August 18, 2022: Board of Education Meeting

001i'm sorry the lights turned off hello oh there's back on good evening i'm calling the meeting to order and the reconvene statement is as follows the executive session of the wayne board of education regular meeting of august 18 2022 was convened in the conference room of the wayne board of education 50 nellis drive wayne new jersey zero seven four seven zero the statement of compliance setting forth date and location was read in accordance with the requirements of the open public meetings act and the roll call was taken the meeting was recessed and is now being reconvened okay uh we're going to stand for the flag salute followed by a moment of silence please i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation

002under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you all right i'll move to reconvene madam president thank you second second mr fatale okay um this this evening we're going to have two presentations the first one will be on the district goals and we start out with those before the start of every school year the second presentation is going to be on the new health and pe standards that are going to be part of lessons that mrs reichman is going to present um you are welcome to make comments during the meeting um there is a portion where you can speak to agenda items and then at the very end of the meeting there's a portion which is an open session where you can address any item i am prefacing this just to let you

003know mrs reichman's presentation will go online and there there's also a portion called let's talk so you will have an opportunity to make comments in let's talk they will all be compiled and the board will not be voting on the new lessons plans until the september 8th meeting so there's plenty of time for you to review them and let us know what you think we are working under a new policy which we worked under at the july meeting for the portion where you can address agenda items you have three minutes to speak there is not a second turn when it comes to the open session you have five minutes to speak and there's also not a second opportunity so with that we will proceed i will turn the meeting over to administration okay so the

004um before we get to the presentations we have the administrative summary report okay thank you so um to start the report um i would like to take a moment to recognize dorita dorothy thomas for the past year and a half dorothy was a colleague someone who worked as the accounts payable manager and after suffering a brief illness she passed away this past weekend she would like to take a moment to recognize her okay so um so for my administrative summary report i'm just going to go through a few things quickly and we'll get to our presentations so we're only a few weeks away from the start of the school year we look forward to the return of our teachers on september 1st and then for our students on september 6th we're well prepared for the

005start of the school year and i'd like to take a moment to thank all of our 12-month employees who work throughout the summer to make sure our schools are ready for another great school year unless you work in a school you cannot imagine the incremental work that is completed during the summer months from ordering all the supplies and materials needed to start the school year at a time when many things are out of stock and not available to making sure our floors are perfectly refinished to identifying and hiring staff members at a time when there is a noticeable teacher shortage there is no shortage of challenges this summer but despite these challenges we are in a good place this week was a very important week leading up to the start of the school year in

006addition to holding a successful administrative retreat that placed all of our administrators in a great place to start the school year we also held our new employee orientation which was attended by 83 of our new employees so i'd like to thank paula clark and the hr department as well as our administrators the wayne education officers ida ferrante and donna river and our board president sue hudup for taking the time to join in welcoming all these new employees i'd also like to thank paula clark and the hr department for planning such a great introduction to our school district we have most of our positions filled we still have some jobs that need to be filled non-instructional though which is great news for the district um let me talk a little bit about our covered response for

007the upcoming year so members of the community have been asking about that so i'd like to talk about that for a few minutes um so we've reached out to ask about um or some people have reached out to ask about what the school year would be like and as it pertains to our coveted response so of course things can change but as it stands some very important changes are a sign that the pandemic while not over is clearly moving into another phase of recovery we have to learn to live with covet and take precautions as needed as we would with any other illness i think most would agree that based on these changes we can expect a normal start for our school year so social distancing universal masking cohorts and school exclusion are in our

008past governor murphy governor murphy sorry recently lifted executive order 253 which required unvaccinated staff members to be tested weekly with that changing will no longer be hosting a coveted testing location in district or requiring staff members to be tested we continue this year where we were last year in that we have no universal masking requirements the only time masks may be required is in limited situations where students are in a nursing office and are actually showing signs of communicable disease covert or otherwise and also upon returning to school after being ill with covet otherwise parents are advised to keep their children home when sick and have their children wear masks for 10 days from the date of last exposure to a positive case of covet 19 or after returning to school and stay six to

009ten however the district will no longer be com excuse me however the district will no longer be policing compliance after conferring with the wayne health department the district will not be conducting contact tracing investigations however we are still required to record and report positive cases to the township and to the state if there are outbreaks we would need to work with our local health department to determine an appropriate response okay so i'd like to also talk about the revised health and pe standards so we know many of you are here this evening because of that so we appreciate the work of our teachers and other staff in developing these lessons which we believe achieve a balance between the requirements of the revised health and physical education standards and the concerns expressed by some members of

010the community we release the presentation that you're about to see in advance of the meeting to be as transparent as possible and we hope that releasing these lessons will help concerned citizens understand what is actually being proposed here in wayne as opposed to getting information from other sources which may not be accurate it's important to note that the board of education as mrs puttup said is treating the proposed lessons as public work session items this evening that means no final decisions are being made instead we are in the feedback phase we want to hear more from the community before any formal action is taken and we are using let's talk to receive that feedback we also recognize that many people are on vacation so the feedback period will extend all the way through september 7th

011and the board of education will be meeting on september 8th where feedback and any changes will be discussed and formal action is planned as we previously shared none of the proposed lessons based on the revised health and physical education standards will be delivered to students until later in the fall once the lessons are finalized parents will be provided with additional time for review along with an option to opt out just a quick update from the business office business office is finalizing the fiscal year prior fiscal year and anticipates that auditors will begin their on-site visits in early october the purchasing area has been very busy processing requisitions for school supplies for the entire district and reports only minor supply chain issues with some instructional supplies the district's move to a new employee health benefits program

012went well with no major issues we're planning for a new open enrollment cycle in the fall and will align the district with the state's calendar year starting january 1st 2023 quick facilities update the facilities department has worked hard during the summer to prepare for opening is finishing up with stripping and waxing school floors throughout the district new curbing and paving running the length of pines lake entry nearing completion planned drainage improvements for pack neck will begin in a few days the wayne hills high school junior varsity baseball field upgrades are almost complete and will now have a proper infield and drainage improvements for the wayne valley high school junior varsity softball field at wayne valley are next the security camera project is moving forward with work at lafayette ryerson and fallon supply chain issues may

013cause a few weeks delay as electro electronic equipment has been difficult to secure during the next two weeks security vestibules will be installed at jfk anthony wayne in wayne valley the district's vestibule project was slowed due to manufacturing delays the roof replacement at ryerson is going ahead of schedule and is over 80 80 complete with only curbing and flashing work remaining as far as the hiv report goes there are no hiv cases to report during this period okay so that's my admin summary report we can get to the goal presentation everybody good okay so um it's always very exciting to talk to the community about our district goals so i mentioned in prior presentations that our district does not have a five-year plan a seven-year plan anything like that we do we do that for

014facilities but in terms of our academic goals we establish annual goals so these are all goals that will improve the school district these are all goals that will move our academic programs forward and they really focus on students and student achievement teaching and learning things like that that will um like i said enhance the school district so um the one goal that we talked about previously that you will not see here that can come back is the goal about a referendum okay so there was previously a goal we talked about with the referendum it's not to say that the district is not moving ahead with a referendum but we received information about the timing of the referendum and as you'll see all these goals are they have a timeline that goes with them so we

015have to do some more work but that goal will come back probably at our next meeting but for now the referendum goal is something you will not see okay so let's go ahead okay well it was working okay so our goals are presented in no particular order so um just because something is goal one doesn't mean like we assign any weight to what would be the most important goal because we recognize that different goals are important for different people there's no way to make a determination about that but this particular goal has to do with enhancing expanding and refining our special education programs okay so the reality is that for a variety of reasons including the pandemic more and more students are being found eligible for special education and related services particularly at the elementary

016level so compounding this is incoming students who are moving in and also the extensive nature of the needs that are out there so this particular goal involves the district doing a comprehensive needs assessment and hiring an outside organization with expertise to come in and evaluate a number of things that um we we need to look at in the district okay so you can see there's a very specific plan for that you can see board members that the financial implications in general are minimal although if you see at the very end of it there's a determination about additional staffing right facility work different things that may come out of this process that will be identified that may be moderate and when they say moderate probably with an expense of ten thousand to a hundred thousand dollars

017to significant which are usually projects that we think will cost over a hundred thousand dollars okay so that's basically goal one okay goal two okay so basically this goal is about supporting our students who are working their way towards their post-secondary plans whether it's college or other types of educational experiences or moving out into work so the bottom line is that in particular the college admissions process has changed dramatically for a variety of reasons the the rise of the common app the fact that so many students choose between 15 to 20 colleges a lot of cases to apply to because they're not sure if they'll get in um the uncertainty created by the pandemic the fact that there was a number of students who basically sat out college for a year to take a gap

018year until they decide to return to school so it would be more of a normal college experience a variety of things have led to a lot of competition for college placement and so the goal here is to put our students in the best possible position by taking action across the district that will help with college admissions okay so here's of the specifics of the plan and the the general idea is that we would form committees including guidance counselors principals assistant principals staff parents and board members we did that already this spring to address an issue with the calculation of gpa and so that's part of this goal that was already accomplished but then there's some other things that we might need to do one of the things that we also did in building up towards

019this goal was working with interviewing and talking to our guidance department to see what their needs were and what might be helpful for them so they themselves identified many of them are our younger guidance counselors early in their career many of them identified the need for a guidance supervisor so that's also something we're going to evaluate and whether that fits in the budget we're also looking to enhance our program of studies for both of our high schools to greater explain the benefits of different classes and to look at what we might be able to do better with our program of studies and um the other the other part of it which is in process is evaluating student outcomes based on community internships so in other words college or high school students looking for college placements

020benefit greatly if on their college application they can show that they have an internship so what was once something that happens when you're in college go for an internship it's now something that's pushed down to the high school level so if there's a particular major that you're interested in or if there's something that you really want to learn about um an internship is a great way to do that so we've been forming partnerships with a number of businesses in the community that will provide our students with really high quality internship experiences okay so goal three previously parents have raised the issue about the extended day and can extend today programs be extended to the middle school level that's been a topic in wayne for many years the other area where parents have requested extended day

021is at the early childhood center so the preakness early childhood center currently does not have an extended day and so at this point what we want to do is evaluate the model see what kind of interest is out there for our parents and then if it makes sense it's warranted we'd like to go ahead and establish some additional extended day programs either on our own or perhaps with other organizations that run extended day programs so that's that goal and there's the specific plan for it so um you can see the survey which was already completed um we know there's interest out there and then we'll go ahead with what that what the program would look like because an elementary extended day program is going to be different than a middle school extended day program right

022so we want to make sure that we have a great extended day program for our students and something that is affordable for our parents okay so another goal we have for the upcoming year is to evaluate learning management systems to enhance the learning process and probably should say teaching learning process but it's also very helpful for teachers to be able to take all the resources a lot of our instruction is delivered using computer and the ability to put all these resources together and to be able to also do things like take attendance and evaluate test scores and things like that have a gradebook all in one platform is an enormous help learning management system offers a lot of advantages and so the whole idea is that we will look at these different learning management systems

023and identify one that works best for the district or keep what we have which is google classroom although it's not really a learning management system um our staff members are very accustomed to using that along with other programs but it's not fully integrated okay so there's our process again this presentation will be available online goal five has to do with the pandemic recovery and what this is um for any of you who are educators the multi-tiered system of supports is not something that is new in education it's something that's been out there and something that we have here in wayne that we've been starting to work on last year we provide professional development and got our start this year we really want to make sure that we're in a great position to deliver services because

024we know that many of our students after evaluating test scores and after looking at a variety of different subgroups and their performance on the student learning assessments we know that they are not where they were in prior years so the administration got a start with this at our retreat where we basically evaluated test scores and looked at where our students are and um we know that we're going to need to target services for our students and provide everything that we possibly can to get them back to where they need to be and at this point this is the best way to get there okay so there's our plan and as you can see most of the plan has no cost or a minimal cost and a good part of it can be grant funded so

025i think that the actual impact on our budget is probably almost non-existent right and that's the report so thank you very much board members do you have any questions anything you'd like to talk about regarding the goals okay next board meeting i'll have the the referendum goal back but we have to talk a little bit more about that timeline okay that's it okay you're good right now mrs good evening everyone as miss put up and dr toback indicated earlier i'm here to share some information about the new health and pe standards physical education and the instructional lessons that were crafted by our curriculum teams this summer we do have a requirement to meet these standards and it was really important that we involved our teachers our counselors and our pe teachers health teachers and our

026school nurses just wanted to make sure i didn't leave anybody out i also think it's important for me to just emphasize that we have been listening to all the comments and information that you've been sharing a lot of familiar faces here and this is an important topic to so many of you we have let's talk available it's healthmp is listed as a trending topic and several people have written in it's really helpful to us to gather this information that way because we can produce an analytics report and then you'll be able to see how the community feels the information specifically that was communicated to us and this could be reported back out to you when we receive individual emails it's hard for us to share because you want to respect people's privacy this is a

027nice way for people to give impact input and feedback and then for us to be reflective and and really consider what is most important to the community overall dr tobak shared earlier also that no action will be taken tonight my goal tonight is to walk you through the presentation so that you can then go home and i also know that many people cannot be here tonight but i want you to have an opportunity to open up the lessons look at the information carefully there are a lot of videos stories that were embedded this would take time and and then communicate and share your feedback with us we will sit down for the next two weeks go through all the feedback and we will be very transparent in reporting back what comes to us through let's

028talk so that you can see overall what the sentiment of the community is and also important to note i just wanted to remind everyone that there is an opt-out option available for students for any of these lessons let me get started when we developed the lessons we considered the age and the developmental appropriateness of all these lessons we had elementary and middle school teachers working with us this summer i mentioned who was involved but that's just listed up here for you to see these standards were revised in 2020 and we're responsible for implementation this fall i know some people did write in and ask you had two years this is a sensitive topic this was not something that we were going to do haphazardly it was not something that we would do without community input

029these are your children and many of our children many of the teachers who participated in this summer work our parents in our community it was really nice to have their input and involvement we were also promised resources from the state and us along with our neighboring districts around the state were waiting to see what was presented to us it did not meet us with satisfaction and based on all the information that we were able to gather we wanted to take a time to develop our own lessons identifying resources that we thought really um met the standard in a way that was reasonable and that people would be comfortable with and and then at their discretion can make determinations about opt-outs any of these lessons are either taught in one class and in some cases two

030most of them are one class i know some people asked about this the this is not clickable right here it's just an indication that anything that's in red gives you access to the scripted lesson plan and as a direct link to the resources so this one's not clickable but when you move forward this is grade one and right here this shows you there's two standards that are listed here and if you click on lesson families and family support it will take you to two lessons for grade one and these are the standards that they're trying to meet describe different kinds of families locally nationally and globally and note similarities in the way in which they keep their children safe explain the ways in which parents may care for their offspring animals people and fish my

031plan tonight is not to open every lesson there are videos embedded but to show you how to access them and then for you to take the next few weeks to go through them thoroughly take a look at what is in there and if you need me to demonstrate then i'll go back and open something if that would be helpful they just um right now want you to see overall collectively what we're rolling out grade two right here you'll see there's four different lessons the red indicates where you can click on the lesson there's culture and expression this really just in an age-appropriate way focuses on different cultures and how people may be different and you know that we celebrate differences in cultural and expression animal reproduction when we talk about reproduction animals are used and

032it's a way for second graders to be able to identify that that feels very much appropriate for their age level body systems and anatomy grade four is um there's no changes from previous years we have always provided a lesson on puberty parents had an option to opt out and nothing has changed this just is a topic that is sensitive with some people and i wanted to include anything that may be questionable or people have concerns about and anything that we're offering an opt-out option for grade five in grade five you'll see right here there's four lessons this was a template i know there were questions people wrote in about the last it says health now the last post-it we used a template because it was a educationally friendly way to share out the information this

033one has a lesson creating a community in the classroom ime health boundaries there's one about reproduction and one about pregnancy i i would encourage everybody who is interested to go through look at the presentations that are in there look at the resources look at the activities and if there's anything that makes anyone uncomfortable that you have additional questions share your feedback this is this is a work in progress the last grade that is addressed is eighth grade this was a presentation that had been used the only revision to this instructional lesson is on slide 10. so that was the only change that was made that concludes the the lessons overall so as you can see there's only a handful of lessons and there's a qr code or you can go right onto the website go

034to let's talk and it'll take you to the page it'll take you to the trending topic and that's where you can share your feedback if you have questions board members i'm happy to respond again it would be challenging tonight to open up every lesson but we wanted to make sure by releasing the presentation yesterday that you had an opportunity to start looking at it and if you wanted to share thoughts or concerns or ideas tonight and over the next few weeks we'll just monitor and gather up your feedback and then we can produce a report thank you madam president um mrs freischmann i heard dr toback mentioned that you're going to go over the let's talk feedback um and then you'll come to a conclusion on the 7th the board meeting is on the 8th

035when will the board receive the feedback and a plan for any changes uh when will we know what the decision is it seems like it's cutting it too close to keep the open feedback until the seventh it should be cut off just a little sooner so that you can compile your decisions presented to us and then bring it to the uh board meeting we could we could take that and it just seemed the timeline seemed a little we wanted to allow as much time as possible knowing it's the start of the school year but we can certainly um scale that back or what we could do is we could share information it comes to in stages okay however you want to handle it thank you another question um to piggyback on what ms kazan said

036because i do think it is important that we do get feedback from the public um instead of because the earliest would be eighth grade the last week of health for them in the first market period correct and then grades the elementary school grades would be the third trimester after memorial day which was we spoke about at a previous board vet meeting i don't want to run out of time is there a way that we could then take action on this at the second september meeting instead of september 8th i think the thing to do is yeah we could i think it's probably a decision to make down the road we'll see what feedback we get and then the board doesn't have to take action if on the eighth the board says listen we'd like more

037time then that's fine you know we could pull if there's an agenda and we can pull it so let's see how things go see what kind of feedback we get and if the board would like more time we'd be happy to obviously it's really up to the board at that point you could determine that you don't want us to rush through this yeah no and i'm sorry uh with with all the feedback that committee will be meeting again possibly we meet on the yeah on the 8th okay thank you yes mr sackos just curious over the last 52 hours that this presentation was available do you have any indication that you could give us of how many let's talk submissions have been related to this topic um i received three oh okay okay uh any

038other questions i receive one email and three let's talk okay all right thank you very much all right okay i'm not yet okay moving right along revisions to the agenda please mr moffatt we have several i'll start reading them it's the under end human resources and one approval of resignations and retirements we're going to add number 24 katie and i'll spell the last name v-e-n-t-r-e-l-l-a which is an ldtc at anthony wayne middle school pc number 01-33-12 backslash cri account number eleven triple zero two nineteen dash uh triple zero 219-104-17-008 step nine ma-30 at seventy five thousand seven hundred and five hundred seventy dollars resignation at uh october fifteenth twenty twenty two under n three which is approval of leave requests we're adding number five which is employee id number six eight six six math scms

039pc number zero one three one dash one nine backlash apw illness illness days 91 2022 through 9 30 20 22 f m l a slash njfla 10 3 2022 through 12 22 2022 unpaid with benefits next one is n5 approval of revised items again under human resources number 17 will be revising employee id number is 8884 revised start date of leave to 9 1 20 22 using illness days and six approval of appointment of district staff will revise the following under number 16 hannah again spell last name b-a-l-c-r we're revising that from an ltr kindergarten rc to ltr grade 3 rc full year 9 1 2022 through june 30 2023 with family benefits salary remains the same we'll be adding number 54. amanda last name is s-e-r-e-k long-term replacement kindergarten td step one ba at

040a salary of fifty four thousand three hundred and thirty dollars prorated and that will then read september 1 2022 through november 23 2022 pc number 01-02-49 backslash afl account number 11-110-100-101-06-00 with individual benefits replacing uh id number five five zero eight uh which is at sixty five thousand uh seventy dollars it's step eight m a on the wa salary guide we'll be also adding number 55 chloe last name is n-o-r-e-l-l music r c r y step 5 ba salary of 57 470 with benefits pc number 01-01-21 backslash ash at a 0.6 and account number 11-120-100-101-05 that's next is the next pc number is pc number 01-10-21 backslash ebx at 0.4 account number 11 triple i'm sorry 11-120-100-100-10-triple zero replacing hannah spelling the last name s-v-e-n-d-s-e-n at a salary of fifty six thousand one hundred and

041twenty step four ba of the wea salary guide adding uh also 56 uh first name is spelled s-h-r-u-t-h-i last name is spelled k-r-i-s-h-n-a a m u r t h y l t r math s c m s step one b a salary of 54 330 prorated with individual benefits that's from 91 2022 through 1223 2022 pc number is 03-31-19 backslash apw account number 11-130-100 pending certification replacing employee id number 6866 at a salary of 78370 step 10 ma30 of the wea salary guide again under human resources and 15 increase in assignment excuse me 0.6 1.00 okay back to human resources uh on item number n15 increase in assignment we'll be adding a number seven which is uh david drazrak who's d-r-o-z-j-o-c-k assistant principal athletics a full-time equivalent of one wayne valley high school pc number

042zero two dash four one dash four two backslash dtu account number 11-00-222 to direct i'm sorry to district assistant principal in charge of athletics and that'll be 11 000 for each of the three seasons moving on to executive session items that come out under legal we have r one which is going to read wtaa sidebar agreement the recommended action is as follows now therefore be it resolved that the wayne township board of education approves the sidebar agreement dated august 16 2022 between the wayne township board of education and the wayne township administrators association to revise article 7 section a to add paragraph 5 district assistant principal in charge of athletics as discussed in executive session and further authorizes the board president and secretary to execute same on behalf of the board the business administrator and

043superintendent authorized to take all further steps required by the terms of the settlement to further implement same we'll be adding number two again r2 wea sidebar agreement and that reads as follows now therefore be it resolve that the wayne township board of education approves a sidebar agreement dated august 9 20 22 between the wayne township board of education and the wayne education association with respect to revision of schedule c1 adding high school coordinator of athletics and student activities as discussed in executive session and further authorizes the board president and secretary to execute execute same on behalf of the board the business administrator and superintendent are authorized to take all further steps required by the terms of settlement to further implement same and lastly we'll be adding number three r3 under approval of hip determination that

044action reads as follows resolve at the board of firm the superintendent's decision on hiv case number 149 slash 2021-2022 following an appeal as required by njsa 18a colon 37-15 parentheses b parentheses six parentheses e that concludes all the changes to tonight's agenda thank you mr moffitt this portion of the meeting is open to citizens for comment on agenda items only residents are able to state their names addresses and subject matter comments may be limited to three minutes per person members of the public are discouraged from speaking negatively about an employee or a student the board bears no responsibility for comments made by the public comments regarding employees or students cannot be legally responded to by the board other comments may be responded to this evening or at a subsequent meeting under old business thank you

045do i have a mover mr fatale second this is kazan all right good evening administration members of the board i'm here to talk a little about the cross the line activity in the fifth grade lesson me plan could you state your name wilson alaquin wayne thank you and um i did go over the new uh updated plans so i'm gonna talk about the fifth grade lesson plan portion of it the activity game and now i don't know if it was part of the old lesson or included in the updated one to be honest with you but what i do know is that it's pretty inappropriate and i generally am curious if anyone can tell me the benefits that this activity this game you know does for the kids um because when i was reading it

046it actually kind of felt more like a therapy session than a fifth grade assignment and uh look i get it you want kids to be accepting and have compassion for everyone in every circumstance so do i but this is not the way not even close and i'm saying says one of the kids who this type of activity would have affected when i was 10 years old [Music] you see i was a kid whose family didn't have a lot of money i was a kid who was raised by a single mother and i was a kid who was picked on you know due to a speech impediment and do you think that this stuff that was on those questions to step forward move back is something i would have wanted to do in front of a

047whole classroom full of kids um definitely not i'll tell you that so um some things i saw on there is why does everyone in the class need to know if a child's parents are divorced separated or never married why do they need to know who raised who was raped by a single parent why do they need to know who has a family member with an invisible disability has anyone considered that a child whose parents could possibly be going through a divorce at that very moment when they're doing this lesson uh where's that sorry you know what about a parent who uh a child was there and they had a parent that passed away and they're hitting your ass move forward move backwards um there's a few things the or the child who knows the struggles

048of the family that uh they go through when dealing with a family member who has a disability reliving something like that of that sensitive subject or a very private matter in front of a whole classroom is unacceptable and to be honest with you it's just no one's business throwing in instant lines like you like fruity pebbles or you like mint chocolate chip ice cream does not hide the fact that many of these questions are inappropriate in a public classroom setting having a kid state that they are picked on last while they were picked last for sports or games in front of any everyone that's kind of demoralizing um this activity i don't know just it just stood out to me and it could easily open the door for bullying teas and also drive a child

049further in isolation has no one else noticed that the more we try to apply and dig into every aspect of his kids lives in school the worse the mental health crisis is getting this isn't just an opinion it's a fact look at the data it's showing children or um we're in the middle of a mental health crisis one that is just getting worse and worse every single year and to be honest with you when it comes to teaching acceptance like i feel this was the point of i think everyone kind of just needs to take a step back and get back to teaching the golden rule treat others as you want to be treated thank you hi um i'm sorry excuse me um we don't normally um respond during public comment yes but in this

050particular case we thought perhaps some other parents had that same question i know we've heard feedback about that particular activity yes and so maybe it makes sense now for us to just address that okay that's okay with you that would be terrific thank you maria could you just have a seat for a moment please okay thank you dr toback mrs reichman mr eloquent thank you for for sharing your your input um i think when the it was an activity that a suggested activity um and again all of this um was put together and with an opportunity for revisions and input and feedback so it's very helpful to hear this information because you hear from a different perspective and i loved hearing what you had to say about how it would have impacted you i think

051the perspective was that children could be just listen and and be able to see that there are differences that people have different backgrounds that they you're showing respect for all different types and recognizing but none of the activities suggested activities that are there have to stay there this is an opportunity to gather this information and hear these perspectives and you shared some very insightful information about how it would have impacted you and we will take all this back so thank you there was another comment so we appreciate that i just wonder that that's that's an activity that we can easily remove from the lesson the other part is that cross line itself is a game that's played all the time everywhere it's played in corporate icebreakers it's played in classrooms and but i do agree

052with you that the questions do matter the other thing that when when a teacher uses a game such as cross the line there's also ways the teachers now um they don't necessarily need to call or have a situation where student feels that they've been called out so many teachers use a game like this but it's done anonymously so it's easy to do that we have software and staff members can use software to make sure that the responses from the students are done are recorded anonymously to share the same information but but it's done anonymously so there's no sharing thank you for your patience nobody hi maria deluca wayne new jersey first i wanted to thank the administration the members of the board and the teachers who participated in the creation of wayne's health education curriculum

053it's clear that those involved not only listened to the concerns of the community but were able to successfully incorporate the state requirements into the curriculum in a thoughtful way frankly the outcome was largely what i expected the health education curriculum written by education professionals containing age-appropriate lessons that meet the state of new jersey requirements so much of the conversation over the last year has been driven by parents worst fears without any tangible information specific to our town now that we have the opportunity to review the long waited curriculum i think most of the people have more of a comfort level with the material being presented i know that everyone does not agree with every approach to public information and public education but i do believe that all parents in our community want the best for

054their children that being said there is a a proposed lesson while well-meaning could have some unintended negative consequences for students the cross-the-line exercise as written has the potential to make some students feel uncomfortable or singled out and could potentially open the door to possible bullying i believe the message behind the exercise is valuable and would suggest that the lesson be presented an alter in an alternative way through a video of the game or through role-playing cards or through some anonymous way rather than having an actual student's real-life experience be part of the game itself the discussion after the game is where the real value comes from and to play after all lastly i wanted to thank those members of the board of education and the community who did not rush to judgment over a curriculum

055that had not yet been written your measured approach allowed for the creation of a compliant curriculum free from the threat of state penalties which could have jeopardized much needed funding for programs that benefit our children i hope that the curriculum i i hope that this circumstance serves as a model for for the future and that the board of ed and the community refrain from rushing to judgment based on hearsay or information from organizations and communities outside of wayne that this time is long overdue for our town to come together and work in a united way to benefit our children after all we can achieve much more as a united community my name is roger gunnels uh 22 loudly ave and that's when you write your thing it's two ends and guns make sure you remember

056that um so i'm just going to address something real quick from from behind us uh this whole game across the line the only thing that's crossed the line is the wayne school system it's none of the school's business about any of the questions that are being asked it's none of your business period end of discussion that's it i want to go and clarify that before we go any further don't be asking kids and interrogating kids on stuff at home it's not your business as we can see from the previous presentations parents have sadly transitioned from a fan of the school system to playing goalie against the school system hell-bent on destroying the american family opt out or not school systems are contaminating the minds of children with material that is sexually appropriate lays blame on

057them for past practices of slavery but fall woefully short of confessing that slavery impacted all people not just one particular group school systems are also promoting material that violates every possible biological and natural law this material does however make those who have chosen to take a less natural path in life feel much better about their choices it's all about feelings isn't it just but no facts just feelings at the direction of this school system children are being exposed to facts and lies you can't teach facts in one class and lies in another you just can't but i guess we're going to i guess we're going to make an effort to next when it cuts so there's this new thing called the governor murphy's got this new thing called a threat assessment team i think this

058school system owes an explanation to everybody about what their intentions are at this third assessment team because from the research i've done on it it doesn't sound like a good idea having read about this threat assessment team this is nothing more this is nothing more than effort to interrogate children regarding what goes on at home and spin it into a narrative that will be able to red flag parents if i find out that my children are being interrogated and pumped for information every legal avenue will be taken to hold this school board accountable for their inappropriate actions good evening my name is uh christian sees 16 claremont terrace here in beautiful wayne new jersey how much time do i have i'm just kidding i'm not going to take over three hours so i um i

059have a daughter who went through the school system here in wayne she's a sophomore in college i have a son who's a senior in high school at wayne hills and i have another son who's going in the sixth grade at scholar colfax we've finally graduated out of grammar school here in wayne which is pretty exciting so um i just want to make a few comments about the the the single a.d solution that we're adopting this isn't about the individual at all i want that to be clear i'm very excited for the individual it's going to be and i think that leads me into my next comment which is you know what happened if it doesn't work out for that individual when we have two ads at bolt schools there could be one um to cover

060for the other god forbid something happens or someone decides to to leave the district now i just think we're putting ourselves at a little bit of risk if we're going to have just a single id for the district if that person decides to retire or move on or win the lottery please don't let them play the lottery it puts us in a predicament and i i understand you know each administrator plays an important part in in the organization of the school system you know the ad one is just they they do a lot they do a lot and to to you know i think there's some inherent challenges with taking one good a d and splitting him in half and i understand they're supporting roles coming on board which is great but it's not the

061same as having an a.d in the building there's a lot that needs to get done i know everyone is very focused on the the academic side it's amazing what you learned from athletics as well and how many kids are in a participant in athletic activities one thing i think that would be great to understand and i'm not looking for an answer right now but you know what's going to be the test to determine is this has this been a successful venture when do we when do we take that test when do we look and say okay you know what this idea we have here it's working let's continue or you know what our children aren't better off than they were maybe we do need to go back to a dual a.d solution and whether that's

062a you know a year from now whatever it is it would be great to understand what that what that looks like um but i do appreciate everyone's time reviewing this on the administration's time and efforts and putting together a solution for for the town of wayne we have a great school system here we've got a great athletic programs if you look at the niche ratings and just google it i mean both schools are highly rated um i just really hope it continues that way for selfless reasons because i think sports are pretty damn awesome so thank you very much for your time i appreciate it cindy simon ratzer road um i actually want to speak to the district goals one and two first of all i'm really glad to see goals involving on the educational

063experience of our students with disabilities as well as a goal to address post-secondary education for the first goal i agree with evaluating and improving our programs i always agree with doing that for any programs having said that this goal doesn't go far enough if you ask me about my experiences as a student with a disability in wayne school my first reaction is to remember the taunting i went through and the way that some well-meaning adults made the situations worse and or denied me opportunities or lowered expectations of that kind of stuff i wish you could say my experiences are from the relics of history especially since my son reminds me every day how old i am and short i am um however i know from speaking to my children and speaking to other parents my

064experience is still on occasion do occur to students with disabilities in the district when it comes to students with disabilities we need a goal that integrates them into the community in all ways possible educating with students with disabilities is not simply about programs for students with disabilities it's about how children with disabilities who are in regular education classrooms are viewed by their classmates and teachers and other staff members it's about how children perceive themselves and their fellow students or in special education classes use the resource room get extra time on tests or go out of class for speech ot or whatever else it is about giving our regular education teachers coaches those who run extracurricular activities the knowledge they need to provide the most positive experience possible for all of our children including those with

065disabilities as for the second goal and post-secondary life the board is a solid start here more time needs to be spent on the question of college affordability because time is short i will only address one example here make sure we make staffing decisions that support helping our students improve their chances of getting into their chosen schools and earning scholarships to this end and to speak to what the gentleman just spoke to in terms of the athletic director situation please have some kind of standard that we can use to measure whether this is working out for our student athletes thank you oh shoot ryan battishill 63km drive um i'm a little disappointed that three of the board unable to be here but i think that's indicative of the problem that we have of trying to get

066through important topics at this time of year when there's a lot of vacations and a lot of things that people have to do outside of the board i think is one of the most important aspects that we've been talking about for two years to get to this point and then find out i know there's going to be another meeting after this and maybe another meeting after that and so on but i think it is important that we consider whether or not this short period of time that we're providing is enough time for all parents to be able to get in and get hold of that with that the the 52 hours that the um the curriculum has been available online some of that has been available without the link being on the board docs they

067disappeared this morning for some reason um i saved the link i think there's been the the tap into was probably the first time that i saw that something went out other than people finding it because people were pinging the board to try and see if it was there so rather than going through an organic process to get parents to find out this i'd recommend that you use your email list and try and get it out there so that people can see i think it's an important enough topic that we've talked about for long enough to be able to get that out and with that the let's talk app i don't know how many other submissions i've heard of many many more submissions i know that i personally have put two in so i've got to

068believe there's more than one other parent that has put one in so like um i've heard of people just in the time since you've said that where they've said they've put three four five six in so either something's going missing in the next twelfth app or they're not getting through to you as well um so that's concerning um i also think it's concerning that the board doesn't get to see all of the submissions that come through they get summarized they get held up from the board being able to go through and see them i don't think that helps the transparency to the board to yourselves to the parents of being able to go through and get that to happen i understand there may be some things in there that you want to remove because they

069are sensitive parents being very upset that kind of stuff like that would make sense but i think the border being adults are probably capable of doing that even if you want to want to share that other than a summary back to the public but i would like a little more transparency onto the things that are going into the let saw cap because that doesn't seem to be necessarily marrying with the the rest of the things i was going to talk a lot about the cross the line um i think there was a lot of very concerning questions in there i'm glad to see that you're going back to look over that and make a decision over where that's going to go and how that's going to be done i think that's good use of the

070feedback that we've got i would say dr tobeck that if you're recording the information that comes back out of that that would turn it into a survey if it's a survey there's a lot more laws and stuff that we need to go through to be able to ensure that you're not recording and keeping that information on the students especially around subsequent topics so i would recommend that we don't go through and record it maybe a slip of the tongue that you were talking about at the time but recording information is not a good thing for this i'd be very upset with the fact that we started recording whether or not people had um whether or not they were having issues with things and so on as well without parents consent excuse me i'm sorry mr

071battershell your time is up that's okay i expected it okay thank you all right good evening my name is norman robertson i'm a wayne resident just a couple of really quick points [Music] from many years in government i can tell you if you don't want if you want to have the least response or the least attendance at a meeting or the least input from the general public have the meeting in mid-august everybody knows that i'm sure you probably everybody here said well i'll be on vacation on such and such three of the of the nine of you aren't here uh and that would have been an important thing for them to see so august is a bad month mike vitale is right there he is mike vitale is right when he says don't rush into

072it really consider it but make sure that you generate the public input that will allow you to consider it i think it would only be fair to this group especially to let them know that the meeting number one in september 8th will be here and not in the conference room where it's scheduled we had a problem with that last year and and people need to be able to ask questions and if they have to go lesson plan through lesson plans that's exactly what they should do a lot of people thought some of that was going to be done tonight but it wasn't i mean you have something called let's talk but irony of ironies there's no talking involved you know there's no exchange of ideas you have a group of folks who get up here

073for their three minutes and that's about it on something that a lot of people around this town and this country think is one of the most important issues facing facing the nation what's going to happen to their first and second graders when they go to school uh wilson aliquin was right when he was talking about uh the fifth grade lesson plan as was the gentleman who talked about it i i'm i'm just shocked to think that someone some little some child is going to be put on the spot about what's happening in their home that's just wrong it's just wrong and i don't i don't quite know how you do it uh you know anonymously i mean you don't put a bag over your head and take a step forward just take a step back

074and i've heard of these programs before and all it does is put somebody center stage in a group of young people who don't always have a reputation of being kind we should be spending our time teaching kindness rather than providing ammunition for unkind people and that's something that you really should consider very very carefully but let the let the people ask the question when you have it on september 8th don't just give us another powerpoint presentation because when you get when you get so many you start thinking that powerpoint means something different we have the power get the point and we don't want that we want nothing more than to be able to fully trust the board to fully trust the administration we love every teacher there but we do have concerns about comes from

075leadership thank you thank you black oak ridge road i feel like i'm in twilight zone i cannot believe that the governor is sending down a program that has pornography in it has has children being taught how to masturbate has children uh being put on the spot about things that are taught in their house or what goes on in their home so i started looking for motivations and of course what's the first one politics uh i-m-h-o s-e-l-c-r-t-d-e-i are solutions for problems that don't exist i've told you i'm an immigrant my family was never kept from going anywhere doing anything achieving anything or acquiring anything that americans families could not once is there pornography in that in this program absolutely i just thought they're going to be taught how to masturbate i took this book out of

076the library okay i know that there that the everything that's going on here is gonna be filled with pornography because this book aside from the pornographic pictures in it and it's written in cartoon form has these instructions on how to commit suicide okay from our library here here he is rolling up his sleeve here he is opening up a blood red pocket knife okay and here he is making a vertical cut on his wrist vertical got it vertical a vertical cut on from our library here i took it out don't tell me there's no pornography don't tell me you're not going to be teaching sexualizing children well they're still too young to be sexualized don't be telling me when there's stuff like this in our library you know what i haven't heard i haven't heard

077until tonight yeah power you've got the power get the point first time i heard how to increase math scores english scores language scores music i haven't heard any of that all i've heard is oh these four these poor immigrants these poor people of color of woo these poor lgbtq xyz all right what else are you doing with your life get out there get an education and get moving we don't need to feel sorry for anybody nobody felt sorry for me and i told you what my son does for a living that's it hello good evening to everybody i'm eileen daniel and i live on valley road here in wayne um i have to say that i respect all of you here the administration the members of the board the teachers the school nurses but i

078still would like to say what i want to say okay [Music] you are all in a very unique very important enviable or unenviable position to partner with the parents of this community to take care of their children's present in terms of education and their safety in school to provide a good future for these children and i don't think that the curriculum that we are trying you are trying to push is the way to do it i am a believer i'm not ashamed of that and i'm gonna code thank you i'm gonna quote from the bible you may think that i'm a scripture um a bible scripture uh memorizing lunatic after tonight but i will say this jeremiah 1 verse 1 chapter 1 verse 5 says before i formed thee in the belly i knew thee

079and before thou comest forth out of the womb i sanctified thee and i ordained thee a prophet for all the nations our children are not guinea pigs for a social experiment please don't destroy the children they are too young all this great grade two grade five grade eight please i don't have kids i have two four-legged fur babies and yet i am very concerned at the direction the education system is going i live in this community so i i have a stake here in this community um [Music] i respect you like i said god bless you and know that i will be praying for all of you [Applause] hello everybody mark faber from wayne i know that in the past we had questions about whether this curriculum was going to carry over into other aspects

080of the uh the class we had questions about whether or not this was going to carry over into other aspects of the teaching that wasn't addressed it said that there were going to be a few classes but i want to talk to you about something that happened with my daughter this year she's in sixth grade going into seventh and they read a book in her class called unwind and i'm not sure if you're familiar with the book but it's i guess on the approved reading list and basically it's a book that says the second civil war in the united states was fought over abortion rights and the compromise that they came to was that no children would be aborted at birth however the parents could send them to unwind camps as teenagers where their body

081parts would then be recycled and given to other children so in that they got a little bit like maybe a quarter of the way through the book and the teacher finally said you know what i don't think this is appropriate when somebody asked what's abortion so sixth grade it's not in the curriculum and that's a question that came up in the classroom now i don't blame the teacher because she hadn't read the book and i actually respect the teacher tremendously and she did stop reading the book but you can see why i might be concerned that it's not supposed to be in the lesson plan potentially until eighth grade but my daughter heard about it in school in sixth grade so we'd like to know more about how you're going to keep this curriculum from

082creeping into other aspects of the teaching that goes on day to day because i will be opting out of it and i don't want my daughters to have to hear it in some other avenue next question i have is how is it possible that we have all of the teachers that are working on building this curriculum and it took parents to give you the perspective that that that activity is questionable and something that is probably not appropriate for children these are experts that are supposed to be teaching our children that have degrees in how to manage children and ra you know help do all this stuff yet they failed to see the fact that that would possibly cause some unintended consequences that's a concern for me that maybe they're not taking parents perspective into account

083and they're trying to teach whatever they're trying to meet requirements but they're not seeing it through the eyes of children or the eyes of their parents and i think that that's something that really should be required of the people that are doing this that they have to have a sense of understanding as to what can come out of the actions and the classes and the lessons that they're teaching because you know i mean second grade teaching you know that boys have these parts and girls have these parts in animal sex i mean i didn't learn about those things until much later on i don't understand why because you know what's going to happen all of a sudden they're going to start oh let me see what you have they're not going to know that there's

084something wrong with it it's going to be their curiosity oh you have something different than me let me see you're starting a path of you know things that are going to have major impacts on these children's mental state going down the line i'm sorry mr faber your time i could talk in the next section uh i have a question i'm whatever just a gentleman said couple minutes ago with regards opening the curriculum i really had a hard time and i was trying from yesterday click click click and i felt like oh my gosh there's something hidden here or what and i couldn't really open anything like when i'm reading article everything is exposed here i felt like everything is hidden and i couldn't read and find what i wanted so i was not able to

085really find what people are telling me what is written there so is there is a way we can do different ways so actually i am supporting the fact to do the survey because it's easier i'm a working mom and it's i'm trying on my break at work to look to check and i'm like i cannot open i cannot open if there is a way we can do a little different way or the survey i think the survey would be nice and better because a lot of people i feel don't are similar to me that they cannot don't have that much time to go and rook and try opening couple times i don't know maybe i'm just not a technology person i don't know thank you [Applause] hi everyone my name is barbara madam president it's

086it's been a half hour i'd like to extend the public portion to give other residents the opportunity to continue talking do i have a second mr prasakos thank you um wait a minute i'm sorry just a moment point of information mr moffatt is a roll call required okay excuse me we have to that's okay so i'd like to say hi to everyone my name is brian sorry we have to take a vote oh my goodness come on already mr moffitt right so motion was to extend the 30 minute portion was there a time extension or was it did you extend it for amount of time i did not i just want to give everybody an opportunity to talk okay and that was mr priscilla's second so i'll take roll mr duffy yes mr fatale yes

087mrs kazan yes mrs kumar yes uh mr prosaccos yes and uh mrs puttup yes motion passes thank you please proceed hi my name is barbara rigoloso i've been a resident of wayne for about 36 years i've raised seven children here six sons and a daughter and i have two grandchildren that live in wayne as well um i think the success of my kids comes from the fact that the parents the board the teachers the coaches we all work together we all work together there was no division there was no arguing there was no uh craziness fighting this has to stop this is not good for anybody it's not good for the town it's not good for new red people new families moving in they're concerned the new families are concerned about sending their kids the

088wayne public schools because there's just too much too much too fast i wanted to talk about the game just like everyone else does the game's got to go the game is not for it's not a game first of all divorce single parents disabilities that's not a game to a child no that's not a game it's shameful school is supposed to be a place where you gather with your friends you eat lunch you talk about the kind of sandwich you have you talk about what you did at football or chorus or band that's what school is about that's where you can be an individual no one wants to stand up their kids are embarrassed when they're from uh when they have a disability kids are embarrassed when they come from a family that doesn't speak english

089my parents were immigrants you know i always used to look over and see the american parents you know uh bringing ice cream to the class why my mother was um an immigrant who sewed in a factory nine hours a day and i always used to say what would it be like to be a child of a um an american mom so what i want to say is the game is not a game the game is dangerous um it would be like me i'm going to give you a visual like i give my kids when they when i i don't know what else to do with them i'm going to give you a vigil visual so all you guys here if you're married step to the left if you're happily married step to the right if

090you have a disability two steps forward if you're sexually active two steps back doesn't that feel good it's a i'm playing a game it's not a corporate icebreaker because corporate icebreaker and playground is two different things everybody wants to be accepted that game is not going to cause any acceptance that game is dangerous i promise after what the kids have been through at co with the kovid they're scared they're confused they want to come back to school they want to be a class they want to take their class picture they want to have a field day and sda and graduation and all the good things that come with the school experience this stuff is not i want to see the the data from the state or from psychiatrists or psychologists or doctors that says cross

091the line is a good game because i think it's not excuse me just saying excuse me i'm sorry time's up got it thank you very much pamela masik nice to see another mom of seven here that have raised their kids the you know with values and you know gearing them towards a life of success i had a question the superintendent talked about an outside organization that was going to come in to review our student needs a lot of us became aware of uh or miss tamika reese that came in last year and we didn't know about it and that that's what cracked this whole thing open in a big way we'd like to know ahead of time who are who is this organization or what is it who's on who's involved and we want to

092know we keep hearing that parents are a part of these committees parents are aware um all the people that i'm hundreds on facebook social media communicating with everybody seems clueless we don't know until after the fact so we'd like to know ways that we can know prior to who are you considering especially uh some of the needs that were talked about between ten thousand and a hundred thousand for costs uh you know i'm trying to connect the dots and i have a better understanding so if there can be more transparency and um more information given to us before your you you hire these these groups uh the same thing with committees that was on the first goal the second goal had to do with committees being formed talking about parents are on this again and

093again when there's been committees mentioned i know parents that have wanted to be a part of these committees how how can that be can we know how to be a part of these committees that supposedly parents are a part of uh every parent that i know that has spoken with me hasn't wasn't a part of it hasn't been able to be a part of it i understand that there's a concern with this curriculum uh that the health curriculum about losing points i think it's cusack but why not just offer the information at the end of the school year if you feel that it's a state requirement and you're afraid to lose those points why should parents have to opt out and their kids lose class time just have it at the end of the year

094like other schools are doing children there's a continuity left in the school year kids aren't in and out of classes and then they're talking about it you know on the playground or whatever parents are saying save this at the end of the year if you feel there's a requirement and then it's the end of the school year if the kids don't go they're on summer break it's it's not gonna interrupt the the the the flow of academic instruction and healthy social interaction that should be taking place in the school a lot of the information that you're introducing to these children if it was discussed in a work environment could be considered sexual harassment so you are normalizing this com this type of conversation in an academic setting with minors whether it's masturbation anal sex you

095know they're not going to ask you questions and and then there's one of the lessons where you're going to instruct the children who are safe people well just a few years ago there was a counselor that was arrested from wayne valley for you know sexual misconduct with an underage student what's a safe place and isn't it the parents place to decide who and what is safe again these are intimate topics that are being normalized and would be inappropriate to discuss in a professional work environment it just seems like it's common sense and please consider these and my questions thank you thank you esposito woodlot road you know i got here late so i don't know if you addressed it yet can you please address the survey that was sent out by employee of your district

096the head of it all here in wayne an email stating the district had no knowledge of this is not good enough i'm registered to vote and i didn't get an email so where did all the email info come from is she here tonight does she only come when it fits her agenda is she going to come to send the email blast to all the teachers who show up on september 8th to stop the extremists who are attacking schools excuse me yes i'm sorry to interrupt you but this is not an agenda topic oh sorry apologies okay see you later i'm sorry jennifer lee in 48 terrace road two things that i wanted to address um first uh in the beginning of uh the night there was a discussion about how some of the covid protocol

097had changed which i was happy to hear um one of the things that i wanted to address though that i don't think was mentioned was about um substitutes i know that the substitutes for our districts were required to have coveted vaccination in order to work here and i didn't know if that policy was going to change i know people who are substitutes or potential substitutes who are affected by that so um just wanted to hear if there was any change on that um and then the other thing that i wanted to follow up on i realized that it's probably not um on the timeline yet because the staff hasn't yet come back from the summer but i did want to follow up about the cross-curricular implications for the new health standards and if they are

098not going to be used in other areas how will it be addressed with the staff are they being told that they can't access it you know through interdisciplinary strands just to make sure that the opt out truly is an opt-out for those who are choosing that thank you good evening val de jacento um a couple of things i wanted to make another point about the um the curriculum starting later on in the year i had hoped that we would have heard a lot about these lesson plans because i know they were already written not in their finality but certainly to the point where we're close to where we were now that there would have been a couple of weeks of the community having those available to them so they could work out the kinks get

099to all these jumps in in the program you know i've reviewed a little bit of it but there's a number of videos that you have to link to you're not sure all the time that you want to keep it in some contiguous manner so since that didn't happen rather than rushing to the september 8th there another time coming up push it to the end of the or further down so that there's enough time to get all the feedback that you're looking for give the opportunity to the community to really study and see what's coming in so we can make sure that we're not going to find some situations that are going to put people in a position where they feel uncomfortable what's going on with their children this is about children that's what we're all

100here for that's what you're all here for that's what we trust our kids and grandkids too um i think pushing it later is is a great possibility to give that time so that we don't have to rush to a september 8th or maybe the week after time period the other thing is i heard that middletown hasn't is looking at or has passed rather than opt out an opt-in program i reached out to the board president frank capone i haven't heard back from him yet to find out how they did it but i understand that there might have been some legal concerns about whether we could opt out or not but if somebody's able to do it maybe there's a way that we could do that as well i think opting in is a much better

101way to have a say in what your child is going to be doing when you get a form back that says i'm going to allow your child to opt in rather than opt out opting out feels wrong whenever i opt out of something it almost feels like i'm doing something i shouldn't be doing opting in sounds a lot more cohesive i think to a child as well those are my two points for right now thanks brittany coral 36 lawrence road i just want to address again of course the standards that have been presented to us tonight were rather not presented in detail like we were all expecting and just to echo the sentiments of mr battershell first of all first off i think it would be an excellent idea for as another woman spoke because

102she's had such a hard time accessing the presentation and the links if this entire curriculum and every bit of the lesson plan was emailed to every single parent in the wayne school system maybe utilizing the same email list that was used for that survey last week by the wea that would be really nice so that every single person could have a chance to look at it analyze it and decide if it's something that they want their children exposed to that way we'll get really accurate results and we can analyze the data as accurately as possible and secondly i'd just like to say that again this administration has been given opportunity after opportunity to stand up and protect and preserve our children's innocence their childhood and their minds for the time being it seems that we've

103chosen the route of indoctrination the route of grooming the route of sexualizing children in what world is this okay history and science show i'm a nurse i know that sexual introducing sexual content information and images to the developing minds of children can result in disastrous consequences not the least of which is mental illness their minds simply lack the capacity to process the information being thrown at them and why over 25 some odd towns in district in this state have chosen a much less extreme route as others have pointed out they have either chosen to utilize the existing prior standards or provide parents an opportunity to opt in to this instruction either after school or on the last day of school these options are more than satisfactory and meet the required standards for everyone regardless of

104where you fall on this matter madam president uh may i make a motion to take a 10-minute recess i'm sorry that's it hasn't been done before but let me check thank you is that present okay all right um yeah i was going to say you if there were two motions you want to have one motion at a time and with each motion you have to have a second to have a discussion to consider it okay um so mr sakos would you like to make a motion and we'll get a second yes i'd like to make motion for a 10-minute recess second a second mr fatale roll call mr moffat mr duffy mr fatale yes mrs kazan okay this is kumar okay mr prosacco's yes i missed this part up certainly thank you we'll be recessing

105for 10 minutes please thank you okay we still have a quorum okay i don't know oh there he is let's go duffy [Laughter] thank you uh the meeting is back in session do i have a motion this is kazan mr fatale thank you okay where are we okay we have some retirements to celebrate this evening so are you ready mr fatale thank you mark piertanazzi after 33 years of hard work and dedication mark tier tenazi is retiring from the wayne board of education mark began as a custodian in 1989 in 1994 he moved on to become a carpenter and has since been a staple on our maintenance team mark has always been an effective team player contributing his skills and craftsmanship wherever needed and collaborating on many projects over the years mark's willingness to help

106others extend beyond his work here with us at wayne he found meaningful charity work with oxford house where he builds and furnishes recovery homes for those struggling with sobriety while mark will be missed he certainly deserves the many new opportunities his retirement will surely offer offer playing guitar and spending time with his children and grandchildren the facilities department wishes him a great retirement and thanks him for his service here at wayne thank you veronica remark veronica candy remark will be retiring from the transportation department on august 31st 2022 candy became began her career as a bus driver on september 1 2009. over the course of her 13 years of service to the wayne township public schools she's always been committed to her work responsibilities as she leaves her job with us kenny will be embarking

107on a new lifetime a new time in her life with many hours to enjoy her grandchildren excuse me mere retirement allow the time to do things she loves avoid the things she doesn't like to do the transportation department and the wayne public township schools wish to express their sincere thanks and appreciation for outstanding support and dedicated service from all your friends and co-workers best wishes for a long happy and healthy retirement president rosalia jereza rosalia jereza is retiring after 11 years as a member of our hard-working custodial team rosa joined us as a part-time custodian in 2011 but quickly moved on to a full-time role at george washington middle school within her first year rosa takes pride in everything she does and has provided quality service throughout her time here her delightful personality and natural

108leadership gained her a head custodial role at randall carter from 2016 to 2020. rosa returned to gw as day custodian in the 2020 school year where she was an integral asset to her team and school community helping everyone through the last few years in every way she could her team says she was almost too helpful at times leaving little for them to do she embraced every challenge and made friends all along the way she was open honest and good nature to her co-workers and built lasting relationships we all will cherish rose's team here at wayne is happy for her next chapter and imagine she'll enjoy doing what she loves spending time with her husband children and grandchildren in florida and caring for her flocks of pigeons sheep little lambs chicken and more we thank her

109for her dedication and wish her all the best thank you mrs kumar holly wormwold we are here today to show our respect for miss holly warmog holly has spent 15 years supporting students and programs as a paraprofessional during her tenure she has served in the capacity of a one-to-one shared and classroom paraprofessional holly has touched many lives along the way including fellow colleagues teachers families and most importantly students she always puts students first and treats all with kindness and respect holly has excellent attendance and has always provided consistency and diligence to all assignments holly you will be missed wayne township public schools wishes you good luck in your future endeavors enjoy retirement with your family we also have committee reports this evening mrs kazam thank you madam president well i'll start with the first committee

110which met this evening at 4 30 the facilities and transportation committee which was attended by myself mr fatale and administrators lauren tibbetts peter romine richard skivinski and william moffitt we discussed the items on the agenda which in this case was a policy about facilities use the project update this is lengthy some of it was already addressed by dr toback but since i still have more here i may do a little redundancy i'm sorry for that um we're in store installing new video surveillance cameras district wide so that project is almost completed in i'm going to say 80 percent of the schools and we're down to the stragglers at gw and anthony wayne they're larger buildings that may take a little longer the vestibules as dr toback pointed out there's some supply chain issues with but

111uh they expect to complete the three that were scheduled jfk anthony wayne in wayne valley shortly the ryerson roof is underway the as we called it the smelly part is over with so it's just a matter of doing the touch up around the perimeter and the edges so it'll be safe for the children to return to school but hopefully it'll be done before that we have the next generation science labs going in at wayne valley three rooms should be complete the only thing that's really pending is an hvac component but again supply chain generators at the bus garage and maintenance are scheduled to be installed [Music] we also started a room for wayne valley high school for what's called esports that is going to be part of our unified sports program for our special needs

112students it's grant funded and it's part of the special olympics and another great program for our special needs students but i'm assuming since it's unified there'll be regular ed students in there as well the architect contract is on the agenda we discuss that science labs there will be withdrawals from the maintenance and capital reserves for those and hvac replacement there's a situation at the board office the uh cooling system one kaput uh unexpectedly and this is why we have reserves so we're going to be removing money for that that's a 825 000 project then we move on to transportation um the retired equipment uh or aged out vehicles will be going to auction uh staffing is still an issue but we feel that we're ready for the opening of the school year with the routes

113that mr skibitsky worked very hard on to make sure that all of the bases were covered we're still waiting for vehicles we ordered in 2021 so that's an ongoing issue and the legislature attempted to help with that by extending the retirement age of the buses by one year because we have buses that are aging out which obviously thankfully we have our own maintenance department to keep in good running order but it is time to let that bus or those buses go um the pcti routes are in order uh there's a new program at pakanak that requires their own routes which is something that kind of came up last minute for mr skabitsky but he's handling it the bus passes now those are going to be coming to you via email so be on the lookout

114i'm pretty sure an email is going to go out to everybody informing them that that's the case uh so this way this is something they can even put on your child's phone that they can show their bus pass easy peasy no one has to print them out but you can print them out if you wish new vehicle orders are going out we discussed the legislation okay that concludes facilities and transportation do you need a break no then we moved on to finance committee which again was attended by myself and mr fatale and administrators william moffett and cheryl lydic that started at five o'clock today we discussed the agenda items um nothing there all pro forma we discussed the resolution that's on tonight's agenda more importantly the state of new jersey and its infinite wisdom saved

115us millions of dollars by offering us this great state health benefits program we spent weeks months days getting the district ready all excited about the savings and now rumor has it that six months into the program they may increase it by 15 because they're on a different fiscal year than we are so all of the savings may end up going poof up in smoke so the resolution that's on the agenda this evening is to uh partner with the school boards across the state to let them know that yeah you need to sharpen your pencil find some money in your reserves and not hit us with this enormous increase in january which wasn't budgeted for we obviously assumed there may be some increase but no one was anticipating 15 percent uh we came to an agreement

116with the school physician uh we discussed bond counsel for the referendum there were three bids that came back and we made a recommendation to move one forward to the next agenda we'll be going out for bid on the landscaping now that the season is over and hopefully have that wrapped up by january we went over the financial reports the reserve withdrawals which already discussed for facility and the business office we heard early on in the evening about the unfortunate passing of one of our employees and then we have another one that's going out for long-term health reasons so we're going to be bringing in an accountant who uh will be an interim for now and we'll be hiring for that other position temporarily [Music] the audit will begin in october and that concludes finance thank

117you thank you this is kumar i'll start with boom at first so the education committee met on july 25th virtually at 12 p.m in attendance were suzanne miss potter miss winteck miss auerbach mr binganelli um myself and miss reichman we reviewed three residency requests we went over a foreign exchange student that may be coming to district and we reviewed the comprehensive health and pe summer curriculum work we were all in agreement that the curriculum overall was well written um ms buendick particularly liked the runchat tell lesson um we also after further review decided that the cross the line activity does need to be looked at um so that is happening and there was small grammatical word choice comments by ms put up in myself on the overall curriculum and that concludes my report for education

118committee the communications committee is the next one we met today at five o'clock with in dr toback's office with dr toback mr duffy miss suentek was virtual and myself um we discussed recent media coverage uh we went over um less talk usage and how it's been perceived which seemed to be pretty positive um and the response back from our school district seemed to be pretty quick and we talked about the start of school and a communication that's going to be sent out along with the district rules that concludes my reports thank you mr prasakos reporting for the personnel committee we had a meeting on tuesday august 16th at 6 pm in person mrs clark the director of hr compliance and labor relations was in attendance mrs reichman mrs puttup the chairperson mr bubba and we

119dialed in uh dr toback for a phone call for a few minutes for item number seven we reviewed the july 19 2022 personnel committee minutes we reviewed a employee leave which we moved to tonight's agenda for approval we reviewed bylaw 0163 quorum in regards to adopting the bylaw for details and procedure around invoking the doctrine of necessity we had proposed transfers which we moved to tonight's agenda for approval a litigation update uh the dressing grooming policy for the staff we updated some language and we had discussions in revision surrounding the lead teacher of athletics and student activities for the job description to be called coordinator of athletics and student activities for both high schools thank you mr prosaccos next is action on agenda items second okay thank you mr duffy mrs kazan thank you roll

120call please mr moffat mr duffy yes mrs kazan yes mrs kumar yes mr prosaccos yes mr fatale yes and mrs puttup yes motion carries thank you okay the agenda has passed and now we have gotten to the public comments portion the open portion this part of the meeting is open to citizens for comment on any topic residents are to state their names addresses and subject matter comments may be limited to five minutes per person members of the public are discouraged from speaking negatively about an employee or a student the board bears no responsibility for comments made by the public comments regarding employees or students cannot be legally responded to by the board other comments may be responded to tonight or at subsequent meetings under old business thank you miss put up i i did somebody

121asked me on break i just wanted to clarify the i'm sorry excuse me i messed up excuse me moment of motion to open a second okay thank you mr fatale sorry that's okay thank you pam mesic i just wanted to clarify somebody asked me it wasn't a teacher it was a account a substance abuse counselor that that incident happened at wayne valley and that's just wanted to clarify that ms kazan had said that the school boards across the state are uniting about the health care benefits i believe it was that they were standing up to the state to sharpen their pencils and go back i don't understand why we can't do that about this curriculum issue why can't our school board unite with other school boards and go back to the state and say sharpen

122your pencils and change this curriculum we've asked for resolutions to be written letters and you're our voice you represent us there's other board of ed's so i ask that this issue is just as important as the need for your appropriate health benefits so if you would please consider doing that also i would like to suggest a forum like we've had in the past if uh about this curriculum many parents were thinking we were going to look at slides and like we've heard it seems that the emails and the let's talk are not getting through maybe there's a a glitch somehow just like links are missing and some parents have trouble not trouble navigating through these slides why not have a forum maybe even one night elementary school since we're gonna postpone this in this curriculum

123supposedly won't be introduced till the end of the year we have time to have three nights so that both parents can attend since they have children in different grade levels let's have a elementary school night a middle school night a high school night and let's show the slides and let there be an open question and answer time period where there can be dialogue instead of just because this is insufficient this is egregiously insufficient to tackle this sensitive topic and we want to bring the community together and i think that would be a very productive solution for that and just a minute i have five minutes um and that's it thank you hi kathy says oh ryerson my son patrick has been accepted into the montclair state early college program this program was brought in and

124promoted by wayne valley at valley in the spring of 2018. my daughter was able to take advantage of this program and started college more prepared than her classmates when she began college she had less stress than many of her classmates because she was better prepared i would like to give my son the same opportunity to many too many of today's students go off to college only to come home their second semester because they're unprepared i am being told this is not possible he wants to attend montclair in the morning and arrive to school prior to lunch so that he can continue to participate in the chorus program this is the only time the chorus teacher is available at wayne valley because she shared with anthony wayne i have been given several reasons as to why

125he cannot do this but not one of them aligns with the district's mission statement the statement is we are dedicated to a constant evaluation of our current systems and policies and enact necessary changes to ensure equity and opportunity for all under the guiding principle that education is a human right we provide students with equitable access to education that empowers them positively to positively engage in our democratic society and contribute to the global community the following are the reasons i was told why he's not able to be to take morning classes at montclair one for the early college experience program we have not had a student take a morning class an afternoon class would work better with our schedule where he leaves the building in the afternoon two he does not have the four hours needed

126for to prefer it to count as a school day three it's never been done before four we do not have a fixed study hall prior to lunch my responses to those questions those answers were just because it works better with the high school schedule does not mean it should not be done the answer is in direct conflict to your mission statement enact necessary changes to ensure equality and opportunity for all two he would have the four hours he would arrive to school by ten o'clock giving him more than four hours three it has never been done before really this is a response i received from administration if we go through life because things have never been done how do we make progress four we do not have a fixed study hall prior to lunch no

127but you have a library where he can go for a study hall in the library i followed the chain of command beginning with the school counselor vp principal supervisor of secondary education and dr toback just today dr tom back told me that it was the building administration gave me a list of reasons why this would not be educationally sound decision all i ask is that my son be allowed to come to school after montclair start with a study hall and then complete the four classes he needs to graduate none of this would cost the district more money none of this would require any changes to the current schedule so now i ask you board of ed members what reason can you give me to explain why this is not educationally sound norman robertson i'm a

128resident of wayne i'm not really going to say much at all i read a book once it was about negotiations but i loved the title was getting to yes if you can hear our previous speaker and not want to get to yes then we have a real problem i just wanted to say that uh and the other thing i only came up to ask is can anybody represent to us first of all whether that september 8th meeting will be here or in the conference room can anybody tell me that and if you and if you don't want to answer because you have a rule then you understand why i'm asking the question can you answer mr superintendent that's the decision for the board oh maybe can we have a motion that we answer the question

129at the moment um sorry we will make comments during i know what your rule is yes i know what your rule is that's one of the reasons i'm i'm saying it now you understand why people wonder what's really happening not that there's any big conspiracy but the point is that we deserve to know you know and i don't i shouldn't have to traverse your website in order to find it out and you know and you're reinforcing the administration's denial to this young lady and her son [Music] by being so stuck to the rules that you can't informally i mean half of you voted okay when you know when harry needed a break and you know and that was fine well let me say that ms kazan also was correct before when she asked when are

130the board members going to know about what happened in let's talk uh when i heard that the board members weren't being fed everything as it was coming in i was shocked as somebody who's had public office i wouldn't take that for 10 seconds all right those are the only points i want to make thanks for your courtesy hey ryan battleshield 63 kilo drive make sure it's loud enough i get told i'm too quiet um i just want to finish where i finished off beforehand um i think the the communication that we need to be able to get uh sorry still too quiet keep moving it up i'll move it closer yeah good um i think the communication that we need to get around this is you know needs to be befitting of the two years

131that we've been having the conversation um the the cross the lang class actually came up a number of times through there in the move forward moved back in various different iterations that we were told at the time that this wouldn't be part of the um the curriculum and so like i am really worried that that communication backwards and forwards isn't always getting through and isn't always coming across in the same way if this is a surprise to anybody that you know people are upset about that specific class i don't think that's the only thing i think that's by far away the most egregious it's only been 52 hours a little bit more now but during that time i think the you know there are people have been very much caught up on that there's going

132to be a lot of other things that come out that are probably much more smaller and minor um there's been a set of conversation about some of the oral sex sections that are within there there's um a set of conversations about some of the second grade material and stuff as well i hope that it's not always obvious and controversial as the cross the line thing but i would expect a lot more of that to be coming back and coming out of these so i'm not sure that you want to rely just solely on the lex talk and hopefully go through and get to another meeting and then just vote on it and move forward i think you might want a little more community engagement i think you might want to be able to go out

133and actually hear have much more of a conversation about the way that this is working and the way that people are feeling about this so that we can engage a lot more on being able to get some of these points across i would move um not even for uh as primary schools and secondary schools and those things maybe even just for a proper hearing but we can sit down and ask questions and go backwards and forwards and like walk through all of the presentational stuff and get to a point where everybody's on board with where this is and what is right and what is wrong and what the problems are um and outside of that i would uh you know i i know someone came in to talk specifically about the ad as well and

134so on as well so like i don't want to take away from that individual thing i know there's been a lot of discussions about other things tonight like don't forget about the ad as well because i think that's an important issue thank you good evening dale cavanaugh being resident for me cursory glance of what we saw tonight um i don't even have to dump into the exact lesson plans what i saw with desensitized children which is sexuality it's exactly the type of stuff that groomers will use and show making children more susceptible to child exploitation exploitation and trafficking may have heard of sex before they may have heard it around the streets or in the classrooms they may have heard a lot of things may have also heard of crack methamphetamine pot and heroin too

135but we don't show them how to cook meth smoke it or crack or shoot up smack a roller joint or do we or is that where we're going next with um with the threat of um losing funding and if that's what we're being counseled i would suggest we seek outside counsel if our president council is not willing to help us on that if that's where we decide to go and uh voting against this curriculum on the other part for members soon anybody here who supports the transgender individuals who are in support of them will you also support and speak about and share the stories of those be transitioning i can tell you from stories i've read they're horrifying gut wrenching all across europe and the rest of the world puberty blockers mass double mastectomies and

136gentility removal are being banned on minors affirming someone in their confusion is not love or encouragement it leads to further confusion which can be destructive the issue here we're talking about into transgenders about three percent of the children that are confused on their gender or dysphoria eighty percent over eighty percent will revert to their biological sex assigned at conception and left alone given the love and support they deserve and need this thirty to thirty percent that we're hearing of now lately has happened in the last two or three years when children were forced home to virtual learning and were exposed to gender ideology ideology online many sort of out to help to explain their depression sense of isolation lack of self-awareness or positive encouragement if anyone causes then i'll finish with this i had other

137things i think now two and a believer like the one young one uh spoke earlier now i'd just like to recite psalm 139 as to what david said about how he thought god thought of him for you formed me in my inward parts you wove me in my mother's room i will give thanks to you for i am fearfully and wonderfully made wonderful all your works and my soul knows it very well my frame was not hidden from you when i was made in secret and skillfully walked in the depths of the earth your eyes have seen my unformed substance and in your book were written all the days were ordained for me when as yet was not one of them came to be how precious are your thoughts oh god of me how vast

138is the sum of them if i should count them they would outnumber the sand when i awake i am still with you and one last one from jesus from matthew cautionary statement as to how he feels about his children that he created if anyone causes any one of these little children of mine harm it would be better for them to have a millstone hung around their neck and tossed into the sea this is how jesus views our children how about you how about me let's do the right thing thank you [Applause] tori esposita i jumped the gun there before uh yeah if you could please address the survey that was sent out more than just an email that the district was not involved with it um also too miss kazan wayne voters will do better

139than 123 in november and we'll show you we do have a brain this year it's the perfect math two plus three equals five i sort of missed that stalker hi hi my name is tom vandenberg it seems i always like to wait until the end to ask questions based oh you can hear me okay you hear me now yeah thank you i appreciate that i often like to uh wait until the end to hear what everyone has had to say um i think it's pretty obvious that everyone disagrees with the cross the line not everyone but many people have spoken disagree with the cross align activity or want to modify it in some way that doesn't you know have students actually speak about themselves i know that after about fifth sixth grade i was with

140a single mom and so i don't know if i initially would have wanted to you know if i'd want to cross the line that way and be involved in that that said there has been quite a bit of discussion or claims i should say that this curriculum has pornography in it that it sexualizes children but i haven't heard anything specifically about the lessons themselves so i hope that during the next public hearing there will be actual specifics said not just claims made during the break i spoke with someone who claimed that there was you know uh what was the term uh sexualizing of children but i didn't hear a response as to what specifically in this and not in the you know the the curriculum that was sort of the state level curriculum that was

141given but the actual specific lessons themselves what's problematic in them i think it's really important to look at the specific lessons themselves so we can actually talk about facts otherwise we're just making things up that's the issue if we don't have specifics if we aren't talking about the lessons themselves we're making things up thank you so much hi mark faber so i guess the the parts that i raised about the sexualization of children that i raised earlier were about teaching my second grade daughter that boys have a penis and girls have a vagina and that they're different parts that's sexual parts and you're teaching you know they reference them as private parts that are covered by a bathing suit which automatically triggers something that's going to be uncomfortable for children like that to talk about

142now i don't know much about animal sex or animal reproduction but i do know that mammals whether it's a dog monkey they all procreate the same way so you have to explain that you have to take something and you have to put it somewhere and then something happens and it procreates now my first lesson in reproduction was plants i didn't learn about animals or mammals having sex but that is a sexual act now there isn't sexual response in the sense that it's something that they take pleasure and they do it for procreation but you're teaching second graders the act of sex so that is sexualization it's i don't care how you're trying to spin it you're exposing them to something in the hopes that they'll figure something out later on in life but in second

143grade that is something they should not have to comprehend i'm sorry it's it's in the curriculum for second grade it's in the lesson plan there's a whole lesson plan that says animals animal animal reproduction so if you haven't seen it it's hard to talk to you about it but it's there so that is sexualization of children because that's inappropriate for second grade children my daughter actually had somebody who used to peek in on her when she went to the bathroom in kindergarten and she now has to change in a room with a locked door and she won't change in front of her siblings because of an experience that she had while she was in school now you take something as simple as somebody peeking into a stall and then you actually you know amplify it

144with these other kind of conversations that is going to be really detrimental to my daughter now i told you before i will opt out however it is not appropriate you know talk about age-appropriate conversations that is not age-appropriate and i know because i didn't learn about that kind of stuff till sixth grade was it more age-appropriate probably better than second grade but these are the kind of conversations that you know you can't i just have to ask why why is it necessary to do it like what is the benefit what is the if you go you know who is designing this and recommending it and for what purpose what is the actual benefit to having a second grader know how animals reproduce and if somebody could explain that and bring that to your next meeting

145what the actual rationale is behind why they need to know this in second grade you know like i can understand math is a building process you need to learn how to do addition before you can do multiplication why is it necessary for second grade why is it necessary for third grade you know why are all of these things needing to be taught so early and so that i would want to know so if you can give me that one i'd appreciate it so cindy simon that's the road so i spent the morning going through the curriculum clicking on the links reading the slides and kept going to have downloaded a couple times because it kept getting messed up but that's a tech issue and i read the second grade animal reproduction uh slides and stuff

146and you know what it said it said some animals lay eggs some animals have live babies and then it talked about marsupials and things jumping on the pouches and and um birds bringing worms to their babies and um i forget about the other ones or the emperor penguin where the dad keeps the egg warm when mom goes and gets food and then she comes back and keeps the chick warm while dad gets food that's what that lecture is it's not about um what any kid who lives on a farm or or already knows about reproduction by the time he or she reaches second grade it's literally it's it's the amphibians and and reptiles and i screw this up the biology chitchat's gonna yell at me are the ones that lay eggs and the mammals have

147live babies unless your duck felt platypus although that wasn't in there that's what that is um so i just i just you know i think it's really really important to have these conversations and to have people be aware what's in the curriculum but i ask everybody to please talk about specifically in this school district what is in there that you find inappropriate i respect that some people don't want a seven-year-old or an eight-year-old to know the word penis or vagina honestly there are people that teach those words to their children from the get-go rather than whatever other names are out there they're not necessarily associated with sex and nobody's talking about sex in second grade there's not a single sexual act in the second grade curriculum excuse me thank you hello my name is wendy

148lemandry i have just one comment the slide directly after the slide that somebody just mentioned specifically requires or requests that a second grade student define their sexual organs is that appropriate do they need to know that i mean i'm just saying they don't need to know that i think in addition what would have been really helpful in tonight's forum would have been to open up one lesson plan just one and go through the slides with just one click on them and go through it so that we were reassured that and again assuming that we're confident in the honesty and the transparency of this board and of the administration here it would have been really helpful the other thing i was wondering was which teacher has a psychology degree which teacher is going to identify a

149student who is so uncomfortable that he or she goes home and tells their mom i it's awful i don't want to go back to school and then what do you guys have does does everybody here have an opportunity to and who's going to address those students who's going to address a student who says joey couldn't do that look at susie she's all red in the face kids are mean and you we're trying to teach kindness by what by identifying what sexual preference body parts whatever else we all turned out okay what's the problem yeah you know what people get bullied and it's awful and in high school everybody knew that i was going to protect anybody who bullied because guess what charity and goodness and kindness begins at home my parents taught me never ever

150make fun of somebody who's less than you or is disabled or whatever i don't need a teacher to teach my grandson how to be kind i teach my grandson how to be kind i teach him love i teach him honesty i teach him respect and the other thing i wanted to know is who's talking about the drug problem in this town who's talking about alcohol abuse in this town we should all be meeting and talking about that part of the forum should be that kids are dying every day people what happened to erin covid did anybody ever pick up the ball and run with it what kids were drinking every night of the week what parents are ashamed to share it what kids have started using drugs what about setting something up where honestly that

151people can just talk about that issue instead of this sexual crap it's crap it's crap no one gets to talk to my kid about their body parts it opens up a pandora's box it's dangerous masturbation hello who used to go into the willowbrook mall and see a man walking along following women doing his thing in his car you called the police now we make it like it's normal it's okay to masturbate please everybody take a good look in the mirror and think about your past think about the future and think about the gosh darn kids of this town it's about time people wake the freak up and show up when i speak i'm talking to you guys because you have some power you have some ability to make a change and to help these parents

152are showing up here and everybody is showing up here all the time at these meetings i'm a nurse i'm a registered nurse i work full time i have a husband i have a white uh grandson i have whatever yeah sorry about that that was woo um but the point of the matter is you understand okay thanks thanks no judgment but here's the thing i'm i'm frustrated and everybody's frustrated so i mean no disrespect please understand that okay that's from my heart i really really don't but i think honestly everybody here has really good points but we've got to take it a little bit more seriously it's not like just like good people really care about their kids thank you francis galley wayne resident five minute hike five minutes ago i was sitting on my couch

153watching this back and forth again and again this year marks 20 years i've had kids in the wayne school system i've been proud to walk along many of you from elementary school through a lot of other issues i look at the good and i look at the bad it infuriates me the lack of transparency and understanding on things that be should be so basic five minutes ago there were people who asked for examples a year ago dr trobeck you urge the parents to please read the curriculum before you step to this mic so i did four separate occasions this year i've had to deal with school and district administrators on questionable curriculum items in one case the curriculum was scrubbed of the material when my daughter was inappropriately surveyed on what she would do if

154she found herself pregnant at 16. here's your example the district administrator i swore i wouldn't stand here because that's not how i operate but i am infuriated that we stand here blindly and say this stuff doesn't transpire in the classroom it is our collective obligation to raise these issues which i did and in this one i'm about to read it was addressed and it was agreed that you know what this probably wasn't the best example to use and when i was asked what was the kids response i said when the shock value of the examples are so great you lose the message of what you're trying to communicate so here goes the 62 pages of the ap psychology has one reference to morality the lesson plan moral dilemmas julie is traveling to france on summer

155vacation from college with her brother mark one night they decided it would be interesting and fun if they tried making love julie is already taking birth control pills but mark uses a condom too just to be safe they both enjoy the sex but decide not to do it again they keep the night as a special secret which makes them feel closer to each other what do you think about that is it okay for them to make love here's example number two a woman is cleaning out her closet and finds her old american flag she doesn't want to fly the flag anymore so she cuts it up into pieces and uses the rags to clean her bathroom i challenge you what if somebody changed that flag what if it was an lgbtq flag that was cut

156up and used for the bathroom what if it was a black lives matter who really cares what the flag is what's the purpose of the message why are we even challenging our kids with quite frankly this crap when is it the position of our education system to normalize incest if the subject matter is a moral dilemma for high school kids there's got to be a pro and a con right it's a dilemma let's have a group discussion why are we discussing incest and i swore i wouldn't stand here but after listening this go round and round i don't care what side of the aisle you sit on we gotta figure this stuff out and don't pretend it's not happening and by virtue of the example cross the line you don't have to look at the

157details what is that statement saying so can i cross the line and ask you all is incest okay is that really the lesson we want to teach our kids come on you have parents stop hitting each other against each other we're all here for the same purpose it's not who's right and who's wrong but you know what some things are clearly wrong and they're happening in this district and we're better than this [Applause] this portion of the meeting is reserved for i'm sorry i know dr tobas administration okay so um so i'd like to just mention i know that um there's a lot that was said this evening and i would like to talk about basically um okay so um excuse me you're kidding me right now okay very good okay so um there's a

158lot that was said this evening and what i've done is i've taken pages of notes um in some cases people gave their names in some cases people did not so what i generally did was i kind of um went by subject okay now the other thing i just like to mention is that typically board meetings involve public comment and generally speaking if you watch board meetings from across the state the administration generally doesn't respond back the board doesn't respond back but here we do and here that's part of our commitment to the community we would like to provide you with answers um and we like to provide them at board meetings whenever possible and so that's what we will continue to do tonight um i may not be able to answer every question i may

159not choose to answer every question because there's some things that were also statements so there were statements or questions but what i'm going to do is my best to kind of explain a response so first of all the whole idea about um you know not having any dialogue i think that if you look back over the pandemic the district has a significant history of all sorts of dialogue we provide parents with faqs like i said respond to hundreds if not thousands of questions during the course of the pandemic and we'll continue to do so we'll continue to respond to questions that are asked about the district um in this particular case i wanted to talk about well there's a few things so first of all let's talk for those of you who have actually used

160it there is there's an important part that you understand that um not only is there a response that's given to you but you get to rate the response and that information is reviewed interestingly by the board of ed sometimes people write things into let's talk so not everything is immediately shared with the board of ed because it's not intended for public view it's sometimes there are questions or things that are brought up that are personal in nature so but these particular items any of the items related to um the health and pe standards would be shared with the board okay although we would redact names now the other thing is we've never heard of any situation the first time we've heard of let's talk not working and i don't believe that's the case i do

161know that the question that was asked was mrs from mrs reichman was when the um the information was released about the curriculum how many let's talk inquiries were there and at that point she said there was three plus some emails um other people may have written at other times and there are more inquiries about the health and peak standards but not the question that she was asked so there's there's two different there's there's a time factor here that was not considered okay um so the other thing is there was a question about substitute teachers and would they be required to have vaccines so that question is an important question the requirement to test for vaccines and the reason why that came to be is because of the over the burdensome nature of testing for substitutes

162all the time and making sure that just there's no way for the district to do it so there's no longer a need to do that so substitutes would not be required to have vaccines you also ask the same question regarding or i'm sorry a question about the cross-curricular nature of the lessons that are presented this evening okay so the answer is that the crosstrek these are single lessons and they're intended to be delivered as single lessons so they should not cross over into other areas they are one period except whatever is noted that might be two days right or two two periods um but otherwise it's one period um i would like to talk a little bit about um the the cross the line game just very quickly so i guess the main point is

163that the the committee from the board has already looked at the issue has raised concerns i understand many of you have concerns about it so it's not that anyone is necessarily committed to having this game as part of the curriculum we've heard your feedback and the other part about it though that i really wanted to share is that i think for our teachers and the members of the curriculum team the one thing that did happen tonight is there was kind of like um like an insidious edge that was placed on the development of this game and the fact that it was being considered as part of this these lessons that was certainly not the intent of the committee and the people who are on the committee are contrary to what was said are people who

164live in this community in many cases they're people who have kids in school so it's not that there's like some separate group of people from some other area that don't have kids that would be involved in this the the people on the committee were in fact teachers working in the district living in the community with kids in school in many cases the other question um was raised about parents and parent involvement so obviously if parents are involved in committees um certainly we have a number but but it's it's limited in other words we can't have dozens of parents involved in committees so we had a committee that i spoke about um from this spring where we made adjustments to the gpa we had a number of board members that attended that meeting and sure enough

165the board members i'm certain can attest to the fact that numerous parents attended the meeting um were involved in the process and i'm not really quite sure what else to say that doesn't mean that parents aren't involved in committee work because maybe perhaps the parents that you may know we're not necessarily involved there's only so many ways that um we could do that another point that was made there was a woman who came to the podium i don't believe she's here anymore but she spoke about a book about suicide and she sewed some images about something that she found but she found it in the wayne public library right that was not something that she got from our school system it's something that's available in the library here in the township i'm assuming that she's

166accurate about where she got this information from right but that would obviously be an issue to be addressed with our library board not the board of education um she also claimed that we spoke about the immigrant and lgbtq community we did not there was a question about contracts so when there are different vendors and a concern about transparency so for every board meeting there is a section that calls for contracts that section has all the different vendors that are being hired for different reasons in the district and so anyone who is brought in to evaluate our special education program will be bought in and would be approved by the board of ed and under the contract section so it's always available for members of the public to look about what contracts the board will or

167won't be approving okay um that's that we have here okay all right we talked about that so one of the issues that was raised was the the topic of the athletic director at wayne hills okay so the model that we're pursuing for the time being is a model that was used here previously a number of years ago where there was a single athletic director that was done out of necessity um the same situation exists now and then this is being done out of necessity the district recognizes that having an athletic director for each high school would be beneficial the district did run an interview process the district did interview a number of candidates and did not find that the candidates that we identified we weren't confident that they would be able to take over a

168program like wayne hills um maybe in a smaller district maybe there's other opportunities but not at wayne hills not with the expectations that are there and not with the excellent coaching staff we have um we needed somebody that we felt would maybe perhaps have more experience and someone who um is able to to handle a responsibility like that so um we do have support staff in place the question about well what happens in the event the athletic director is absent well the athletic director we don't have an athletic director in the district so that's an important thing to understand we do have assistant principals and we have multiple assistant principals so like in any other situation if the athletic director is absent which does happen other people cover for the athletic director who's actually an

169assistant principal right so the assistant principals take over um let's see what else we have here one of the questions that was raised was why is this being done now and there are accusations made against the board about the fact is that the these uh lessons are being presented now um for a less than honorable reason to sneak this in to do something that the public doesn't know about but if you recall it was many of the people who are in this room who at the end of the school year were demanding that this has to be done before the start of the upcoming school year the summer at the time was explained is prime time for the school district to write curriculum that's exactly what we did and right now we're presenting this information

170before the start of the school year because the desire was for parents to be able to opt out or some people were saying well they're going to take their children out of the school things like that so i just wanted to respond to that statement it's not quite accurate let's see here what else do i have we have subs here the vaccine um with regard to the the idea of opting out so one speaker talked about well in middletown they you have to opt in or something like that so um mr geppert previously commented about the opt out option the the legislation that we're required to follow is very specific about what you have to do the current statute provides for the opt-out provision but says nothing about an opt-in arrangement okay so it's just

171it's just the way it's the way the the requirement is written right it's an opt-out requirement um which will be provided so the other part is this that um i mean ultimately let's talk like i said if you if you write to let's talk you get an answer you get a response sometimes it's not you know it depends on the nature of the question and what we can respond to but the other thing is that um there's obviously a process that the board put in place a thoughtful process so this is a a first step with the idea being that we will be collecting information over the next few weeks and trying to identify the actual issues that are out there one thing and some of the other speakers spoke about this that would be

172very helpful is we heard a lot of feedback about cross the line very specific information very specific concerns some of the speakers mentioned the idea that it's really important to provide specific feedback about different things that you find objectionable so we said tonight we heard about cross the line we didn't hear about anything else really we heard about the specifics across the line and um from there if there are other comments or concerns certainly we can do that and like i said it would be shared with the board someone said that this information will be shared with the board it'll certainly be shared with the board um i guess i'm trying to think if there's anything else right so somebody raised concerns about threat assessments being used as like a tool to interrogate students um

173so i mean while i suppose you could look at it that way the requirement is to have a threat assessment team and the stated intent next year in 2023 is to have threat assessment teams to work with law enforcement to identify situations or circumstances where there is a threat to the school to actively think as opposed to react to threats right so we're not going to react we're going to actively pursue and think about and work with law enforcement to identify possible threats to each of our schools so i guess it depends on your point of view many people are concerned about school security and many people are concerned about safety and so a threat assessment team would be assembled um the stated purpose is certainly to to make sure that every student is safe

174every staff member's safe and if there are issues out there things that we can share with law enforcement that's when it happens okay um this is um did i say your name correctly i did okay good so i know that um i didn't get a chance to talk to you today um i don't talk about student matters in public but i did i did respond to you and um but i think when mr palzerski comes back it's appropriate to have a discussion that the info some of the information that you shared is um is certainly compelling and i'm sure that the the district will certainly hear but there's also a specific set of reasons why what you requested was denied okay and so i don't think that i would give it the reasons yeah i

175know what's that yep no i know i know um but there's there's an option that was given too and so as explained it doesn't fit the class you want to take and i understand i am in education yep and i understand that at times students need to make choices my children know that they don't get everything they want but in this case it is doable with no expense to the district and no change to the schedule so i don't understand why it's not so we have a process um and so like i said the lessons are there they're available changes are possible but what we need and what's most helpful is for anyone who finds information or things that you find objectionable certainly share that information for those of you who find any aspect of

176the lessons to be positive or appropriate share that information as well okay i'm sure there's a lot of people in the community that um also might be receptive to at least some of the lessons what was that what else anything else um i i think for anyone who's navigating technical challenges they should reach out we have a technology department it may be another device uh yeah yeah if there's anybody who honestly if there is anybody who's having like a technology issue um we just did a test on all the links and we just did a test to make sure that all of our technology works at least at this moment it was working perhaps there was a glitch or something like that but the fact is that information is available it's out there and um

177it's something that if there is a problem certainly give us a call um we can help you through um looking through the the lessons that are there and we'd be happy to you know share share some other information if if anyone's interested all right i think that's about it what's that um yeah yeah so that's that's that concludes my comments for tonight what's that um i think she made um she made comments that i i certainly understood i would have to look into the concern and find out more about it i understand that you um you obviously it has been addressed okay all right yeah okay that sounds good okay thank you dr toback okay okay between the emails that are going back okay um okay could you please stay after and ask your question

178again sir thank you okay um old business yes mrs kamar i just have a question because this was something that was discussed during education committee um the curriculum does have to be approved or adopted in september right isn't that the statute i just want to be clear what the statute is that it has to be adopted by the end of september by the board so the way the lessons when when you look at um when they would actually be facilitated it's not in september so we have time yeah i know that we have certain like requirements as to when the board has to vote and adopt them i just wanted to be sure when those work that was kind of discussed i just wasn't clear so it would be important because there's also the opt-out

179process so once the board adopts lessons then those lessons would be sure those are the actual lessons that's what the board is adopted and at that point that's when people would have to opt out which parents want to opt out so that that all takes time no i understand that's why i was asking the question about adopting and moving forward old business comments from the board okay new oh thank you hello um first of all i wanted to welcome the new employees to the district that will be beginning our new scholastic year i guess i could say that on behalf of the board in the administration um i have to own up and say it was probably my fault about the august curriculum release i did ask for the curriculum health ed curriculum to be

180released in august versus september as previously was mentioned so i i thank the administration for indulging me and having it produced by by august secondly uh i'd like to say i'm proud of this board and the administration for the resolution about the exorbitant rate hike that they plan on doing for the school employee health benefit program so i'm very proud that we're taking a stand against it i also wanted to to read a little item from the new jersey school boards association from the april 2022 faq and i want everyone to hear this the njsbn its member boards of education believe that parents are our most important partners in education and we welcome parental input and communication in fact state regulations require boards to encourage feedback from the community as per njac 6a 8-3.1 so

181i gave my feedback i'd like everyone in the community to give their feedback so this is your this is your encouragement to provide the feedback via the let's talk curriculum so i'm a little bit rattled uh from listening to that uh incest lesson plan that was in our high school but uh you know everyone have a good night mike thank you um i just want to stress the fact how important it is for us to use the let's talk app i don't think this is something that needs to rush to be done i think it is important that we put our best foot forward we keep the transparency going if there's something positive that you see be positive if there's something negative that you see please please voice your concern as well um it was

182it was nice not that it was nice that people had to share personal experiences but i want to thank the people that stood up at the microphone and was brave enough to share those experiences that they had in their own personal lives to show how important it is with certain games and certain things and the impact that it could have on our students i would like though to thank our subject matter experts for putting forth the effort effort to put something together i did voice concerns i also voiced things that i thought was good i think as a community we do need to come together and we do need to do what's best for our students and they them as well as our teachers need to be our number one priority come september and when

183we implement this program thank you mrs kazan [Music] okay first i want to thank the teachers for the time and effort that went into compiling the new curriculum i think they did an excellent job of listening to the desires of the community there's nothing controversial a lot of what was talked about over the past year never came to pass there's nothing pornographic or salacious or a lot of what's been said has just been outright nonsense uh the stuff that's in there now is very low key i looked at every lesson and you can too the the the links will be online um there are no graphic materials uh there's nothing that shows any sort of sex act i none of that came to pass and and i'm glad we're finally at this culmination um the

184cross the line game we've made clear if you know if there are enough people in the community that don't like it well that it's gone that's what this meeting is all about this meeting is about having the conversation as we promised now you get to weigh in we're not voting on it this evening it's not a done deal however there are mandatory portions of this curriculum that we don't have a say in this is dictated by the state board of ed and the department of education we've made this comment multiple times it went back to the education committee all of the legislators listened to you they made attempts to move it back to the floor of the assembly it never made it they decided this is it you're gonna teach it and you're gonna like

185it or you can opt out they've i called people i know that work at the department of ed no opting in it's not allowed under state statute sir that's the simple answer it's not about our lawyer's opinion it's it's about the law in general and it's documented at the state level and not only is it documented they had a state board of education meeting only a week or two ago six hours long they debated this topic yet again and we were supposed to write a curriculum when people are all still talking about it well so we could rewrite it again you know they weren't giving us guidance they weren't telling us if they were going to change it this is we finally reached a point where they all said no that's it this is it

186you're doing it and it's due for the 2022-2023 school year so get it together um we're we wrote the curriculum ourselves we could have bought a curriculum but you probably would have hated it uh so we we took the time to have our education professionals write this curriculum and take into consideration the things you felt were the most sensational and and make them as milk toast as possible and i think they did a gosh darn good job of it the resolution uh yeah the reason that's being brought tonight is because both sides of the aisle and everybody across the state agrees it's egregious and we need to address it there is beyond consensus for it that wasn't the case with some other items uh but there it was addressed in other ways so you you

187got your time in the legislature for this situation and it failed that's it it still has to be implemented it's not our choice we did not come up with this idea we did not choose to this curriculum it's not our decision but it is our mandate we take an oath of office we must do it here is an article right here will new jersey schools that refuse to teach the new sex education standards face consequences and it goes down the laundry list of them i'll give you a brief the state has responded by saying school districts that flout state standards will be penalized districts are required to implement the new learning standards by law i'll get there well if you want if you want the shorter version i won't read it to you they will

188use the state board of examiners which will remove their certifications to even operate as employees in the state of new jersey they will remove the teaching certificate from any teacher that outwardly refuses to teach that don't shake your head sir it's here it's here the commissioner of education said so additionally addition it's my turn to talk it's my turn my turn to talk and i'm stating facts i'm not making this up i'm stating facts you do you want to hear the facts i'm stating facts no you have no evidence of that sir middletown is not doing anything yet because the school year hasn't even started and trust me they'll get a hand slammed the the new jersey revised statutes withholding of funds from districts is very clear if you violate the state standards your monies

189can be withheld by the superintendent of the department of ed and the superintendent of the state board of education so those are things i i'm not willing to give up quite frankly now back to mr esposito who obviously are we facebook friends i didn't know um but that's okay you can read my comments if i make them public they're for everyone to see excuse me should i wait i don't understand the discourtesy i do not understand the discourtesy no excuse me it's it's her it's her turn to talk i'm answering your questions sir no i'm answering your questions at this point if we could ask the public to please refrain and control yourself you've had two opportunities this evening for public comment you have an opportunity to come up after the meeting and discuss at

190this point this is the board comment section and i would ask that you respect give them the opportunity to finish their comments thank you mr gepper mrs kazan okay back to you mr esposito uh i think you uh mistook the flavor of my comment because when someone puts out an article that says well you know what's going to happen people are going to vote one two three well you know what that does that discourages voters it discourages voter turnout which affects the democratic process and i for one happen to think the democratic process is important i want people to look at every person running in this race i want them to make an informed decision i don't want them to be lazy voters go in there and press one two three did i say don't

191vote for one two three no read my words and interpret them correctly sir that's not what i said but you're entitled to your opinion and your comments i'll take it but i wanted to clarify that um mr robertson we cannot make a decision here in the moment about whether or not we're going to have a meeting uh at the chambers or the um board offices because we have to find out if it's available and if we do then you know we may decide to change the meeting no one's playing any games here uh and mr uh prosaccos answered your question about uh why this ended up in august again not to keep it out of the light of day but you know we acquiesced and some board members wanted it sooner rather than wait till

192september which was our original goal when everyone was back in school and we could be um more forthcoming with the community that this was on the agenda uh is there an email that's going to go out with the attached curriculum it'll be posted but will they know that it's posted i i think i well yeah i think some sort of blast is required i i agree with with that comment um okay his time is short blah blah blah i think there's a total of maybe nine lessons in that uh presentation um i'll let dawn address that um it's very little to review at the end of the day it took me no time at all i don't think we need to drag this out for weeks and months and years it's really not that much

193there that you need to review and if you take the time to just sit at your computer for an hour you will be done uh this this is ready to go we'll listen to your you know concerns obviously across the line has probably already crossed the line uh and that's fine you know we'll find some other way to convey the the message that was meant for that particular part of the curriculum [Music] and and mr faber i think cindy simon answered your question that we don't talk about uh animals having sex in second grade no one said that no one said you know what i'm going to address you madam you were correct you found something in the ap psychology class which is a very niche group of students it was probably not a good

194idea for that teacher you took care of it who brought it up never mind no no no okay i get what you're saying but the point is you reported it you you did it correctly and it was removed was it not okay that's exactly the type of thing that when it occurs and it was immediately taken care of that's how would i know that's in there how would anyone know that's in there i'm sorry i'm not saying it's not real i am agreeing with her that it was it should i'm talking to her ma'am i'm telling you that what you did was correct you you you saw a problem you addressed the problem you took care of the problem i have no way of knowing up here as a board member everything that's well i'm

195asking her a question because i want to answer her question uh okay we'll talk after the meeting uh clearly so no one wants to let me speak let's see define organs uh talking about drugs and i believe we we have drug curriculum but anyway i'm done thank you thank you mrs kazan any other comments from the board mrs kumar okay i will ask mr moffatt to please check on the availability of the town council chambers for the september 8th meeting thank you you're welcome okay as far as the cross the line i would like to thank members of the public who reached out to board members regarding that there was a very strong reaction from the public board members started to question the inclusion of that game or the the form of that game and

196with the lesson plans so that is being looked at by the administration that's how we affect change we've presented something we already got feedback and we will take it under consideration and make changes so i appreciate the fact that so many people reached out and had strong feelings regarding that i want to congratulate the new employees that will be in joining us this coming school year i'm sure the school year will be a terrific one it's going to get off to a really great start and my email is very easy to find it's right there on the website sputup wayneschools.com if you'd like to reach out to me make comments we will especially if there are any technology glitches if someone's having a problem accessing the lessons just please let me know mrs reichman dr

197toback um and we will see if we can help you i like the idea of the blast going out thank you very much and thank you all for coming have a good evening and take care see you next time thank you