks back with mask and it's been a somewhat busy time chairman of the middle states association of secondary schools for 34 years which grants accreditation to the schools in several states in this area okay i know a lot about school districts and how they operate and should operate it's obvious based upon the

115last two meetings i watched online that this is not an effective way to conduct the process of education what do i see happening at these meetings i watch the july meeting i watch the june meeting and the basic problem that i see is a problem of communications and teaching communications it goes both ways okay members of the community are asking for answers to legitimate questions a board of education not providing answers or directly communicating with the people who elected them what are the implications it appears that the board is not in compliance with the open public meetings act which requires the board to provide a mechanism for public questions and answers the community members have requested the resignation of the superintendent and the board president and the last two meetings i've watched the answer is

116always no which i would expect as an administrator uh it's also obvious that the community members should be informed that there's a recall process to remove any individual that you don't want on the board or the entire board uh it's obvious that these meetings are going nowhere you want them to resign they say no you don't offer reasons as to why people you want them to resign you don't offer reasons why you should stay if the community wants they could start a recall process the community can elect new board members who are responsive as seats open up on the board at the next election i've noticed over the years that that's a problem contact your new jersey school boards association elect new board members and you might see some change all of you need to

117communicate not answering questions is not communication the community has legal options use them and that will end the reality thank you i appreciate your comment to answer your question i think i have actually i have stated why i refuse to resign because i think i do a very good job and just because there's a small group of people who want to bully me into resigning when i have an overwhelming majority of people who want me to stay and continue to work on diversity and inclusion and basically you know human rights human rights is not a political thing human rights is something that should be offered to every single student and that's why i'm here and i'm not going to be bullied by some individuals who don't believe that you know and yes you're exactly correct

118there is a recall procedure and and and i've been you know you're welcome to look into it if you want but the overwhelming majority of cedar grove elected me to do a job and i'm going to continue to do it while i'm on this board of education so thank you very much next i have jacqueline woolstern jacqueline wolfstar and 70 buena vista road um i pulled up the nj.gov website that specifically says as of may 17 2021 new jersey's travel advisory is no longer in effect they have suggestions on things that you should do but by no means do you have to so i'm wondering did you all travel this summer and wear mass did you quarantine did you get tested or are you being hypocritical and just pushing this on children and making them

119suffer um and mr grosso you went you had your speech before about sel we know that at crt i see through you the parents in here see through you we know you're trying to indoctrinate our children with your leftist agenda but we don't approve of it thank you well to to to answer your question to answer your question or your comment um first of all the travel advisory i've heard this from several people that we are not obliged to follow that for the entire school year from march of 2020 to now we have been guided by the medical and health professionals from the state of new jersey you don't have to agree with it in fact this is not something that is political it is something that is in the field of health so i

120sit before you not as a medical professional i sit before you as an educator by trade i'm a teacher then became an administrator and i'm your superintendent you don't have to agree with everything that i do or say that is your prerogative and that is your opinion and i respect that but the one thing that we have to look at is is that this is not in your words ma'am a political agenda or leftist agenda this is based on medical and health advice from the people who do this every day so i do rely on them for that and i will continue to rely on them for that so when we talk about what did i do or any of us did here in this room over the summer well that's based that is not

121school related that document which you can definitely look at it's in the archives on the return to school website which share what k to 12 schools masking and travel guidance is and i explained in the very beginning when i had my very long introduction to what some of the things were to come about what schools need to follow and those are guidelines and that is in conjunction with the health department now as far as social emotional learning when you talk about crt what crt are you talking about can you explain that to me and you're more than welcome to come back up to the microphone what is crt we all know no i i'm i'm offering you an opportunity hold on one moment i'm offering you an opportunity to share with me because you've said

122this to me multiple times what crt is and what you feel is being placed into the well last meeting i specifically we know crt is critical race theory so what is we all know this you're teaching children to to treat others differently by their race that there's white supremacy that certain certain people are better than other others that is critical race theory and that is what you are using social emotional learning as and i'm sure you remember me speaking to you last month about it and you're disguising crt that is what i was saying your leftist agenda is and i don't approve of that being taught to my children nor do many people here so i'm going to offer you this in the field of education crt is not critical race theory crt is culturally

123responsive teaching and what culturally responsive teaching is is looking at every single person that is in a classroom they come from different backgrounds different ethnic and racial backgrounds different gender backgrounds different religious backgrounds what we in education in the state of new jersey are taught through crt as we know it as quick as um culturally responsive teaching is that we need to recognize that to be able to make each individual student feel comfortable accepted and to broaden all of our students minds because when you leave the classroom and you go into the real world whether it's college university or career you will face multiple people that may not look like you that may not believe in the same things that you do and our job in public public education is to provide those types of

124tools for our students and i will share this with you and i will offer this to you if you would like to have make a meeting with me and come up to the office and talk about what critical race theory is or even take an opportunity to look into our curriculum which our curriculum is our curriculum it's disgusting excuse me our curriculum is online yeah and you are more than welcome to look at it from science math so on and so forth i will be more than happy to sit down with you and walk you through that and look at that yeah and i use it please i appreciate educators teaching my children facts not what they believe so i will tell you this we have to respectfully disagree on this okay because i do

125respect you and i respect your opinion the public education is horrible and i would never put my children in a public school ever again if you think that you should be teaching my children what you believe as a person well i wanted to share this with you just so you have the facts and i don't want to give you my opinion okay because what you've done here is you have you have shared with everybody in this public who i am personally not the case but i will share with you who i am as an administrator and how we in new jersey and the public school system have to follow the land the law of the land it is from it is shared with us from the department of education through laws through statutes that we

126in public education must share the different cultural perspectives of all students whether it is their race and their ethnicity their religion their social economic or their gender identity i am by no means against that i do not appreciate children being taught um opinions for i'm not saying i don't know what you believe or what you feel i'm saying but you i wouldn't want you teaching my children your beliefs because they're my children i teach them what i believe i teach them my values and morals i wouldn't want you teaching them something whether or not it's the same thing i that's not your responsibility you know and i have to tell you i respect that from you because the family unit is important right but again i want to share with you because i want to

127give you very factual information because it goes a long way because unfortunately and i'm glad that you're you know we're having this dialogue because it's something that we all could learn from unfortunately there is a lot of misinformation that that spreads out there whether it's through social media whether it's through conversation whatever it may be i'm offering you this you can come to my office and we can have that conversation and i will be more than happy to hear your opinion and to even share with some some advice that you may have but i always want to provide you with the facts this isn't personal this isn't political this is factual based on public education what we as public educators and what you when you send your children to public school what you will encounter

128okay thank you thank you [Applause] thank you next i have heather rosetto deliva good evening heather rosetto deliva 242 ridge road over the last two board meetings i have heard students and parents talk about their experience amongst kids and inclusion but no one has talked about the discrimination against students by administrators well here is my family's story my family has been up against the district for the last five years my son has openly stated over these five years that he does not feel safe in school nothing is being done even when requested i have been told that my child doesn't look disabled among his peers by an administrator i've been told by him an administrator that my son's iep meetings were a waste of his time that they need to remove a diagnosis for fear

129that i am going to request more services they've never heard of my son's diagnosis nor the therapy to help him in the classroom therefore being denied time and time again over the years does ignorance excuse the district from helping my son in school i've had a learning specialist an advocate two lawyers and several of my son's team of doctors try to explain to the school district how to help my child yet they failed to listen and continue to deny the in-school services my son deserves i have even had three of these doctors on separate occasions say i've never seen a school district push back so hard and be so unwilling to help a child in need the most recent situation was when i requested ada accommodations for my son and was told none will be

130given at this time the superintendent the head of special services and the south end school principal collaborated to discriminate against my son he would have been completely excluded if i hadn't contacted the county superintendent joseph sara to get him the ada accommodations he was legally entitled to how many other children with disabilities are being discriminated against who do we turn to when it's our own administration discriminating against our children do any of these three people that discriminated against my son hold a seat on the edac committee if if so they should be removed immediately and lastly what is going to happen to the children with disabilities in september my son turned to me in the midst of all of this and said mama if i were you i would have given up already i responded

131i will never stop fighting for you i am never giving up thank you thank you for your comment this isn't you know no way to have a back and forth with um mrs leva but maybe you could give her a call after and you can set up time to meet with mr mr grosso and i appreciate your comment next i have um haley grieco [Music] haley grieco 48 overlook road good evening i'm coming to you tonight not as a candidate but as a parent so many of the issues tonight are very important and require dialogue and discussion but luckily some of these issues will pass so tonight my site is on the next few years i have a daughter at south end three years ago well before the pandemic we learned about the size and

132the population of the students at south end school we learned at that time that the school was at maximum capacity usually there are a few classrooms that do not have classes assigned to them but in that 2019-2020 school year when we began every single classroom was needed for assigned classes class sizes have been increasing over the years and we must as we have done in the past adapt to the change to provide the best possible education for our children now i know you as the board of education were well aware of this issue and planning for how you're going to meet the needs of the expanding student population i attended virtually the recent board meeting where the plan was laid out for the reopening of lrp and what that looks like for the students the

133plan is very comprehensive and well done and i'm excited for the next steps so i'm here tonight to ask you how can we as a community of parents and residents support this critical initiative the ability to get this done directly affects every single student in north end and south end today this also directly affects every student that will be coming into our schools in the years ahead the learning environment that is provided to the children affects their ability to thrive within the curriculum that has been given so much care and work and the best environment that we can give them supports all of our teachers and the work that they dedicate to our students the children have had so many challenges over the last two years and we owe it to them to ensure that

134they will have a learning environment that will allow them to succeed thank you [Applause] thank you very much for your comment mr grocer do you want to give an update on where we are with our expansion plans sure i'll definitely do that um you are correct that uh we are looking at class sizes that are going to increase and this was something that when i first came to this district um had to take a very good look at a lot of different logistical pieces of how we were going to serve our students and one of those pieces was um where are we in the community and how are we population wise in our and where and where and how are we serving our students cedar grove has been very fortunate over the course of of

135of years and and there's in every district there's ebbs and flows uh when you have new traffic or new populations and new homeowners that would come in to the district and when i see cedar grove has been very fortunate it's in the fact that class sizes have generally been to 20 students at an elementary level well you are going to now and in the in the 21 22 school you see those class sizes increase uh that increases based on population we started in conversations i'm just giving a little bit of a history through this because it's very important because we as we move into the uh new academic school year we are going to be having a tremendous more conversation on this this is not something that we can sweep under the carpet this is

136not something that we can make believe that we can we can wait for another time to address the time is now and if we don't address these issues there will be bigger issues for us as a community what i mean by that is is that we have seen an influx with home sales so we have residents that have been moving out we have residents who may have passed away and so we have remaining homes and and established homes that will be filled with new residents some will be um families with with no children some will be with children we're finding that we've also found a new development that has come up we've seen the hilltop you come down bradford avenue and you look at the hill and it's it's a city in itself right so

137there's a lot of there's a there's a change there um and when we talk about well that's not necessarily adding to that that's not necessarily true because when we look at our enrollment numbers our enrollment numbers increase at south end alone by july we were at a level of new enrollments uh at south and at 65. by july the beginning of july that is pretty unheard of in a community like this if you are in a larger district that's not so unusual if you're in a district that fluctuates where you have international travel that's not so different that's not so unusual um we also are looking at and i'm going to be very and this came up through a demographic study um when we had our demographer come here and give that um that uh

138expo back in february it's only where i can think of right now um but uh he shared that with the with the development of hilltop and cliffside avenue there's going to be an increase in enrollment we're seeing it now and we're noticing at um north end we are starting to have to move to art on a cart north end is not heavily affected right now it's really the south end families you will if you are a southland family and you have a kindergarten student in september you're going to have a class size of approximately 24 students and that one and that four students from 20 or 6 students from 18 may not seem like a lot in a lot of districts it's not right that's that's some in a lot of districts that's the norm

139but the more students you have in your classroom the i want to say less but there is a drastic change in individualized services that you can provide for each individual student in that classroom and that's that's the reality of it so we have explored our original excuse me exploration of lrp i'm being honest with you we were having some pipe dreams we thought we were going to do this and we were going to do that and then you realize that you can't do that because it's not just a condition of the building because the condition of the building when we saw our architect dan dressler come up and show at the june meeting these parts of that building that are not in very good shape um and we are we as you know myself as

140a superintendent and we as the board if you are going to be moving from south end north end or memorial middle school into lrp you have to have just as good or better facilities and experience and to mr stringer's point before when we're talking about safety and security that's just not present right now on the bottom floor of lrp so there is a lot of there's a lot of change that needs to happen in that facility but then we have to look at the location of that facility and back when that was built and we look at through the 60s and the 70s we as individuals and community members were very different we may have had a two-parent household and one parent worked and the other parent stayed at home that's not the case anymore

141we have both parents working and sometimes working multiple jobs so therefore the ability to walk to school has changed and the ability and one of the one of the folks you know that i spoke to has a long history here was um the previous chief joe sarasa and he he he gave me some great insight and some historical knowledge as to how did that school operate back then how did you how did you deal with traffic pompton avenue is very different looking than it was 20 years ago or 30 years ago so we have to take that into account as well and how do we devise a traffic pattern for families to come in and to leave so it's a very delicate dance that has to be done and it needs to be done in

142a timely factor so how do we and to your point how do we as a community pull together well ultimately our idea is to have lrp serve every single student that comes through the cedar grove public schools we look at that as a possible possibility of an intermediate school now if every single student is going to pass through this built through lrp then it's going to affect most every family here so we when it comes time to really start to really look into this and this will this process will start in september and we as a board of education as a school district are under timelines whether it be for architecture through the department of education through the department uh department of environmental protection the department of transportation there's all these little pieces of this

143puzzle that all come out to this major project there's a perfectly good building there we we occupy that in the upper half for our administrative building but to do this we need to bring this up to code to ada standards we need to supply the building with new furniture uh security features boilers heating ventilation there's there's a very long list of that so when we do start to have some serious serious conversations it is important that we come together as a community and i think this is a perfect opportunity to address this we can be we can see differences with each other and we can have differences of opinions that's who we are as people and that's acceptable and if we do it in a respectful way we certainly can move forward but we are

144going to be facing a major issue here and that is a population issue and if we if we ignore that and we don't address that and we make believe that it's not happening the time will come where we all look at each other and say well what do we do now i don't want to be that person i don't want to be you to be those people we need to be proactive so to be proactive we need to look at all the variables and see how is this really going to affect us and it's going to take a village everyone every single person in this room every single person watching this at home and those who aren't it will take every single one of us for one pure simple purpose to provide the best experience

145possible for all of our students for all of our children when we look at the educational component and we remove all of these other pieces that we've talked about the educational component in how we deliver services to our students is art on a cart music on a cart or other services on a car what we want for our community is increasing population size of students in a classroom is that what we want for our community once we've known what we have had i don't believe that's what you want because for those of you who i've spoken to and for those of you who i've known who have high expectations and when you've come to that microphone through the course of this past year and this was the test for all of us we cannot go

146backwards we must move forward and to move forward we have to look at what is at our disposal and how we work together as a community it takes a village we've all heard that it takes a village and for some of us who don't have children anymore in the system i want to share this with you and it's not a dream and it's not just a cliche the quality of your education system in your community does dictate the value of your home and the progression of the community as a whole so there is nothing better to invest into than the education system that you have in your community so we will talk more about this i appreciate the the comment this is a little bit of a long-winded answer but i want to be very

147clear we will be having some major conversations based on this and we have to make some major decisions as a community because whatever decision that we make we will have to live with and that may be three four five or 20 years down the road and that will be our choice so again i look forward to having these conversations with you we will having we will have small groups there's one thing i do i'm sorry i just wanted to say this to you i didn't mention this in my earlier report i will be sharing something out with the community in the coming weeks there will be a superintendent series that i will be sharing that means i will be at every single school uh every month or every other month where we can have dialogue

148like this not so formal where we we're in a forum like this or there's a time it's a back and forth it's something i would have loved to have done when i first got here in cedar grove but unfortunately the circumstances through kova did not allow that so we will have those opportunities and i'm sure we will talk about lrp and i'm sure we will talk about class sizes and i'm sure we will talk about the differences in the delivery of education in the system in which we work in through those cut through those series and i encourage you to come out to those those will be live in person opportunities where we can get to know each other a little bit better would have loved to have that this past year unfortunately that wasn't

149possible but we will do that now and this will definitely be on the agenda to talk about thank you i think you're talking about bringing back the coffee talks as people know them [Music] a couple things i just wanted to to mention when we first talked about or when we had the person come and we talked about the expanding population in cedar grove one of the comments had been made is that all the houses um or you know homes at the hilltop had been had been sold and so this is we were going to max out at the at the number of students most of the houses might have been sold that's true but not every one of those people who bought a house and have a child were ready to go to school yet

150meaning they weren't five years old yet or they may not have children yet so just because we have a certain number of people that you know we have as a result of the the hilltop development that doesn't mean that's not going to increase because it absolutely is that that's definitely going to increase and you have to think about this too because i i do tend to drive through there on my way home um just to see the construction because those those kind those um units are going up pretty quickly and you see families there that are with baby carriages and they're young families so there may not be school age children now but in in several years they are going to be and we can't wait that long the other piece of it is that

151some of those some of those pieces of properties and those those units are being used as rentals right and so when we look at that and then when we look at the new proposed cliffside avenue project those are rentals as well so then you're gonna have fluctuation of people coming in and out of the community and so we have to be we have to prepare ourselves for that because if we don't the consequences for that like i said our larger class sizes are dealing with um the logistics within a classroom or within a school which is something we haven't dealt with before those when those buildings were built in the 50s cedar grove wasn't as populated as it is right now so there's no reason why to think back then when they when they built

152the schools they anticipated that there is going to be that the ups and downs of family populations so we have to think we have to be forward thinkers and we have to be proactive thinkers and we can't be reactive thinkers because when we do that we're going to jam ourselves up thank you next i have laura marinelli fish 112 sherman avenue no those are words that resonated with me upon ending our last board meeting by our board president when a fellow board member asked her if she could speak this was an example of the type of lack of communication i think that we've all experienced here in coming to these board meetings we expect better don't we well we've clearly gotten it tonight because somewhere along the line the communication and the dialogue has changed

153you're actually answering some questions and you're providing some answers so now that my tone of my of my address here has changed because i am so looking forward to some of the answers now because you're finally able and you finally are providing them i initially came for two reasons one communication which you clearly responded to this evening second was the football trip my questions and i hope that they all are answered at the end of my speech my address is if we were so worried about communication at what point does our superintendent provide enough respect to answer and to respond to his administrative administrators as i understand there has been numerous emails phone calls on returns to administration and that's just unacceptable particularly when we are dealing with a trip this size with this much

154money invested and this many people going one of the board members just said they don't go ripping through policies they look and they read so my question to you is did anyone really read that trick proposal because i know that our athletic director never got an opportunity to present it to the board so had you seen it or perhaps have you read had you read it maybe you would have asked some questions along the way because i find it very curious that it wasn't until last thursday that our superintendent questioned our athletic director about quarantining you had all summer to vet this trip you had all summer to respond to emails and to answer questions and we as parents want to know some some answers why haven't you ever responded to our superintendent how many

155emails were gone unresponded to what was the motive for the superintendent to require this quarantine for non-vaccinated players or to even bring it up or to bring it to the super to the athletic director's attention without allowing the proper time for students to actually become vaccinated what really triggered your impulsive decision on august 12th to just remember about this i'll be more than happy to answer those questions for you um i think [Music] okay so i will no you don't get to go again mrs marinelli you don't get to go again mr grosso will address your concerns thank you [Music] so i i i mrs marinelli as a former board member here in cedar grove i'm sure you remember that there's been numerous times where we've had microphone issues and it has nothing to do

156with the person who's up here it's just sometimes the equipment just stops so there really is you know i'm sorry that that's was your experience tonight well i mr grosso i'll be more than happy and you can kind of you know like i said this her microphone turned on well it's definitely off mr chair mr chair hers is definitely off now because the time was up here comes i appreciate your technical abilities but we have somebody who can help us out i will start the conversation so i can help answer some of those questions for you and i think that you can definitely um coincide with some of this because you are an educator yourself and an administrator correct yes yes our district is not putting in place any type of quarantining so what i

157meant by that was that you know the flow of information and as an administrator and the adaptive ability to go on the fly based on specific um edicts from the department of health and for the state of new jersey so i i can i can definitely walk i can definitely i can definitely so i want to share this with you i'm more than willing to walk you through this and to help you understand this there's i you've asked a question we've had a great night here tonight we're being very civil excellent so i would want to continue that so what i what i would like to share with you is and i want this so you've had your opportunity to ask some question i want to be able to answer that so the first piece

158is is that number one what you're talking about is a personnel matter between myself and any other administrator in cedar grove right when i look at that you there's information that you are sharing with me that when i look at that that is an organizational discipline issue there's no reason why you should know x y and z about emails dates times etcetera because i'm leaving i'm going to i'm going to show you we've asked for answers which we haven't gotten answers that you haven't gotten i'm going to share those answers with you no no no athletic director who i will share this with you answer that i will share this with you there's no times unless you'd like to share them i'm going to share this with you what goes on between the administrative staff

159and myself is a personal matter in fact mr gogerty who is sitting right over there right now we've had some we've had very good dialogue the past two days with each other and we have great conversations and and that is based on how we are going to be moving forward so to base yourselves on the trip and how this trip comes to be i will walk you through what has happened here so mr gogerty and i've had multiple conversations about this trip way early on in the school year and mr gogerty has shared with me can we kind of move forward with this do you think this is the appropriate time my answer to that was no it wasn't it was inappropriate we've had conversations earlier in the winter knowing that this trip was something

160that was brought to the attention of the families and the players before i was even here then we continued that process it was not appropriate to bring students to florida in the middle of a pandemic we understand that well i'm glad that you understand that because what i want to do is i want to share i want to share with you how everything comes about and give you factual information so excellent so as we move forward and the time comes forward it was explained to me there is a lot of money at stake and there's a lot of expectations at stake of moving forward when this trip was approved in june we were at a very different point in the pandemic than we were in february than we were in september of this time last

161year so we were able to move forward with this now if you recall in the beginning of july i was able to put out a communication to all the families that masking was going to be optional that the governor of new jersey was releasing a lot of those recommendations for whether it was quarantining or staying safe a lot was changing the delta variant excuse me was known but we knew it to be taking place in india right this is all factual information what hasn't changed and what i've shared and my expectations of all of our our staff members is that in our families is that when we talk about the travel guidance and i make those calls into people's homes and i purposely archive those materials because not everybody can get to the phone and

162not everybody can read things on in a timely manner but it's there it is our job to stay abreast of those things so nothing ever changed there was nothing that ever changed the same way that masking never changed until the governor came out and said we're going to change this then you see the change happen from the district so as far as the travel guidance that came out on may 19th nothing has changed so you refer to a meeting that i had on thursday last thursday when i contacted mr goger no i asked you what changed on thursday why did we get why were we i will i will be more than happy to explain that to you and i started i started all summer and i wasn't i'm not on record because i would

163my mic was off but you did have all summer with the trip proposal all of you so we all have all this summer right and to ask about questions i'm going to i'm going to share this with you everybody had access to it nothing nothing okay nothing has changed the trip is still planned the travel guidelines are still the same nothing has changed thursday's conversation with mr gogerty was based on my round table with all the superintendents of essex county with the meeting of the state department of health and the essex county department of health wanting to uh for us we as a community of superintendents wanting to know is there going to be a change because we know that families are going to be traveling during the labor day weekend the answer to that

164was we are waiting for the guidelines from the state from the k-12 school department because the guidelines that we all get and we go when we go on to the covet hub on the state of new jersey that's not what we as school districts follow we follow the to 12 guidelines that's never changed whether you're looking at an elementary school a middle school a high school yeah you're just getting a little off track because i want to try and focus i want to try and focus on i'm trying to stay focused i want to be able i want this to continue in the manner that we've been doing this but i need to share with you the facts but what you're doing you're trying what you would like to do is to try to control

165where this is going so i need to give you that information no i'm just looking for some specific answers so the specific answers are those those changes never change so my question is why wasn't anything brought up all summer long when you hadn't when our players had enough time if they chose to to get vaccinated here's my question and you asked me about my child because my son is going he's not here no he's not i don't know i told him because of the last few meetings i told him to stay home okay i didn't want him to be thank you thank you for carrying my son who's a teammate of your son so but who they all get along by the way very well i know yes they do i said and that's exactly

166why i didn't want him to come tonight okay so my son is going on the trip and we as a family made the decision about what to do i watched the news now i saw what was happening in florida we decided as a family what to do are you going on the trip are you not going on the trip if you go on the trip what's going to happen when we come back i looked it up i researched it why didn't you share that with the rest of your probably should have but as a parent here and camaraderie why are you keeping secrets excuse me share your information and there is but but excuse me excuse me that information was not just given to me it's on a public website but you're talking about teammates

167and camaraderie and playing football together so share your information hey listen there could be a potential quarantine time period and me and my family are going to get a better personal responsibility perhaps this is going to come down from the superintendent and you know what it might contribute negatively to the boys football season so i'm okay so if they do have to quarantine they are going to lose a football game so mr joker would you like to come up here and please and please discuss everything that's going on because i think the board would appreciate that here is my point no i'm finishing this my point is there is not one person that shoulders the responsibility for what happened last week in this room every single person in this room shoulders responsibility for what for

168having to not or being not aware of the quarantining my son won't have to quarantine well your son's gonna have to forfeit the game then because we don't have enough players to fill the team but if you knew this information as a board member you're here to communicate no parent and as a parent no you're as well familiar he was a board member right now and there and what i said was there is not one person in this room i'm not playing blame i but i believe you are no no i'm asking you to share you [Music] and i did i was privy to some of those emails before you took me off i'm gonna all right this is this one all right i'd like to stop the back and forth because i think up

169until now i think we were all having a good dialogue um and i think one of the reasons why the communication was a little bit better is because people weren't screaming um and so it was a lot more productive so i'd like to try to get back to that because it we were in a good place there so mr gogerty if i obviously there's some issues some people think that we're going to lose a game if we don't you know if we do this florida thing can you please chat with us sure um you know last thursday mr grosso sent me an email you know i guess reminding me of the guidelines um the travel guidelines that were still in place from may to disseminate this information to the football group you know just so

170they know the guidelines are still in place um this was news to me um you know i i you know mentioned this in an email to my football group this afternoon i took blame i didn't know exactly of these exact guidelines still in place in may um you know i had conversations throughout the winter a little bit you know mentioned we had the trip on the table fundraising we had money evolved timing you know we were still in that pandemic i submitted the proposal may 18th after governor the day after governor murphy lifted the travel restrictions that's when i submitted the proposal and you know wanted a discussion about it you know because i think things were in a better place um you know so from that point on you know there you know i

171didn't know much about the travel guidelines i accepted that fact that was my fault i'll live with that things like that i talked to mr grosso i think today i think you know i think we had a pretty good conversation one of the things i say as an athletic director is there's times there's decisions there's there's things that that as an athletic director that sometimes go above the normal realm of athletics and i asked for help we have discussions which i've had in the past seven years you know that that that sometimes you don't feel that you can make that decision by yourself and i think we missed we disconnected during that time a little bit you know um you know it it wasn't the normal athletic direct director decision in my eyes um i

172needed it above my realm i needed some input get two heads three heads together um i think we agreed i think that that that that time you know that there was a mishap there a little bit um and that led us into you know not knowing now you know i we're going to florida you know you know we're going to florida and um we'll have to you know i'm going to as the athletic director of football coach i'm going to continue to to to see if we can make our september 10th game workout thank you mr gogetti um and to to kind of clarify a couple things um you know to to your point to your point um there is an expectation of understanding what goes on in the realm of education and that is

173sometimes medical sometimes special education needs and law it can be law it can be regulations could be statute so on and so forth as far as the conversation goes with the quarantining this is a perfect opportunity to prepare ourselves for the upcoming school year not just a football trip to florida but for the upcoming school year it is every parent and caregiver's responsibility to understand what the expectations are when you send your children to school to sit for us to sit here and bury our heads in the sand and say well i didn't know about this until now that is unacceptable and the reason i'm talking the reason why is because the reason why is because when there is information available in multiple outlets and resources when there are phone calls into people's homes when

174there are letters written in email when there are websites and archives it's a very difficult case to make to say i didn't know about that because the reality of it is the reality of it is is that we as educators i'm talking about the two of us know that not every family can get that information at that particular time that we disseminated so what we do is so if you so i'm going to rephrase this you understand this in a little bit of a different way i started the conversation with factual information i place every single archived message on a website whether it's a phone message whether it's an email it goes in an archive if you can't get to it at that moment in time you can always go back to it at a

175previous time that information came out in may it came into every single family's home that is registered in cedar grove public schools if you ignore the phone call if you can't pick up the phone call or if you want to get the message which leaves half of it you can always go back and see that come up in your email information about quarantining has been in place since may i'm sorry i'm sorry please understand this i shared with you earlier on i am not a medical professional i am not a health professional and i don't pretend to be one what i do do is i lean on those in that community to help guide us and when we look at the k to 12 guidelines whether it's masking whether it is quarantining whether it is

176social distancing or whether it is exclusion prop processes through the coven risk matrix i rely on those professionals so please i shared something from the previous comment it takes a village it does not take people's opinions or pointing fingers or whatever it may be we work together i'm sorry that you disagree i'm very sorry that you disagree with the messaging capabilities i'm sorry information's there you can go on your phone right now i'm going to show you all right we're going to move on to the next person because we have a number i want to tell you this thank you very much for your comment i thank you very much for your comment and i look forward to i look forward to the team going to florida all right we're moving on to michelle moriello

177please who's next michelle moriello 51 bennett ave cedar grove i'd like to address the board and superintendent grosso i've spent months attending these meetings i've been accused by a board member of cursing at you all when i ran out of time which is a blatant lie in slanderous i have an email email upon email go unanswered first of all i'm a taxpayer you work for me and my children if i fail to answer an email to my boss as a teacher to a parent i would be disciplined i want to know why it is that you all feel you don't need to communicate things such as how you will measure learning loss and how you can overlook telling 50-plus players on a football team that they need to quarantine upon returning from from a very

178well-planned trip that you mr grosso approved back in june this lack of communication and lack of regard shows your inability to lead effectively do not even begin to point fingers at our head coach gogurty you are the decision maker not him and the onus goes on you i call this taxation without representation we should be able to approach you communicate and get a response from the very people who work for us and we should trust in your decision making and sadly we do not did you all forget that this role up there is a privilege if you choose this role and choose to be effective and make changes how could you do so when you refuse to listen show transparency communicate and pass the buck us parents are not allowing this any longer it is

179telling that details are omitted and decisions are made impulsively and the lack of leadership and plain arrogance is displayed and that is not what cedar grove is about you owe each and every one of these coaches parents and children you have let down an apology and i hope you put as much effort into future decisions such as learning loss approval of trips mask wearing and overall academic success as you do to your diversity and inclusive instruction furthermore my children will never be part of any survey here on out so don't even think that you're going to be sending another survey it means nothing so i'm going to call once again for your resignation superintendent grosso and board of ed president christine dye you are self-serving and you fail to lead you have rambled your powers

180and we will not comply we are in charge of our children and the decisions being made not you and i would love to know how many lawsuits are against you right now and how much of my hard-earned tax dollars are going to fight these lawsuits because you're inept and you're unable to lead effectively you have to go you have left the town divided angry and with the lack of trust in your ability to lead you should be really proud of yourself you're a disgrace thank you very much for your comment by the way the entire board did hear you curse at us at that meeting so um and i am very proud of the board and all the work that we're doing so thank you very much um next i have lisa casilli before the

181time stops can everyone hear me good my name is lisa casilli i live at 12 dogwood court i come to you today as a concerned mother a 25-year veteran educator and a member of the football cheer family i have tried to remain silent on many concerning matters that have occurred this past school year but this evening i can no longer do that i will not be asking questions as i have attended many board meetings and watched as other parents were ignored criticized labeled a mob most recently the mafia in the hallway tonight and accused of heinous acts all questions asked go on unanswered and speakers received the standard and condescending thank you for your comments next therefore i will be making a statement so that the community is aware of the dishonesty lack of transparency

182unclear communication and zero accountability or effective planning that is occurring in this community our football trip was meticulously planned and approved by this superintendent and board in june with zero discussion or communication about travel restrictions or communicated recommendations from the department of health or cdc the last update to the safe return to school plan was on august 9th and said nothing regarding travel protocols or restrictions it was only added yesterday nothing was mentioned to coach regarding travel restrictions or protocol until thursday we know this because he communicates with us on a consistent and regular basis and he responds to all communication so if it was mentioned he would have known and we would have known and we would have prepared accordingly we have raised close to one hundred thousand dollars through blood sweat and tears

183in a very short period of time against all odds parents only paid out of pocket expenses for the trip after it was officially approved in june no fundraise money was sent until after it was approved in june we are not fools we knew not to send that until it was sanctioned and passed by the board once it was we believed we were safe to send funds we are now being blindsided and told we must face quarantine if not vaccinated and not every school district is doing this not only missing school but also possibly forfeiting our first home game learning this only now presents us with an impossible timeline and no ability to comply if we had knowledge of this information in advance we could have made informed decisions about the trip those of us hesitant

184to vaccinate may have decided to not attend those those of us on the fence about vaccinated may have decided to do so to avoid quarantine none of this was presented to us by the administration or board the buck stops at the top we will not accept blaming the athletic director for this major failure we would have much more respect for you if you would admit this error state that it was not on your radar and work cooperatively to remedy the situation but instead thank you for your comment mrs casilli everybody gets the three-minute moment okay the person did not get longer okay thank you for you thank you for your comment can you please sit down mrs cassily next i have kim nicoletti mrs casilli if you don't sit down you're gonna be removed please

185please thank you very much hi hi hi kim nicoletti 31 greendale road i just want to say the first person did have close to five minutes maybe you didn't realize the timer wasn't on the first person i i hate to bring it up but it's true and i'm sorry they did have five minutes oh i'm sorry they did have five minutes um i've been a resident in cedar grove for 25 years and i have sent three children through the school system very successfully however i am and i'm also an educator in essex county i'm embarrassed by what i see at these board meetings uh i have fellow teachers in my district that watch and compare you to the real housewives of new jersey because of what's going on it's embarrassing um the most embarrassing part

186i think is the handling of this trip it was poor and it wasn't poor on our athletic director on the football club it was poor on your part you didn't communicate there was a lack of transparency and the attempts to shift blame are unacceptable i again i've been here for 25 years i've never i've watched i've attended board meetings but i've never made a complaint um despite approving the trip i don't know if people didn't hear before but despite approving the trip in june we were just informed uh on thursday that if the boys chose to go and we chose to go they would have to forfeit their opening game these boys lost their season or part of their season last year okay my son tore his acl he has been rehabbing for 11 months

187three times a week for two hours he also maintained a 4.3 gpa and took high honors and academics he brings up your statistics as well as my daughter and my other son who graduated i'm asking you as a parent and as a fellow educator to please reconsider this i there are other high schools i have here from summit on monday summer superintendent scott hugh whose school starts in just 13 days said that as of now families who travel domestically will not have to quarantine or take a covet test upon return to school however unvaccinated kids who travel internationally during the school um will have to this is a domestic trip i i don't want to argue i don't want to point the finger i'm asking you as fellow parents and you tell us all the

188time mr grosso you have five children okay as a fellow parent please reconsider and let these kids have their opening season not to forfeit a game and please reconsider this because as an educator and i consider thank you for your comment fairly intelligent i never saw the travel restrictions thank you for your comment mr camaraderie mr grosso can you can you comment on if there's a can you just comment on why some districts aren't requiring unvaccinated students not to be is it just a health department or it's who we follow or can you help us understand i surely can the the guidelines apply to everybody in the state of new jersey okay to 12. k-12 can you please not interrupt please we're trying to have a civil discussion those guidelines are presented to every school

189district in the state of new jersey mr grosso is not and nobody on the board is just going to answer when somebody's yelling out can you please just let him explain all right please mr stringer okay please stop interrupting he's trying to answer the question i'm asking you to please stop interrupting mr stringer if you don't stop i'm going to ask security to remove you so the k-12 guidelines are from the state department of health um i've shared this before i'm not summit i'm not south orange maplewood i'm not cape may i am not um any other school district we are cedar grove and i have followed those rules and i know that there has been plenty of people in the community that have had major issues with me following those rules throughout the course

190of last year um you need to understand something here is that this is not something that we can fluctuate whenever we want to fluctuate it is based on recommendations that i get from our district doctor and that i get from our local health department i've shared this with you i am i will continue to give you that same answer as i have shared with you in the past [Music] so your answer as to why is summit doing this and why are other school districts doing this there's other school districts that have done other things throughout the course of last year that they've taken it upon themselves and we've had those conversations up here so i'm not worried about what other districts are doing i'm worried that our students are going to go out of new

191jersey they will be there for a multi-day trip to florida which has one of the most highest rate of transmission of covid through young people in this country so if you are going to sit up here and criticize that decision which you are certainly welcome to do please understand i'm looking out for the health and safety of not only your children but for all the other children that those children that are sitting here in this room would come in contact with in this township so my obligation is to all students not to a select group of students but to all based on health guidelines and needs so therefore i will always utilize that as cedar grove population and how we could best serve the interest of all students here thank you can next up is

192chris nicoletti please i have chris nicoletti [Applause] chris nicoletti 31 greendale road good evening i am humbled to call myself captain of the football team here at cedar grove in addition i am a member of the national honor society among other things last year my season was cut short with both covid and an acl injury that same year we had a trip to play in florida which got moved to this year due to covid it was brought to the team's attention thursday august 12th of 2021 that we would need to get the vaccination in order to go on our trip to florida without quarantining this would mean kids who have not been vaccinated either have to miss the florida game or miss the first home game which is for the conference for myself and others

193that have already had seasons cut short this decision was heartbreaking as we do everything we plan this trip together as a family parents fans and cedar grove together rallying behind us to make it possible to force this upon us so late feels almost passive aggressive like the board and superint superintendent never wanted us to go and is now trying to sabotage the trip the ksa and njsia have not mandated this rule only the board and superintendent not even with enough time for us to get the vaccine despite people asking about the quarantine and vaccination policy it wasn't mentioned until the 11th hour how can this group of adults expect children to have to make these decisions when school time sports among countless other things have been cut from their lives for a group that advocates

194how much they care about children in this town this decision could not be farther from that narrative it was a political disrespectful and petty move from a group of adults that is simply not fit for the job my case is only one of many here that of dissatisfaction and disappointment from the superintendent and the board we ask that you show how much you care about the traditions of panther football and the passion of your children and reverse this decision thank you thank you mr nicoletti i just want to point out that on numerous occasions whenever any administrator or any teacher comes up and talks about an upcoming trip whether it's to d.c whether it's to florida whether it's to around the world you know the board has always said that they find it that it's

195an amazing opportunity for anybody to get to go anywhere so this is in no way political at all and i want everybody to be able to go just as i've always wanted that i mean there's no reason not to so i just want to point that out i i want everybody to have the opportunity to travel anywhere whether it's in state in the country in around the world absolutely so moving on mike marinelli and i'm assuming it's the student right okay [Applause] michael marinelli 112 sherman avenue tonight i will be speaking on behalf of the 2021-2022 senior football class football to me is not just a sport it is a brotherhood and a commitment for essentially my whole life i've been playing football and working as hard as i can many years later all of

196that work has led me to my senior year here in cedar grove as a captain of the football team ever since i made the decision to return to cedar grove my teammates and i have worked tirelessly on and off the field recognizing our dedication and talent our head coach planned to play our first game in florida this was originally planned for my junior year but had to be moved to my senior year because of covid because of this setback our coaches and parents have worked very hard to make this trip memorable and a great way to start the season there have been countless hours and a great deal of stress from planning this trip and we were finally able to feel as though we were smooth sailing this was until only a couple of days

197ago when our coach was notified that the players who are not vaccinated need to quarantine for seven days after the trip notifying us this late meant that players would not be able to become fully vaccinated by the time of our florida trip those who are not vaccinated will be missing four days of practice and our first home game of the year we would essentially need to forfeit the game since we do not have enough kids who are vaccinated this feels like more of a punishment since we either lose thousands of dollars or miss our first home game the first home game is a division game and forfeiting it will jeopardize our chances of winning the division which is an obvious goal for us knowing that there are no state mandates saying we need to quarantine

198means the superintendent has chosen to put this requirement in place at the last minute instead of feeling as though our superintendent has pride in our team is proud that we will be representing in florida and rooting us on for a state championship it makes me and the rest of my teammates feel as though our superintendent is undermining our season furthermore i would also like to shine light on the immense loss of numerous games during the 2020 season in which my teammates and i will never be able to get back i'm hopeful that we will not have to endure any further loss in this 2021 season we are asking you to reconsider your decision regarding the quarantine thank you thank you next i have um preston and i'm sorry i'm not going to pronounce this correctly

199because i can't see it um scarivia is this thing on preston sarava number 10 cedar road panthers as a student here at cghs i was so excited to be told we were going to florida for the football trip this trip almost two years in the making it this trip is a this is a trip almost two years in the making only to have it in question due to the bogus quarantine order mr grosso the board you do realize all summer my teammates and i have traveled to destinations such as florida cancun aruba and all across the country conveniently i happened to get coveted at the jersey shore mr grosso i have a few questions do you know why we are going to florida do you know how long it has taken to plan this trip

200more importantly i don't think you even care all of us are here tonight to convey the spread all of us are here tonight to convey how special this trip is to us we are all aware that that that the diversity cert that diversity and surveys mean quite a lot to you a lot more than showing your football team you care for them as well especially considering we have a conference game on the line september 10th if we have to quarantine it puts us at jeopardy for having a forfeit mr grosso it appears that you don't understand how much work our players and awesome coaches have invested into preparing this season for for our coaches that includes hours of film and time away from their families for me personally it means going to our school's weight

201room since february learning a playbook and attending workouts planned by my teammates where we weren't wearing masks or social distancing you now have the information needed to make your decision on the quarantine i hope you don't take your anger out on us players and i hope you make the right decision i also have one more thing for the record uh there was no cursing at you guys just have to make that note she called for the resignation of miss dye and ms grosso as do i thank you for your comment next i have tom perry okay next i have um ken horowitz all right moving along then next i have john martinelli [Applause] john martinelli dirty hillside avenue john 1 l.a 30 hillside avenue as a proud democrat and supporter of all people's views as

202a father of a biracial family most people know that there is a grand plan to make cedar grove as well as a neighboring town of very very progressive and woke town to social justice and political means ultra left-wing radical groups are also involved and i've seen it personally in some meetings if you're not on board with their ideology you're an automatic races they question everything you say and they try to make the way you think this doesn't represent my family's democratic values it has infiltrated school systems across the country starting with grades as early as kindergarten 212. i heard a couple of individuals speak about it at the community pool and social events with our children they stated big change is coming and we want to flip the town most of us are still waiting

203for an exact list of the members of the edac board i personally feel the edac board is stacked with only one point of view if the board truly feels and supports inclusion has diversity because that's all i hear then they need to specify the edac members exactly who they are and specify what their affiliation is and also the minutes of the meeting and their views that they support with reference to the last board meeting an individual labeled himself and he was very comedic about it a super duper liberal elitist without provocation without anybody saying anything he had the nerve to come up here and lecture parents to teach their children empathy yet using comedy to mock a ten-year-old little boy who was coming home feeling bad about himself on what he was being taught daily

204and constantly at school by a person of authority not another child and that child was my son my son in addition mark two women who have endured unpleasant situations tell you what i'm gonna do i am extending an invitation to that person and the ladies you mocked by coming over my house for coffee and cake and you can sit next to my son and lecture him with your infinite wisdom on why the world isn't all rainbows and butterflies lastly our board as well as other boards across the nation are obsessed over race and use the phrase inclusion and diversity with every issue if this is to unite the people if that is your intent then why did it why is the town ripped apart okay like my buddy big sal stated at the last boarding

205board meeting everyone is entitled to their point of view as long as it doesn't stifle another person's point of view my question to you and again miss mr grosso i do appreciate because when my son had those issues of hearing nothing again i hate to bring it up but that other person made me come here tonight but what he said about my son that i felt that was being marked taking his opinion whenever that i want to know if my son can be excluded from this seo because he's really affected by it he came home again i hate to say it shame that he was white and i don't need i'm the parent you have to understand i'm the parent and my son's biracial i just i'm just requesting my son and any other parent

206in here i'll in question is if they could be excused in this seo because i do not want my son to be exposed to it because it's effective thank you for your comment mr martinelli [Applause] can you can you just please explain to the public if they can opt out of curriculum thank you absolutely um mr martinelli and anybody else so what the state of new jersey allows you to opt out of is any um subjects that take place in health class sex education um family life uh when it comes to social emotional learning i i think you know when i when i listen you know and i appre i appreciate your comments you know i have to share that with you and i'm and what i do is when you're saying this to me

207there just seems to be a massive disconnect to what social emotional learning is and and and the reason why i'm saying that is because social emotional learning has been around for for many years and it's because it has a name you know what social emotional learning is the connection that it it could be a teacher it can be an administrator it can be a counselor it can be outside of the school it is the social emotional awareness of a child what does that mean it means that if a child is having a difficult time in their household because perhaps their family is getting a divorce right their family their parents are getting a divorce social emotional learning comes into play with that right say a child has had a death in the family that is

208where the school can step in and provide counseling say a child is going through bullying or cyber bullying or um a multitude of different things that we all who have sitting in this room have gone through as children that's what social emotional learning is it is the ability for a teacher a counselor an administrator a nurse to be in tune with a child to be able to provide them with the appropriate services and needs i will share this mr martinelli i have been a principal of an elementary school a middle school in a high school the social emotional needs of children change rapidly through the maturation process and what they're going through whether it is when they're a child and they're learning how to share with each other and they're learning how to have a

209social dialogue with each other or school phobia or when they go into middle school and they're introduced to drugs or peer pressures or drinking to when a child may be in high school and they're working with identity issues parental issues or even issues within their own relationships that they have with with their peers it is part of our job not just to teach the academics but to teach the the social emotional skills to help those children become productive members of society and i have to share here is that there is a massive misconception that it is connected to something else i will tell you this school academics social emotional learning should never be political and i will tell you there is a strong tie to this in these conversations that we have because when there

210is a misunderstanding or misinformation about something it is it is easy to go and start to weave it into something very different i will tell you i have worked with multiple counselors multiple social workers i will tell you social workers that sit on the special on our special education teams they deal with social emotional learning every day when you go when if you are qualified for special education and you get the family history that's part of social emotional learning to understand where that child is coming from and the needs of that child so social emotional learning is a broad term but it doesn't mean that it is pushing a particular person's agenda or a political party's agenda it has been around a very long time and for those of us sitting in this room who

211are in education or who work as contractors in education in this field it is our job and our obligation to help correct the misunderstanding of what social emotional learning is it is a vital piece to a child's learning to their growth their maturation and their development if we cannot provide a student with a proper stable atmosphere for themselves then all the instructional pieces that we're all talking about and that we all are are worried about they'll never come into place they'll never come into play and think about this we all sit here we've all had problems with our our friends our spouses our families and we've got to go to the work the next day and our productivity for that day is not the best that it was prior to the previous day when there

212is an issue or a problem that's social emotional issue are you when you're in conflict with somebody are you prepared to do the job to the best of your ability are you prepared to speak to the best of your ability are you prepared to diagnose apply and move forward with concepts to the best of your ability if you are not in a good social emotional or mental health state i will share this for mo for many young people across this country and across the world mental health has become a massive concern we watch children do self-harm to themselves we watch them actually complete the act and there is a loss i cannot mr martinelli i cannot tell you through my career the loss of students that i've had to endure because they have taken their

213own lives or they themselves families have taken their own lives i'll let you i'll i'll let you speak just one moment sir but i will share this if you as a student can if a student cannot be in the right frame of mind and can't get sometimes some of our students can't get the right support at home and for the simple reason that maybe we as family members don't know how to provide that support but we as educators and counselors we can do that we can provide that we can provide that basis so everybody in this room when i talk about social emotional learning and when you see other people come up here and talk about social emotional learning this is exactly what we are talking about it's not to promote a political agenda it's

214not to promote an opinion of thought it's to promote a specific environment that is fruitful and successful for that child to be ready to be able to learn in an appropriate environment for themselves mr martinelli i know you want to respond to something again on this matter but the problem is my son didn't have a problem until he came to the school he didn't know i'm just being honest he didn't know race he didn't and what happens is i sir i just don't know this obsession with diversity inclusion my thing to you is this and you still didn't answer my question [Applause] other parents may be somebody you know maybe they like you said they have a situation and they admit to go into a divorce and somebody may be on drugs i don't get

215that but the problem is i feel totally confident that i can raise my own child because i'm the parent you have to understand and like i said he didn't have an issue all i'm saying is whatever in this audience needs that kind of help i'm going forward go for it but i'm saying to you sir that my son don't need him because like i said he was fine until he went there and like i i have to quote one thing that morgan freeman said if you stop talking about race it stops i just this constant barrage is not that way he got that in the house he got that feeling from what was being taught or the way he was being taught i know what you're saying that it could have been the teacher i

216get that but when you hear six and a half months of constant discrimination and racism about one people right you start to ingest that and i'm saying from the flip side from the person that they're saying that's being how would you say experience racism i don't think it does any good for either side of the spectrum whoever feels it or whether it's like say feels that way all i'm saying to you is this my son comes out of the car he goes daddy i don't understand what's going on here's a stop sign stop racism here's a stop sign stop sexism stop that he goes i'm trying to go to school addiction i'm trying to go to dicks just to get football pants soon you should walk in we do not support homework you know like

217uh waiting for homophobia it's just constantly bombarding me young children he's only 10. he's tempted adoption all i'm saying to this and i won't drag this out anymore i'm asking you again can my son hop down should any other parent opt out is because it's not working for my son sir it's not for me well i i appreciate your perspective perspective mr martinelli and i will tell you that unfortunately in the state of new jersey you can't opt out of learning about things like that um in fact it's it's uh it's part of our curriculum through a state curriculum we talk about amistad curriculum we talk about the lgbtq curriculum it's part of what the state in public schools feel is appropriate and important for students to learn about now how they learn about that

218is a very different story right and at the age levels which they learn about that and so to to to to bring up the perspective i just want you to know this and this is for anybody else i'm not obsessed with race what i am encouraged with is that we have an obligation as a public school to enable our students with what diversity and inclusion is and what i simply mean by that is is that diversity inclusion means that i'm looking at this room right now there are many different people in this room they come from many different backgrounds religious exp religious experiences racial experiences gender experiences so the reality of it is is that when there is a six-year-old a 10 year old a 15 year old or an 18 or a 17 18

219year old that goes to school in a public school they are faced with the difficulties of coexisting with each other and that's really what this is about it's about co-existing with each other and about learning about each other and being able to respect each other so i would say i would share this for when there is a person of color and they say and someone says to them well i don't see color that is not necessarily what a person of color would want to hear because they want to be re they want to be recognized as who they truly are so so so so the reality of it is and the reason why i speak of this is because yes have i been immersed in this my in my career yes have i had the

220the the the fortune of learning and and and i will tell you something i've learned i'm not i will tell you i don't know everything about it and i've learned day by day about this some of the words the words that were accepted years ago and phrases that were accepted years ago aren't accepted anymore and i think that's the thing is because society as a whole they don't necessarily accept those things anymore and people want to be recognized for who they are what they are and what they stand for and the state of new jersey in the state of new jersey the state of new jersey feels that this is what is appropriate for children in public school now if you go to a private school they don't they may not necessarily touch those issues

221right you know it could be it could be a private school it could be a catholic school that's a person's choice if they want to send their child there but if you're sending your child to a public school you have to understand the reality is is that you are going to be dealing with curriculum that deals with different types of people that come from different backgrounds and that it is our obligation as educators and as boards of education to uphold what the with the state department of education and the state department uh a board of educations want us to help teach our children and i mr martinelli i would say this to you right now and this is to everybody i respect what you do in your home what you how how you want to

222have your conversations with your children and what you want to do with your children uh and how you want to introduce your children to things i respect it i get that you know you're right i do talk about my own children all the time because i'm a dad i'm a parent as well you know i have a wide range of children that reach from 7 to 17. so when you sit here and you talk about your issues yes i will go and empathize with you because i do have that in my own life but i want to always be as factual as i possibly can and one of my jobs and we've talked about this when you hire when the board hired me was to help progress this district forward in multiple areas whether it's

223curriculum whether it's instruction or whether it's inclusion and diversity because it's all around us we can't escape it we can't turn a blind eye to it there's people sitting in this room right now that come from all different walks of life and we have to look and say you know what you're part of our community and we work with each other but it's not all about mr martin i don't mean to cut you off it's not all about race right it's a it's about um religious expression it's about gender expression it's about believe it or not we don't think of this but socioeconomic disadvantages that's part of being inclusive there are people that are um range on a different scale in our socioeconomic system so that's part of an inclusionary piece that's part of a

224diversity within a community or diversity within a school so it's not all about race and i wanted to be very clear we tend to take when you talk about inclusion and diversity that it's about race it's not does is race included in it yes but there's so many different facets of this and that's something that is our job to start to work through i appreciate what you're saying and i i want to say something else to you mr martinelli i appreciate how we're having that conversation because we can do that we can get a lot accomplished we may not always agree with each other that's that's for sure and that's okay but we could start to understand a little bit better a little bit at a time so thank you very much thank you our

225last speaker of the night is um gerard nicoletti if he's still here no you may not good try though very good try all right then i closed that portion of the meeting i'm sorry no because as i said in the beginning we a lot 40 minutes and i let that go over so everybody who was listed on the meeting on the i'm sorry on the on the list could speak and as you're probably aware we are far past the 40 minutes at this point no i know and and that's the thing i wanna you know there was a little bit of a difference in the in the meeting this evening because it's a lot easier to have a dialogue when somebody asks a you know a question and we can and we can answer it

226when somebody's just uh you know yelling at us or telling me to you know resign which i'm not gonna do um or yelling out you know something like half truth or something that we can't answer then we can't have a dialogue you know we absolutely want to be able to have a discussion like mr grosso just did with mr martinelli because that's what we do so but sometimes that's not possible based on the person that comes up and and and how the exchange goes so we will continue to try to do that but you have to do it in a a respectful way i i get that there's differences of opinions and that's absolutely fine but there's there's no reason that we can't all be respectful to each other and we should be modeling that

227to you know to our students in the audience as well because if we can't do that as adults why are we holding our students to that when we can't do that so so yes that is the ultimate goal is to keep having a dialogue but people yelling at us you know when we're trying to speak you know that's not going to help the situation so hopefully we'll get better at this as we go i guess my last question my last comment is the football trips in three weeks is there going to be any reconsideration because that question was never answered and i know i asked if my son asked it mr grosso all right well on that note i closed that portion of the meeting announcement of future meetings the next uh thank you thank

228you no it's not funny at all yeah i'm not laughing announcement of future meetings september 14 2021 same place thank you and you know what's not funny also mr marinelli is standing outside threatening people that's also not funny so can i please have a motion to adjourn please so moved thank you roll call please mrs dachara yes mr schoener yes mrs dye yes this meeting is over um can i please ask our security guard to just please make sure that everybody leaves without incident thank you very much have a good evening everyone