001i call this meeting an 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's 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 are transmitted to the verona cedar grove times and star ledger newspapers tap
002into online news file with the township clerk and post it on the district's website roll call please mrs de chara here mrs miga mr pandoria surprising mr schoener present this is die here the meeting is open to the public for comments on items on the agenda seeing none good evening everyone hello hello long time no see it's only been two weeks how's everybody doing this evening all right we're going to start with um committee reports anybody have anything we were going to just talk about um today being the first day of the elementary schools but i just wanted to steal the thunder from the super and everybody well that's nice because you generally still yeah so that's really nice today thank you does anybody have anything they want to talk about that won't steal the
003super thunder this evening i have a little apt report go right ahead miss megan um the membership with the cedar grove high school apt is now open anybody wishing to send in their membership may do so and they are also selling masks for ten dollars a piece and they're also going to be making it well they just had their meeting they're going to be making a donation which will come to us future meeting from last year that is the apt the black and gold club let me just read my note here membership is now open for the black and gold club it's forty dollars per family and they are also looking for people to donate their time and items for fall sports starting with friday night's football game at the snack stand fall sports start
004today for the high school the breast cancer walk for the township of cedar road just a reminder is october 22nd from 6 to 8 at panther park and the talent under the stars is october 7 six pm at morgan's four that's all i have michelle i just was wondering how much is the apt how can they get ppt i believe is twenty dollars and they should how should they do that there's actually i think if i read it right there's three locations three addresses within cedar grove homes it's published some place and even if it's in the friday folder i believe the membership for black and gold and apt that information is in the front of the variety folder okay and there's an easy way to do what is it black and gold through paypal
005right yes yes that's what i was wondering okay thanks okay um i attended the north and fsa meeting last week i just wanted to give a few comments about that um it was a really good they were really good fsa set up over there uh really a lot of people joined and they're very active and i just want to say that normally they give a welcome back breakfast to the staff and so being as to the con you know the situation with the pandemic they gave each staff member a gift card to cedar beans in lieu of the welcome back breakfast and it seemed to it went over for very well and um also wanted to say that i found one they just wanted to mention that i found very interesting was um they did
006a lot of discussion they were discussing their dues in the revenue and it's really when you look at what's going on with the pandemic i mean it has really affected how much they can they can take in but it's also affected how much they're going to be paying out because there's a lot of things they can't do so it seems to be evening out there and as i said they were a really good setup over there and the kids at north end are really lucky and that's that was about it most of their meaning was really taken up with discussing you know the back this week's back to school and also perfect thank you um and then before we get to the superintendent's update we actually have our high school rep here this evening um
007fran catalano thank you for joining us welcome thank you for having me um so i'm francesca catalano i'm the president at cghs and i just want to give everyone a little update of what we're doing as previously stated fall sports did start today this thursday the boys soccer team is playing orange high school and the girls tennis team is going up against irvington this saturday the girls soccer team is facing off against belleville and as you may well know this friday is the first football game the team is playing hoboken high school it's our annual brian topoleski game come out and wear purple and it's also senior night as well there's a dinner in the cafeteria honoring all the seniors involved with the program uh next wednesday is the annual talent under the stars morgan's
008farm at 6 pm i'm hosting it come see it social distancing and masks are required we have a total of 13 acts ranging from singing to monologues to dancing really great show and a really great lineup next friday i'm trying to plan a virtual pep rally that includes pre-recorded performances by the cheer team sending out a google forms to the fall sport coaches asking who their captains are what they're looking forward to this season what their goals are what challenges they're facing things like that and hopefully we are back to school in some type of hybrid by halloween because uh us student council officers were throwing around the idea of a trick or trunk or something to that extent with uh social distancing and masks in mind of course and that's pretty much it for
009right now it's really slow but as i'm sure you all know it gets very busy very quick at cghs and that's pretty much it thank you great thank you and uh and not to steal the super thunder but i think he's going to have some pretty happy information to tell you about going back to school before halloween so mr grosso all right how good good evening everybody hope everybody's uh having a good night i'd like to thank you for coming out here tonight fran i'd like to welcome you it's very exciting to have you here um it was very refreshing to have you share the news um i do have some good news for you tonight so i will uh i'll begin the first um the first order of business that i'd like to share
010with everybody it is based on the graduation rates uh new jersey regulations njac 688-55.2 rather f require districts to report graduation results annually to the district boards of education or charter school boards or trustees at a public meeting no later than september 30th so tonight is the night um i want to share with everybody that the total number of students graduating in the prior school year was 120 students the total number of graduates who met the graduation assessment requirements by passing a substitute competency test with zero students the portfolio appeals process included zero students meeting alternate requirements specified in their iep there was zero students the number of 12th grade students who were denied graduation and how many of those students were denied solely due to failure to meet the graduation assessment requirements were zero
011students there were there was one student that was going to take the accuplacer however it was waived as a result of executive order number 117 for the 1920 school year and there is another student that was also going to be taking the accuplacer however that was waived as a result of the executive order number 117 for the two for the 1920 school year so overall those are our required reporting for a graduation i'd like to talk a little bit about the update of today which is the opening day for elementary school it was an exciting day i had an opportunity to go down to north end to welcome the families in and see the students then i moved over to south and after students were actually in the building but i will tell you that
012i was extremely impressed with the transition uh it was very well organized i really want to acknowledge uh mr maddio and ms dyer for their efforts and really and in the staff at both north and south and for their efforts and in in working with um each other and also working with the families and the students it was very interesting um i had an opportunity the night before to view these welcoming videos that uh miss dyer and um mr maddio put together for families which i thought was really really helpful um where bless you where they um as a family you would be able to see the different um temperature stations where uh students would would enter and how the process the social distancing points of where you would go and although although this was
013very different from from years past i was very encouraged by looking at this video just to show what the inside of the building looked like what the decals on the floor look like what do you do if you have to go to the bathroom what does a classroom look like where do you line up outside so i definitely want to commend um the principals and the staff for for putting that together i will i also want to thank all the board members here every one of the board members here sitting before you were at the schools today welcoming um members of of our community back it was a weird um it was a weird weird end of september because it was really like the first day of school although we've been in school for a
014month and it was um the the students were really excited the parents were excited um and there was a lot of apprehension because of the unknown and how were we going to to maneuver forward but uh it was it was actually very very smooth uh and i i spoke with the principals afterwards as well and uh the dismissal process was was very smooth with that i also want to um i would also want to thank the police chief and our uh our cedar grove police officers they were present at each of the buildings i was i was very very grateful for that uh that was a big big deal in their presence uh just to help guide everybody in and just their presence there was was very very important we start for our middle school
015on october 5th that's next monday so we will go through that process and also cohort i think it's is it a yes that's right co thank you so cool cohort a at the elementary schools will start next week as well as cohort a for um the middle school um and we will be present there as well we look forward to that transition and fran i'm very happy to announce to you that the high school will be going back to hybrid starting october 12th um so trunk or tree sounds like a good idea right um uh so this is exciting i really want to um it's it's very very exciting because we we put the deadline as october 19th for us to go back in hybrid um and we're getting there before that date although i
016want to be realistic and we have to be really uh rational about this that we this year will look very different than any other year there are large possibilities that we will be in and then we will be out and then we'll we'll be back in again and we'll we'll see that movement back and forth just based on the fact of how we move forward with um covet and how we move forward with members the state and um our designated um region that we are in within essex bergen and union county uh i also want to give a little bit of an update on technology jim walsh and the technology department they've ordered new access points for the building and what that means is is that if you have seen some lagging in in in
017the schools or if you have seen um some lagging at home uh the new access points will uh will begin to uh lessen that those effects we will work on and after i've had a conversation i've had a conversation with mr walsh uh we will target the areas where there have been the most difficulties and then we'll move forward with that and also just to announce to everybody that excuse me that every day starting we'll start with the elementary schools middle school will start on the fifth in high school on the 12th of october uh the text messages will begin at 7 30 and that will be reminding all families to make sure that they um everybody does a check a wellness check of their children as well as making sure everybody washes their hands
018and making sure that everybody brings a mask or masks to school with them so there will be daily messages monday through thursday friday will not have a message based on the fact that we will not be in the building during those times i do want to i do want to take this opportunity right now to um to speak of a particular individual and an organization that was was very instrumental in in bringing us back to um to school on the hybrid so i would like to mention that um over the past several weeks mr chris cannella myself and the board have been working in conjunction with each other and we've been working through a lot of different issues that have come up in obstacles but i'm very proud to say that mr cannella ms dye
019the board myself and the cgea we have come to terms with the fact that we are united and that we are moving forward with bringing students back to the buildings um i have to say the announcement that i made today with the high school going back on october 12th as well as the middle school and the elementary schools couldn't have happened if we weren't partners with each other so i uh i'm very happy with that i'm very excited about our relationship and working together and i just want to thank you tonight publicly for your uh partnership uh in the cgea's partnership and the board's partnership and working together to make this a reality um so thank you i also want to give an update about the high school principal search uh tonight we are prepared
020to announce uh uh the candidate to come forward for approval uh just to give you an update on the last time we spoke i shared with you the phase two process and the phase uh what would be phase three phase three process was a district advisory panel that included a supervisor of curriculum director of special education athletic director high school administrative assistant and board member we had two candidates that we moved forward tonight you will see the candidate that was selected from our panel uh the candidate met with our with the board and had a nice conversation uh before uh our our public meeting uh the process was i will share the process was and was a exciting process um you will hear tonight um about the candidate himself you will have an opportunity to
021hear from the candidate himself and what was very interesting the whole entire process was taken extremely seriously we had multiple levels and those levels went through multiple tools that we utilized to come up with a um the end result it was it was interesting because of how we were looking towards the future but it was also interesting where the voice of of the community the voice of students so free and i have to tell you that was extremely exciting to see when we utilized the survey that the that the students actually had a large large voice um in the survey as well as community members and staff so um i just i just want to share that that is very exciting tonight we're very excited to share with everybody um who the candidate is i
022also tonight during um we have some very exciting board presentations tonight um we will be speaking of paw which is a new initiative that was brought up through erica sloda and donna lefoun michael valenzano will be recognized tonight for his work with the brain injury alliance of new jersey and we will be recognizing giancarlo morano for his artistic abilities which is very very exciting so that is my update as of right now fantastic thank you as far as the board presentations i don't know if you want to go in order if the last time when i know when mr pearson came up we sat down there how you want to go about doing this we sit down there okay and we will start with um ms barbosa janine barbosa from our curriculum instruction department she
023will be giving an update on the lgbtq curriculum which mr bart pearson gave last week but this update will be towards uh the areas of math and science okay come here thank you so much okay good evening everyone mr grosso mr davida the board of ed thank you for having me tonight distinguished guests in the audience um i'm very excited to be here to continue the conversation for inclusive curriculum because it continues the message of representation and acceptance which is really the rationale behind all of the previous new jersey state mandates that have come out in the past [Music] i'm just going to pull my notes out here so two weeks ago my curricular counterpart mr bart pearson came and did a presentation on the lgbtq inclusive bill he set the framework he discussed the
024amistad and holocaust commissions the previous mandates and he made it a point to relay the message that this was a state requirement all districts across new jersey have to move forward to slowly and appropriately infuse this type of curriculum into this type of these type of lessons into our curriculum so just as a reminder the the bill states the board of ed are required to include instruction and adopt instructional materials that accurately portray the political economic and social contributions of lesbian gay bisexual and transgender individuals as well as individuals with both cognitive and physical disabilities now i want to i want to reinforce that idea that he that the message that he sent last week that this is about representation and acceptance what i hope to do tonight through the lens of math science and
025stem or steam is i hope to further those rationales now when you think about math and science they are very content-driven subject areas if you think about a math textbook right you have theorems properties equations word problems equations word problems and then every other chapter or so in math and science textbooks you have maybe a little blurb spotlight on pythagoras spotlight on isaac newton and they are really these historical figures and their contributions are really just sprinkled sparingly into the curriculum so when we dive into curriculum as teachers our instructional planning is intended to enrich the curriculum so this is one of the rationales that i would like to add to representation and acceptance mandates such as the lgpdq inclusive curriculum provide an opportunity for teachers to enrich the curriculum by presenting interdisciplinary connections and
026requiring students to really dive into the history of the content while targeting individual contributions so just tonight i'm going to share very very briefly some of the opportunities that we're looking forward to there are historic documents and scriptures and notes referencing homosexuality and specifically leonardo da vinci da vinci davincio i don't know where that came from leonardo da vinci um he was really one of the world's first polymaths a polymath is someone who is almost like a renaissance man takes math and engineering and science and combines it with art and music and he is one of the greatest innovators our world has ever known sir francis bacon credited with the scientific method and pushing the boundaries of experimental design it's also referenced of uh homosexuality in in notes pertaining to him sally ride nasa astronaut
027the first american woman in space what an amazing accomplishment she is also in this population and alan turing is a code breaker whom i will reference more specifically in one of my my lesson examples moving on to individuals with disabilities stephen hawking suffered from als early on in his life but it didn't stop him from hundreds and thousands of different accomplishments along the way as a theoretic theoretical physicist for 55 years john nash if any one of you have seen the movie beautiful mind john nash developed equilibriums with economic game theory it's the cornerstone of economics that earned him the nobel prize in 1994 he suffered from schizophrenia the resilience that all of these people in both proper populations have demonstrated it's it's really inspiring it's very inspiring thomas edison thomas edison if you we're
028under the lights right now we're here because thomas edison's many many inventions he put new jersey on the map he had almost complete hearing loss by the age of 12. so imagine what he was able to do and he pushed through regardless of his disability in temple grandin a a doctor in animal and animal behavior um i'm going to speak a little bit more particularly on her with with my next example with my second example rather i'm going to move on to this so how are we going to work this into our program here is an example in looking at high school curriculum specifically algebra 2 pre-calculus computer science in any of the curricular units that have to do with combinations or permutations and for anyone who might not know what that is it's arrangements
029how many different ways when i'm playing poker can i get a royal straight flush how many different ways can i arrange 10 different posters in my classroom how many ways can i i encrypt a code with all the letters of the alphabet and this is exactly what alan turing did alan turing was a mathematician one of the many mathematicians in bletchley park in england during world war ii he and his associates attempted to do the impossible which was to to decipher alphanumeric encryptions from a german um from a nazi coding device called enigma german u-boats were sending messages back and forth um as i'm even talking out loud i'm thinking wow this is this is not something you would typically hear from a math teacher right and that's what that's what's incredible about something like
030this is because one of the purposes of education is to blur the lines between subject areas right so going back to alan turing he in order to do this quickly to expedite this process of trying to crack the code he created a massive coding machine which became the foundation for our first computer and our processor he experienced persecution in his life homosexuality was considered a crime and so he was arrested and unfortunate things happened through the years and his death is questionable but his life ended at 41 and i think how much further he could have gone and all the other great contributions he could have made because of this another example i'm going to shift over to the world of science any level of biology where we are talking about animal and human behavior
031and also environmental science where we we bridge um we bridge uh and any topics in biology with how it affects uh the planet the economy agriculture things like that um i believe that the meat industry was absolutely a topic of conversation in the last six months as when we went to shut down in in march there was there was a meat shortage and so there was a lot of focus on the meat industry well temple grandin um who who has her phd in anime and animal behavior she uh is autistic she ended up using her autism as a strength she embraced it and she used her strength of israel's visualization to study animal animal behavior um for the purpose of contributing her input to experimental design the way that we use mice and other animals
032in testing as well as revolu revolutionizing the meat industry where her methods and strategies have allowed for cattle ranches and slaughterhouses to approach the entire process in a more humane way so if you think about there's lots of different subject areas that that this could be mentioned in and the last example i'm going to use was something that i i really thought about a little bit a few weeks ago um i have a six-year-old and a three-year-old daughter and we were watching for the first time how to train your dragon and if anyone has seen that movie toothless the dragon has a disability he has a broken tail and his his buddy hiccup the young boy works through the entire movie through the engineering design process to solve a problem and that's what engineers do
033and that's the purpose of robotics and stem design we address issues we solve problems we see what is needed and there is a huge population of current professionals with disabilities that are contributing their input as disabled veterans as amputees as people who are handicapped and maybe need our wheelchair-bound they are all in a population that are supporting research so this is why this is really in kind of a broad way this is my third example any of the engineering courses and stem courses in grades 6 through 12. they are constantly investigating engineering design tasks to spec specific to address individuals with disabilities as a whole population um lessons could include the redesign of structural elements of a building to make make it handicap accessible and that bridges back to mathematics the grading the incline the
034the percent um ties right into trigonometry and engineering of tools devices technology to solve a problem specific to the physically disabled so it really is again an opportunity to come full circle representation acceptance and really celebrate all the contributions of these amazing people so the math science stem department we are looking forward to diving into this and doing more to enhance our curriculum thank you and the last side was just reiterating the curriculum plan we are going to investigate and slowly infuse all of these lessons into what we have in our district thank you again i want to call up um is erica sloda and donna lefoun um i wanted to share a little story before we begin this presentation so i guess it was it was actually it was last friday erica came to
035my office and she was sharing some some information with me and we were going over this she was sharing about this project which sounded very very interesting and it's something that paul which is panther awareness wednesday which is really the brainchild of both eric and donna uh it will definitely provide an outlet of resources to children and families and caregivers of of our community but was very interesting especially during the time that we are all presently going through with social and emotional um learning um this is very very refreshing so i i asked erica and don if they would mind presenting this tonight and i'm very excited for for you all to hear this so erica and [Music] donna good evening for those of you who don't know me my name is eric eslota and
036i'm the school counselor at memorial middle school um first and foremost uh we're very glad to be here to see everybody and we're excited to be working with the students very soon in person and we donna and i were working together last year helping the students in the middle school and the high school and what we noticed was that there were a number of emails going around so many different ways of communicating and we said wouldn't it be great to have one streamlined way of not only communicating but to provide resources and to provide activities for students and families to do together to also embrace the staff and to give them an opportunity to utilize some of these resources so we decided to come up with a website slash newsletter that would provide all of
037these things to all stakeholders so without further ado we have our panther awareness wednesday newsletter so again as an introduction i'm eric soloda i'm the middle school counselor i am also one of the anti-bullying specialists at the middle school and i am the peer leadership advisor this is my 12th year in district and i can say wholeheartedly that i absolutely love what i do i love working with the families i love working with the students and the staff and i couldn't picture myself being anywhere else but here and i am mrs lefun this is my fourth year in cedar grove high school i am extremely excited to be putting this newsletter together as like erica said we work so well with the students and we want to just provide them as much as we can
038with support and education so being this my fourth year i am the student assistance counselor i do run the community service program x2val and i am soon to be a new team member for the anti-bullying team okay so the goal of any really good positive educator is to help students meet their academic social and emotional goals goals as best as we can the intent of this newsletter is to basically help students do just that so there are a couple of main purposes of the newsletter first is to have a sense of unity and team um parents work with their students at home the adults and and the staff in cedar grove we work with the students in school and as a team we need to help our students feel confident to help themselves to find
039ways to solve problems and find ways to move forward in a positive direction the mental social emotional health and well-being of our students is definitely tested every day on a normal day now we find ourselves in the middle of a pandemic and it's definitely being tested more so now and our all stakeholders the community the parents the students we all need to work together to make sure that we're there for the students and that we can do our best to help them reach their goals what we're doing here with this newsletter is to develop a platform that not only encourages students to be proud of who they are but to feel proud to share difficulties that they might be having to be comfortable being their authentic selves to help them create a sense of comfort
040that will allow them to open up to all of the adults in their lives and this is so important throughout all of these pivotal years be it middle school high school even elementary school this newsletter will be um sent out once a month on a wednesday we needed rw for the paw so it will be sent out on a wednesday you won't see it on a tuesday or thursday and we're just really excited the first one that we're going to be sending out will be out tomorrow and it's going to focus on the really important weeks respect week school balance awareness week and red ribbon week for the month of october so we look forward to gathering more information we'll be work we will be working with the rest of the counseling staff to come
041up with different ideas each month and we really hope that you enjoy it so one of the things that we really wanted to do was we wanted this newsletter to be like a toolbox for our students so you know our emotions and our relationships affect how and where we learn what we learn and like ms lota had said it's it's been a trying time with virtual so it's really important for us to work as a team to gather as many resources for everybody so looking at the social emotional this is what we hope that our students will take away we want to be we want them to become more self-aware more socially aware them manage their stress to deal with their emotions we want to provide the right tools for them to be able to
042do this we want to motivate the students to have good decision making skills not only in school but in the home in the community we want them to have good communication skills and this will hopefully help resolve conflicts appropriately and we not only maintain healthy relationships but show them what a healthy relationship looks like then there's the mental health and the substance use we would like to look and give them resources on both however i also would like to i like to combine them because there is a crossover you'll see students and children using drugs whether it be peer pressure or you know just just peer pressure or they might have some kind of curiosity but you'll mainly see it because of self medication so what we want to do is we want to kind
043of go in with you know take away that stigma let them know that it's okay to feel anxious it's okay to feel be fearful and have all these feelings we want to give them both the tools to to cope and one of the things that we're looking at is maybe provide some videos with self-regulation some breathing exercises maybe a mindfulness corner kind of letting them know that there is a healthy way of doing that and showing them that the dangers of using can intensify their their emotions and their fears so all that is education and supportive and we would like to link trusted adults in school and in the community to helpful resources and one of the bigger resources is nami we have njpn and we have samsa and we put adults in the school
044to link as well because we want our newsletter to also speak to our teachers we want to give them the resources to be able to incorporate them into their curriculum to maybe have a discussion with their students about the hot topics that we would like to to bring to attention so instead of you know so to continue this presentation and not just talk about it we thought we'd give a sneak peek of what you'll all be seeing tomorrow in your emails so this is what you'll see when you open up the link and as you scroll down you'll see the index to where it will bring you to for october what we have week of respect school violence red ribbon week and then the following months as they go on we'll have different contacts so
045as you click them they will bring you down to everything that we are resourcing to not only our students our community and our parents so thank you for taking the time to listen to our presentation i just want to say that um resourcefulness is is exactly what's needed at this time and the collaboration and working together for students staff and families this can only grow so i want to thank you for your creativity i want to thank you for your your honesty in this project and i'm really excited to see where this goes so thank you very much um i'd like to call up mr michael valenzano and i just want to share um i don't know if mr valenson wants to come up but i i i do i do want to recognize mr
046valenzano because of his um his service and his um this honor that and i i hope that you wouldn't mind just speaking a little bit as well okay so for the past 10 years cedar grove high school has participated in the brain injury alliance of new jersey the brain injury alliance of new jersey the alliance is a statewide nonprofit organization dedicated to improving quality of life after brain injury and offering the promise of a better tomorrow cedar grove high school has been chosen as a legacy of safety champion in the in the ugot brains champion schools program the awards recognizes the award recognizes the efforts that michael valenzano and his students have made throughout the years to make the roadways safer for everyone out of the 65 participating schools brain injury alliance has chosen 15
047high schools who have been loyal hard working and successful in the program and cedar grove high school is one of them a 500 reward check has been provided by brain injury alliance and presented to mr valenzano but most of all it's mr valenzano's dedication and education and just being honest with with the students about what is needed and i'd like to recognize mr valenzano for his um his ability to touch the lives of children today um as well as his children are here today and i'd just like to give mr valenzuela an opportunity just to speak a little bit about this honor ladies and gentlemen good evening mr grocer i can't thank you enough that was extremely uh well said and and uh i do i do appreciate your kind words from a uh first-year
048boss this this night couldn't be going any better for me from what i understand although he's not named yet uh you're doing me a favor making me look good in front of my new boss as well so um miss slow to miss the phone i kind of like that panther who who else went up on the screen here like all right i could mess with it um ladies and gentlemen thank you again for having me my name is mike valenzano is my 18th year in the cedar grove school district i do want to thank my children eddie and rachel for joining me tonight uh my wife did want to be here she has graduate school on tuesdays but i said come with dad there's a podium uh but uh it it kind of means a
049lot these are these are special nights when you get asked to speak at a board of ed meeting in a positive light so i do thank you um you have four great phys ed health teachers upstairs we each have our own grade and the corresponding health curriculum that goes along with that i i go into the classroom first with the sophomores our health curriculum is driver education and uh it's a job that i take so very seriously because when you think about it you know t as a driver's ed teacher i get to teach students something that they may use every day for the rest of their life and not a lot of teachers get to say that you know it's my job to really build a good foundation for them to understand not only
050the rules but a good philosophy behind being a safe driver because each of us in this room the adults in this room can think you know when we were in 10th grade you did your six hours behind the wheel you passed that road test you nailed that parallel parking that was 16-17 and and for me it's coming up on 25 years ago uh so you know if you're if you're doing the math you're just never retested you're never you know if you're good at paperwork you know you're set for the rest of your life being being a driver so that's how important it is to me to really establish a great foundation uh to our sophomores and it's a great year you know they're through that the pins and needles of their freshman year uh
051the seriousness of junior and senior year is not upon them so i really do think it's a great group of students uh in regards uh uh last but not least in regards to the project uh it was about 10 years ago that uh mr frank pumphrey from the cedar road police department and please let me thank them uh for the great collaborative relationship we have they come in about once a year to my classroom and talk to the students about their experiences and their expectations of young drivers and i think it's real important for you know the students to uh see them in a positive light and know that they're out there for their safety and to make sure everything is kind of on the up and up uh but the uh frank said to
052me hey have you heard of this uh you know this new project and i hadn't and uh he said that it would be great to dive in and i was i was you know uh in the same mindset as him and we did so and um i i get every year about you know 10 or so students that i can know and trust and and we're asked to throw together a 10-minute video along the lines of safe student driving passenger distractions driving distractions pedestrian safety gdl compliance and i think one of our most important was talking to passengers the young students the 14 15 16 year olds that aren't behind the wheel to say hey listen if something's going wrong and you're the passenger uh you know have the guts to speak up and say
053hey you know it's my life in your hands too uh so we want to make sure that uh you know that that news is is conveyed so we joined the the the project and as uh tony said you know every year uh we put together a video i pick a group of sophomores every year i see francesca over there she was a she was a cedar grove roaming ref uh in the past and uh i'm proud of you it was it's nice to see you uh you know grow up into uh our president and a proud senior here at cghs but uh the roaming refs are kind of our mascot i've been a varsity football official for 20 years so the shirts are mine it just made sense and we go over the mantra of
054um you know anything that takes away from your 100 focus on the road is a foul and we say don't commit a distraction infraction so we kind of been running with that in every may we're invited down to six flags with the 65 other schools and we meet and greet and you know we put city grove on the map down there in a good light and um you know see what they're up to when we talk about our uh you know our initiative that we ran with and it's just been uh extremely positive so to get the word on a zoom call back in may june that i was on uh was kind of cool and then when the check came in uh the board of ed and the administration have been so supportive and
055that's why i am in front of you this evening so thank you and i wish you all a great school year and looking forward to it thank you foreign take a picture this is this is terrific thank you very much this is um this is a great night and i'd like to finish off our presentations tonight um with a a a student accomplishment so the essex count actually you know what let me let me do this um i want to i don't know here there we go uh-oh while uh i want to thank nick uh nick who's coming down here right now uh nick is uh nick is one of our our um our tech department um family and he is all over the district he's been helping us out he's been a very busy
056man throughout thank you throughout the um these past couple of weeks so nick i want to thank you for that i thank you for doing that right now too um so i'd like to share with you the two the the 2020 essex county parks photography contest and the essex county parks photography contest of 2020 is sponsored by the essex county environmental center the purpose of this contest is to highlight the best of what the essex county parks system has to offer it's many residents year round the essex county parks department parks excuse me the essex county department of parks recreation and cultural affairs offers a wide variety of rich natural cultural and educational opportunities for all to enjoy what we are proud of the most here for of this essex county uh contest is giancarlo
057morano john carla morano has won first prize uh in the youth category there is there's an adult category and then there's a youth category and uh john carlo won this with this this photograph of kip's castle and uh we're very proud of him tonight and we want to recognize him and um we wanted to applaud him for his artistic ability uh le this happened very this will happen quickly i think this is going on or not um but i i i emailed i emailed um john carlos family and asked if he was willing to come here tonight and um if john carla would come family because this is this is this is an accomplishment and the one thing that i want to share is is through our email back and forth um ms morano had
058shared that john carlo is very interested in photography and if you can find your a way to express yourself that is half the battle and john carla your expression through photography you never know where this is going to take you whether it is a hobby or whether you make a career out of this or whether whether this opens other doors for you i want to applaud you and congratulate you let's give john carlo a round of applause john carlo would you would you like to say something i'm putting you on the spot right now john garlow come on why don't you talk about your inspiration why you chose kip's castle let me wipe this down for you good evening everyone my name is john carlo morano and i'm a sophomore here at cedar grove high
059school and i recently got into photography about a year ago um it's not something i've been doing for a while so i'm still pretty new to everything and i don't have any fancy equipment or anything i just use my my phone for most of it so when i heard about this photography contest from my mom i thought this would be a pretty cool idea to share some of the stuff i've been working on with more than just people that i'm friends with on instagram or social media so i chose kipps castle park and verona park and the reason why i wanted to go to kipp's castle park is because it's quite different from most standard parks it doesn't have the normal things that you would think of it's as you can see a castle and
060visitors are able to walk through the castle see some of the sights there so i thought it'd be pretty cool to go somewhere that many people wouldn't really think of at first when they hear the word park and when we got there i just started looking around see what i can find and captured this shot and submitted it to the contest and a few weeks later we got an email saying that i won first prize and when and when um i got the news that i would be recognized here at the board of ed meeting i thought that was very very nice to see members from my town and my friends coming out to support me tonight and i thought that was very nice i just want to share with everybody if you're interested in
061seeing john carlo's work posted or others you can see that at the essex county environmental center from from october 1st through the october 31st of next month so i encourage you all to do that and congratulations [Applause] i'm doing you guys okay a lot going on a lot of good stuff absolutely thank you for everybody who um presented who came up who was part of it all appreciate it we're gonna move on now um from the office of the business administrator and board secretary under minutes can i have a motion for b1 through b5 so moved second b1 is a motion to approve the public in executive minutes of september 15th b2 is a motion to approve the budgetary transfers for the month of september b3 is a motion to approve the treasurer's report for
062the month of july b4 is a motion to approve the board secretary report for the month of july and b5 is a motion to approve the board secretary's certification to the city of board of education pursuant to the code that no line item account has encompasses and expenditures which in total exceed the line items appropriations and violation of the code any discussion no no roll call please mrs dichara yes mrs miga yes mr spondoria aye mr schoener aye mrs dye yes under bills can i have a motion for b6 so moved second b6 is a motion to pay the list of bills that were in our packet any discussion no no no roll call please mrs dichara yes mrs miga yes mrs fondoria aye mr schoener aye mrs dye yes under business can i have
063a motion for b7 through b eight so moved second b seven is a motion true prove the following write off of unreconciled items from the high school activities account and the athletic account and b8 is a motion to approve the location agreement with biscuit filmworks and the cedar grove board of education any discussion no no no roll call please mrs dicharra yes mrs miga yes mrs flandoria aye mr schoener aye mrs dye yes from the office of the superintendent of schools under personnel can i have a motion just for s-1 so moved second s-1 is a motion to appoint the following staff in accordance with the state emergent hiring start date procedures dustin bayer high school principal suzanne marzuka middle school maternity leave replacement math teacher christine palomara high school maternity leave replacement english teacher
064and dean strout high school short-term leave replacement math teacher any discussion no no roll call please mrs dechara yes mrs miga yes mr pandoria aye mr schoener aye mr dye yes before we move on i'd like to introduce our new high school principal and i wanted to not approve the rest of the motions because there's two young kids out there who've been so incredibly patient waiting for their dad to get approved so if mr bayer wants to come up and introduce himself and welcome and we are very excited to have you here yeah it's on the other hand you just have to pull the mic out and stand thank you thank you and thank you for uh for uh taking the consideration from thanksgiving so i appreciate that good evening members of the board of
065education superintendent grosso in the cedar grove community i am honored to stand here this evening and accept this position of principal at cedar grove high school throughout my 10 years in education i have developed a reputation as an innovative leader who inspires and motivates through action at the core of my beliefs is that students learn best when they are able to relate what they are learning in the classroom to their current or future goals and have positive relationships with their teachers counselors and school student opportunities staff professional development and school culture and climate will be at the forefront of my decision making as i step into this role cedar grove high school is a school that is rich with tradition and commitment to educational excellence i intend to uphold build upon those values i look
066forward to developing strong relationships and collaborating with faculty and staff parents and community stakeholders to provide our students with educational opportunities that are critical for growth and success i recognize that we are that we are currently in unprecedented and uncertain times please know that i will work tirelessly tirelessly to ensure a safe environment for our students taking into consideration all aspects of social and emotional learning and student development i am here for and eager to work with our students in the cedar grove community finally i want to thank mr board of education for entrusting me with this tremendous responsibility and thank you to my wife and two children who are here tonight for their unwavering support thank you thank you [Applause] and like i said we're very excited to have mr bear start 2020 has
067been about a lot of change and uh and we have our our new superintendent who even though it's not quite two months it feels like much longer with everything we've been through um and we started our adventure with him and we're very excited that mr bear is going to continue on this new adventure with you so and thank you to the younger bear children for being as well behaved as you were and i'm sorry it took so long so congratulations all right we're going to move on can i have a motion for s2 through one second a lot of pages here and they keep going uh through s14 s2 is a motion to approve christine carabastos as at south end staff to provide temperature checks for staff and students s3 is a motion to rescind
068motion s4 on september 15th agenda and approve the extra class stipend from september 8th to september 22nd for the following teachers s4 is a motion to approve the following personnel as pathways instructors for the 2021 school year s5 is a motion to approve the following staff to provide home instruction and supplemental instruction s6 is a motion to rescind resolution s15 on the august 18 2020 agenda and approve the following school age for the 2021 school year s7 is a motion to retroactively approve jody inglis to be paid an additional three days to assist with the reopening of the high school from august 18th to the 31st s 8 is a motion to approve the tuition reimbursement for the summer 2019 fall 19 and spring 20 semesters for the following employees s9 is a motion to
069approve the following stipend positions for the 2021 school year based on the 1920 bargaining contract and it keeps on going s10 is a motion to authorize attendance at the following events s11 is a motion to approve the following students for classroom observation s12 is a motion to approve the following leaves of absence s 13 is a motion to approve the following tenured staff member to receive mentoring fee reimbursement in the amount listed and s14 is a motion to approve robert gogerty as a cedar grove high school interim principal from october 5th through november 25th at the rate listed any discussion no no no roll call please mrs dechara yes mrs miga yes mr splandoria aye mr schoener aye mr dye yes under policies can i have a motion for s15 so moved second s15 is
070a motion to approve the second reading of the following policies listed any discussion no no roll call please mrs de chara yes miss amiga yes mr swandoria aye mr schoener aye mr dai yes under curriculum can i have a motion for s-16 and s-17 so moved second s-16 is a motion to approve the following teachers to write district curriculum at the curriculum rate listed for a max of 20 hours and a 17 is a motion to approve the studio art honors curriculum any discussion no roll call please mrs de chara yes mrs miga yes mr spondoria aye mr schoener aye mrs dye yes under contracts can i have a motion for s-18 so moved second s-18 is a motion to approve the following contracts for special education students as recommended by the director of special
071services for the 2021 school year any discussion no no no roll call please mrs ditara yes mrs amiga yes mrs fondoria aye mr schoener aye mr dye yes before i get to the the public part of the meeting i just want to read the same little paragraph i read last time the board of education recognizes the value of public comment on educational issues and the importance of allowing members of the public to express themselves on school matters of community interest in this section we allow public comments on school related matters our regulations allow 40 minutes for these communications again each person shall be limited to three minutes and we ask you to try to stay within this requirement speakers may speak more than once only after all others wishing to speak on this topic have
072been heard 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 will be interrupted warned or your participation may be terminated but that's not going to happen i'm sure please also be reminded that if any person does not observe reasonable decorum is disorderly or disrupts the meeting you'll be asked to leave the meeting and please remember to state your name municipality of residence and group affiliation if applicable each and every time you address the board okay the meeting is open to the public for commenting items on or off the agenda and we had a sign-in sheet so i'm going to start with the sign up sheet first and then i'll ask
073at the end and don't worry i know mr cannell you want to speak to um if anybody else wants to speak as well so kelly white yep and then the only thing i ask is after you speak if you could just wipe down the microphone for the next person we'd appreciate it i know the feeling hi kelly white lombardi 15 donato drive cedar grove um just a quick question well first i just want to say thank you for getting the kids back to school i have a high schooler who was very happy to hear the news today so but um just more like a housekeeping question and i looked online couldn't find the answer anywhere so i figured i might as well come tonight and just ask my question um i know with the younger
074kids they don't really change classes so the cleaning i guess is being done after they're done with school how's that working with the middle schoolers and the high schools with changing classes i couldn't i just couldn't find it i was looking online at our plan and um just wondering what how that works because i know my job like we're not allowed to be at other people's desks and things like that so what's the how are we doing that so i've updated the um our buildings of grounds department updated the plan so it is there's a new section uh as of yesterday that uh explains the cleaning procedures before during after friday is deep clean and then also in case of a crisis but what we took into consideration was what was reasonable based on the
075um on the staffing that we have our custodial staff every room does have a cleanser there not for the kids to use but uh if a staff member so chooses we're not maki we're we're making that optional um but we are ours our custodial staff has been instructed by um the buildings and grounds department on how to maneuver through between classes uh there will there could possibly be the utilization of multiple desks depending upon the rotation out of desks depending upon how many kids go in or in the classroom but our custodial staff will be moving in and out student staff will see the custodial staff frequently uh within within the room but again it's about what is reasonable at you're absolutely right at a elementary level their students are stationary within their room but
076we have movement at the middle in the high school so our custodial staff will understand that aside from the you know the frequent cleaning of bathrooms they're there to be frequently cleaning the the classrooms as well okay all right thank you for the answer appreciate it thank you anybody else wishing to speak mr canelo chris canella 62 liberty street lodi uh i'm the president of the cedar grove education association um i i've this is my 21st year as an educator in cedar grove or as an educator it's my 20th and i'm losing count jesus so i've been here a long time um this is my 15th year as the president of the cedar grove education association and um i and i i don't know if i've said this in the other meetings but i've definitely
077had these wonderful conversations with both mrs dye and and uh mr grasso um this over the last six weeks uh trying to get us back to where we are today has been the most difficult task that i have ever had to deal with as a union leader um on an almost daily basis uh you know i have members who call me with multiple concerns um on you know when the announcement went that we were going to open virtually uh it wasn't well received by the community and and you know there were some things that were said um that were not what is typical of this community and what i've seen in this community for 20 years um so it you know it this has been hard for me it's been hard for our members and
078i know it's been hard for the families of this community as we try to move ourselves back in um that that is understood and i think my members understand that i want to thank mr grosso for for acknowledging the hard work that we have done there has been a misconception that that the association and the administration and the board has not been trying to work through these issues to you know on the contrary actually we have been working really hard on these issues since the first day that mr grosso took office on on august 3rd where we we had a three-hour meeting working through the initial plan um and at every turn i do say and i want to again thank thank the administration and and the board they have made efforts to to make
079the association and make the members feel as safe as possible and i think everybody knows and that there is no safe there is no 100 safe right now until until we get through this until there's a vaccine um so i again want to thank thank um mr grosso for that um and i want to let everybody know that moving forward the association is committed to making sure that one you know we're gonna we're gonna do everything we can to to to move forward to get things going to be where we need to be um you know i want to see this community go back to where where we were you know march 13th trust me i think nobody wants that more than me i i love my job and anybody who's ever been in my
080class or who's seen the work i've done in this in this room as a as i've traveled with students the work i do as an association leader you know the work i do for advocating for public education the work i do for lgbtq understands the passion that i bring um you know that um so i i just want to reiterate there is a commitment on my end there's a commitment on the cga on the cga's end i do have a couple of my officers with me here today uh christina lesitra who's out one of our vice presidents and danielle who's our who's our secretary treasurer i asked them to join me in support so um you know i think it's time that we start changing the narrative and we start changing the perception that that
081um you know i heard apparently unless we talk about that that it appears that we're not working together and that's not true do we agree on everything no we don't nobody ever is going to but i think one of the things in our society that we all can learn and we all need to learn is that we're not always going to agree and despite that fact we still have work to do and we're committed to that work so um i thank you and i want to let mr grasso mrs dye the board of education know that um look we have a lot of work to do and you know i'm there as a partner the cj is there as a partner um and you know let's get let's roll up our sleeves and get it
082done on a personal note um i saw over i did watch the meeting last week i saw mr uh um forgetting his name uh the curriculum you guys um did the presentations on the curriculum mr pierre mr pearson sorry i saw mr pierce and i saw miss barbosa do presentations on the lgbtq curriculum those of you that know me know how much work i put on that on a state level i did some lobbying for the union to get that passed i worked with groups to implement pilot programs and to create resources statewide and and to see that's coming to fruition is exciting and um you know i i know that the board approved it last week i thank you for that um also uh you know i also want to pledge to the board
083that um as soon as we can you know we got the next project i think we need to start working diving into that work um you know miss diane i talked about this a few times over the summer i'm looking forward to doing that work personally so thank you thank you very much mr canelo we appreciate that and i just want to reiterate what mr grosso had said and obviously what mr cannella had said is that you know the board the administration and the staff the cga everybody's committed for the one goal and that's the students and i think we we all succeeded through a combination of leadership and compromise and and recognizing that students come first and that's how we were able to get north end and south end back today that's how we're
084able to get the middle school back next week and that's how we're going to get the high school back the following week is it going to be easy no are we going to take a couple steps forward and maybe a step back absolutely but i think as long as we all share that common goal um it's definitely time you know for everybody to to recognize that we are all you know coming together because this is what's best for everyone so i thank you for those words i appreciate it anybody else wishing to speak okay i'm gonna take the gavel i'm gonna close that part of the meeting are we sure okay i close that part of the meeting announcement of future meetings i feel like they're all the time the next one will be october
08513th here uh same time same place um and then october 27th again same time same place um i have to say with the exception of the chairs um because they're really uncomfortable this is actually a really good setup not gonna lie you know i'm a direct person this is you know it was nice being down there um but no i i like this i like that people can actually come and be in person and i like that people can be able to watch from home and i think this is is working out nicely so and it's not freezing like it was two weeks ago i feel a little more comfortable so uh on that note uh can i have a motion to adjourn second roll call please mrs dichara yes this is amiga yes mr
086pandoria aye mr schoener aye mr dye yes this meeting is over everybody have a good evening and stay safe thank you