Dunellen Board of Education Meeting - 01/30/2024

001this meeting has been provided by advertising in The Courier News and posting notice in the Board of Education administration building and district schools and filing notice with the burough clerk I hereby call to order the regular public meeting Tuesday January 30th 2024 in the Lincoln Middle School cafetorium 400 dellan Avenue at 7 p.m. this meeting is broadcast live uh please check www.del and schools uh.org for details at this time uh we are going uh to an executive session so that n Board of Education will now adjourn into executive session to discuss items that fall within specific exceptions to the op open public meetings Act njsa 10 4-12 B the confidential matters discussed by the board during the executive session include items related to individual privacy collective bargaining agreements pending or anticipated litigation and Personnel any

002discussion that does not need to remain confidential will be made public as soon as it is practical minutes of the executive session will not be disclosed until the need for confidentiality no longer exists all individuals who may be discussed in executive session have been adequately notified action will take place after the conclusion of the executive session looking for a motion to go into executive session move to go to exe second second all those in favor I opposed okay we will see you guys back about 7:30 for okay we are back so um I'd like to uh ask for a motion to come back into public return to public second all those in favor I I opposed okay so moving on to item three Pledge of Allegiance would you all please stand for pledge of allegiance

003Flags here 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 will you all please remain standing for a moment of reflection and respect for our troops serving throughout the world our TR troops who have served and our troops who have made the ultimate sacrifice in the name of our our United States of America thank you okay Mr Pepe could you please call the role for this evening Mr Anderson Mrs Condit present Mr Dugen here Dr gendrano present Mrs Howard here Mr sanoi not here miss Shimp is not here Mrs Shep here Mr Walker here and Miss Sophia here okay we have seven board members present wonderful thank you Mr pepy so moving on

004to item number five approval of minutes looking for a motion to approve 5 a and and B which are uh the minutes from the December 19th board meeting 2023 as well as the uh board meeting uh which was our organization meeting on January 2nd 2024 looking for a motion to approve those two items approve 5 A and B second open for discussion comments questions sorry okay uh Mr Mr Pepe can you please call the roll Mr Anderson yes Mrs Condit yes Mr Dougan yes Dr jenjo yes Mrs Howard yes Mrs Shep yes Mr Walker yes motion passes wonderful thank you very much okay moving on to item number six student recognition may I turn it over to you Mr Ross absolutely thank you Dr gendrano welcome everyone it's so wonderful to see so many students

005here and parents um it's great to have you here as always for our student of the month recognition and we have for January we have some very special students being recognized for the amazing things that they do in their buildings so without further Ado we will start with Faber Elementary School and we'll bring up Mr [Applause] tenant that's thanks Dave there we go uh favor welcome student of the month our first student of the month is prek David gordano cbon David come on up not here well David is hardworking student who sets a wonderful example for his peers he perseveres through challenging tasks and his MO is modeling positive behaviors and classroom routines he's a pleasure to have in class and we're so proud of his progress congratulations David kindergarten Penelope melano here she comes

006you want a penel b there you go just stand right here okay and turn and face Mom okay panel B is very sweet and caring to all her classmates and friends she is very helpful in classroom and great drawing great with drawing and coloring she always puts her best effort forward and always does everything his best she can do congratulations Penelope first grade we have Cali Mundy there's Cali back there big smiles big smile big smile Callie's a very laidback student who does not get frazzled by anyone or anything wow she is helpful sweet and kind to all academically Cali always strives to do her best she is a great student and a friend to all her classmates congratulations Callie second grade with Melanie agular archilla Melanie she is Melanie is am is amazing and

007a behavioral role model for her classmates she never never complains about anything and she's always had a great attitude always puts best forth her best effort she a sweet kind respectful girl and a great classmate to all congratulations Melanie third grade we have Isabella Rosas Gonzalez Izzy is someone who always comes to class with a positive attitude and gives her best effort she deserves this honor because she has gone way above and beyond for all their students and she has moved here from another country she always makes sure that she understands the instructions helps others in learning and does great with her friendships she shares these same selfless qualities with all those other all those others in class congratulations [Applause] Isabella fourth grade we have Xander Robertson but Xander could not be here tonight uh

008Xander is a hardworking individual approaches each assignment with grit and determination he doesn't back down from the challenges always does everything he wants to accomplish and what he needs to do congratulations Xander fifth grade we have two students first is Tiffany Barrera Rena that's a big smile I like that Tiffany makes everywhere Tiffany makes everywhere she goes a better place she is exceptional in every way Mr bur is most impressed with her work ethic which is unmatched but most importantly she shares her talents with everyone around her Tiffany is a helper unless you're playing soccer against her at which point you'll need someone to help you stop her she is the most deserving in this honor and most definitely will not be this will not be her last recognition in school congratulations Tiffany next fifth

009grade we have is timir dors Ty here come on up I am so proud and honored to name time dorsy student of the month missile says Tamir is hardworking caring student who works coopera with his peers and teachers he's also a proud member of the safety patrol team and has recently joined choir Tamir has shown growth in regards to Independence and his level of maturity the school year congrat congratulations time here great job and last but not least special areas we have Eddie kallik come on up Eddie congrats Eddie Eddie is polite kind young man who helps all staff and students he's a pleasure to teach and is active in the schools he's active in chess club and Music Eddie always has helping hand and willingness to learn learn in specials Eddie greets his staff

010and students with a hello Eddie is not only active in the school but he's works for scouting he has created his own tie dye shirt stand where he sold tie dye shirts at the Harvard Fest in the open air markets in town Eddie is always willing to help out PTO and other organizations congratulations Eddie great job buddy big round of applause for faor students of the month parents feel free to come up to the front and grab a picture [Applause] all right thank you Mr tenant so next Lincoln Middle School and uh Mr Al thank you good evening thank you everyone for coming uh at Lincoln middle school we have three students that we are proud to announce as our students of the month I always announce that this student or these students that have

011been recognized or selected have been selected by a committee of teachers which makes more to me then rather than just one individual identifying one student so a group of teachers and myself have identified these students as our students of the month at Lincoln Middle School the First Student in sixth grade Gabriella cardus swarez if you can come forward [Applause] please Gabriella is a very respectful and conscientious student she is always prepared for school volunteers during instructional periods and actively participates in classroom activities Gabriella maintains a high standard for herself both academically and personally she is always willing to help to the teachers and her fellow classmates Gabriella is a pleasure to have at LMS and is seen consistently with a smile on her face congratulations [Applause] Gabriella next up our seventh grade representative Kaylee Garcia

012Castro come forward [Applause] please the seventh grade teachers would like to congratulate Kaylee for being recognized as our student of the month Kaylee is a good example for her peers to follow she values her education and works extremely hard in all of her classes Kaye always comes to clash prepared to listen to learn and to put forth her best effort in work when working collaboratively with her pairs she always contributes to the group and stays on task in addition ition Kaylee is always kind and courteous towards her teachers and classmates congratulations again to [Applause] Kaye and our eighth grade representative Colin do [Applause] Sila the eighth grade team of teachers is proud to announce Colin Silva as student of the month col is being recognized for his exceptional qualities and contributions at LMS he has

013established himself as a reliable and supportive peer within the student body KH is respectful to fellow classmates and faculty alike and is a role model for the school Community he not only completes his assignments but also goes the extra mile to help his peers understand the content he actively participates in classroom discussions fost fering an engaging and Collaborative Learning environment we appreciate Colin's positive influence and uplifting Spirit congratulations for this well-earned recognition [Applause] Colin congratulations again to our three students of the month and we appreciate them for making LMS an outstanding place to learn and develop parents if you'd like to come grab some pictures [Applause] and last but certainly not least Mr Lynch and den Allan High School good evening everybody I'm very happy to represent dellan high school before I get to the

014students of the month I do want to just recognize one individual that is also here this evening we don't have a swim team here at Dell and high school but this past weekend we had the GMC championships and a young lady in our school participated for denell and high school so I want to recognize uh Gabriella roses Gonzalez over [Applause] here and although he's not here Jason Young also uh participated in swimming for us too so Devon tell him I mentioned his name okay all right so we have our students of the month that I do want to recognize are ninth grade student of the month Rose Chella Rose has had done a fantastic job so far in high school she's very much gotten involved in school activities she was the starting goalie for the

015girls soccer team back in the fall she's now playing on the girls basketball team and her time has increased significantly as the season has gone on and come springtime softball correct so she'll be a three sport athlete here at dellan High School in addition to being an excellent student so congratulations Rose in 10th Grade Elmer Vargas [Applause] Estrada conratulations as a 10th grade student Elmer also has done a fantastic job here at the high school ninth grade and then continuing into 10th grade uh he's gotten active in school doing track back in the spring correct doing it again this year excellent and he comes from a family of athletes that participated in track and he's one of these families that the number of cousins that as we talk about the Vargas family in discussions with

016him finding out who was related to whom really amazes me over time so he's done a fantastic job and it's been great getting to know his family over the years Elmer congratulations our next two individuals are not here but I will speak to about them our 11th grade student is Kevin Roberts Uh Kevin moved to dellan just last year in late fall early winter and when we saw him show up we knew he was a football player but he had missed the fall season and when when he got to play this year he showed everyone what he was made out of he was one of the leaders on the offensive and defensive lines he did a fantastic job he is one of the nicest individuals you will ever meet so respectful well spoken and nice

017to everyone around school and so the 11th grade student of the month is Kevin [Applause] Roberts and finally our 12th grade student of the month is Alexis Frankin uh Alexis another fantastic student has her college applications out there waiting to hear back uh one of the reasons we she was nominated in one student of the month was uh our 12th grade counselor Mr best put something out to all of the students as far as a volunteering opportunity and Alexis was one of the first ones to come up to him and say she really wanted to participate it it's with hackensac uh Meridian health and she's done a lot of volunteering several days a week with that organization and has done a really fantastic job putting herself out there and helping others so our 12th grade

018student of the month Alexis [Applause] Rankin parents if you want to grab some pictures please feel free [Applause] all right thank you principal so much and congratulations students congratulations parents really wonderful honor we're very very pleased that you could join us tonight we have a long meeting ahead we'd love if you uh if you're interested in staying but of course if not uh we'll take about a five minute break so that everyone can uh can take off thank you again have a wonderful [Applause] night very good thanks but this one's on yeah okay gee thanks for okay hello check okay we are back so moving on to item number seven uh presence REM marks a few take a few minutes just to say a few words here so good evening Welcome to our January 30th

0192024 dellan Board of Education meeting this is our first officially scheduled board meeting for 2024 yay uh so for those joining us here for the first time we meet as a governing body of the school district we donate our time out of deep compassion for our students and work to make decisions based on what we believe will best help all of our students be successful we meet once a month here in the cafetorium for a public meeting and it covers School District updates uh updates from our student representativ student recognitions like we just saw as well as important presentations our agendas are posted prior to the meeting on our denell and School District website along with past agendas and attachment so please feel free to take a look at what we discussed over in the

020past and I invite you to join us um monthly in our discussion so um take a moment here just to recognize and congratulate again all the students who were recognized this evening we're proud and so proud of their accomplishments and please let keep keep up the great work a lot we have a lot of great students staying healthy uh as a as the weather changes and the temperature has dropped right it's important to underscore that healthy kids I said this before I'll say it again healthy kids means healthy schools which means a healthy Community um so from the New Jersey Department of Health with uh 1,720 schools submitting reports as of the week ending January 13th there were actually three covid-19 outbreaks reported in K through 12 schools across New Jersey one in Bergen County

021but two of them in Middle sex County so so it's it's it's close um RSV percent positivity and percentage for emergency department visits with with RSV have been decreasing since mid December so that's a good thing and the percentage of schools reporting non-f flu respiratory outbreaks has slightly decreased which is also good as of the week ending January 20th flu activity level has been high Statewide um there have been two confirmed influenza Associated pediatric deaths reported this season thus far so the botom line is here we we encourage you to take Common Sense precautions like washing hands well covering up when sneezing keeping sick kids home and keeping current with vaccinations to minimize the spread of infectious diseases um that can really those can really impact our school year as I do um uh every

022month just to recognize what are some of some of the monthly celebrations um we're coming up to the end of January but we celebrated Martin Luther King's birthday there was a national day of racial healing on on the 16th there was Holocaust membrance day on the 27th and um uh this was also School Board recognition month Governor MTH he signed that into law I guess uh last year in December I'm sorry December of 2022 looking ahead February is Black History Month there's also lunar uh New Year um and um I mentioned all these things really just to underscore the import importance of diversity equity and inclusion in the fabric of our daily lives and the impa and the impact that that has on our community so open honest and Equitable communication that's respectful positive supportive

023fair and most of all kind goes a long way in strengthening our community as we embark on 2024 I think it's important to acknowledge all the hard work and be thankful for all the progress we've made in 2023 a lot was accomplished but we have plenty more to do looking ahead I'm excited for all the possibilities the changes we've made thus far uh since this time last year have all those changes have afforded us especially the changes that are going to move move our school district forward and put us on a better path to success I can't wait to see what 24 2024 brings and I'm glad we as a board and our dellan community are continuing to work together uh to achieve that success lastly I wanted to thank the community for your support

024and confidence giving us board members the opportunity to serve the dellan community I would like to also thank my fellow board members for electing me to another term as president it's my honor and privilege to serve as the Board of Education president so let's go 2024 and thank you for letting me bend your ear for a little bit Mr Ross floor is yours thank you Dr gendrano so um we have a number of items in the superintendent report we're going to start today with the student report so I will turn the mic over to Sophia hello so uh the girls basketball team are having a really great season with a record of 12 to5 yesterday they played against Perth Amboy magnet with a score of 46-28 and their their top scorer was Wendy wall with

02518 points and Wendy being only a sophomore is their top scorer of the season and is building up a really impressive record the boys basketball team won against Highland Park 66 to 54 and their top scorer was Ryan Hutchins with 20 points the play students are currently in early rehearsal process of the musical and so far is looking and sounding really good and so a few weeks ago uh actor and model Darius Darius Jordan Lee came in for an acting workshop with our drama club and he helped us develop our characters more and gave us really good Insight on what the pros and cons of being an actor are Miss piano has been teaching us about the music side to Black American history and how music had a huge role in it and everything else

026that connected to it like brick dancing rapping and graffiti art so she's having someone come in who is an expert graffiti artist to teach us graffiti and myself along with many others are really excited about this the seniors sold Pizza during exam days and every time we thought we wouldn't sell we were surely wrong sophomores are having an early Valentine's Day big sale on February 1st and the Juniors have a fundraiser with Chipotle coming out which is fun uh this Friday is exciting it's denell and Scott talent run by the PTO and all the proceeds go to the DHS uh performing arts and there's a total of 27 acts from elementary middle to high school students also including staff who will be showing off their talents midterms week was a little chaotic with the snow

027daes snow days and midterms getting pushed back but I think the extra day to study really helped a lot of students and I know it helped me most col most colleges have given their acceptance letters so now our amazing seniors are being rewarded for all their hard work and there's a butin board in the hallway that has students names next to it where they got into so if you ever pass it you should check that out you might see me up there thank you thank you Sophia um all right so moving on we're going to uh invite our wonderful auditor up for his annual presentation um Anthony ardido has been district auditor for longer than I've been here which isn't really saying that much is it 10 years 2015 2015 so nine years or yes

028uh and M sardo was really instrumental in working with me last year um as we put together the sidebar for the DEA um just in terms of understanding our finances and and where we stood so uh without further Ado Mr adido great okay so you um again my name is Anthony ardido partner with ardido and Company we uh completed the 2023 audit June 30th 2023 um just recently we issued the audit report maybe a week and a half two weeks ago um so the audit has been issued and filed with the state um a lot of years that we have to wait for uh certain information from the state which puts us a little bit behind in the old days we used to do the audit and you know we'd have it out uh a

029month later uh but we we completed the field work back in October and now the audit is complete this uh Financial presentation I have five slides to go over we'll talk about the highlevel finances of the school and then uh I'll talk about the audit so this first slide here shows your governmental fund expenditures total of 36 mil1 154 uh it's a pie chart and you see down at the lefthand corner is instruction 8.7 million that's the largest portion of your piie that's teacher salary and direct uh classroom supplies that are included in that as we go clockwise around the around the uh pie chart we have tuition almost uh a million dollars there and that's mainly for special ed uh students uh the ESC being the biggest one um support at 7.8 million almost

030right above that and that's everything that supports your instruction uh function um Improvement in instructional Services you have your guidance in there Health Services your child study team is also in there uh media library anything that supports your instruction area everything else kind of falls in the other buckets as we'll go around G GNA General Administration almost 2.2 million 6.1% of your Pi the average for the state of New Jersey is about 8% so you're doing well there and containing your GNA expenditures everything in there is you know superintendent's office all your principals secretarial the Board of Ed office um also you have legal expenses audit fees uh all your Communications and uh te telephone expenses it department is in there and different uh General supplies uh plant and maintenance about 11 o'clock 1.9 million

031you know that's all all everything to run your schools your custodial uh salaries maintenance and cleaning repair Insurance util all of your utilities is in that plant plant and maintenance slice there uh Transportation at the top about 800,000 it's mostly uh special ed with the ESC again uh also includes athletic and field trips anything uh that requires uh student transportation TR uh Contracting with other uh districts such as South planfield and also parent provided transportation is in there uh next at one o00 it looks like a large slice of pie which it is this is called on behalf benefits you don't actually pay for these but in governmental accounting we have to show it what that is is what the state pays for your teachers pension and for your teachers health insurance postretirement so those

032payments uh the state gives us that number 4.4 million governmental accounting says we have to show that as an expenditure and we show the exact same dollar amount as a revenue so they offset each other and has no impact to your budget has no impact to your fund balance but it's there for presentation purposes uh right below that is employee benefits 1 point or 4 point 4.1 million uh most of that's health insurance 3.4 million of that health insurance is also you know the employer match for Social Security uh the purs payment which is uh your your non teers pension uh contribution workers comp any tuition reimbursements that you have are all in that employee benefit uh line item uh about 3:00 special Revenue 1.3 million that's all of your federal uh spending on grants

033so all your Ida all your your child or all your um title programs uh all the covid grants Sesser one two and three uh we're we're now in the midst of finishing up number three which is the American Rescue plan ARP and that'll be spent down by uh September of 2024 down below there is Debt Service uh 2.6 million that's on the two bonds that you have you have a bond from 2012 has a $4.5 million balance and then in 2020 you did a referendum um and that referendum bond is now spent down to 21 million so you have 25.5 million you have a long way to go to pay these down uh the 2020 referendum uh ends in 20 uh 2035 is the last payment that you'll make on that and down below Capital

034outlay that's mostly spending on that referendum project you've been spending on that throughout the years and the Faber classroom addition uh the referendum project was 2.4 million of that and the Faber classroom project was 3.8 million of that uh 6.4 million um if we flip the page uh we take a look at expenditures again but over a uh five-year period starting in 2019 now the Blue Line there is your 2019 expenditure shares of 18.4 million adjusted for inflation um compounded annually so from from 19 to 20 it was 2% 21 it was uh 4.7% 22 it was 7.7 and in 23 it's around uh 3.7% uh so you could see inflation is leveling off the green uh bar is your actual expenditures so we start off at 18.4 million um you're below inflation by 2021

035but then you take a big jump from 21 to 22 you say wow we spent a lot of money but the reason uh that that happened last year in 22 and this year in 23 is you had a a large increase in your state aid so you got that state aid money you're able to put that to work in different educational areas so uh there was spending across the board in order to utilize that state aid um the biggest one of the big or the biggest jump from 21 to 22 was Debt Service because that 2020 referendum needed to start to be paid so that that went up 1.4 million in one year um instruction was the next largest uh increase and the same holds true for 20123 uh cross the board increases in all

036the all the items um you had a like a $1.5 million increase in state aid um last year in 2023 um the largest increases were in instruction and support and benefits and very very little increase in uh admin and uh plant M maintenance last year and just one note on this schedule it it excludes capital projects and those on behalf benefits that I talked about so these are P purely your operating um expenditures so that they're comparable uh next page is your revenues uh over a 5year period again um the these Revenue sources mainly two of them um support your entire budget uh the largest being now the largest being state aid which is the uh orange triangle there and you could see as I mentioned in the previous slide it went up from 21

037to 22 and then more in 2023 so that's your largest revenue Source now uh followed closely behind by the tax levy uh which you could see is pretty stable over the last number of years um to keep the impact down to the to the taxpayers uh down at the bottom we have federal revenue that's the black line and again that's all your uh covid money all your idea uh title money $1.2 million and down at the very very bottom and I'm I'm mentioning this more and more uh local Revenue we don't see hardly any local Revenue anymore in our schools um that's $77,000 there and 32,000 of that is interest income and I've been mentioning this to all of our schools the banks have been getting away with murder with their interest rates um as

038you know interest has been going up uh but the banks have not been giving out um interest unless you ask um so Provident who who uh you deal with you have almost $18 million in the bank with them um and they're only giving a 0.15% so I would say now may be the time to give them a call and say you're going to maybe shop your Banks um unless they uh come forth I have another client up north in north New Jersey school district they got they have Provident also and they went from 0.15 to 4.4 so going from that to 4.4 would earn you another $800,000 a year so that that might be something to look into um next page this is your excess fund balance now as you know you're only allowed to

039have 2% of expenditures in in unreserved fund balance if you have more than that it's called excess fund balance um so if you look at at 2023 the red bar is the amount that you were allowed to have 747 th000 um that's your 2% um in 22 and 21 you're allowed to have 4% and the state allowed you to do that to accumulate um extra uh unreserved Surplus because of covid but now it's back down to 2% um you came in at 2.3 million so the difference between the 747 th000 and the 2.3 million is called excess that's one 1,554 so that 1,554 automatically gets plugged in as a revenue you're not allowed to keep it as a revenue in your fiscal 25 budget so at the end of 23 we calculate 1.5 it goes

040in as a revenue automatically to balance your fiscal 25 buck budget in fiscal 24 the the excess was $756,000 so you're almost $800,000 more going into the 2025 budget than you than you were in the 2024 budget and this is all coming and generated because you're you've you underspent your budget last year and you could see in the prior couple years you underspend it also um uh part of that uh excess is generated because they went back down to 2% so you had to give up about a quarter of a million dollars back in excess uh because now it's back down to 2% and not the 4% but the rest is from underspending your budget uh next page is all of your fund balance components now the previous page we just talked about unrestricted fund

041balance unreserved fund balance and that's at the very bottom there 747 th000 on the left bottom and above that is the excess that you had in fiscal 22 that is going to the fiscal 24 budget as of June 30th 23 you still have that money in your fund balance because you didn't start using it until the next day July 1st 2023 for fiscal 24 above top that White Slice that's the 1.5 excess that we just talked about in the previous slide um we go around unemployment comp that it's just uh your account you have set up for unemployment encumbrances just open POS you have at the end of the year uh that need to be reserved for when those services are provided and down below your largest piece capital reserve 1.84 five million um you

042were able to grow that this year you start off with 1.1 million at the end of last year uh you budgeted taking out uh 4.3 3 million of that uh you didn't have 4.3 but you budgeted it anyway because you knew you were going to generate some excesses um that 4.3 went to fund uh the Faber classrooms 3.3 million and also uh 1 million went to Debt Service so you're using your capital reserve uh for capital projects and to fund Debt Service that is funding your capital projects if you remember in June of every year you pass a resolution that says any unspent expenditures Appropriations any extra revenues you're allowed to plow it back into the capital reserve to the tune of $5 million so you passed that resolution you had unspent money you put

043five the max in 5 million you took 4.3 million out so now you're left with a A 1 point $845 million capital reserve really healthy level uh for you guys so all in all total fund balance at the top 5,215 um which is um uh very healthy situation that you guys are in in this District any questions on the numbers or Finance side all right so we we completed the audit and we do have a couple couple audit recommendations let me see if I can I don't know if I can get this bigger may be about there we go okay we have two audit recommendations um one is that the district should document and Implement internal controls to monitor the preparation of bank reconciliations to ensure the bank accounts are properly reconciled to the underlying

044general ledger account detail so what this means is you have your bank statement and you reconcile it to what you have recorded on your books um we found last year that they were impr they were prepared but they were imp prepared improperly so when Rich went back he went back to the beginning of the year and worked his way forward July of 22 all the way through the end of the year and found a bunch of different things found uh transactions that the bank had recorded that were not recorded on the books so they needed to be recorded and we found also transactions that were recorded on the books but the bank didn't have and they were mainly Bank transfers where they where the district said we're going to transfer x amount of dollars from

045general fund to the payroll agency to pay payroll but we never told the bank to actually physically make the transfer so we're in in the midst of uh cleaning that up um as of June 30th 2023 the reconciliations are completed and Rich has a good uh footprint to go forward and a good starting point uh to make sure that that's continually happening throughout the year uh the second item uh this was something that happened the the board should monitor Federal programs and request Cash Cash reimbursements subsequent to the program expenditure so this is this this happened in your ARP program for Ida ARP and Ida preschool ARP AR being American Rescue plan those funds were drawn down and there were no expenditures related to it you you're only supposed to draw down reimbursements when you

046spent the money first it's a reimbursable grant um this happened before Rich got here it was probably September August September last year that they were drawn down um we seem to think and uh that probably uh the prior ba had an idea of where the money he was going to take it from he probably spent it in your regular fund 10 budget is probably going to reclassify it but we have no idea what what that was um it's I don't think that they would have just or that he would have just drawn down the money without having an idea of where it was going to be spent but it never got uh spent in the right bucket and we have no idea um what that could have been so subsequently uh Rich has identified expenditures

047that can be applied to that Grant so those grants are taken care of you won't have to give the money back um but you should uh put you know controls in place that you only draw down the money once the once the funds are spent and you could see them on your books being spent so those are the two recommendations all in all I think we had a great audit uh rich and his team and Dan and everyone in the office there were very helpful to us getting us everything we need we we uh perform a lot of our audits uh remotely especially since covid happened we've learned to do a lot of electronic um back and forth with files but we still show up uh we spend a few days here doing some of

048the things that are not uh conducive to passing files back and forth uh but thank you very much admin for your admin department and Board of Ed for their support for the audit any questions for me sure yeah you can talk about it ask question so I'm very happy to report that uh this past week we did transfer about 10 million almost $10 million out of Provident Bank oh good into a uh fund that's getting us 5.3% interest nice nice and you must have been reading my mind and yes and part Part B of that is that I have as soon as I did that I got a call from Provident Bank and I have a meeting with them tomorrow to talk about our interest rate nice so is the next step talk to Geico

049oh right oh sorry so Anthony I wanted to ask you about um the fund balance components yes so this is um Slide Five on the presentation and if you're interested because I know you're interested in the audit everything is online so now it's all linked in there um so the budgeted fund balance for the current year is that 756 number right the budgeted fund balance for next year is 1.5 million right can you talk about what that what that means for us in terms of planning for this year and I mean that's a very large budgeted fund balance can you just kind of explain to the board a little bit about what that means and then what that what that means in terms of our requirements for this year's budget when we plan yeah so

050you have about $800,000 more of Revenue source and of course you know that your revenues have to equal your Appropriations your Appropriations meaning your expenditure plan they have to balance um so you're going to have to put together a budget um that has expenditures that match up to your revenues um and that might be a challenge to do you don't want to just spend spend 800,000 because you have it because the following year you might not have it right so then you budgeted an expenditure spend it and now the following year you don't have excess Surplus to support that ongoing expenditure um so I tell a lot of my uh school districts uh to be safe uh try not to budget reoccurring new Appropriations with this new money because it might not be occurring um

051a lot of districts uh will earmark that money for one-time capital projects um uh and you could you could earmark it for Debt Service you want to pay down Debt Service one time there's a lot of different things that you could do um if you look at your excess Surplus history over the last number of years it's it's always been around that 700,000 it was like 2 1 million like I think what three years ago um but it came down to 700,000 so sometimes districts don't even plan on spending that money but they appropriate it and then they never spend it and then that just builds up excess for the following year it's just a revolving door of having this High excess number um but if if you if you did have a a reason

052to budget it for onetime type expenditures uh that would Pro probably be my recommendation um going forward thank you appreciate that board members do you have any questions for Anthony okay all right thank you very much okay thank you appreciate it have a good evening oh no you may want to uh usually you're sitting over there so I can sort of make no not you [Music] um all right so um this uh so District goals midyear update is uh part of the the process that we sort of put into place last year when I first came to the district I think it's important that the um the district goals not only sort of breathe life into the things that we do on a daily basis but that the board hear about the types of initiatives

053that we've been going through throughout the the year um and get this midyear update and then of course have some sort of um update at the end of the year whether that's a state of the schools address which is what I'm planning for um later in the spring um or something just sort of related to that just so that you get a sense of it we're working on this every day but as a as a board I know we talk about it a little bit in committee but we don't really kind of you know organize as an organizing principle we don't necessarily use the goals so this is a uh similar presentation to last year um in terms of the structure the objectives are the same which is identifying the district goals recognizing how we

054use them and then understanding the progress on each of the goals so the district goals are linked here this presentation is available on the website if you're interested in in looking at it or sharing it we have uh statements of purpose in three key areas that are listed there we know goal one is academic goal two is about school climate and student wellness and goal three is about construction and fiscal health so uh in the whole presentation initially we talk about the deliverables and then as we go right this really serves as the foundation of our work so we talk about is this a goal one object or is this a goal two um type of thing and that's really how we discuss the the district goals so here are the goals and the language

055which you're familiar with so I won't um uh take more time with it but we have again academic success student wellness and school climate and then construction Pro progress and fisical health so I am a huge believer in the aligned systems framework so we have a set of principles that we use that are kind of the umbrella for everything that we do and things should flow from that so when we talk about District goal number one and we talk about academic success we're looking at ways to imbue that into professional development plans the school-based goals the admin goals our individual staff members uh professional development plans all of the PD that we do collaboration teacher leadership Etc our budget grants programming Etc right when we look at Grants that we're interested in applying for we

056always say you know does this fit into what we're doing um is this worth our time um or is this a sort of separate and outside type of initiative obviously we talk about them in our board committee agendas and obviously there's there's much more than that but really what we do is we focus all of our work um on the district goals and things should flow from there so the way that I did this presentation for today um and I I thank my my admin team for reviewing this and and providing a lot of insight as well is I was thinking about with each of the goals how could I sort of identify key leverage points um for each of the goals so where do we really focus our attention and how does that Focus

057um actually result in action so for goal one uh we have four key leverage points we have have a shift from uh intervention and referral to uh tiered system of supports we have an improved focus on multi-lingual Learners we have professional development and training and we have core and after school programming and I'll get into each of these when when we go into those slides in in particular for goal two we also have the same number one which is the shift from Intervention and referral to a tiered system of supports um and for both of these for academic and for Student Wellness in school climate we're talking about uh a response-based um approach to Student Learning which is much more proactive um that's the tiered system as opposed to intervention and referral which is much

058more reactive so a student has demonstrated significant challenges um that have not been met in the current program and then we look at you know changing program or providing significant modifications to the program um to improve that students uh potential outcomes Urban assembly which we've talked quite a bit about structured supports and parent Community engagement are the other uh key leverage points for goal two goal three we have budgets grants and other Revenue sources um as you heard from Mr Ido we are in good shape right now but we also um are heading towards the fiscal cliff of s funds uh running out so we've got to find good resources and and revenue sources for future uh projects we have construction management which has been a very large uh part of my work for the

059last year and a half ongoing projects and personnel and capacity so for each of the goals I've really just kind of laid it out um by the key lever key key leverage points I'm not going to read everything on here uh for obvious reasons but uh I do want to just kind of just talk about a key a couple of key points for each of the leverage points um I've identified a sort of a statement of purpose right why do we focus on uh this particular key leverage point and then what are some key aspects um that fit within it so from the shift to uh to the tiered system of supports um we have really two big pieces one is understanding what those are and how that works um which has really been a

060culture shift um specifically and and really most importantly at the elementary school and then just a data culture a culture of data and assessment and data collection and data understanding which really drives the ability for us to provide appropriate interventions so the tiered system of supports um we we've developed a tiered systems guide book which we've looked at as an admin team the board has seen we haven't shared it with staff members yet um because I just there's there's a lot going on and I think it's not particularly the most helpful thing um in the day-to-day right now for teachers um but we've got tiered screenings and supports we have a huge number of new resources that have been used to provide direct intervention to students who have uh identified needs within their particular classes

061this is in language arts and Mathematics primarily we have a new uh process of uh screening and Intervention which has taken place at Faber and is well on its way and the sort of output for all of this is we have a reduction in the number of referrals to the inrs process as compared to last year inrs is a very common process that schools uh inrs is is a a process that's that's uh delegated by Statute and board policy and you know it it exists in every school district the way that inrs is often used is as a a Dumping Ground for students who can't make the grade in a particular course and it is a a process that sort of gets abused in a way because uh kids in in many situations circumstances they

062don't get kind of all of the resources and interventions and um and supports that they might be accustomed to or that they should get within the general classroom environment so with all of that as the sort of backdrop for it they then get pushed into a process where they're meeting with a team of Specialists who's trying to figure out what's happening with those students and then there's this plan that's developed for them but what we know about good instruction is that really good tier one instruction right really good tier one intervention is sufficient for most students in terms of meeting their needs so when we have interventions that have been tried that have been been uh researched that have been time bound that have been delivered appropriately and then we provide a second tier of

063intervention and then a third tier of intervention and these things are all done well if a student's still not making uh appropriate growth that means that we've identified that despite our best efforts um there might be a a change in program that's required and so that's where um the inrs system is really valuable because then it brings in special Educators uh related service providers ERS who have um significant expertise in a wide range of areas and they can do educational testing um and psychological testing and things like that so rather than sort of start at that point what we what we would prefer to do with a tiered system is we end at that point only and if only uh all of the interventions have not succeeded so on the data side we've really been

064working on a data culture we've been talking about data warehousing and uh really significant amount of normed assessments and of course informal formative assessment data Gathering which is something that we're still working on from an instructional perspective number two is improved focus on multilingual Learners um you all know that we've seen a significant increase in our uh population of multilingual Learners we now have a 16.4% of our population uh is uh is identified as mL 22.7% of students at fa and this is only k 12 so we're talking about one in four one in five students um at fa is a multilingual learner which is really a significant number so we have shifted um and uh Miss drapkin really deserves a huge amount of credit for this um to a pushin model of support um

065and this is uh the the the way that we're also delivering intervention rather than pulling students out of the classroom right where English is spoken and there's this Rich dialogue happening in the in the the home language or in the native language uh there the pull out model um often removes students from that English experience and that English immersion the pushin model um you know to the contrary allows them to stay in that that environment where they can really access English much more of the day um and increase their proficiency uh by Leaps and Bounds and so we've been working with the classroom teachers and we've been working with the ESL teachers to provide this um type of intervention for for language learning we added a staff member uh last year we added another ESL

066staff member this year and now we have six ESL teachers in the district which is uh fantastic uh we are looking at potentially adding more ESL support in next year's budget we've been using midyear exits and increased use of the weeda model screener um when students perform or demonstrate a certain level of proficiency on the screener they um exit exit the ESL program and obviously what that means is that there there's more room then for teachers to provide support to students who are newcomers or who have different types of learning needs and we've been doing a lot of training um there is a sheltered English instruction model um which is um really kind of the gold standard of instruction for uh meeting the needs of multilingual Learners we've brought in uh folks and we have

067folks going to Tel trainers to develop scup and SEI classes and we've been using instructional coaching as well the third piece of this is systemized professional development and training really this has been prioritized by instructional coaching we've talked a lot about instructional coaching we made I I made the determination that we needed to bring people in who were experts um as instructional coaches rather than H instructional coaches because it gave us the ability to leverage a wide range of expertise and supports so from that list we have a stem a stem expert we have we have uh a language arts expert at the secondary level we have ESL experts we have Early Childhood experts we have science experts PE and health experts so you know just that list is a really amazing range of folks

068that we've been able to bring in to help support uh staff members there's been a lot of teer teacher leadership I'll talk a little bit more about that in my superintendent report but Ed camps and after school presentations has been something that we've really tried to prioritize we've been Focus focusing a lot more on data and how to use data during all of the the team meetings we've re-engaged with the bug Center at Ruckers University um not only for pbsis support but also for CBI support which is for special education um and we had the techly part partnership which we appli to which is transforming Early Childhood literacy Institute which had some good benefits um some of which included meeting some of the folks that are doing some of the coaching for us the last

069piece is really core in after school programming so so as we talk about instruction we also talk about programming um if we have good core instruction then we're going to be able to meet the needs of more of our students so we are looking at uh we're piloting right now uh core resource in language arts in Elementary uh and that seems to be going very well there seems to be a clear sort of leader in that pilot which um you know we're very likely to implement for next year we've been adding a lot of different types of programs um including the decodable texts um which meets the needs of uh sort of the science of reading and um early dyslexia screening and those sorts of things we've been doing a lot of work recently with

070World Language um adoption and R review for next year we built a Heritage speakers class um which I know was something that uh Mr trada spoke about for for many years here at the board table when he was a board member um and that's going to be put in place very shortly we've been using virtual reality and math in grade 612 looking at core res resources there and then we've got a lot of curriculum writing as new standards are bound to come out in 2425 uh to be implemented we've also expanded our after school programming a lot of this has been grant-based we received the high impact tutoring Grant which was $76,000 we also have been running after school enrichment programs this is paid for through the sr3 ARP Grant um and then we've also

071increased the stem opportunities students to science who we uh touched base with last year and who spent some time with us in the summer they're going to be doing a program at the middle school and then the Harry Potter science club is being put together by Miss Brown at the elementary school as part of our new stem lab down there so that's goal one goal two is student wellness and school climate um these four uh indicators are are you know similar in nature in terms of the shift to tiered systems of supports again we're talking about being proactive rather than reactive um and you know a lot of this is how do you reach students in the classroom so how do you give students uh time and attention in small group instruction uh just to

072have conversations with them and make them feel like they have support um and you can identify the the needs that they might have um obviously there's a lot of sensory uh uh instruction that can be undertaken to make students comfortable Etc um but a lot of this again is basically just tier one good instruction what does it look like how do you support kids and collecting data and uh working with your colleagues Urban assembly has been our instructional coaches for uh for school climate our school climate coaches I should say they've been working with uh our our school-based climate teams and our administrative teams doing a lot of great work uh in in that realm the reason that we went with Urban assembly uh not only the great resources that they have but also because

073they have a wonderful implementation rubric which um Point by Point helps every school district that you know engages with it make significant change within the district so our teams are working through that talking about common language around expectations there's just good things happening that are being done you know middle school has big projects the high school has big projects Faber as well um and you know again a lot of this is walkthroughs coaching understanding best practices and sort of pushing that stuff out again our structured supports will probably look different next year but uh currently this year we have Thrive inous um they have two counselors on site every day so we uh refer uh students who have significant needs or challenges to them we have lunch groups obviously pbsis here at uh or over

074at Faber um you know other items we also added two counselors last year um in the budget for this year so our counselors at Faber and the middle school started this year we also added an additional school psychologist U we added two interventionists and we also added uh an ESL teacher so a lot of supports for our students uh with with particular needs students of the month which we just went through we have a lot of assemblies U Miss Hoy actually has been really doing a great job working with outside vendors and providers to um to put those those events together we just have to figure out how to get more parents to attend them um student celebrations um today we had the second um uh celebration for students who exited the ESL program from

075uh grade six through 12 so we had about 25 students and their families came in for for you know bagels and coffee and Munchkins which was really wonderful um and we have some counselors pushing into the classrooms certainly K8 uh and teaching seal lessons parent and family and Community engagement we know is a big partnership aspect right if parents are engaged and supporting uh the school district then there's a better chance that we can make those connections so here is just a a list of of things that we've done sign significant items this year uh really is just the increase of child care support for uh evening events and this has been been done through um dellan high school so we have now advisers for that and we have a lot of students who have

076um used the time to uh gain their service hours we have a lot of Engagement sessions that we've been working on and as preschool comes in we'll have some uh advisory committee meetings we're also moving to schoolwide uh Title One funding which we'll talk about a little bit later um and that's going to involve uh stakeholders at Faber as well finally goal three um budgeting grants and other Revenue sources um those of you you know who have looked at you know any of the work that we've done you know that we really have prioritized grants um we've applied for a lot of Grants we've gotten most of the grants that we've applied for um and it really has made a significant difference um you know in in our small District so as I mentioned the

077Esser Grant sunset at the end of September of this year um and so we we have to be looking at you know ways to kind of fill that Gap and we also know that we're going to have facilities needs as time goes on so we have to sort of plan and safer that but just this year we received uh about half a million dollars in preschool expansion Aid which we anticipate going up to about a million dollars next year $76,000 from the high impact tutoring grant $68,000 for the trees for schools Grant um we recently a couple days ago found out that we are uh being funded by the state for cyber secur enhancement and we also found out a couple days ago that we uh as part of our our partnership with Kane University

078are being funded through the minority teacher development Grant which is really technical support and financial support to help improve the teacher pipeline so we will keep uh working on these we have two grants right now that are kind of in the pipeline and um you know obviously this is going to be something that we'll continue to prioritize construction management here are the the big constru construction projects we know the big four and our work with greyhawk so we're in very good shape with all of this um last really last item is the sound system to be installed this week um in the auditorium right before the uh the event right it's definitely going to happen maybe might definitely happen the event happening um and our work with greyhawk uh which you which you know and

079which we're we're very comfortable with um the last two indic s ongoing projects and Personnel in capacity so ongoing projects is really just what are we doing on a day-to-day basis to identify things that can continue to improve um the way that the school feels and operates so we have some smaller projects we had the stem lab which is up and running we have the Kiln which was installed in uh earlier this month at Faber so now the Faber art teacher can do projects with art with a clay rather we have a lot of um repairs ceiling tiles HVAC issues um painting this room for example uh you know if you remember what it looked like before and what it looks like now it's just wildly different um we have some adjustments to central office

080to provide more confidential space some security enhancements and some other things next year we also have there's a new law in New Jersey that requires schools uh middle schools and high schools to provide men menstrual product dispensers in each of the girls bathrooms um as part of the menstrual Justice uh sort of perspective because we also have Athletics at Faber um we will have to provision some of the Faber bathrooms with those products as well um so that's something that we're looking at in terms of vendors and products and what might be best suited for a school environment um and we continue to to update the board's operations committee um and board members you have access to all of that about the ongoing projects um in a bimonthly fashion finally personnel and capacity um we

081really kind of shook things up this year um we totally changed the structure of facilities we added a daytime and an evening custodial supervisor positions um we this this model has been great because we now have people who are directly overseeing the custodians and have that custodial expertise it's really uh improved the work that we've been able to do we've identified a lot of training needs we've done a lot of training already but we're trying to increase the number of Staff members that have black seal licenses we have uh manual ual that are pretty much finalized on cleaning practices and maps and things like that and as much as we can we're doing upskilling and cross trining so we have two maintenance folks that are with us for the most part on a daily basis

082trying to get our custodial staff to be able to learn some of those uh skills in trades has also been one of our priorities we also have been looking at swing shifts and changing hours for folks um and as you know we significantly increased compensation for our custodial staff members um this year uh which just you know again working thinking about your salary every day is just not a great way to to be so if we can get folks to be comfortable in that um you know that's going to produce a a happier and healthier work Workforce um just as a baseline um we're also looking at capacity do we need additional staff members and this is based on the FES from the Department of Education and then we also have um additional support where

083we need it where people can just s of sort of jump in at at particularly hot times all of this is also being reviewed for the budget for this coming year um we've made some adjustments even just sort of on the fly but we are planning for next year as well so those are the three goals um and I will say you know it's a comprehensive list um in many ways but it also barely scratches the surface um so there just is a lot going on in the district um I know that staff members sometimes feel like they're a lot of initiatives um and a lot of change and things like that and I feel that way as well what I know is that the way that we're making this change the way that we're

084making uh uh the way that we're implementing the types of things that we're focusing on is sustainable and we've provided a tremendous amount of support and we continue to provide all of that support for staff members so we're going through growing pains and that's okay because this is lasting change that will significantly transform the district over time so planning for the future we will continue to build and integrate systems we're looking for new initiatives and expansion we've talked about preschool uh we are uh you know actively pursuing trying to get to 100% of our universe for preschool um and we also know that enrollment overall has increased so we are looking at options for potential expansion or uh changing the grade levels at buildings uh if we can find another site or things like that

085we will continue to promote promote professional development um those of you um who review the board agenda know that we have a significant amount of PD that's approved every month um and we will also provide tight oversight and management so everything that we bring in there's a reason that we're bringing it in it has a very specific purpose it has supports that are tied to it and it has a goal that we expect to to achieve um and we'll continue to think that way and and you know look for feedback on ways that we can improve that process so with that I will open the floor to questions and comments from board members um I have a comment um so I just want to say to the um well thank you to Mr Ross and

086the administration for un teachers for all the work you've been doing to achieve these goals so far this year um I'll just mention that I had the the um opportunity to go to two different events that were listed tonight so one was a uh a title three parent engagement night and then this morning's um ESL event that Dr gendrano and I um attended and if anyone in the board has the opportunity to go to these events even if they don't pertain to you and your child I highly recommend going because it's really the best way to see the work of our district um staff like live and it really reminds us while watch we're here which is to support the work of the teachers and the administration so um if anyone has the opportunity I

087highly recommend going to um any of these family events or um you know asking questions about the professional development because it's really the best way that we can get a chance to know how we're supporting the district thank you 100% And just to add that I think was a great event this morning thank you Mr Ross thank you Mr trapkin it was great um I'm sorry that I was I missed it on Friday but uh it really does the the smiles on the faces was was more than worth it yeah absolutely any other comments or questions about any of the districtal items yeah I would just also like to say thank you to you your admin team and to the teachers um it's really wonderful to see these overarching goals where all the energy um

088and efforts are being focused on that and starting to really impact student uh performance in a very positive way um and that's very exciting to see so thank you yeah thank you anyone else um Mr Ross I do have a question in terms of a goal number two support of the student wellness and school climate uh just curious and how does the district support students who have been admitted into like inpatient care uh or institutions and address to address uh critical Crisis Intervention needs and more specifically as they come back to school coming out of institution or facilities like ruter University behavioral healthc care and gen psych um avoiding a lot of the stresses that put them in there in the first place but at the same time having them achieve what's required of them

089and making that careful balance of coming from an impatient care back into the school environment yeah I mean I think it's a it's a it's a challenging question it's a challenging situation it's highly individualized based on the particular student what I would say is that you know when students are out of the district in a in an outof District placement there is um you know to my understanding a good amount of information that's shared back with the district and so when students do return to the district um those who sort of welcome the student back at whatever particular level it might be have a good sense of the progress that the students made what the particular uh manifestations might have been what some of the challenges were what some of the stressors might have been

090um within the academic program and obviously it also depends on the grade level there are modifications to the program that the student uh goes through that are completely appropriate so if you're in an elementary program or if you're in a middle school program you know we're not counting Carnegie units of seat time so you know your credit attainment is not kind of the same thing so really what we want for you is we want for you as a student to be able to come back and and be successful and so that means you know pairing a student with the appropriate counseling support psychological support you know other other resources that we have part of the the the work that we've done with Thrive has been to ensure that we have a second level of support

091from the daily case loads of the school of psychologists that are in the district now Thrive is being paid for right now through the ARP Esser Grant um and has been for the last couple of years so when we think about future planning what we have to do is we have to recognize that this is a service that the district needs to provide and so how do we do that do we continue with an outside provider you know and we've had some successes and some drawbacks right and that's that's true of any provider um I will say that from you know when I first came to the district there was a significant problem with thrive in terms of the number of cases and in terms of the case load that they had and what we

092what we did with Thrive was is to say you work for us right this is true of any contracted service provider we're paying you to provide a service um you know and we will we will tell you what we need from you um and if you can't deliver that then that's fine um and we'll just find someone else to do that um and that conversation turned out to be a it was a it was it didn't you know come off like that um but it was that was essentially what it was they responded very well to it um and increased case loads dramatic Ally for their uh providers and also those folks are doing more group work and things like that which is much more responsive and proactive is it the same work that one

093of our own staff members would do probably not um and could we ask more of one of our own staff members to you know in terms of engaging students probably um but again you know cost is a factor uh impact is a factor and all of that so for students that come back with those very very challenging situations you know the the the important thing as with academic needs as with you know any type of needs is to identify what the tier system looks like and for some students you know they are fine with you know their classroom teacher checking in on them on a regular basis for some folks it's your guidance counselor is a good resource for some folks it might be your um your case manager right and for for other folks

094they might be in situations for short term or long term where it's going to be uh a behavioral uh clinician or a therapist that has to you know uh spend more time you know addressing those particular needs so I think for for me when I look at it as a as a from a leadership perspective it's do we have each of those levels set is it clear what the progression looks like and do we have the supports that are available at each of those levels and uh to complete that are we able to look at overall efficacy of of these actions yeah I mean there there are some metrics you know one of the things obviously you know when we look at things like discipline referrals right let's let's you know take take it out

095of the the realm of mental health right um if we look at discipline referrals when we're when we're more proactive with um programming in the school district when we have more direct supports for students when uh we recognize that middle school kids are just trying to learn how to be human beings right and they make all sorts of stupid decisions right when when we think about those students that are in those situations how we react to them really says a lot about us and it also says a lot about our ability to reach those students in the future so if we focus on punishment first and foremost right we're not teaching any lessons and we're also not you know giving the students any skills that they can use for for for the future so you

096know by adding the second counselor at the middle school what we've seen is that there has been a significant draw down in the number of discipline referrals um it's not to say that there aren't any and when kids make decisions that uh violate the code of conduct you know we still um you know have that conversation about what's an appropriate punishment but coupled with that is not only the discussion real time about you know why did you do this what types of things were you thinking and you know how were you feeling all of that um but it's also upon re-entry you know what can we help you with so that you don't do this again um and a lot of times you know kids have this sense that they do one bad thing and

097then everybody is going to write them off and maybe that's happened to them with another teacher maybe that's happened to them in their personal life um but as adults in school we can never take that perspective and we have to always be the ones that are upfront and say we forgive you right you screwed up you got punished for it you know appropriately now you're back and let's figure out how to make this work so that's I think a really good place for us to start um you know there's been a lot of stuff about the Instagram uh denell and fights page right we're not seeing harassment and bullying in in the schools we're not seeing physical violence in the schools you know there have been incidents right I'm not saying that those incidents aren't

098significant and serious but we're not seeing that kind of systemic you know outof control behavior from students um so I would say those are two areas that I would point to thank you absolutely and I have a follow question I'm not super familiar with Urban assembly but from what you shared that seems to lay some of that groundwork at the schoolwide as far as an intervention and how we interact with students yeah and I I've talked about this a lot at the board table and certainly in committee but you know my my whole take on uh Wellness in school is that it has to start with adults um if adults are reacting badly to kids and then the kids you know react in response that's the adults fault um and I have seen a couple

099of those incidents here and certainly I've been in education for 18 years and I've seen a lot of them across the the board but I think the work with Urban assembly first and foremost is about providing adults with the right mindset and approaches to deal with students um and to not put them in situations where they're going to be defensive or they're going to be embarrassed or they're going to be dejected or they're going to be you know looked down upon or something like that um and that that is really part of the kind of the work of the the urban assembly the portal is called the resilient Scholars portal right because it's about developing students that are resilient right but that comes from not kids going through some uh you know some software where

100they're answering good questions like in this situation I would a punch the kid B not punch the kid right it's it's that as adults right we're helping kids and we're saying man you really screwed that up why' you do that you know why'd you make that choice right not you're a bad you're a bad kid I can't believe you did that you know what's wrong with you right so it is a part of it and it is something that no school is ever going to do perfectly and none of us as humans do it 100% of the time but if we can increase the balance from 70% to 80% that's 10% better that's more than 10% better but that's you know 10 percentage points better um and I think that's you know that's that's the

101type of movement that we need all right so District goals feel free to uh review them if you have other questions followups uh please let me know it is 9:15 my superintendent report is two full pages single spaced so I will go through it quickly uh try to um the enrollment report is in the agenda we did have uh addition of enrollment bye M drapkin good night um so enrollment for uh January 30th um prek has gone from 36 to 42 students because we Garden dropped by one student to 97 first grade is 89 second grade increased by two to 99 third grade is 90 fourth grade increased by 4 to 102 fifth grade increased by 1 to 119 sixth grade is 123 7eventh grade dropped by 1 to 106 e8th grade is 111 9th

102is 102 10th is 121 11th decreased by 1 to 93 and 12th is 86 So currently at favor we have 638 students um which is 5 96 K12 596 K uh sorry K K5 um and then the 42 preschool students the Middle School we have 340 students um and at the high school we have 402 students so Middle School is up 30 uh from the beginning of or from the end of last year and it's only going to be more next year um I want to start with a couple of um teacher focused items so I want to thank the DEA for the make a difference Monday um we had a little Gap with some inclement weather um in there uh which is you know and Martin Luther King and all of that uh but

103Lee best was recognized on January 2nd Mr best is a DHS counselor um on the 22nd it was the favor prek team and on the 29th it was Nancy Rosales this was yesterday um custodian at Lincoln middle school and we saw Nancy today at the breakfast and she had escorted some students over it and she was like beaming and walking around like you know she was so happy and so excited that she had been recognized um by the DEA so thank you for that as always I mentioned teacher leadership so we had on the 22nd last Monday um some Ed camps at Faber Elementary School we had Rebecca canella who's one of our first year teachers she did a session called reaching elll students in the general education classroom Lori Kitz and Sher Krauss who

104are our interventionist two of our interventionists and Miss Kitz is one of our first year uh staff members here in dellan they did small group intervention strategies and then we had Caitlyn Tesco and Rachel delcampo another first year teacher um who did exploring hegerty and then uh Brian Capriola did a session at Lincoln Middle School on Gog Guardian teacher um which I'm going to ask him to do at the high school and also at the elementary school as well because it's a great tool um that's vastly underused uh ESL breakfasts we've talked quite a bit about um so I won't spend too much more time on it other than to thank Miss Khalifa Miss melanowski Miss Rah Miss dveo Miss Franklin Miss Jordan and Miss drapkin for the amazing work we had 45 midyear and

105summer exits from the ESL program this year which is just amazing um also access testing starts next week so we anticipate we'll get some more students that that are going to be able to exit as well uh Mr jkin and Miss Moody um from Faber submitted a proposal to present at the njasa PSA women's leader leadership conference in March and it was accepted their proposal uh or their session will be building capacity through teacher leadership and they will discuss District initiatives that have empowered staff members um our preschool expansion update we did have our six students as I mentioned we're looking at um potential shifts in the timing of the day notably uh delayed opening the one delayed opening whatever that was the week of the 12th um was a very very was very hard

106for people to get to school because we had the regular drop off and also the additional 70 preschool students so we might have to shift that time back a little bit or forward so that not everything aligns um at Faber we have the NJ 4S student and Parent Academy sessions uh NJ 4S is the Statewide student Support Services uh program it's through the division of Children and Families this is the new model that they came out with this year and I believe that we're the first first uh School District in middlex County to use their services we have three student sessions and three parent sessions the first one was yesterday the topics are cyber bullying social media safety and interpersonal and Community relationship skills um and these are being presented both in English and in

107Spanish um so there's actually going to be two presenters one in English and one in Spanish for each of the groups we have on the agenda in the education section Ruckers computer science uh partnership agreement what's on the uh agenda is actually the IRB agreement so this is required for studies where through a grant um there's information data that's collected from uh the the the participants so this is a study um you know that Ruckers has put together this is uh through a Federal grant um that was co-written by someone in um the grat School of Ed and also Ruckers computer science and so we look at board policy 9550 which is educational research projects which requires that such a study be board approved um the benefits for the district are free expert free technical

108assistance and curated resources um you know the network obviously through ruers and experienced education researchers um we're going to be looking at our courses in Middle School what resources we might be interested in putting together and then looking at K12 Continuum and uh in exchange for that the district will be providing uh period data collection which is primarily in the form of observations surveys and interviews so I just wanted to draw attention to that I had a good conversation with Dr gendrano this morning about uh the difference between a partnership that's just a partnership and a partnership that's actually a study um and so from the University perspective it's important that uh you all be aware of what we're actually approving um any data that is shared with um the the study folks um will

109be scrubbed of any personally identifying information teacher data teacher names are actually on the initial uh survey responses but they'll be scrubbed before they're actually processed and no um student level data will be collected uh that includes any names or anything like that so we're very excited about that they seem very excited as well um and I've worked in the past with the woman from Rucker computer science and she's wonderful so I'm excited about it Dr Jano mentioned the covid-19 uh test kits or the covid-19 situation um so one of the things that's one of the interesting things that the federal government has done recently is the the Department of Education and the administration for strategic preparedness and response um which is aspr um announced a partnership to deliver free covid-19 tests to schools so

110um this is basically free rapid antigen covid-19 self tests and so I registered the district for this immediately when we heard about it and we placed the first order Wednesday um and the test kits actually arrived today um which is amazing so I ordered uh 2,000 test kits which is a thousand boxes of two tests each um and we brought one box each to Faber the middle school and the high school for an initial distribution to staff members we will have a significant number of tests just from this round available to provide directly to students and also to keep in the nurse's office if we need to um but then this is also periodic so if in 3 weeks we want to order more we're able to do that so um I messaged the staff

111that the tests were available um and I you know I understand that that they were taken as well so this is exciting it just provides um you know a resource for folks um if you know there's a certain symptomology that comes out and they do want to um get tested or have that test available this at least provides them with the ability to do so um for free so it's very exciting The District calendars are uh on the agenda for approval the just a calendar for this year uh is up for reapprovals mississipp that uh on the calendar officially and then we also um adjusted the inclement weather days for like the third and fourth inclement weather days which on the original schedule uh the next inclement weather day was scheduled to take the Friday

112of spring break off and then it would be the Thursday so we instead made it the March PD day and then the May PD day are the next two days that would be used um as school days if we have more inclement weather which for my sanity I'm hoping that we don't um but uh but we may so uh the 2425 calendar is also uh on the agenda for approval um the the one that is listed or in the agenda it says to be added it is available on the website um and um I have a copy for everyone when we get to that section um actually I can well I'll get it I'll I'll pass it out um but it maintains you know much of what we've discussed um we uh I've had a

113lot of conversations about the calendar um some very good collaborative uh collaboration uh conversations with the DEA leadership um as well as the admin team um everybody's got a different perspective and so we sort of take all of the the input and do the best that we can so we've swifted switched the inservice from three days to two days um and we've pushed new staff orientation up uh so we have the two days in August students would start the Tuesday after uh Labor Day and um we switched the way the inclement weather days were built in um and we have spring break from the April 14th through the 18th uh which is the week that Good Friday ends on rather than starting with Good Friday that is also the week of Passover um we don't

114have Jewish holidays in any other part of the calendar nor do we have any other religious holidays um other than that election day is an interesting thing and we've talked about a lot of models for that um but we I've been in touch with the mayor's office to try to see if Lincoln Middle School can become not a polling place um and if the polling could be switched to the library so um the the burough clerk's office is working with the county clerk to see whether that's possible I don't know whether it's possible for this coming election if it's not then so be it but in the future um you know I'd really like to not have to worry about polling uh at the school if possible there are a couple of other items on

115the calendar that that are just listed as TBD but what I wanted to make sure of was that a general structure for the calendar was approved so that um you know it doesn't necessarily matter when the second marking period ends or the third marking period ends or when you know conferences are at this point but just a general structure of what the calendar looks like so we can talk more about that couple notes about policies um there are policies in the education section and the Personnel section in the education section there is a policy 5111 and a regulation 5111 which is eligibility of Resident and non-resident students I'm going to uh propose uh that we pull that one off the agenda that we table that for a future uh approval it is a very comp

116complicated set of policy and Regulation and our current policy and regulation uh they're very specific to dellan and I want to make sure that we don't miss anything um you know uh by proving this too hastily the other one is policy and regulation 3324 and 4324 which is the right of privacy this SE this policy and regulation has an optional section about the recording of students and staff members which um I don't love the wording for um and I'd like to have a conversation with the DEA leadership about it and also the admin team before we move on it I think I mean we could pass it without the optional language but I I think there's probably a better compromise there so I'm going to ask that when those get moved if we could just

117make a note that those be removed from the recommendations so noted all right and then last but not least we have in been engaging in a uh rapid but incredibly thorough hiring process for our new supervisor of early childhood education um and I just will provide a bit of an overview of the process um I am very excited our our successful candidate is here her name is Jordan gribin please wave yeah so we're very excited um so we started with 53 candidates uh who applied 21 of those candidates were screened virtually by me and Miss drapkin on Friday January 12th we then brought nine candidates in person to meet with a small panel of Administrators that was Mr tenant Mr drapkin Dr santanello and me um that was Thursday January 18th so the following week

118we brought four finalists into the district on Tuesday January 23rd to meet with a large panel of 13 administrators and teachers thir the panel was 13 folks comprised teachers and administrators the finalist were asked to prepare a 90-day entry plan and they answered a number of challenging questions about uh leadership and instruction Community engagement preschool expansion and other related topics so after thorough conversations that evening and the following day I made my recommendation uh with regard to the candidate um Miss drapkin and I checked references um and then I met that candidate to uh discuss the district dive further into work experiences engage just some more informal qualities so this was a uh very thorough uh process um that had a lot of stakeholders in it and the one thing that I want to make

119very clear is that when we go through hiring processes um I always take just with as much difference as I can the feedback of the folks that are in these in these panels not everybody agrees um and sometimes it's very hard to make a decision what I look for uh is trying to find the candidate that will best suit the district's purposes moving forward that has the best set of qualities for collaboration and uh growth and has the most potential to become really an amazing uh administrator um at the end of the day um this is about trying to find someone who can serve our students um in the best possible way that they can and to inspire our staff members to be the best that they can um I believe that I found that

120person with Miss gribben um and we're very excited to have her so uh Miss gribben excelled during the interview process and references just rave reviews so you can thank them buy them a bottle of wine um they talked about her collaborative and supportive personality has successful they thought she that she would be here as a supervisor and just her love of education so miss gribbon currently serves as an instructional coach in the Scotch Plains Fanwood School District uh and she works across a number of schools supporting literacy instruction she began her career in 2007 um and has also served as an elementary teacher in a variety of grades and as a special education teacher she has presented uh professional development in a wide variety of settings and recently presented at the national NCT uh which

121is National Council of teachers of English um Convention of English leaders conference in Columbus Ohio which is very impressive um she was also selected last year as Scotch plan fan Woods New Jersey EMP exemplary educator of the year um and she holds two master's degrees one in curriculum and instruction one in special education and she lives in Greenbrook with her husband and her soon to be one-year-old daughter Rowan so we're very excited to have her join the team um I can't wait for you to get started I hope they'll let you out early I'm sure they won't but um but when you do come to the district you will be um welcomed with open arms we're very excited to have you on board so so yeah awesome so with that I think I've run out

122of words okay I'll uh I'll take it back and uh just to followup looking ahead so we have a oh yeah so just a followup looking ahead early dismissal uh coming up this Thursday um we are closed on the 19th of February for President's Day um and then our next board meeting on the 20th of February so moving on to um item number nine wow item number nine public comments on agenda items so the board invites public comment on agenda items only for members of the community in accordance with board policy 0167 public comment sections are intended to provide an opportunity for members of the public to express themselves on school matters of community interest the board and administration will be taking notes during public comment but will not provide substantive responses to questions or

123concerns raised by individual speakers if necessary the superintendent May provide a brief response after their entire public comment period is completed board recognizes and welcomes feedback from the community but is not at Liberty to engage in back and forth dialogue with members of the public during this portion of the meeting prior to making your public comment please state your name and municipality please note that all statements uh must be directed to the presiding officer please come forward to the mic at this time if you'd like to make comments on agenda items only okay last call okay then moving on to item number 10 education uh at this time I'm going to turn over uh turn the ball over to uh Mr Dugen who is our chair for the education committee Mr dougen thank you Dr

124jono the education committee met on January 24th and discuss a number of items including an update on a wide range of curriculum and instruction items presented by Miss drapkin including ESL midyear breakfast exits held on January 26 and January 30th the expansion of the district's after school programs including new stem offerings instructional coaching initiatives throughout the district and parent engagement events discussions about the 23 24 2425 District calendars the development of Heritage speaker courses for Spanish-speaking students the district's ongoing work with Urban assembly a computer science partnership with Ruckers and a number of confidential items thank you thank you Mr Duan so moving on to um item 11 education action items looking for a motion to approve 11 A3 through f as a block noting um tabling 511 I'm sorry uh 5111 thank you P

125and R 5111 which is in 11d as well as tabling I oh wait sorry that's right uh right there that one but for now so looking for motion for those approvals um minus the the two I mentioned for tabling no one wants to approve can someone make a motion which one were you tbling d tbling uh tbling D the part where it talks about uh p and R1 policy sorry that's the one for the El eligibility of residents just that one just that one approv 9 a no 11 a through F second okay open for questions and comments so um just to note here um right so a couple things that are in here first of all um item F that's the one about the uh computer science uh thing that Mr Ross had mentioned

126earlier um so just want to know that that that was there and there um we talked about D um already and the discussions we're open for discussions on B and C which are the current District calendar as well as uh C which is the next year calendar for 2425 if there are comments that anyone would like to make regarding that and I believe the com the calendar is here U Mr R just distributed that so if there's anything you guys uh before we approve if there's anything you guys want to talk about bring yeah I would though I just like to make a comment about 11c the 2425 Calendar please um first I just want to acknowledge all the work Dan that you put into to make in the calendar I know it's not a

127it's not an easy thing to put together but um I would rather see the two PD days the Tuesday Wednesday immediately following Labor Day I'm not a fan of starting before Labor Day Ever honestly but I think maybe this year maybe optically it appears worse because those days are in August not September so just from my viewpoint that that's how I feel about that I'd rather see those two PD days on the third and the 4th with the first day of school being the fifth a second those sentiments thank you both question on um what are we on same thing C uh Dan you had mentioned that the buau is working to see if we cannot have a school be a polling place and that could be moved to the library would that change at

128all the Tuesday being just a PD day if that were to happen next year it it would it probably would um it would likely mean that we would have school for students that day and so what that would do would be a day of student a day of school that we would need to put back in place but um that day would just become a day for for students it it would then affect graduation or we would need to put in another day somewhere to um to keep it on the Tuesday thank you I also noticed that there are no days off for teachers for the months of September and October uh teachers as well as students often benefit from a mental break um if there's any place to put that in for them I'm

129sure they would appreciate that yeah we and we we've talked about uh Columbus Day you know as being you know probably the the obvious one um since we're not looking at religious holidays um so I mean again my this is this is where I'm at right now um you know a small small changes like that I think we can still work through if we need to make adjustments in February um big changes I I want to make sure that we have those set so that everybody has clear expectations about what we're doing moving forward but again I'm not you know really not tied to uh October 14th in the way that it's outlined with you know I'm not dead set on it in any particular way in the comments that uh I did share this

130calendar with the da leaders ship um and we had a wonderful conversation a couple days earlier about it where um you know concerns were were raised and I appreciate the um Spirit of collaboration and and openness of discussion even when we disagree about things there are some parts of this calendar that I'm I'm still not really 100% sure on I don't know that I'm ever going to be you know I'm ever going to think one way is necessarily better than another there are some things that I I have very strong feelings about um but a lot of the rest of this I I you know I'm certainly open to um suggestions so as I mentioned we do need to reapprovals that are listed um there is some TBD pieces here and some other pieces so

131you know I welcome you know further conversation about that any other comments I have a question so when we vote in a few seconds if we vote Yes then this becomes the calendar last call questions I'll just ask just to ask so if we vote Yes it approves the calendar but does it give us another opportunity to change it I mean you can always change any anything uh it's a question of notice so what I think is important is that um major aspects of this calendar be provided as far in advance as possible to provide appropriate notice to families and staff members who are thinking about travel plans or other sorts of items um you know as I mentioned whether Columbus Day is a professional day or a day off from school I think that

132that's probably not something that's going to really cause a significant challenge for students and staff members at this point at the end of January um spring break the opening of school winter break um I think those are the those are the big ones um so yeah and and again regardless we do have to have this calendar come up again for uh for reapprovals structural pieces is what I'm really most concerned about at this point okay last call okay Mr Pepe can you please call the role Mr Anderson I vote Yes except for no to see Mrs Condit yes Mr Dugen yes Dr gendrano yes Mrs Howard yes Mr sanoi yes Mrs Shep yes Mr Walker yes with a no on C okay motion passes okay thank you Mr Pepe so moving on to item 12

133uh Personnel discussion items so um uh I chair that committee so let me give you the report here so the Personnel committee met on January 24th and discussed a number of items including discussions about the 2023 to 2024 as well as the 2024 to 2025 District calendars um we discussed the approval of the affirmative action team for the district's comprehensive Equity plan we discussed updates to the supervisor of early childhood education position hiring process um we also discussed updates regarding the federal government's covid-19 testing kit distribution program for school districts which we heard about as well as a number of confidential items so uh moving on to item 13 personal action items looking for excuse me motion for the approval of items 13 a through L um oh thank you very much uh that also

134means um for item I we're looking to table uh P 3324 right of privacy as well as P 4324 right of privacy uh which we believe requires additional discussion so approval for 13 a through L um minus tabling those two uh two policy items approve 13 a through L including the tables second okay open for discussion and comments um just just to note quickly uh item a was there's an updated uh list uh that was added and for L that includes a sidebar discussion that came as a addendum question on f e f is and Frank okay um I see all of the the necessary Personnel listed the last line of that table is a Community member however is there a conflict because that Community member is also a school Personnel I think we can

135we can look into it um this is a this is a a a requirement for qac as part of the A8 team um but certainly if if there is we can find another Community member who could serve on that thank you absolutely I will point out that on the uh the adendum items we have two items one is the updated staff list which includes uh Miss gribbon and then also the sidebar with the daa for the addition of the position supervisor of early childhood education in the recognition clause and also the salary schedule for the 23 24 and the 24 25 calendar years I would also just like to add uh I think this was noted earlier under K just the amount of PD is awesome 33 items uh this month which is a I

136don't know if that's a record but it's certainly up there which I think is rather impressive and really does in uh you know uh show support and and you know we're really into this professional development thing yeah thank you not just lip service Mr Anderson is indicating that you should speak more directly into your microphone we had 33 items on the be list I'm sorry I'm probably mumbling a little bit so um yes just to say that I think it's I think it's wonderful that we have that many items on there and we continue to do so um and um you know it I think it's great that we have that thank you and in order to have all that PD we've had a lot more substitutes so that's wonderful so we could because we

137can't have one without the other that's right yes I thank our community for that we have three three new uh staff member three new folks who are approved as substitutes one is actually our uh uh our destined to be Spanish teacher um who is in the process of getting his Spanish certification through the limited CE program so we're approving him as a substitute he'll be able to work for a certain number of days um as he continues to go through the process that's uh Peter Conroy any other questions comments okay Mr Pepe can you please call the rooll Mr Anderson yes Mrs Condit yes Mr Dugen yes Dr jenjo yes Mrs Howard yes Mr saoi yes Mrs Shep yes Mr Walker yes motion passes wonderful you're official congratulations also you can go home now if

138you want since you have you have work and you have a letter a resignation letter that you have to prepare for tomorrow yes you too absolutely grab one of those addendums on the way out and you can um that can your record okay moving on to item 14 operations uh committee report I'll turn the floor over to Mr Walker thank you the operations committee met on January 24th I was present at the meeting along with Dr Jano Mr sodoi Mr Ross and Mr Pepe discussed that the meeting were discussions about the 23 24 and 2425 District calendars and an update on the status of District's audit for the 2223 school year planning for the 2425 District budget and a variety of confidential matters that was it than so thank you so much moving on to

139item 15 action items for operations looking for a motion to approve um items 15a through o motion to approve 15 a through o second okay open for questions and comments I I did have one one item uh actually a couple things to note here real quick um under F swim team supervisor uh in the table the increase should be zero per hour that's a good point you see that Mr pepy right either that or current rate would be zero we don't actually have that so it's kind of oh we don't okay I I was following the following the where was that it's a in item F it's the last item it's the only one that's the hourly rate because it's because we don't actually have a swim team oh yeah the pool's on the roof

140we'll fix that in the minutes thank you Dr J it's cool we had two kids who went to GMC's though which is great yeah um I'll just point out a couple key items they um audit documents are d and e that's the cfer or the AER and the corrective action plan we have a a long list of our professional professional development providers in uh G through L and those folks will be presenting at upcoming meetings or have already and then item n is the long range facility plan major Amendment we approved this item uh last year and actually we may do we need to re that approval at a future board meeting I don't believe so but I'll double check okay uh we ALS we received a second uh offer for the lrfp major Amendment

141um and this is a company Lan which um gets very good reviews from uh folks who use them um especially facilities directors who sit on this board um as well as others and so we are uh excited it is a significant decrease in price um and we the district has been using spel for many many years through many many projects and I'm sure that they've um serve the district well in a number of capacities um we are also exploring whether there are other Architects uh that could be used either in conjunction with spel or um as a replacement to spel in the future so this is the type of project which is a nice kind of dip your toes in First Step get to know you type of thing so we'll see how they do

142with the major project this is required to be completed by May right May so this is the long range planning right long range facilities plan and we will have also um February is about the time that our work with our demographer should start um ramping up a little bit so we'll have both the demographic study report and the lrfp up updated um by you know June or by May um which I think will put us in a really good place for planning in the future when was the last lrfp Amendment on 2019 so right before the referendum yeah yeah spel yep and uh just to note to O was an an addition as well uh supplemental uh allocation just so that you have that um it wasn't on the original agenda but it was it

143was added as well I don't know if anyone wants to comment on that but just to yeah so we the we get funding uh for uh students who are experiencing hom homelessness um and this is just a a additional allocation because the state had a little bit of money left over so let me just put the amendment on there excellent okay so um again just to reiterate looking for uh We've we've gone through the different items here we have have um the approval open any last uh comments questions things you going to want to mention here before we vote okay Mr Pepe can you please call the role Mr Anderson yes Mrs Condit yes Mr dougen yes Dr jeno yes Mrs Howard yes yes Mr saoi yes Mrs Shep yes Mr Walker yes motion passes

144okay wonderful so moving on to item number 16 old business any old business that business from previous meetings you'd like to bring up okay I'll take that as a not moving on to item 17 new business any new business you want to bring up okay moving on to yes oh a feedback that I've received um just curious in terms of the pay for schools um lunch money capture system or whatever when a student graduates out of out of high school and they still have a couple dollars in that account uh right now there's no way to retrieve that money directly is there a process to enable parents to recover some of those dollars that are left in that account I think that's a great question that we can look into thank you absolutely yeah I

145didn't know that either I thought I got it back my son graduated I'm pretty sure I got a refund actually I can answer that question if you like me to oh if you know the answer please yeah um so when we have when we have someone who leaves they have an option of doing one of two things but they have to um reach out to the business office and request if they have siblings we can transfer the balance to a siblings account if if they um do not have any siblings or if they're moving out of town then we do have a process if they request a refund um it's a purchase order process so you need to reach out to the business office is there any way to enable parents to know that information

146it's not very clear on the site when I investigated it and how to do it it just it's not really clear yeah I think we can yeah we can update the website to make it clear right great feedback anything uh any other points anyone wants to bring up under new business okay uh moving on to item 18 president's remarks uh nothing to add from what I had said before um and moving on then to item 19 uh public comments on any issue any topic so the in the board invites public comment on any issue topic uh for the members of our community uh in accordance with board policy 0167 public comment sections are intended to provide an opportunity for members of the public to express themselves on school matters of community interest the board and

147administration will be taking notes during public comments but will not provide substantive responses to questions or concerns raised by individual uh speakers if necessary the superintendent May provide a brief response after the entire public comment period is completed uh the board appreciates and welcomes feedback from the community but is not at Liberty to engage in back and forth dialogue with members of the public during this portion of the meeting prior to making a public comment please state your name and municipality please note that all statements must be directed to the presiding officer please come forward uh to the microphone at this time if you'd like to make comments on any issue any topic okay last call public comments any issue any topic okay moving on to item 20 Executive session so the Dillan Board of

148Education will now adjourn into executive session to discuss items that fall within specific exceptions to the open public meetings Act njsa 10 4-12 B confidential matters discussed by the board during this executive session include items related to individual privacy collective bargaining uh pending or anticipate litigation as well as Personnel uh any uh discussion that does not need to be that does not need to remain confidential be made public as soon as it is practical minutes of the executive session will not be disclosed until the need for confidentiality no longer exists all individuals who may be discussed in executive session have been adequately notified action will not take place after the conclusion of the executive session so um may I have a motion please to move into executive session motion to move to executive second all

149those in favor I I opposed okay we'll see you guys back on H February 20th in about a month