MTSD: Board of Education Meeting: 3/24/22

001like to call the march meeting of the manchester county board of educated orders mr staples here ms mountain mr keller here mrs servant here mr murky mr wrangler yeah mr scarlett mr adequate notice was published as required chris on friday march 4th specifying the time and place of a meeting statement to this inspection on the end of the minutes of this meeting where section 8 of the occult meetings public act mr certain circumstances whereas this public body is of the opinion that such circumstances presently exists now therefore be resolved by the manchester township board of education as follows the public shall be excluded from discussion here and after specified subject matters the general nature of the subject matters to discuss legal personnel negotiations to anticipate these matters will be made public within 60 days this

002resolution should become effective immediately second all right like reconvene the march meeting manchester county board of education we have world cup please mr stevens here it's now here here this is starting here here i'll see you guys soon thank you all right thank you all for coming outside to see many people here great um my report will be very short as it usually is i was able to attend a volleyball game like manchester jackson this movie last week actually last week is going to be the state although this one they don't have a freshman boys volleyball we have enough boys go out for it we're just talking about it we have we had some numbers that were conceivable together putting the schedule together was really challenging there's only a couple of people in the county

003that have it that was a challenge and you know we're hoping that if we continue to get some numbers people get better for us maybe and the program just with scl i think these kids involved in much stuff it's so you might have more another thing uh this last week i went to a workshop on let me get this straight lgbtq a question mark right on the rights in the curriculum and all the things we have to start really very informative i think we're ahead of most districts and getting this stuff incorporated and it was quite quite interesting [Music] all right so we have some presentation we have some presentations tonight we're going to start off with the audit presentation delivered by mr david yeah welcome back so you know it's amazing i i remember

004eight years ago when we used to actually have a lot of presentation in october um and it's march now uh so i wouldn't i just like to let the board know that it's not as a result of anything you know banned on the business office not that we're not doing our jobs it's just that the state of new jersey quite professional information has to go into each audit report uh the stages continue to have like a struggle in providing that information uh so the revised them on this year was marshall team with final report in accordance with whoever buys everyone uh first of all i just want to thank the district staff district administration uh year in and year out we receive excellent cooperation um you know we have about three people on site for

005three weeks uh requesting a lot of information school years is distorting and we always receive our requests timely i would find that the staff was very professional very courteous great attitude attitudes so we really do appreciate that um it's also important remember it's not just an order of the business office uh you know purchasing uh payroll student activities student accounts happens all throughout the district so it's very important to have processes and procedures throughout the district uh so that things can happen uh and you follow statute administrative code there's so many different stats in their strip codes that you have to follow and the district has consistently had those processes and procedures in place um also at the commander of the district i'm receiving the student excellence for french reporting yet again uh 26th straight

006year a lot of accomplishments congratulations to the district and business office uh there's an unmodified opinion on the internet statements uh what that means is that your financial statements present and course the general civic county principles of all the requirements in front of education i'll tell you that business office does a great job in compiling those monthly reports uh so really you know those monthly reports that you get every meeting they're high quality they're accurate overall the district's financial position is very strong uh again the general fund fund balance of 7.4 million dollars which was a two million dollar increase from the prior year uh things to understand regarding that uh not evolve was unrestricted some of its restrict for certain purposes 772 000 uh was already reserved and being utilized in your 2022 budget

007uh million six is restricted to the capital reserve about a million is restricted for maintenance reserves uh we have an unrestricted fund balance of three point four million dollars that's the step of the increase in the priority of 1.7 one thing to understand regarding our script this past year there was a change in legislation uh that allowed districts to increase the amount of uncertainty from balance they had from year to year just to ensure that they had additional flexibility as a result so for the fiscal year 210 that would just this this year 21 year we just ordered it as well as the 22 fiscal year that we're in now four percent permitted uh it's not known whether the legislation will extend that or go back to the true percent starting with the sphere's length

008right yeah i i haven't heard yet about that so just something to keep in mind and 245 000 is considered an excess surplus uh that's required to utilize your explanatory percent in a capital projects fund there was about 165 000 remaining from the old referenda project that was closed out that money was uh transferred over to death service fund to provide future tax relief regional day school there have been a number there have been a number of years i have expressed some concerns before regarding um continued law system regional day school but again i'm happy to report over the last few years regional baseball continues to have positive gains uh at the end of june 30 21 the fund balance was once nine million dollars so that's very significant very healthy uh certainly much improved

009from a number of years ago uh based on level of funding that the district has for federal state purposes we're also required to do a federal state single order we've additionally unmodified opinion compliance and what that means is that we didn't find any compliance errors any questions costs uh and then this year's this is a very important note you had a number of stimulus programs uh so those were all incorporated in our procedures uh lastly we didn't find any findings that require corrective action uh so no internal full failures no uh uh statutory uh findings um no no issues until there's no certificates as i mentioned the district has has long had a good system internal controls in place um even through transition a number of transitions have have happened over the in the business

010office and a number of other another positions in the district and you know they either bring in the right people promote from within uh and it seems that those processes and procedures are in place and you know how to follow them uh but the district kind of continues i also just kind of i want to thank dave his team because like he said this is a fairly intensive process you know they are out anywhere between three and four weeks depending on what's going on over over a couple periods of time sometimes they pop out for day here and there they are very respectful of the fact that we are you know we are at work and you know they work with us throughout this process so i want to thank them for that and the

011certificate of excellence um this is this is something that it's not a business office award it's not a reward for me this is this is an award for the district because basically what it does it shows that this board supports fiscal transparency um and we can't achieve this award without everybody in the district doing their part so i just want to thank everybody uh you know for another good year another and again like they said with the amount of federal state local regulations that come out each year with farms um everybody just seems to adjust and do what they have to do so i just want to say thank you to david and his guys and thank you thank you my board office staff and the staff in the schools and the staff and our

012departments for doing their part to help us achieve this thank you next we have our pta coming up to for our hitting presentation um hi i'm kelly dunkley and this is holly sales kelly and i are asked to make this come true tonight because we have been active pta and many grand community members the longest i believe the word they used was the oldest uh kelly has been a member of the pta since her old disorder katie started school here in the district 18 years ago i joined the pta after moving to whiting in 2009. at the time that i joined the pta there are approximately 25 key pta volunteers key volunteers are considered persons who hold a border committee position and whose home school might be whiting but if they're needed to step in

013at mces for any reason they run over there and have balance um about seven years ago for safety reasons parents were no longer allowed to go into the classroom for any child uh class parties or indian school activities that significantly hurt the pta because we were no longer able to network with new parents to try and get that power out this message supporting committee members networking and our volunteer number of key volunteers dropped down to about 12. today as we enter the endemic we have six to seven key volunteers working to benefit six schools and approximately 2 900 students i'm addressing this tonight because for the 2022-23 school year pta has almost 30 vacant spots between board and committee uh including two very important positions we no longer will have a president or a secretary

014next year since there are quite a few administrators teachers and staff here i'm requesting that if you know of any parent or guardian who you believe would be a good fit for the pta someone who would want to help the district to enhance every student's education that you please speak with them about becoming an active volunteer that being said the pta's goal is to remove the welfare of children and to be an advocate for children in the home the community and in schools our largest fundraiser is our annual gift auction free pandemic the gift auction committee was able to bring the gift option to a level of 350 guests and over 30 000 a year in profits those funds were used to benefit the children of the six schools for events and programs which included

015visiting offers scholarships for our high school student free hot cocoa day in all the schools which as an aside is two thousand dollars and also um our mini grants which benefit our classrooms post pandemic the gift auction is in the rebuilding process and is headed by angel gamberella she and her committee are working hard to make the adoption a success um so that you'll have funds for next school year the gift auction will be held on april 14th at the clarion in towns river 250 50 guests are attending and there's still 20 tickets available the committee is also in desperate so if you know any local businesses that would be willing to donate no matter how small or how big i would be greatly appreciated information including the donation request letter can be found on

016the pta facebook page or on their website finally each of the pta strives to help our teachers by distributing mini grants which are used to purchase essential and beneficial items needed in our client service this year the mini grant committee which is one of the most difficult rewarding and fun was comprised of six volunteer parents one of whom was a new pta dad who had the privilege of spending two hours with five women and we would have spent up to five thousand dollars he had a volunteer was chosen from each school with the pta president monitoring piece of thai waiver was needed there were three levels of mini grant applications under 200 200-400 500. the committee met via zoom on january 12th and we had two days to review the applications we received 25 mini

017grant applications requesting a total of 9 400 unfortunately one application was disqualified because it did not meet the rules as with careful review consideration and discussion the committee was able to grant 13 applications for a total of 4 987 dollars which means we spent almost 12. we are extremely pleased to announce that this year each school in the district had at least one application and at the end each school was awarded a mini rant considering that this was done blindly that's pretty great i'm so happy about that the high school was awarded too many grants out of five applications the middle school was awarded one mini grant out of two applications manchester elementary was awarded four out of five ridgeway elementary was awarded four out of six applications whiting was awarded one out of four

018applications regional day was awarded one out of three minute applications and the recipients are lynn spinelli from ridgeway for weather's jumbo articulation drill book and add-on books amazing garlic from mtes for fluency roll and talk and add-on cards from the middle school for highest books laura henry from mtes for magnetic scentiles alice maclin from mtes for sergeant art tempra paint six jennifer gilbert from mces for stem supplies christine newberry and rachel kelly from the high school for 22 micro bit bt v2 go kids kelly ramos 800 piece stem straw construction set with six mini robot walls colleen guests from whiting [Music] for displays oh oh there we go all right come on sure okay so now okay great congratulations to everyone next we have uh mr rauscher who's going to come up and do the

019technology update for the board education sorry when i had this all set up and the update moved me out at least it wasn't virus all right thanks everybody for having me here tonight uh give you a pretty full uh lowdown on some of the tech that we're doing uh how's tech changed through the years uh in manchester in my short time here four years uh with the pandemic has really tightened the use of technology and we've had full support with the board and you know greatly appreciated and supportive administration on where we've gone up through the last 10 years it's happening so uh technology in 2012 what it looked like in the district it was almost non-existent uh we had teacher and student classroom computers they were wired you know they're part of the part

020of the classrooms no really no wireless network connectivity uh there was local web filtering access going on each device didn't really get a lot of reporting going on other than you know block this website a lot of manual processing there were computer labs the student stations where the teachers would bring down their classroom they would have to sign up for it so using large numbers of kids it really limits it uh projecting onto the screen you know if you see here we have like seven displays we were looking to have seven projectors and a client in a building where the departments and grade levels were sharing projector parts so you know that was that really was a heightened use of technology once that technology had developed teachers limited to access communication platforms like email you

021know teachers and students didn't have access to that to those resources of literally administration for communication purposes and now students teachers and all that have access their work staff and students share computer access accounts so you know teachers and students would access the same desktop environment there really was no ownership of what was being accessed on the computer and then there was a systems based storage student information system so a lot of the information was still kept on paper and then grades were kept on you know they were entered into the system but soared locally on teachers for so there was a lot of sneaker map going on sneakernets were basically the technicians and whatnot would run around and fix the computer and saw that they manually from a floppy disk or usb desk that's

022called speaker netting uh there was limited information security it really wasn't a thing back in the day 10 years ago your little things are you know happening but you know you had a virus maybe on a computer but it didn't happen completely slow network internet bandwidth speeds uh if you probably had a 10-minute connection with each site that was a really fast connection there wasn't a uh we have a you know edpl we have a viral connection you know buildings that really was non-existent there's a hub based network technology system in place so you really didn't have the background speeds that you have now and there really was limited wireless infrastructure so to be able to do all these great things with mobile devices really wasn't uh there wasn't that option some just some local

023servers at each location there was one technology coordinator and then one i keep uh sas report number to support all that stack on site what our current classroom technology looks like we have over three thousand plus student problems we have over 500 uh staff from those mobile mobile desktops computer stuff like that we have another classroom desktop with staff computers 250 platinum projector systems 200 platform network printers well the support looks like that now there's uh network viral support and we have to cover make sure wireless is active at all times testing there's assessment that's happening so we're going to make sure that networks are available and also for security reasons uh we managed the voice over id systems active directory user storage management google workspace you know back 20 uh about 2017 when i

024started we started phasing over into google workspace it really made the trend easy when it rolls over into the pandemic teachers and students and adam being on the same platform uh administration uh information security best practices diligence this is when the business office has been supported since i've been here when it comes to cyber you know really making sure that we're doing the right thing for our staff and students especially at value time for them today uh server infrastructure support classroom technology support that's huge you know how many classrooms we have all these technologies that you can use right with the support of the board last year we were able to run an ed tech specialist and help provide training to staff members and get really these products that we're using when it comes to

025educational software are they being used correctly uh new technology and operations you know we're process always is looking at new tech how can they implement and improve our district from a business standpoint educational standpoint uh they both have to sink harmoniously and really work together and then uh our student genesis student information system you know really making sure we have all the required state information and student demographic information that's required by the state some of that state reporting responsibilities we have our student data management student demographic parent forms great book management workflow set up by the day we mandated changes online registration student resource class roster integrations you know all those resources that we purchased come from our student information system so there's not manual processes being done a lot less it down the back

026end that we integrate into these systems uh ng-smart all the required state reporting like sid management state submission uh state testing end-of-year snapshot course roster submission uh the listing can go on and on and including all that data stuff is your state testing data set up now you have njsla just start strong access testing njdpa which just was done two weeks ago the last two weeks dlm testing uh device configuration for those devices for testing make sure networks optimize in the monitoring of the network while there's testing systems going on so what our technology department looks like now we have a technology coordinator uh we have two technology specialists uh and two technology computer technicians we're looking to kind of revise uh some of the job titles we're looking to actually add a data communication

027specialist to assist in some of the state data that's required because they're constantly they're going to report us all the time be able to manage our central registration and make sure that we have the information coming in from our schools and reporting to the state to make sure all these reports are reported to the board uh device server network specialists we're looking to change some of our existing uh job titles to kind of fit what their role is now some of these job files have been revised in 10 years or so so looking to really just look at their responsibilities lines for what they're doing uh in the data system for help desk and parent portal uh last year we rolled out the parent portal to uh that was high school uh with the pandemic

028we developed communication aspects it was important to have that district why whether it's electronic all forms electronic and we've been pretty good at aggregating a lot of that data online now this is kind of what our proposed technology department alignment will look like with those job titles so we have the superintendent technology coordinator support staff for technology device server network specialists technicians and then the data assistant communication specialists report back to myself and the superintendent to make sure that the streamlined and communications and data is being worked properly we're also in the process of investigating a shared service agreement with lakehurst uh see how the district can best support their technology needs it's a small building a couple hundreds you know a couple hundred students and some staff members uh we're looking to make sure

029that the scene was processed from them coming to elementary school to our endorsement uh reasonable the first couple months might be an integration processing evaluating that's gonna be part of the the talks we're talking about first phase evaluation we're looking at their systems you know monday's be done because i think there hasn't been someone there like two years outside of consulting so really to evaluate any questions thank you for all your support from the years you know that's a great job thanks chris we appreciate it all right so moving on to my report uh so first welcome this is our first uh best optional meeting and actually so if you're walking in here today with uh adam naston so thank you for coming we appreciate it uh thank you mr rousher for that presentation and

030kind of just taking us through the past decade of where we were with technology where we are now and sort of where we need to go in the future so thank you for that my next community meeting java with john is on april 7th at bridgeway everyone is welcome you do not have to be a ridgeway parent to attend so come out ask questions get feedback it's very informal we have cookies cookies cookies and buffy and uh [Music] 6 pm at ridgeway we are in need of substitutes i can i'm happy to report that we have more substitutes working today than we had in the past two years here so that's a huge gain for us a huge win uh we're always in need it's 120 a day if you're interested if you're an education

031major you only need 30 credits if not 60 credits we can get you all set up to be a substitute we're also looking for substitute nurses that's 200 a day and then bus drivers 18 an hour we also have some full-time positions with benefits available so if you know anyone for any of those positions please send them our way our board policies are now online you can go right to the home page thank you uh mr zeitus for putting it right up there so that way you can access it for this year we have it so all the board policies are on there we're in the process of working through the regulations and updating those so for the 22 23 school year we'll also have regulations on there as well we have a couple of

032retirees on our agenda for this evening um i know one moment's here so uh mr steve nevada with uh 22 years of dedicated therapist thank you we also have some libraries with 34 and a half years of dedicated service mr bill shell 15 years of service and carol delucia 12 and a half years of service a huge thank you to our pca for funding all those mini grants congratulations to the teachers and staff uh 15 recipients and um thank you to the pta for just supporting our schools i know it's been challenging so anything that we can do to help you get the word out for your events help you um gather additional members anything that i can do to help please and the administration's more happy to help you also uh you can save

033me three of those tickets i'll be attending so i just wanted to give an update on uh our collaboration efforts with the military base so um april is the month of the military child we've been invited to attend um on the mcguire side on april 1st to attend their kickoff event so we're very excited we have some students attending myself mr adams and lieutenant commander of the high school will be coming this is petrossian i actually met with a representative we're looking to expand the services and programs that they offer there's one in particular that we're very interested in and it would serve as our fifth grade for next year it's called starbase and they would actually have students go over to the base and work through stem related activities they would go five fridays

034for a total of 25 25 hours that they would go through the stem series so we're excited about that and then also we have a summer stem program that we're looking to see if we can implement and that would be for our middle school students and that would be over the summer and these are free programs that we have available to our students so it's patrons and i've been working very hard to really have that military connection and bring opportunities to the district our online application one question then i know it still earlier but president biden announced he's bringing over 100 000 refugees from ukraine but he did announce 100 000 refugees are coming over to the united states from ultimately and uh like ourselves to be a popular we will be ready if they

035need a place to be our online application and recruitment platform we're in the works of doing that we're working with mr raucher and i'm working through the administrative services that will help us with recruiting teachers and recruiting staff there's an online platform and it actually streamlines all of our applications so no more paper applications coming into the district so that should be up and running some action our dual enrollment and academies update so i do have the high school administration staff come into our april meeting to get the boarding update until then um we're actually out recruiting at the middle school we're working with eighth graders there's our course brochure that's out we have lots of new courses and offerings for our students we have the addition of new academies that we're really excited to

036roll out we're fine-tuning those and working through that but you've been expecting the april for that meeting that you'll hear more about these academies and what we're going to be offering for our students at the high school beginning next year you're going to vote group graders as well yes and we also sent out surveys to students so we were able to gauge their interest in some of the courses that we're offering we have two new policies on our agenda so we have two new policies on the uh agenda this evening that we reviewed the versus the transgender policy and the second is uh independent educational evaluation we have some new jobs and job descriptions that will uh the agenda and um i just wanted to thank all the teachers and staff that reached out to

037me since the last board of education meeting i know that we talked a little bit about geos we talked a little bit about that was something that we spent a significant amount of money um and i just want to thank the teachers that opened up their classrooms uh for me to come in and really see uh what's happening i'm happy to report i'm going to be sharing with you there was a video that the ridgeway staff put together so you could see geodes in action and i have to say it was one of the first times that i got to see it in the classrooms and when i say classroom this one teacher was actually doing it in the hallway and the the students were completely engaged and captivated in the lesson um and it's

038a wonderful addition to our literacy blog so i just wanted to formally thank the teachers and staff that reached out to either have conversations or welcomes into their classrooms for me to see it in action i'm going to be sharing a video out with the board it's about 15 minutes but it's 15 minutes well spent and it was well done by the ridgeway staff so um it's nikki and kerry and all the staff of bridgeway thank you so much for sending that it definitely opened my eyes up to what geos is and really you know what a critical resource it is um so thank you for that and as always if you have any questions if you need me i have an open door policy i'm available phone email text come on by um always

039available so thank you i will be getting that video anyway for next week just a couple of things um so a couple things on the agenda tonight the 2223 budget is on the agenda for approval uh this is not final approval this is just for approval to send to the county office so that the budget can be reviewed changes can be made to this between now and our public hearing which looks like we're gonna move through april 27th um our regular people board meeting and our budget public hearing will be april 20th uh i'll just go into a couple quick things i won't get into a ton of detail tonight because we won't do that over here um the the budget that was submitted to us was roughly a million dollars over our statutory account

040we first received it uh so we had a million dollars in cut um we were able to do this a couple different ways we're able to solve this on the revenue side and solve it on the expense side so all said and done we cut about 550 000 out of the budget on the expense side and adjusted the revenue uh 450 on the revenue side primarily due to the fact that the state is now paying extraordinary at 90 um we were typically budgeting that around 50 or 60 percent so yes we had some room there to kind of increase that revenue projection which helped us this year um on the on the expense side some of the things we did were we looked at some things that were being asked for for next year um

041we're going to pull some of those things into the current budget and try to do that some of them were just red line deductions you know you don't need this much based on trends so we were looking at trends we went back a couple years with the different areas of the budget where there could be potential savings made adjustments based on that so in the end we ultimately got to our statutory cap um just some quick details are the our entire operating budget is only increasing by 0.79 um our over our total fund is only increasing by 1.16 um a large part of this is because we did have significantly more surplus last year and that was due to those covered years where there were certain things you weren't spending money on more money rolled

042into surplus for technology and for facilities upgrades so that money is in this budget um federal aid is expected to decrease a little bit uh so we're anticipating a 15 decrease that's what we budget at if we get more that just helps us out um more part of our budget includes our c relationship rankers um so that is that is a budgeted revenue for us um we are anticipating a few more kids this year from lakehurst they have a very large ninth grade class coming in uh so that revenue item went up a little bit uh we also provide resource services for those those students uh so we are charting them 240 000 for that service and basically how we how we come up with that is our auditors who are just here one of

043one of the things that they take a look at is they take a look at all the resource services that we do in the district um they take all the they take all the hours you know throughout the district including lakehouse um and basically you know we it just becomes a percentage of our total cost um we estimate that to be about 240 000 and that's the portion that we built the leaders that they pay as part of their tuition uh the other thing the other piece that we have is they do send some kids to vocational schools so those kids that come to us visa vocational school they also pay for that as well um so without getting into a ton of detail on the expense side just just so you're aware rough roughly

04482 of our budget is is kind of comprised of five categories it's salaries it's health benefits it's special education uh it's liability insurance and it's our it's this pension payment that we have to make now so so when you when you consider you know developing a budget for any school year um you know right off the bat you have about 18 percent everybody to work with uh the other 82 is pretty much its faces not much you can do about that you can make adjustments here and here to kind of tweak you know tweak salaries or do we have benefits to do collective bargaining and things like that um but you need liability insurance one of the things that's going to be a huge huge cost driver this year is we just came off two

045years of remote learning um you know stacking hybrid schedules so staff we didn't have as many staff in the buildings we didn't have as many kids in the building we were transporting for a while so premiums your premiums along those years and claims on those years were or a lot less now what we're seeing is now that the staff are back and building students are back in the millions there's more workers complaints there's more you know automotive accidents is you know those types of things we're seeing now we're starting to see a rise in premiums so um we're looking at potentially a million dollars in liability insurance this year between workers compensation and all the other insurances that we need to have so there are some college trainers in this budget but um it is

046that count um i think everything that's in place is we will meet the goals and the needs that we have next year um like i said if anything happens between now and next month when we present the budget to the board for final approval we do have the opportunity to make those changes um but for tonight unless you can afford to improve attendance budget so that the county can review it um i'm scheduled to meet with them next week so that's the long and short of the closure um another thing on the agenda tonight is we do have a agreement with the mtpa and the support support of education association we met and negotiated over the past couple of months and we do uh we haven't agreed the association has voted on the memory of

047agreement i'll be voting of those that voted they approved the they approved the moa the member have agreed by 92 uh so we are we are we're excited to present that to the board tonight for approval it's a five-year contract um which is fantastic um not that i don't want to do it all the time but um you know i want to thank the association for being flexible with us and and coming in and you know we work pretty quickly through this this time and you know we we had some good conversation and we had some good discussion on things that are going on now things that could be coming up things down the road so i am happy that we were able to get something done and in time so that we you know

048teachers this year know that they have a contract next year and that's one less thing that both we all have to worry about so thank you dan back there and thank you mga that's on duty but that's on the uh agenda fact as well and then the last thing and i think i reported on this last week i was a little nervous because i hadn't heard from the state on our hvac project that we were doing a regional baseball uh we actually did get to meet today uh we met down at we went down regional day school today uh they are going to replace all the hvac equipment down at the regional day school uh they're getting allocated about three and a half million dollars for us for that project so we took the we

049took them around the district today around the regional day we walked through all the rooms what we were looking at and some of the things we were looking to do now this this is going to take a little bit longer my guess is we probably won't be able to start this working so not this spring spring of 23 that's based on the time limit they gave us you know they have a little bit more red tape to go through at the state level but the work we know the work is coming um so we're looking forward to that it's definitely needed we have them kind of mandating our way through the summer's down there and in some cases the winners depending on where you're at so we just got to get through one more one

050more year and they'll be coming in you know in spring of 23 summer 23 here overall the hvac that's the report thank you so i got excited about the pta auction ticket so i completely forgot to welcome our student representative adrian fasfari so adrian will be with us this month and then she'll also be with us in june i believe and then we'll be rotating through the other student government uh the association executive team and we'll do the same for next school year as well so thank you to those advisors for helping us determine which students would come and give everyone that's an officer the opportunity to be here adrian and uh for future student reps you'll be able to give a report ask questions you're just a non-voting rep to our board of education

051so thank you for your time and for your service okay do you want to give your report now yeah sure perfect i think it's on oh okay okay um so first of all i would just like to say thank you for um you know allowing this opportunity i know that the state you know an accident recently um and i've been an sga uh student government since my freshman year of high school um and it's been great to see like a huge change um and you know how we how we do everything um and unfortunately i am graduating in three months so um you know this is like kind of a good way to like you know leave my mark um before i leave um but you know i'm very grateful to be here um and

052i'm just gonna give a rundown of you know what we have going on in high school um you know as we all know we're back to uh mass optional in the building which has been great we get to see our own spaces now and that also means you know for student government things can kind of resume to normal um and that means a lot more uh in-person events um and even next friday we're having our first normal pep rally um you know maybe since my sophomore year so you know it's it's been two years um since we've had any kind of normally savings um but we're actually meeting uh tomorrow after school do i you know arrange all that and get things approved um so we're really looking forward to that i know the students

053uh you know we all really miss that normalcy so it feels great to you know take one more step towards you know going back to normal um and just to run down from each of the classes to the senior class um they we just recently had on march 15th our 100 nights dinner and those you who aren't familiar with 100 dinner um we had a bunch of um hypnotists we had food that was um catered by linda's pizza over on 37 and we had a bunch of you know generous um manchester uh you know community members that donated various gifts um baskets that were raffled off and it was a great way to mark 100 nights to graduation which is kind of bittersweet but um you know time flies by um and we've also been

054working on uh prom and we have prom committee meetings and i've been working with the senior class advisors ms philadelphia and mr um connors to kind of head the prom committee um to get that all under wraps and prom is may 20th so it's gonna come before we know it um the junior class they've had um a lot of things going on you know they're trying to make up for lost time um and they had they just recently finished their tulip and flowers they did really well with that uh they're currently working on a gertrude hawk fundraiser which will kind of lead them into easter and we'll bring in some great money that they can use for their junior prom and for their senior pond next year they also just recently had a chipotle fundraiser

055and they did pretty well with that and i believe um on monday they are having their first of two taco-holics fundraisers um so definitely pop out to those um they are also working on class t-shirt sales um you know kind of bringing a lot more money um then they're also working on their problem which is may 13th and working on a product committee um and the sophomore class they are actually um so two years ago my classes had this idea to do student and teacher basketball game and unfortunately the week it was supposed to happen the pandemic hit and um you know as you know everything went virtual and it was just you know a bummer but luckily the sophomores have actually worked to pick that back up and they're doing a student versus teacher

056volleyball game and they sent out interest forms um and they're getting teams together um and just a lot of things developed and it's great to see um how excited you know people are they actually had to cut it off to a certain number of teams because of the participation um so i think everyone's looking forward to normalcy and you know just being back to how things were um the freshmen are working on t-shirt sales for their class which is great you know to kind of you know integrate these freshmen um into the atmosphere in high school um and i believe that they're also working on some additional fundraisers too um and then so next week we actually have our spirit week and as i mentioned we normally um end our spirit weeks with the pep

057rally to commemorate um you know whatever season uh of sports are occurring so monday we have our themes being twin day so you would you know dress similarly to a friend of yours tuesday is neon day so justin bright neon colors um wednesday is generation day so you can dress like your younger self um or your older self um thursday is a throwback thursday so you can kind of like you know 2000s 1980s you know 1990s whatever you want to do um um and our friday theme is blue and gold and we always do that to you know bring together our school colors um and then next friday is our pep rally so um i'm really looking forward to my last spirit week um and we're really kind of going out with the bang and

058um yeah so i'm hoping that this will bring about a lot of school morale and you know help to bring that back so i'm excited thank you uh welcome adrian nice to see you you did a great job thank you um thank you to the pta for all of your support and all the grants that you issued that was very generous um i was able to go to schools to read across america today which is great i thank all the elementary teachers for inviting us in but i chose mtes because that's where two of my three attend school so i was happy to report that my fifth grader was as happy as my kindergartner two seaman so it worked out well i attended the kindergarten orientation at ridgeway um for half of the time it

059was nice to see the parents coming in in person you know to learn about what next year will kind of store for their babies in february i attended the cpac meeting it was virtual in march they just had a closed meeting to go over the iep process i was not part of that as i'm just the board rep april 6 they will be having another virtual meeting parent academy caregiver support may 2nd there's a meeting going over the iep process what you can expect from the beginning of the process time frames and who will attend the meetings um updates bridget our new special ed supervisor is going out to the different schools to meet some of our students um as far as staffing there are several new positions for special ed um cbi district and

060a couple of others and then there was meredith's report there was a parent survey that was issued and they were having because they had 60 responses um some of the other things that people um wanted to talk about and bring up was family loss groups and supports programs are being created transitioning from school to school so there's talk of district transitioning meetings and creating bigger transitioning programs also for adult living for our complete disabled population and the out i'm the ford event representative for the cpac and so i just wanted to relate to you that big concern that has come from a couple different members of the community is the bb program which some people are just concerned about how it's going to work and they want more of an idea or vision of you

061know how the program will be rolled out before they make decisions about bringing children back so if maybe we can communicate some more information to them fear of like talking in public and that was cling to me so seeing her do this was amazing and i can't thank manchester schools enough for helping and encouraging the growth a lot of learning that my child has thank you so much you know i really appreciate it you did a great job the kiddos they were having a good time as well nice job to the staff representing the administration uh it was a really good turnout um i we also attended many of the members of the excellence in education dinner the mta great job mr staples um it was wonderful to see the staff and and see them

062get recognized we appreciate you we appreciate everything that all of you do for our children each and every day and it was great feel like the shippers down my spine when i was there it was it was fantastic great job you must be proud of yourself um on the other side of things i i wear a hat as the president of ocean county school boards association um i just wanted to share that mr payton i will be attending a meeting for presents and vice presidents next um we also have the eighth grade dialogue coming up and those who are not familiar with the eighth grade dialogue um every school and ocean county throughout the state um an eighth grader is selected by the principal um and that child were that spiritual as well mr penny

063from new jersey school board association is working to put this um video together like you did last year um the dialogue was interesting it's pretty fascinating because the kids are there talking about current topics um that are they're facebook now and um you know a lot of pandemic questions for last year a lot about virtual learning um but um we're working on getting those kiddos uh the video and uh that should be done within the next couple of months and our main meeting will be presenting that um and that's it that's my report thank you anyone else um um so mr bernardo you had mentioned a lot about the working with uh the base on different stem programs and i even noticed a lot of the mini grants that the pta given were for um

064stem related things um and i just wanted to say that like i i really appreciate that and even at the high school um i've been working alongside miss kelly um she's a computer science teacher she also do that um and we've created a women in stem club to kind of encourage you know young girls to um explore different uh career fields in stem and we actually are having our next meeting next uh our second meeting next week and we've been having different speakers come in um i believe we had our last meeting we had miss claus she's um she actually replaced mr golic who retired and she spoke a little bit about her career path um and then we even had um commander holzer that came in and spoke although he's not not a female

065it was very to uh just get a you know different perspectives and to open up um you know the doors uh the many doors in the stem field so i thought that was amazing that you're starting you know so young with these children too and i want to pursue a career in the stem field too so i think it's amazing to kind of you know open their eyes up to all this stuff in science so i thought that was amazing so i just wanted to applaud you are you guys going with the girls code yeah well miss kelly i know there's a lot of um like she'll post links to different activities that go on and stuff like that code is a hope yeah yeah it's been really good so as you can see you

066start to see more females yeah my ap computer science class i think uh miss kelly had won like an award it was presented a few meetings ago yeah about the yeah so that's great you know it's really good mr vernon i'd like to thank you about the military connection too because in fact one of our most incredible resources the military you know wherever my husband's retired your wife's retired mr servant you know it's fantastic to have that right now so that's amazing thank you thank you administrations working together thank you all right of the public participation now any agenda items only yes um introduce myself i'm heather framer i've never had to do that before so well um one question i did have about the military-based thing for you um and then i'll request my

067questions on the agenda um you said the fifth graders that would be like standard for all fifth graders is it a club is it do they need to qualify what is the criteria for the students to attend that sure so as of right now it's going to be every fifth grader including students in a self-contained setting they actually the the connection that we need with the basics that they've send representatives how to work in classrooms for students that can't transport so it's going to be an inclusive program for anyone so our current 4th grade rising to 5th grade next year would be able to participate you're welcome um on the agenda with the um some of the approvals um number 11. which section are you looking at i'm looking at the personnel personnel clean personnel

068so right now it's going to be a district-wide position is the way that we have it they're going to be providing instruction we've identified students that are rising uh lighting that could do services so they're going to be doing some lessons at lighting and then they'll rotate to the other elementary schools as well um number 12 kind of the same question listed on the teacher for the district what capacity is that for sure so we're really excited about this we have a wilson certified teacher that we are hiring she has her level one certification her home school will be at mtes for this year and then over the summer i'll be working with mrs antonucci and then also we have a cohort of teachers that are going to be going through the wilson level 1

069certification so she will work with those teachers and work as the liaison between their certified trainer and then from there we will be able to identify where those certified teachers where they provide the instructions sure so wilson certification is an important deal in hand program it's a multi-sensory reading program our level one uh steps one through six so typically we begin that instruction in second grade and it could go all the way up to students in high school depending on your level of entry into the program it's systematic it's explicit it's hands-on it complements some of the other multi-sensory reading programs we have in place you may be familiar at the k-2 level we have foundations we also have beginning in fourth grade our just words program and we have one teacher that is working

070feeling him certified as well so this just complements this to be able to have the level one certification and this teacher that we're hiring has expressed interest in becoming level two certified which would extend our program from step seven all the way to twelve and so the reading specialist isn't the wilson certified teacher so that's like gonna maybe place students in certain kind of programs let's determine that right now at that level sure so a reading specialist like code has an additional certification so just like you have elementary school teachers this particular candidate has a k-6 certification she has a student with disability certification and then in addition to that she has a reading specialist certificate that allows for her to assess students with a multitude of assessments and really work hand-in-hand with our basic

071skills teachers to be able to develop programs and personalized learning opportunities for students who need remediation and reading [Music] so i understand that but how how will she have access to the kids will she be coming into the ie meetings will it be is she going to evaluate all existing kids that fall into that program sure so um this position right now the way that we have a design is going to be a 60 40 position which means that 60 of the salary and time will be spent at regional day school and then 40 is going to be um from the general budget so it would support students uh preschool all the way to 12th grade um and really by design of ucba while they do go into classrooms and they do perform something as

072similar as like a fba they'd be able to do a functioning behavior assessment as needed they really work closely with our registered behavior technicians so we have our paraprofessionals that are going through the rvt you may be familiar with that they're going to be going through and really the purpose of an rvt is to be able to implement the plan that was created by vcba and then using data to track um the implementation the effectiveness um and if anything needs to be reevaluated changed revised or modified to meet the students get a real needs and this complements uh really nicely to what mrs antonucci is trying to do and we're trying to identify students that are in and out of district placement similar to what mrs down was talking about our um in the behavioral

073classroom is actually we changed the name of that now to the state level the classification is um emotionally regulated i'm sorry there's no regulation thank you all right eri so i knew the acronym uh and the idea behind that is that we would be able to bring out of district students into these programs that way we could have the behavior supports available if they need that and we're looking to do that at every level in elementary middle school and high school because we do have students that meet the criteria for those programs and really it's a best practice for them to be able to have these programs um with their neighborhood peers so i think the other concern um that came away from the cpac too um parents are just worried we're not bringing every

074kid back to district it's a slow and steady pace that's where some of the miscommunication is some parents are fearful you know some kids need to stay in their district but yeah i think you know do you want to jump in yeah surely right now that we're looking at for elementary level um that we're looking to bring back and it's going to be um an interior development bridge so we're going to need to see how they do um first we're going to just upload we're going to have a teacher with that comes from along with the bca go into a field of conservation in their administration that they are currently in i'm going to have an offer and then we're going to do that are individualized and a lot of these conversations just you know

075we don't tell parents that they're coming back these are collaborative so when we have an iep meeting or if we're doing observations the communication happens with the parents that they know that we're going to have to observe and a lot of times these what happens is the conversation happens that the parents want the program they would never tell parents that they have to bring their child back simply because we have the program it's a matter of matching their needs to a program thank you and then my last question is on number 19 um within the cell phone secretaries from um the special services department out of the board office and into their appropriate school um is this i was just curious to really ask why that is going to happen like what the benefit of

076that would be and i can see some i just don't would like to hear right now and also is that a permanent move or are you like you're doing the world right right um that's a great question so i'm glad that we're able to address this so basically the long and short of it is to improve um efficiency as you know with special education timeline uh is a huge part of that being able to meet the deadlines and what was happening was there's paperwork that comes from a building level so our child study team works in buildings for the most part they all have their own building to work in we have three child child study team members that go to white elementary school to support the students with iep's there and what happens is

077the reports in the files were being held there were two separate files that we were holding for students and it really is a better practice to be able to have one file for students that have all the information in there and the likelihood of items being lost in transitioning from school to school is a lot higher when the secretaries are not working side by side with your child studies so essentially we're looking to um you know improve consistency the efficiency of the program meet deadlines and be able to support the child study team which uh we did survey the child study team and that was a request that came out of that for them to have your secretarial support available to them when they're working in the buildings and the second part of that is

078is it permanent yes um so as a parent who deals in this world um if i need to submit a letter uh a request the written request which usually is board office and i would assume the secretary would the best candidate that have been received what's the process for us so the parents don't have a lag like into the world we'll send the board office yeah we do have mrs antonucci's administrative assistant works there these are the child study team secretaries and i have to tell you that if you if you look at other school districts most child study teams have their secretary with them even if they do work at multiple work sites um it's a very uncommon practice going to have secretaries that support individuals at a central location okay that seems very

079different than what we've always been told as far as we needed to mail it to the board office any request we needed an iep we could copy our case managers but we needed to address our [Music] and that could happen via email too to reach out to the peace manager anyone else have any questions on the agenda yeah i have a question on the transgender policy yes i live in hollyoaks here i have a daughter in the manchester school system so has the policy already been voted on and adopted it has not been it has not okay so there's two points that i'd like to just voice my opposition to on page seven one references the activities allowing those who participate in the spirit based on their gender identity as opposed to their biological gender

080not necessarily as it is to any student who is transgender or identifies in a particular way i think it's a negative impact on women i do have a daughter she graduated she said you call me now but and honestly this is a major conversation that's not just happening here in manchester but that's happening throughout the state throughout the nation but i just want it on the record i don't think it's appropriate i would hope that ultimately as you look at this policy you would not allow those that are biologically or opposite to compete in the offices both ways so i would ask the board to really consider that particular portion of the policy the second part that i want to draw your attention to is the restroom facilities where it allows those to use the

081breast confidence based on their gender identity as opposed to their biological gender and i recognize these are difficult situations but um unfortunately there have been attacks on students too particularly in virginia other states i hope we haven't had any situations here that i've heard of at least in manchester or quite frankly in new jersey but i think when you kind of buy something i'm also an attorney i hope the lord will look at the legal liability how to find this bathroom policy i don't know what the answer is perhaps it could be a gender neutral bathroom or whatever the case may be this one i'm not necessarily sure if it should be removed or not if you have some concerns someone using a bathroom based on their gender identity as opposed to their biological genders

082but specifically because there have been incidences in other states i pray that nothing like that happens here in new jersey particularly in the activities i just wanted to rise and put it on the record that i'm against them and then briefly i know mr chairman i mentioned initially that the curriculum we were moving ahead and opening remarks that we were ahead of the game so to speak my final question would be for the lb lgbtq curriculum directed also at elementary school children is there an opt-out provision thank you for completing the questions sure so i guess i'll start backwards so i just want to be clear the lgbtq curriculum i think begins at the middle school level there's inclusivity standards that are geared towards specifically being able to have an inclusive environment beginning in kindergarten

083so there's there's some crossover and some misconceptions on inclusivity which was the bill 844.54 and the lgbtq curriculum basically what we're doing um to provide a space for inclusivity for all students is being able to you know teach students that you know for instance it's not just about sexual orientation or being transgender it's that we don't prejudge students simply because they have a different color skin or they live in a small house or they have two dads where they only have one mom that is basically everyone is treated with respect and dignity and that's the spirit of that law the in the lgbtq curriculum that begins in middle school um basically we're looking to infuse um different areas and different standards across the curriculum and um the other misconception is that this only lives in

084health and pe and it's not it's across the board just being able to provide opportunities for students to engage in experiences and dialogue beginning in middle school that represent the world at large because at large we do have families that look very different we have people that look very different and even just looking around manchester it's a very diverse community there are some communities that aren't as diverse and it's just being able to provide our students with that experience that way they're prepared and ready to engage with people beyond this community um in terms of the transgender policy i just wanted to address the bathrooms i've met with every principal and we've identified across actually beginning a kindergarten so all of our elementary schools the middle school and the high school gender neutral bathrooms that

085would be available currently a lot of these practices are in place already we're actually behind this policy was mandated back in january of 2019 and it was never presented on a court agenda for approval so now here we are in in march of 2022 and we're actually approving a policy that should have been in place already and we have practices happening within our schools that aren't supported by board policies the bathrooms um are completely taken care of and we have gender neutral bathrooms at the elementary level we have the efforts in most of our classrooms the ones that don't have an alternative stage for for students that are transitioning or if they just don't feel comfortable going into a bathroom you know with multiple stalls and multiple periods in there um in terms of the

086sports um i know that mr uh listeners back there i don't know if you wanted to jump in a little bit about what's happening at the sports level well we would be obligated as members of the ndis to follow their regulations and they support transgender participation where the student identifies we haven't had a situation like that in our school always had a number of kids transitioning and recognizing you know uh who they want to you recognize that they haven't asked to participate so you've sort of avoided that issue i mean i understand as a father a three girl and a brother of five sisters the concerns but i think we're obligated to follow the regulation and we put ourselves in the district at risk if we try and combat that so in order to say

087that the town wanted the school district following those uh national sports standards would still happen by that i i don't know if you don't know that that's fine just just just build it as a member of the njsa school that agrees to their you know regulations we we would be subject to follow those so you know mr monae would feel like we would have the option to to challenge that or would want to try and do that you know i think the answer to that question is the njs double a that's required yeah right if you don't beat their requirements don't beat yeah so it would have to come from a legislative level to have you know some sort of um leeway on our part to be able to decide whether there were pieces of

088it but again as an attorney you would appreciate that once you open up one piece of it then everything is subject to additional interpretation so as mr said we would follow the regulations prescribed for us to participate under those guidelines and just add further if you look at the transition if you look at the policy at the end of the title which says transgender students there's an m in parentheses that means it's mandated by the state we cannot say we're doing this it's mandated by this but we have to we should have adopted years ago but we so it sounds like even if the state legislature and the governor signed the law doing that because we participated in that sporting association would be abide by their association of change that could come from them from

089both essentially state as well as the sporting association between thank you for your appointment sir and i appreciate this room it's my first time good job and there was one about the opt-out the opt-out um that's available in policy is for the health and pe curriculum and that would be specific if you there were pieces of it that you did not want your child to be a part of you would reach out to building principal and then they would walk you through the opt-out um procedures and it could be specific um to a portion of the curriculum if it's something that you oppose or a piece of it a lot of a lot of within the curriculum is the sexual education standards i think uh but the reason why they wouldn't put it as widespread

090throughout all of the curriculum as opposed to just health because parents only have the option to opt out to just that negates the parent's ability to opt out so what you're saying is it's not just in the health curriculum it's not there is no opt-out division even though it is dealing with sexual gender issues so i don't know but would it be addressed in math or science or other classes i know like so for instance there may be a math word problem where instead of saying a mom and a dad are going to the grocery store it might say two moms are going to the grocery store now our math program does not have those specific problems but there are certainly text and mentor texts that we're using that provide an opportunity for our children

091to see that a family is different than just a mom and a dad or that you know there are occasions where people you know our students look at their grandparents and that's okay you know in in the basically the spirit behind it is basically just being able to provide an inclusive and diverse opportunity for our students to see the world and i can also take my daughter graduated here and over to my son another box and there were several times in the middle school and in the high school where the literacy classes they were asking me certain books that we felt violated our religious views we asked our reading and writing program is um individualized so students choose their own steps to read they're able to have the agency you know work specifically you know

092the level that they're at what their interests are you're welcome all right anyone else well just whatever all right uh mr mentioned any old business uh no business no correspondence okay we'll move on to the action part of the building section one a minute number one and two i need a motion any discussion hello mr stevens yes ma'am yes mr keller yeah yeah yeah mr scardy yes travel number one need a motion second any discussion real quickly mr speaker yes miss mouth yeah mrs keller yes sir yes sprinkler yeah mr scardy yes mr peter yes see budget items for 2022 2023 numbers one through four i need a motion any discussion please mr staples yes yes yes [Music] any discussion i would like to say congratulations mr on your doing it here as a former

093accountant i don't have tough that is to get 26 years about qualified families so i've graduated but uh but it is impressive special education council number one need a motion any discussion yes um this was also brought to me from members of the cpap um i understand why we're hiring the attorney can you explain to us why we're reaching out other than mr on hand here so that way everybody and there was a discussion as to whether i should continue dealing with special education based on god and i what i indicated was i have done this in the past but in the current environment you specialize so while i am understanding the law of regards to special events i don't have the understanding that special education lawyers who specialize in that have for example you

094could have an i can on a certified civil trial i can try any case anywhere there's only about five percent of us in the state that have that certification but the reality is when you're in special ed you are in the office of administrative law and you are dealing with issues that are to the student with regards to classifications with regards to programs with regards to other things of that nature and it's almost like if you take for example a doctor going into a certain area he's talking with other doctors they're talking about specific things that they have the knowledge of and i don't feel confident that i have that knowledge to participate as a specialist in that area so i think it's better for the board of education that you hire somebody that does

095only that type of work because today it is no longer just something that that's part of education it's very significant today and today i think we've talked with the superintendent the different people that we're hiring the specialties that they have certifications that they have are people that deal in education not just law so my specialty is law and dealing with the board of education and the law not the issue of education with regards to special ed students i think it's yes this is survey yes this is wrangler no this is garden yes yes section two a administrative number one through twelve i'm going to ask this ruins to please pull item number eleven leave that in as a separate one after we vote on the other one through 10 and number 12. motion please this

096is for everything except for number 11. second um i just want to say i'm concerned about the amount of um positions that we are posing or we're going to be having soon you know i i and for the children i am for getting what they need because of this pandemic um but i'm just concerned with the amount of positions being posted i know that the funding is coming from grants and i understand that but i just want to make that known because i am a little uncomfortable with it but i i on the other side i get it i understand as a basic skills interventionist myself i know it's needed so i'm on the fence with a lot of them so and i know a lot of us feel the same way [Music] all right

097now at this point we'll meet in uh number 11. the reason for that is there's several of us on the board they're conflicted [Music] so friends are calling them mr number one through you have 32 in your agenda mr omega is going to be read in number 33. so number 33 we just received this prior to the meeting we will be accepting the of taylor power who is a custodian here in the middle school effectively all right i have motion please promotion second question i just want to congratulate you again mr navaji thank you for your service at the manchester student school system yes see student personnel number one mr staples yes miss mountain yes mr kellerman yes mr server yes ms wingler mr scardy yes mr p section three a finance number one through

098five mr staples yes miss mountain yes mrs keller yes mr cerner yes swinburne yeah mrs gardy yes yes all right welcome before now public presentation on getting an item yeah just like the thank you award for contract tonight um [Music] also a founding member of our cpac committee so i understand there's concerns and questionable new positions being addressed specifically to be in the special education realm so how that will pan out i will tell but i am grateful that the district is investing in those students so hopefully the plans all work out well that's all we have right now but i feel motivated and hopeful that our students outside the pandemic will continue to um improve and become better and more active members of our society the future might education programs that we've had in

099place i kind of say yeah you're a little antiquated what can we do to improve those kids so thank you very much thank you very much i i just have a sister who's handicapped and back in the 60s when she was in school they were pretty much shot if not with the side anymore and to see the growth that we have as a country all right okay thank you oh yep