February 10, 2022: Board of Education Meeting

001the executive session of the william board of education public workshop meeting february 10 2022 was convened in the conference room of the wayne board of education 50 nellis drive wayne new jersey the statement of compliance said it fourth time date and location was read in coordinates with requirements of the open public meetings act and the roll call was taken the meeting was recessed and is now being recompened here [Music] here you're right please stand for the flag suit moments out i pledge allegiance to the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all so for my administrative summary report um let's get started so during this public work session we'll discuss some very important topics and share quite a bit of

002information for the board and for the community we have two presentations the first one is the district starkstrong testing results which our assistant superintendent mrs reichsmen will share earlier this year we're required to present student performance information which gave the board of ed costs for concern about the impact of covid on student learning while the department of ed required that we make a report at that time they did not produce any information that would allow the board or the administration to see where we stand compared to the rest of the state that has changed this evening i think you'll see that while we're not where we'd like to be we fared much better when compared to most other new jersey public school systems the second presentation is about successful bond referendum campaign practices this lawyer

003perlow from the northern region head services commission and the new jersey's public relations association president will be assisting the board and administration with understanding more about getting the public involved in a possible bond referendum campaign this presentation is the next step after the board of education retreat which was held in december public works session in march will include more information from our architect about various projects with more refined and projected costs at the april public works session the board of education will be hearing from the district financial advisors about the cost of projects and the impact of those costs on local school taxes so we'll need quite a bit of time for the presentations but i'd like to call attention to some other agenda items first of all the big news to report this evening

004is already well known across the district it makes sense to recognize that we have reached another milestone in the pandemic recovery governor murphy announced a new direction for masking in schools and while governor murphy did not lift the masking requirement completely he allowed local school boards the option to keep modify or make masking optional starting on march 7th in response to this news the wayne schools will be adjusting our covert policies to make basking optional for student staff and visitors effective march 7th we'll continue to provide updates should there be any additional guidance tonight the board will be voting on revisions policy 1648.11 appendices making our school masks optional starting on march 7th this is item u1 under emergent policy work based learning is an important program for wing high school students and has expanded

005dramatically even during the pandemic we have about 120 businesses in wayne and other local towns that have agreed to participate in the program and have been approved this school year in short the work based learning program takes a variety of forms and is designed for each child to explore potential careers in real life situations that are sometimes paid or unpaid internships tonight we have four additional businesses brightview living burger king sp industries and the spotted dog daycare which are all in wayne have agreed to participate in our work based learning program thank you to these and all the wayne area businesses that willingly take our students under their wing and help them learn more about various career opportunities this is item s6 under emergent education some exciting news the new york jets offered an 8

006000 grant to the wayne township public schools to start a wayne valley girls flag football program the grant also includes nike uniforms flags and footballs all the equipment that's necessary the nfl has been reaching out to communities across new jersey and there are several surrounding communities that will also have girls flight football teams 63 wayne valley girls attended the general interest meeting and with board approval the team will start this spring we're hoping to be able to have teams at both high schools but the jets committed to offering funding for wayne hills flag football for next year the resolution pertaining to flag football is 07 under pws finance other news we have we continue to see our coven numbers move in a positive direction after many weeks of bad news at this point actually today

007is the first day that we've had since for a long time where we have no new cases so there's zero new cases and um so that's kind of another milestone um you only have a few staff members out due to coven and these numbers represent a dramatic reduction from our first new year report when we had over 800 students and staff who had tested either positive for coveted or were under quarantine along with the covet update i wanted to share with the board of ed that on tuesday the administration met with the wayne health department to seek their guidance and feedback as we planned for all of our spring events activities trips and end-of-year celebrations so as we continue to recover from covid and plan for normal i wanted to take a moment to thank

008the health department for their help as we now have guidance about how to proceed with all of our events we're delighted to welcome acting new jersey secretary of state tahitian to visit our students at john f kennedy elementary school on the 22nd or 23rd of february this is way we'll be visiting one of our kindergarten classes and she'll be working with our students and staff and highlighting reading for black history month the new jersey quality single accounting accountability continuum continuum known as cusack is the department of ed's monitoring and district self-evaluation system for public schools it's an accountability system that consolidates consolidates and incorporates the monitoring requirements of applicable state laws and programs and complements federally required improvements the system focuses on monitoring and evaluating school districts and five key components that based on research

009have been identified to be key factors in effective school districts these components are instruction in program fiscal governance operations and personnel so at this point um we've gone through the early stages of qsec monitoring we've submitted all of our documents next month in march there'll be site visits and at this point the department of is verifying the accuracy of the documentation that we submitted and so we're ready for that new jury department of ed's statewide budget collection process officially started the department of ed released guidance for the 2223 budget year and their software is open the district will not have school state aid figures until after the governor releases that information with a state budget message which is expected to be delivered in early march the business office has been very busy reviewing school and

010department budgets updating financial information in our financial system and entering data into the doe software we continue to build the district-wide budget and present it at the to the public in march just to note that this week is national counseling week so it's a week to focus public attention on the unique contribution excuse me unique contributions of school counselors within u.s school systems national school counseling week highlights the tremendous impact school counselors can have in helping students achieve school success and plan for a career the 2022 theme is school counseling better together so just a moment to thank all of our school counselors for the tremendous work they've been doing with our students and also support our staff during these difficult times thank you to all of our school counselors unfortunately the mass mandate is

011still in effect and we have several um participants here this evening that are non-compliant which could pose problems for us if the attorney would like to weigh in at the chairs well the executive order still is in place as of today for school property so everybody should want to ask candy good evening everyone not march 7th yet we all have to wear a mask still please comply okay thank you so just um to conclude my report and do the hiv part of it so i'm recording the following data related to harassment intimidation and bullying incidents in the wayne township public schools there are 17 incidents of hiv reported and investigated since my last report six of those cases were deemed to meet the criteria of hiv incidents so in order to allow this parallel a

012little additional time into the things moving here what i'd like to do is change the order presentations a little bit so it's probably if you would um begin your presentation i already provided the board with an introduction so you know a little bit of glory and you're at the opportunity to meet the clerk before our exact session so that's carla thank you good evening everyone it's a pleasure to be here tonight my name is lori perlow and i'm communications consultant with the northern region educational services commission and i'm also the president of the new jersey school public relations association so the purpose of being here tonight is to sort of scratch the surface around some key strategies with regards to communications on bond referendum so i want to keep things simple the first strategy of

013course is to plan ahead uh which is exactly why we're here tonight um to start thinking about what's involved around communications uh with bond referendum um obviously one of the key components when we're talking about bond referendum is building trust with all of our stakeholders and then of course connecting and communicating on all of the aspects related to bond referendum so of course the first step in planning ahead is to first consider what your time frame would be the state actually dictates when these votes can take place um there are some theories around which ones may be more effective than others we're not going to necessarily get into that there are some statistics if you wanted to dig deeper into that but certainly something to consider as you are planning for the future once you've

014selected your time frame it's very helpful to develop your campaign timeline and work backwards from there the more time you allow yourselves the more effective your campaign will hopefully be most importantly what you want to do is conduct your research engage your voters and determine what your school community wants to see as well as what their concerns may be so that you can address all of those factors as you plan obviously utilizing your research and your other findings to develop key messages and identify who your trusted community ambassadors are to help this anytime we engage in a bond referendum campaign the more folks you have involved and engaged the more effective it's going to be and hopefully resulting in a successful outcome obviously trust is key here when we're talking about things like architectural plans

015which are often a key component in bond referendum campaigns we want to make sure that they're very clear and accessible to all of your stakeholders and of course providing options for your community to weigh in and see what's involved making sure that you have something like a dedicated website where you can where folks can actually access the plans and see all of the details that are involved and then of course communicating how these proposed plans will meet the needs and benefit the community at large one of the most important pieces obviously is simplifying and explaining the financial impacts and benefits associated with any bond referendum another piece that's key in building trust is monitoring conversations online we know that so many folks go online to receive information to share information subway opinions we want to

016be able to monitor that and gauge any any potential for opposition and address that right we want to make sure that we're putting out the facts we want to address any opposition in the most constructive ways possible and of course displaying a unified front is always very important most importantly taking on the huge task of connecting and communicating with a community particularly one of the size i would highly recommend utilizing a professional firm to assess there's a lot of strategy involved a lot of message development branding collateral interacting with the media there are so many facets to a campaign that i would highly highly recommend that would consider utilizing professional firms and then of course making sure that you are getting out and connecting with your communities through large events smaller events in-person events and

017virtual events because even with you know heading back into normalcy there are certainly folks who would who would prefer to have a virtual event or at least the option to participate in something virtually sometimes we just had demands on work and family and sometimes that just might be more convenient and of course inviting yourself in connect with as many community groups as you can to get your messaging out and to gauge feedback and receive feedback from your community when you have established trust it is certainly a lot easier to ask your community to take action of course you can never tell taxpayers how to vote but you can always remind them to vote now of course campaigning during covet brings some uniquenesses um community engagement of course is key involving your community in this process

018from the very early stages of gathering information and feedback to well-planned virtual events we know that this has been successful in a lot of communities that had votes during coven i'm going to share some quick results with you in a moment but of course most importantly when we're looking at communications overall making sure that there is a very cohesive strategy utilizing all of the most visual and interactive channels that you can including social media video and photography anything that you can utilize to demonstrate impact and show your community what's possible should your vote pass this is just a quick summary of the results from votes that happened during 2021 if you were interested you could certainly dig deeper into the stats that are available through the new jersey school boards association you can see which

019communities and districts had their you know had their votes to dig deeper into what their successes were um obviously challenging times but certainly possible to have success um with bond campaign happy to answer any questions that you may have around communications is there uh in terms of amount is there a sweet spot of amounts that you've seen that that were successful over those four four periods that you posted what do you mean by the math so 20 million dollar bond offering versus 241 that hoboken put out there or i mean every community is different right so i don't know that i can speak to the specific amounts um what i can tell you is that in some communities where they had multiple questions there were instances where you know one question may have passed and

020another did not so i think while i didn't get into the details of that that might be something to be mindful of um but i i don't know that i could speak to the amount because every community is so different and the specifics you know in their campaigns are so different i actually had a question um you gave us the dates but what's the timeline to prepare and have the paperwork into the body that puts together the the actual election um prior to the vote itself the election itself so i don't know that i have a specific time frame that would probably be a better question to ask your bond counsel but i know that there's a certain period of time but my recommendation if you're starting out in advance give yourself as much lead

021time as possible just to do your prep and engage your community through research before you put your actual plan together that goes to the state so i don't want to just misspeak about the time frame um no i meant specifically like we're going to do the april when do we have to have that paperwork in to save the county that runs the election i'm not sure you don't know who will the left so yeah that would be a better question yes is there a good time frame to be out in front of this because a year out better is six months better like is there a sweet spot to time frames i would say and this may sound um too generous but i think the more time you have the better if you have a

022year i would say at a minimum of planning time and a year for you know to solidify exactly what your plan is going to be you could have up to a year to campaign and get your message out it may sound too generous but what i see oftentimes is when there is too little time when we're talking about a few months you don't have enough time to pivot right so having your community involved in what that bond package looks like is going to help you get to the you know to get to success and have and pass your bond referendum any other questions thank you very much for your time yes good evening earlier this year i provided a preliminary presentation to just share the initial results that we were given back and we were

023told that we would be given a more comprehensive report which we did receive this is a required presentation um the template and information that's in here is what was included in the njdoe template and then i added in some additional information that i thought would be helpful for all of you to hear just to gain a greater understanding so important to um understand and to know this spring we're going to be administering the new jersey student learning assessments um typically they're always administered in the spring and it's after several months of learning of that grade level material so what was interesting and unique about the start strong assessments is that they were administered in the fall and they were intended to give and produce very quick standards-based information to provide and evaluate the needs of

024students and it's a complement to the resources that we use so we have many of our own assessments that we put in place aligned with standards knowing that we were tasked and responsible for really developing a complete digital portfolio for each student so that we can capture and measure learning along the way these assessments were administered quickly in person and they provided immediate results and what that means is some in some grade levels it was as few as 10 questions some were 18 questions the start strong satisfied a federal statewide assessment requirement to administer general assessments in english language arts mathematics and science for only the 2021-2020-2021 school year and we'll resume with our regular testing schedule this spring start strong this is super important to consider start trunk fall 2021 assessments do not replace

025local standards based benchmark assessments district may have already have in place and and they do not replace the spring 2022 njsla statewide summative assessments that are predictive of their results so once again one thing that we did not touch on or probably communicate well enough in the fall is that we were administering the grade level assessment capturing data about completion of standards that students hadn't even had an introduction to when publicly reporting assessment results consider the impacts of coved we know that the situation varied from student to student we had at home learners we had students who were here every other day we had periods where we were not in person at all and that did impact learning significantly for all of our students whether it was academically or just um mentally it was a

026challenge for many to be learning from home it is suggested that districts not compare any individual student school district start strong data to any state level data or start strong nor should comparisons be made to any njsla data and i put in however and i will share why on the next slide please note that the start strong assessments were not designed to predict future student performance on the nj sla nor was it designed to estimate what score student would have received if they had taken the nj sla in the spring 2021. so this gives us a lot more to think about i i think we all jumped to many conclusions when we saw the preliminary results which were concerning i felt much better after putting together this slide and it's really important because we have

027a side by side comparison and if you look over to the right column where it says level three less support may be needed so these are the students who performed better you can see that in wayne we outperformed the state at every grade level so that was really good news for us overall if you look at the combined less support and some support we did fairly i think we did really well and we and then obviously the concern is where strong support is needed and again we have fewer students than the rest of new jersey which is a good sign for us but again my priority is our students in wayne and and that's why we have put so many intervention programs in place we have all of our own local benchmarks we're fortunate and

028that we've been prioritizing data driven instruction for the past several years we've invested in a software solution linkit to gather this information and introduction is differentiated by student by classroom by grade level pacing is looked at based on how students perform so this is work that we've been doing and doing very well this slide is a side-by-side comparison with um new jersey and and wayne and once again look over to the right um for less support needed and math um we did much better at every grade level than the state overall and on the left where strong support may be needed same thing fewer students than looking at the state numbers and the state averages so that is really good news for us and we were really happy to see that [Applause] we've hired to

029report out on the strong start strong test design um so these were short tests again some um some grade levels 10 questions some went up to 17 or 18. it was based on a subset of prioritized prior year academic standards um you know there's some examples we'll post this slide online tomorrow but it's important to note that the language arts assessment for students in grades 4 to 8 included only 10 questions and and also to remember that the last normal year of schooling for fourth grade students was first grade because we have been this is our third year of the pandemic um again i said this early on but just reminding you that they took this assessment early in the year after having not having a full year of instruction where students in every day

030since first grade and um we'll see um it once they take the spring assessment it is a much longer assessment much broader assessment greater depth um and i think that it'll be a much better measure um combined with our local assessments for student proficiencies before we invert anything going to go through these next few slides real quickly this one just specifically details which grade levels were assigned to which assessments this slide shows the number of students at each grade level who took each content area assessment once again this is just the the wean data i compared it to new jersey on a previous slide and once again wayne township outperformed the state in all areas having more students needing less support this slide details the number of students in each grade level by category for

031english language arts this slide details the number of students in each category level for mathematics and the slide for science um on the on this slide i think it's important to note that attendance during the pandemic had a significant impact on student performance we're operating on a hybrid schedule at times um and this slide starts a series of slides which highlights the school level performance by the grade level test so i'm going to go through these real quick and again this will be posted online for anyone who wants to take a closer look tomorrow um this is grade five english language arts high school grade four mathematics high school grade five mathematics high school grade six language arts middle schools broken up by middle school grade seven language arts broken out by middle school grade

032eight language arts broken out by middle school math this is grade six broken out by middle schools grade seven support levels broken up by middle schools for math math grade eight broken up by middle schools algebra one broken out by middle school english language arts um grade nine broken up by high schools english language arts grade 10 broken out by high school algebra one broken out by high school geometry broken out by high school algebra 2 broken out by high schools these are our subgroups broken out by by race math percentages for subgroups broken up by race the previous slide was language arts science broken out by race on this slide we have english language arts broken out by gender this is math broken up by gender science broken out by gender english language arts

033we have the percentages our subgroup program mathematics science and um i thought this was really important to share because again this just detailed the last normal year of school at each grade levels that our students had so you can see our kindergarteners are in school for the first time first graders second graders had never had a normal year in school until this year um grade three the last time they had a full regular school year was when they were in kindergarten so there were a lot of other things to consider when kids were coming into school just acclimating to a school day at our last discussion algebra was also a point of concern and we had a discussion about that and i wanted to highlight and share share here um it's really important to know

034that our eighth graders were being assessed in the fall on eighth grade standards that they're being taught now so our spring assessment will be a much better way to gauge proficiency and student learning any questions or comments on board thank you oh sure yep emergent human resources if you have changed on team number five district staff number four ad salary 58 970 is prorated at step 6 va 15 of the wea salary guide to start april 11 2022 or as soon as possible t number 10 approval of additional hours minutes there's a change we're going to revise line number one of a is nancy patano c-a-t-a-n-e-o from jf to laf and we'll be adding a t13 which reads as follows uh it's an approval of administrative lead t-13 resolved at the board of ed upon

035the recommendation of the superintendent place employee id number 4171 on administrative leave for the period from february 2 through february 11 2022 and that concludes the addition to changes to tonight's agenda this portion of the meeting is open to citizens for comment on agenda items only residents are 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 where students cannot be legally responded to by the board other comments may be responded to tonight or at subsequent meetings on their old business i wanted to talk to my name is danielle piano and i came here to talk about something else

036tonight but i'll come back up later and talk about that this is my son vincent and he goes to anthony wayne he's in sixth grade uh i'll talk about the other thing later but i came i wasn't gonna talk about this tonight but i saw that was about the agenda the start strong program my son took it and he actually got in level two some support may be needed for math ela and science science was very low because last year um in fifth grade they did not teach most of the science program because it was virtual most of the time but when he was allowed to go into school he was in school every day but the problem that i had with this is not that the children have um more scores you know they

037just started school and the discussion was at the beginning it's the extra help that's being provided for the children now in the summer there was extra help programs for all children children in every level and iep children and my son's in the iep program now today i asked when are the um the extra health classes you know get extra time and extra practice with ela and math and i was told that the new extra health classes did not include iep children now that to me is discrimination if they were offered in the summertime for children with iups my son took the um two week program and they were offered to children at um all levels they had you know iep teachers teach the iep kids and regular teachers teach the regular kids now how come

038the after school and before school programs now don't include them and is there going to be a program later on in the summer time and i was told today that they by mrs reichmann that they're not included because they're in the iep program in their um classes but they're not getting the extra time they were out of school the same amount of time as the other children and they're not getting extra time like in their classes they're just doing the regular work they're not getting like extra skills for they're not just they're just not getting extra time and i think it's discrimination if you're gonna have extra classes and extra help like in the summer time for all children at this time should be for all children too the i the kids in the special

039ed and iep programs should not be excluded and that's what i want to talk about hey everybody i'm sure you guys all missed me mark chamber wayne i want to talk about common sense and critical thinking and the policies that we've seen put in place uh for the last couple of years first one i want to talk about is the masking of teachers with along with the testing mandates for the teachers so i think everybody here could agree that uh we all know that covet is transmitted by vaccinated people as well as on that stand if you don't believe that then you're living under a rock because i caught it from someone who was got fully vaccinated and boosted and the question i have is why do we have a policy in place where if

040it's spent to protect children why are only unvaccinated teachers testing for coffee weekly why is it not required that anybody that can transmit the virus um has to test weekly if you're telling me you're there to protect my kids because not testing everybody does not protect my kids now you're all academic so i think that should be a question that i would think you guys should have thought of but didn't now i've heard from you know other people and other things that have come out from the njea the njea now wants to start this uh conversation about the mass you know removal and they want it to be where if you're vaccinated you can pull your masks if you're not you know the kids are going to have to wear masks in school again the

041logic of that makes absolutely no sense because anybody can transmit this there's an article that came out from the njea they're fully against it and they want it to go backwards so i'm asking you to think about that as well because it follows the same lack of logic as your testing policy for teachers lastly that presentation about the rankings of our kids and all the testing all that i'm sorry but i do not find any comfort in fact that our kids did better than people in the rest of the state that does not tell me anything or make me feel better that you know other kids are doing worse so that makes me feel better i worry about what my kids are doing and what my school system is providing and that lack that loss

042of learning is actually partially to blame for the policies that you have enacted and you know we've all been talking about this now for six months eight months and we've been saying that a lot of the things that are detrimental to the kids like mask wearing and all of that is gonna come back and it's gonna have direct impact on their learning and it has now the studies are starting to come out about how children are learning less when they're wearing masks and these are all things that we've tried to explain to you guys months ago so now you know it's coming out that this is the fact so i i'm going to beg you guys to stop with all of the academic thought and think about things in theory and start to look at

043things in practice because the very big difference between what you read in books and what your you know what you're going to think is going to happen and how people react and impacts on people in reality that's to say i'm not going to get into the curriculum tonight because that's a whole nother topic but it's along the same lines as those things that things that you're looking to implement sound great in theory but are not good in practice so mister oh thank you it was your time yeah because it was still jennifer layton 48 terrace road wayne um good evening board members i haven't been to a meeting for a few weeks i did the birth of my son so i just want to start out by congratulating and welcoming our new board members it's

044so nice to see you standing here with that said i come to tonight's meeting with cautious optimism for the students of our wayne public school system after the governor's announcement i had fully expected to come and present the board with another speech about the importance of parental choice when it came to masking but to my surprise you quickly responded with what we've been asking for for months and that was the option to wear masks or not in school so i thank you for that um i want to thank you for taking this important step because it has renewed some of my faith that our voice that our voices are being heard we now know that with the ever-evolving science that one-way masking is effective for those who choose to continue to mask and that students

045and staff in our buildings have now had the time to make the proper medical decisions for themselves that would allow them to feel safe in the school environments that they teach and learn in as a new jersey public school educator of 13 years the last two years have certainly been the hardest for me i've seen the social emotional and mental toll that the pandemic has taken on our most vulnerable and impressionable minds i've witnessed listless children emptily staring into screens during the failure that was virtual instruction and have endured watching teary-eyed children literally beg their children and literally begged their teachers to take their mask off pleading that they were not sick i will never forget this i won't i will forever blame the powers that being trenton including my own union in the state

046for perpetuating this on our children but with that being said i am asking the board and i'm asking teachers who feel the same way to stand with me even outside of union lines and make sure that this never happens again our children cannot afford these continued losses in learning and they certainly cannot afford to lose any more of their childhood what i am now asking of the board is to make clear in the upcoming weeks the updated protocols for mass optional students we have seen that there has been a disparity in the way that vaccinated versus unvaccinated children are being treated when it comes to close contact and quarantine will this further that disparity my hope is that all are treated equitably moving forward again i thank this board for taking the time to hear

047my concerns and i'm excited to see a new more normal chapter of education in our town unfold thank you coral 36 lawrence road um i'm going to continue to speak about mass tonight because i'm of the mindset that every day from here until march 7th should already be march 7th while everyone has been supposedly celebrating the bone that philip murphy through the state of new jersey this week the truth is that what he did was unlawfully and illegally extend his emergency powers for another month at the cost of our children and babies in the school districts who continue to comply are the henchmen complicit in carrying out these crimes against our most innocent and vulnerable our kids anyone who cannot see the gross and vast damage that has been done to these children is either

048in denial willfully ignorant or evil we continue to go to our sporting events concerts shopping vacations supermarkets with the choice to be master unmasked yet how have we justified placing the heaviest burden on our children demanding that their mouths and noses remain muzzled with damp dirty cloth for hours on end not only restricting breathing but inhibiting speech development articulation and their ability to read facial expressions and learn social cues no matter how much fear you personally possess regarding this virus the fact remains that this virus poses about as much of a threat to these kids as a seasonal flu take this commentary from a speech therapist in maryland because of these humane restrictions the speech issues i see in three and four year olds that have been masked i've never seen before in my 22

049year career so much load muscle tone drooling unusual articulation errors in early developing sounds history will not look kindly on those in positions of authority who carried out these nonsensical and cruel orders and mandates all the while claiming to have no choice and that their hands were tied for the sake of funding what about the children's sake something very grieving tragic has happened over these last two years and that is that our children were used as pawns in a sick political game and the mandatory masking continued flying in the face of science and evidence showing their futility at the end of all this in the words of barry rice you will realize most importantly that this is going to be remembered by the younger generations as a catastrophic catastrophic moral crime once again we ask

050this board to stand up for our children and send the letter to philip murphy urging him to rescind the extension of the mass mandate and tell them that these children should be masked not one day more just give me one second please just as a reminder when you come up to speak just please keep your masks on everybody's speaking thank you very much elliot's 576 valley road i am uh now to a speak unmasking i want to thank the district and dr toback for uh sending it out that you will uh send the mask mandate on march 7th though i need to look at the calendar every which direction to see how quick this month could go by because i cannot bear one more day i've been treated like this for two years by this

051state and me my fellow students have been forgotten about by the state and finally something has been given to us i hope that this decision does not change because if it does it'll be the biggest disappointment that any student has ever had the students and the teachers have accepted this and that we will not have a mass mandate anymore it is time to get back to normal and keep this and i heard earlier that the board will vote to uh on the policy tonight and i hope that the board the board decides has the correct decision in favor of the students not just the teachers union that has been treated so well over the past few years by this state i am praying that i will never have to hear the word mask up ever

052again in my life because these years are two years that i will look on as the worst years of my life where i feel like my life was confined to one little bubble of a mask every single day i was in school where i was mistreated by being yelled at all the time about a mask that is not naturally supposed to be on my face i am done with wearing a mask i will wash my hands i do wash my hands i understand the virus i just want the chance to feel normal again i hope you stick to this decision thank you see nobody else before now we'll move forward to reading up the committed minute [Music] okay so i missed it okay we're having a hard time i'll stand and speak loudly finance committee

053this evening the finance committee met with myself mr pavlak mr fatale administrators william moffett and cheryl lydic we had quite a bit on the agenda now that budget season is here we discussed multiple financial reports that are produced monthly the treasurer's report the operating and enterprise funds were discussed transportation contracts which are on the agenda were reviewed contract revisions for psychological services and the replacement vendor were discussed that will be on our emergent part of the agenda budget transfers not necessary this month ryerson is going to receive a partial roof placement the money will be coming from our maintenance fund and that's going out for bid security vestibules at wayne valley high school anthony wayne middle school and jfk elementary school will be receiving vestibules paid for by the alyssa's law grant going out for

054bid in march those are tremendous projects quite expensive and we won't be paying a cent of local taxpayer money we discussed the cost of our upcoming health and dental for next year that will be going into the budget we're waiting for information from our broker it's really too soon to tell what the increase will be that's always a nail biter until we receive that information and it's a large impact on the budget surplus projection um oh okay so we we may be short in some areas which would affect how much we can roll into surplus uh and that would be the preschool and some revenues that we normally receive from facilities use and rentals um and we're not quite sure what next year's extraordinary aid will be we had a bit of a windfall this

055year but it was an anomaly enterprise operations were discussed um we're going after all available oh no that's sir sorry food service is doing much better now that uh students can eat in school uh we actually are in a plus position where we can invest some money in equipment my first recommendation was pizza ovens there's never enough pizza so before and after care is also doing well in the black but preschool is down so if you know anybody who needs a good preschool send them on over to wayne esser funds were discussed we're going after every available dime that we can get and uh most of that has already been earmarked and applied for and we'll have a presentation on that coming soon for the public uh revenue projection well there's going to be a

056delay as dr toback mentioned earlier in our state aid number so we're waiting for that we have a maintenance reserve account that began at 3.8 million so far we've used quite a bit of it for a roof an hvac upgrade another roof and from that 3.8 we're down to 8.44 so we're hoping to bank some uh money there uh before during this budget cycle from the the excess from the audit our capital reserve started out at 8.6 million and again we invested in a lot of projects uh science labs security cameras etc so that fund is now at 3.8 million so another fund that will need some replenishing and uh that's it for now more to come the education committee met tonight um myself missmantek and mishreishman were in attendance along with paula clark we

057reviewed policy policies of the two policies that are up for vote today and then we discussed the new club at schuyler colfax on community building the updated computer science curriculum a residency request the transitional skills community based instructions we went over policy related to that and how that program would work we also went over the possibility of a summer intervention programs pending funding um we went over the rutgers paraprofessional coaching project to help our it's paraprofessionals three-year plan for english language learners we're also looking at a curriculum for a sixth grade seminar for them to learn study skills and organizational skills which is really important um and we discuss the honor roll policy um so it needs to be updated um there are things that are in that policy that need to be looked at

058and then it's going to be coming back to committee for discussion at the next meeting that's next time we meet and that concludes my report mr duffy tonight the technology safety committee met myself mr bubba mr prusakos and uh mr joe bashar i could sit here and bore you all with the recall of charging cords solve that problem relatively quickly we talked about the retention of emails for the next seven years that were required by federal regulations our chromebooks when they go out and don't work anymore have zero value except for scrap as well as our tvs our old school tvs that we all grew up with with the tubes not worth anything we've now put a filter in we've had a filter we're updating the filter to go after the two thousand two hundred

059thousand websites that continually come up daily which prevent pornography sites gambling sites all the stuff that we don't want our children to say federal funds we have for that and that's about it it's a really eventful meeting thank you [Music] i'd like to move the entire attendance consent agenda discussion on the agenda um i just have a general question related to the masking policy only because as we are talking about making mass optional my question is how will that affect our quarantine and isolation policy is there going to be an update to that policy so right now the state provided us with information about the lifting of the masking requirement on march 7th there is fall of guidance that they will be providing so that the other actions the board could take at a later

060time would not affect necessarily the part of the policy or the appendices that are being voted upon tonight but it could affect some of the other appendices at a later time so we do not have all the latest guidance the state is still in the process of producing additional methods just love it i just have one thing i'm not even sure if it's tomato or not but we're taking the donation from the jets for the uh wing valley it's eight thousand dollars is there interest at wayne hills yes so if there is can we just match up this year and then we'll get the money next year for it and start the program is it this way we're not in one versus the other i would like to see that so financially that would be

061something that would be able to do we would have to um in addition to the eight thousand dollars he would also need to purchase the uniforms but i know there's i understand that if you're looking for a cost um good can i suggest we have that brought up at the next finance committee so by then we can have some actual numbers it would be best to put something in writing this point in time it's not live did you just ask her to give us yes so that's why yeah this is jets not giants i said s kurt for the giants yeah okay i didn't hear the child so if our finance committee does not meet at the next meeting it would probably be important to move along based on the timeline to start the season

062oh this is for this year goes for next year oh okay well that's a good thing so you know it's okay i mean in the case that we can put together a resolution and certainly can be discussed by the full board it seems to be an interest for the full board so we can put together a resolution and that we find it okay thank you yes mr duffy yes mr kazan yes this is kumar yes mr pablo yes yes yes motion carried this portion of the meeting we're going to open back up and call the comments this portion of the meeting is open to citizens this portion 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 three

063minutes per person members of the public are discouraged from speaking negatively about an employee or 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 a subsequent meeting on their old business good evening my name is uh sal biondo with a 23 bridge place first of all thank you guys all for volunteering your time um i know it's a daunting task um with that being said i'm here to talk about wayne hell's at life programs my son's a senior at hills he played high school sports for the love of the game learned many life lessons such as teamwork physical fitness and well-being community representation being a positive role model and making

064social relationships here's my take after volunteering a lot of my time attending school events sporting events in particular at the high school over the last few years at hills our sports teams experienced delays in a weight training regiment uh due to purchase order issues in weight training weak sets plates weighted plates bars um believe it or not they just came in this week after about a two year wait um i've witnessed different guidelines for seat belt safety depending on what school you're going to and uh non-school buses of course not winning buses but charter buses some guidelines are put in place with just a two strap uh system uh which is just the waste while other schools were held to a different standard for a three-point waste and cross-chest uh restraint system um that cost

065certain programs a little bit more money than others um so we need to kind of streamline our guidelines more i've witnessed unnecessary overzealous supervision by some administrators to deter school spirit and pride during sporting events i've also recently learned even after um the gym capacity limits were lifted that we had people turned away at a high school basketball game he was actually at wayne hills alumni and the college recruiter recruiters right behind me they both got turned away um some of these things i really don't like to bring up but i mean i feel like they brought the light because it's been ongoing um uh this past fall we had uh some uh booster club guidelines that were introduced to us granted uh they were an amended copy but now tabled by dr toback which

066we appreciate these guidelines uh caused a little bit of fear panic uh amongst many booster club parents creating work for uh extra work for volunteers these same guidelines were published and distributed um without consent from every booster club president um with their private phone numbers and email addresses published on them they distributed to dozens of people uh thankfully again these guidelines were tabled but since this time booster club parents have communicated regularly many concerns have been brought to life about outdated facilities at wien hills mr that's three minutes okay thank you my name is danielle piano i came here tonight to talk about um the honor roll well the lack of honor roll actually um that i found out my son you know he just started sixth grade and he got straight a's amazingly this

067marking this past marking period and the first marking period he almost got straight a's one art class he got 89 and the wrestle alias so i didn't think there was an honor roll um didn't look into the honor roll the first marking period because i figured you know he didn't get all eight so he wouldn't be on it so the second marking period i said oh that's great you got sure days you'll be on the honor ball and i called the principal anthony wayne says no there's no honor roll you know i haven't heard of it i started here in 2013 never had it so i said how can they not be honorable i grew up here went to school here like i i have friends here and we've always had the honorable like especially

068in middle school i don't i don't remember high school but i remember middle school so i looked into it and it's like a positive thing i don't know how anybody could think it's negative for children it's a very positive thing that they could um you know work towards especially after the last two years that we've had and um to my surprise nobody knew about it and they didn't know some people knew about it and didn't know when it ended and then you know i sent out emails and i said wait a second let me just go look like you say look at the policies online and i found the policy right there online and it says it's from 2009 and it was edited in 2011. so i know i just heard you say that you

069talked about it in your um in your meeting but i couldn't hear what you said but what happened because it's like it's hard to hear back here so i don't know are you gonna are you gonna be able to have the honorable back again i heard you say something like you talked about it today but i couldn't hear what he said back there uh it's not an interaction i believe uh during comments later it will be addressed if you didn't hear it yeah i heard you said that you did talk about it but i couldn't hear like what you said something about next next meeting but i didn't care okay i think uh yeah just the door and board comments at the closing don't reiterate on that i just found it look amazing that it

070was just sitting right there on the right there on the website five minutes looked up right there on the website and everybody's like oh no no no the honorable and it's just amazing it's like your policies that's what made me upset the most it's not that the honorable was gone is that you didn't even know your policy was right there on on the website that makes me just really have like no faith in like what's going on and what i forgot to say before about um the extra health classes too you know you're receiving money from the government the money should go to all the children it should not you should not be having extra health classes right now after school before school and excluding special ed children and children that are in the iep

071classes so i mean my son has regular science and regular social studies and i heard that this the extra help is for social studies and science at schuyler colfax now what's that about i mean i'm sorry that's three minutes okay thank you oh hi ellen at domicole 31 grandview drive i wasn't going to speak today i'm shaking very nervous um but as i'm here something has come inside me and i need to express what i've been feeling i want to walk you guys through bedtime in my home shower bed decompress read a story to my son after that's done the tears pour pour down asking me mommy when am i going to take my mask off why is it so hot in the classroom how come i can't breathe this these are the conversations that

072i have to have with my son and i know i know i'm not the only parent having those conversations so i'm excited that the mask is being lifted come march 7th but i hope that doesn't give you plenty of time to come up with stipulations to breathe they deserve to smile i recently got a letter you mentioned quarantine just in your previous discussions about possibly lifting them i got a letter from the school saying that my son has missed too many days of school and that i should take interest in that being that it could affect his epidemics why did he miss those days of school tested for covid first i tested positive i was told he wasn't able to come back to school until my last quarantine ended then my husband tested positive that

073would have taken his 10 days to another 20 days of missing school how are these kids doing well in school how are they getting any sort of education our test scores clearly are showing that our kids are failing they we need to do some change we need to take the mask off we need to stop the quarantine we need to go back to normal life and let our kids be happy and free apt has a program no place for hate our school is a complete place of hate there's no kids that want to go there they're just they don't want to go to school anymore they don't want to learn this isn't normal so i take i hope that you take into consideration you have a long time to come up with stipulations on taking

074off this mask i hope you stick to it and actually back parents up back these students up because they're trusting in you and ms kazan has said many times that parents don't show up to the meeting so you think that they're okay with it no they're not okay with it maybe they can't come we take into consideration that they have to take extra jobs on because of the financial burden that has impacted them from covid have you taken into consideration that maybe they don't want to miss their kids games because that's the only sort of normalcy that their kids have where they're mask-free running around smiling and playing with their friends so i just highly stress and encourage you to please make these changes thank you good evening um mr duffy i thought that was

075a really valuable point that you said about the filters that they need to be updated for the websites um it caused me to have a question i'd like to know what the policy is for the standard of that which is deemed pornographic for these filters and where i can see that in writing whether it's pornographic or any other inappropriate content that we want filtered on the websites so if i can please be told where i can get that that would be amazing number one number two um i'm highly ignorant but wanting to learn about the esser funds and i'd like to know where we can see in writing uh money's come in money's gone out what the projects are you know we're all i think the election expressed we're longing for more transparency accountability so

076i'd like to see some things in writing i'm not just anything general i'd like to support the voting on the honor roll my son he's a senior and uh this past semester he got all a's the one before that he got all a's in one b and um he's not involved in sports or other activities and the group that he hangs out with is not either so this honor roll besides him having a perfect attendance and notaries these are the things that he can build on because not every child is sports minded or into athletics or the band or things or art so that honor roll is something that they could use for their portfolio especially in high school so please consider that also i learned just recently that there is an uh some kind

077of an afternoon trade school that i believe the seniors can attend we never knew about it i don't know if that is posted somewhere or parents are involved again i could be ignorant and i'd like to have some information on that if a child goes there in the afternoon a student a senior just does that mean if he attends that uh trade school that this the high schools here get less money i just like to know you know i i'm wondering why because he he doesn't want to go to college he wants to go to trade school which i think can be admirable i have a few plumbers in my plan and uh i think what he wants to do should be supported and he could have benefited from knowing about that so those are

078my four points and i'm hoping i can get some information thank you very much sure i also just wanted to speak out in support of free implementation of the honor roll i also grew up here in wayne and have fond memories of middle school and high school days of being on the menu and and just wanted to make some points on that um the honor roll is unlike other academic recognition recognition programs in that it recognizes short-term academic achievement as unlike other programs which recognize longer-term academic achievement like being in the national honor society or whatever so that means that more students will have the opportunity to get that recognition that they might otherwise not be eligible for i also think that because of the nature of the program um it it re it emphasizes

079positive recognition and reinforces that positive behavior that allowed those students to get to to be eligible to be on the honor roll and then they are of course more likely to duplicate those behaviors that got them there given the academic challenges faced with covid it is even more important to recognize students on a short term basis to to overcome the challenges that they face in the last couple of years so i encourage you to consider that when thinking about uh reestablishing the honor roll it's also something that's a low-cost low operational uh policy and program to implement so i would ask that um for you know the upcoming school year that the board consider that and the administration consider doing that and bringing back the honorable i promise won't be too much longer again sal

080beyond a 23 rich place so um since the guidelines um were tabled oh the booster club parents have began communicating regularly many concerns have been brought to light regarding the outdated facilities such as the basketball court in the gymnasium the baseball field the main term field bleachers press box and port-a-potty stall situation and safety concerns within them down by the field as well as a small parking lot in the entrance circle of the front of the high school it looks like it really hasn't been paved in many many years we also failed miserably on our website if you go to wayne hills high school right now the website click on the athletic tab you still have girls tennis live scoreboard being screened across the screen been played since fall um there's no out the updated

081uh rosters for current uh teams many winter sports games scoring boards scores are missing and so much more with that being said i think the administration needs to do better we need to think more proactively with more transparency we need passionate leaders that show true patriot pride and indian pride and to advocate for all the student athletes we need to hire higher administrators who will put in the work now and get these kids back on the field of play thank you [Music] all right brian battlefield three cannot drive i can't help you i'm sorry speak louder that's right um so last year dr toback offered to get parents involved sometime in the spring to start talking about the new curriculum changes and to start getting involved with us i'd like to know when we're going

082to hear about that and when we can start getting involved with those curriculum changes so that we can start hopefully avoiding all of the things from last year that were concerned it's not to be facetious it's a genuine question i was listening to the powerpoint and the statistics and how it was referenced this gender and this gender and the question that popped out of my mouth is if we're teaching the children there's more than two genders how can you be taking a study on two genders it just reflects the insanity of the subject and how i'd like to know how this board is going to navigate this situation and address that because i it's it's adding confusion it's just it's more insanity so that's something i don't know if anybody thought about that when you

083were giving the report but please consider that and see how it's going to be addressed oh uh one i would like to start discussing moving the public work session meetings to a different location since there's you know safety involved that i would like us to start talking about possibly moving it to one of the high schools or the chambers if it's open and my point number two was i would like to do a motion to have the public speaking portion increase to five minutes from three minutes was to have a discussion about changing the okay so the motion is to increase the public speaking portion from three minutes to five minutes i'll second discussion well first mrs wedding i'd like to point out a few things um you're asking for a policy change i know

084your new board member you haven't completed your training yet but we have a process for that we have a process for everything the last time we made a change to that policy i think it took four meetings before we finally rang the bell on it and there was a final vote we have a committee system if the board has consensus this evening to even entertain your motion it need needs to be written we can't vote on a policy that's not in front of us like the policy we voted to revise this evening was on our agenda so a simple vote here this evening cannot change the policy if the board wants to continue with this discussion we can certainly entertain it but it would have to be written um unless you brought a written one

085with you no i did i did speak to the board president ahead of the time okay and she had suggested that i do that today well this is a starting point i just want you to understand that this is a starting point this is not something we can determine this evening because again the policy has to be written there may be some other ideas from the board about how they would like to revise this policy so i think that's what this discussion should contain this evening okay so um i would make a secondary motion to remove the or as you first to remove the motion so that we can just follow our normal process have the discussion and defer it to committee and then we'll bring it for a first reading after it's written right

086that's the process if the attorney would like to wait and go right um you've brought a motion and seconded it under discussion so you do have the opportunity to vote on it uh it is true that our policy 167 controls the time limits uh it's moved from five minutes to three minutes i would require a change in the policy to do that our normal process is to refer the matter to the policy committee to prepare a written policy to vote on and then bring up for a public voter the next quarter that's the whole process our policy works and how we typically approach it and there might be board members that want to do other things to this policy five minutes for myself um i would be amenable to it but then i would want

087an overall time limit because you're adding to the amount of time that people can speak and board members are volunteers we start here at 4 30 for the most part and as it is most meetings were here until late in the evening so if you're going to add another two minutes to everyone's comments and so far this evening everyone's been able to get their point across in three um i think everyone was able to speak you could have one or two people without it if i could just interpret one second to the chair not only is everybody able to get their point across in three minutes they do have a second bite of the apple coming in for an additional six minutes so you actually have an additional minute more than five but i will

088yeah you wouldn't get it i would i wouldn't approve of the second bite of the apple any five minutes because again you know this is we already have a generous policy based on what other boards do throughout the state that was all done and investigated when we started the discussion of changing the policy last year this isn't something we just surprised to the board with at a meeting it was discussed fully board members were for certain things against certain things we took the time to change those things because we want to work together as a unit and make sure that everyone's opinion is in the uh final product mr powell perhaps mrs whitehead would amend her motion to five minutes in referring to the policy committee well we wouldn't need consensus well you're going to

089get consensus on a vote there's a motion and a second on the force so you have to either vote it up you vote if i'm going to take this to the policy committee i want to hear what the board wants not just what can i i can maybe shed some light that might end this one right now we just have a second motion by miss kazan that we have we changed the policy if i'm not mistaken in august i think that was okay i believe we have six months that we have to leave the policy in place correct you would know that will be better than i would it's never come up before i always thought there was a time limit but that was the question is there is is there john a time we

090have to have the policy in place before we can amend it again no i mean the board has the discretion to to amend the policies when they choose to typically it's under a two reading policy uh process and then you go from there okay because i was under the assumptions for six months which we would be at six months in at the end of this month and then everything would be open after that but if there's nothing so i can just if i can so we have a motion on the floor we have a secondary to remove that failed second secondary a man to refer to mr pavlov today or did you make a secondary motion don i asked her oh yes i agreed but three to move it to the policy committee with the

091five minutes with the five minutes right so you want five minutes what do you want because if we're going to amend the policy we need consensus on whatever you want you send it into committee you keep come out of committee any way it wants well i don't want to go through committee if you don't want you know if you don't want to go with me once okay i'm in favor of five minutes one shot one time so dawn five minutes evie five minutes put one bite of the apple one bag of capital for me same with same with you yes okay five minutes okay one bite five minutes one bite no one wants an overall time limit i think i do have a common place um i just want to get higher let me finish

092getting the information i need for policy committee mrs kumar you were okay with i'm okay with five minutes if it's one time yeah versus the three with two one i'd like to have a time limit in addition to the five minutes overall i don't want to be here till midnight and to be ladies are you listening sorry yes uh harry you were okay with that obviously you want the five minutes you're okay with the one bite yes you're okay with the overall 90 minutes i don't need an overall but i'm fine you'll be okay with that you're okay with a 90 minute overall okay so far you're okay with 90 minutes well i think that might i missed a guppy that might violate the sunshine model if we go into another day yeah that's the

093problem well we've been there [Music] there you go [Music] i don't think i wrote you down okay so the consensus is we'll go to five minutes revise the policy to be voted on at the next meeting and the overall time limit will be 90 minutes we can always vote to increase the time if there's a hot button issue but that will be the standing policy if we get a vote once it's written so does winter have to pull her first or a moment asked to convene a policy committee between now and the next meeting yes great yeah okay i guess i had my second point was to discuss the location of the public ready in a policy recession uh and it's the purview of the president once the board votes on it we've already voted

094on the calendar for the year can we discuss changing the location well exactly i'd like to just ask we have to get through the first motion question first sorry we read it all right so we have to take a moment yes so we have the amended resolution that was introduced by mrs wintech and seconded by mrs mr uh and uh as discussed here so i can call the goal mr duffy to go to the policy videos house mr kazan yes this is kumar yes mr pablo yes mr sacros yes mrs yes mr papa yes mr fatale our policy currently reads that the board votes on a calendar at the beginning of the year any changes to that calendar or from the board president she's not even here so i think after being in only what

095is it now three meetings mrs montana uh i don't think you understand the value yet of our pws meetings and the reason why we have them here i mean tonight for instance we would go long we then have to drive our car over there trying to watch presentations like this are very difficult in that large room where the sound is awful the acoustics are horrible i can't even sing let alone here so i think when we're working on things here that are important presentations etc which is what work sessions are for and understand that the public um is not a factor of consideration with the two meetings per month they're only entitled to one meeting a month the second meeting was basically uh started for us so that we can actually get to the business

096of the board and not be distracted by things that are not important at the moment because there's the other meaning for that so um obviously again i'm not even sure that's something we could vote on unless again we want to do a policy change because that's the current policy so what does the policy say that we vote we vote on the meetings and their location etc at our reorganization meeting we produce a calendar and we've done that any changes after that or the purview of the president okay so again we would have to change a policy if we want to move that we change that decision well my suggestion if the policy puts it within the purview of the president that might be a reason for us to carry this to another meeting when at

097least the president is here to participate in the conferences that would be smart i agree all right given the discussion brought up by the paul lake specifically ms corral in regards to a letter to governor phil murphy given that dr toback gave us the absolutely great news today that there was zero cases of covet if there's another specific another amount of zero cases in a row i would recommend you know and this is up for discussion and also to uh consult with uh mr geppert here uh that we communicate with governor murphy about providing a special consideration or dispensation for the wayne district and being proactive in possibly removing the masks earlier then [Music] there's a yeah well as i said before we're under an executive order so we need to comply until that's changed

098but i mean if the board wants to consider a motion to ask him to change his mind i would like to make a motion that we do some form of communication proactive communication that we present to governor murphy that the winning district gets special consideration given our zero case load uh in the wing district if we can if we want to discuss first and uh decide do we need you know three days in a row of zero cases or you know any specific amount or if we just go ahead and you know communicate to uh governor murphy that we have a special consideration to do a prior to the march 7th executive order so i just want to make sure that we have this correct uh you're putting a motion out for a letter to

099be written or some form of communication to governor murphy that if we have zero cover cases for x amount or you know whether it's who are you who are you going to write the letter or i can write the letter we went through this with the governor letter last year we can't vote in the abstract there has to be something in front of us okay i can present a letter by tomorrow well we can't vote on it by the time we vote on it we'll have like five days less of mass wearing right no offense i mean i get the the point and it would be nice but that's uh nothing if i could being being the person who brought this up at the last the last time i totally totally understand i totally agree

100but as mrs kazan said we by the time you write the letter we get back here okay in two weeks to where i'm sorry the 24th we're seven days of school and to be honest with you unless you write it on toilet paper that's what he's going to do with it so i i do totally agree but we have a light at the end of the tunnel and there's no reason to shake the cage and that's just i agree but we see it like i i i totally get it i'm with you i wish it was yesterday i'll make a motion then that given how we stand as a district and i'll agree with you um that you know if if the executive order does expire march 7th that we will continue that we will

101go with mask optional but if you know he extends it for other reasons then then i'll let it get swapped for that we could agree with you i think we i think we all know we're all sick and tired of it we're ready to reference [Music] the motion is given our current status to ensure that we will be less optional more seven if if the governor for whatever reason extends his executive order uh beyond march 7th we will then communicate immediately to governor murphy that we should have special consideration in our district second yes and you said communicate what i did what does that mean you know whichever communication email or letter email it's harder to do the louder for the first march meeting if necessary sure get your giraffe going i had this so

102make sure it's too emotional i missed the tacos this is one security second correct remembered mrs kumar um i am actually going to abstain because we don't have the quarantine guidelines right now for the current mass optional not that i won't necessarily be for it later but right now just because we have missing information that's all mr pathway although yes but we could draft a letter right here right now but i'll go yes yes mr bubba yes i i do think it's an exercise in futility but yes as mr duffy said this is going to end up because he doesn't care mr duffy yes as long as it's written on two plus yes but i hope we don't need that letter at all and from march 7th we are a mass optional so yes ocean

103passes any other new i just wanted to go public and say i'm all for relaunching the honor roll in the schools so uh you know whatever it's worth to the education committee and thank you to all the parents for for coming out to express your opinion in this in this tight in these tight borders here yeah i also support the annual i think it would be great addition for our district at almost zero to no cost with some boosters to the kids so i definitely support it and i agree mr powell um i do i too support the honor roll you know we talk about social emotional learning and where our kids are our kids haven't recovered folks and anybody who thinks just because they're back full-time that recovered has not been in a classroom

104i can tell you i am in a classroom every day and no they're still hurting still hurting and then you have the state school board who decides oh time to up the requirements for our seniors next year we're not and i'll shed a piece of light to those folks down there folks it's not going to change that quick we got a long way to go our numbers look better i'm still not happy with those numbers we still have a long way to go miss come on um so i am in support of the honor roll um what we discussed at the meeting um was that we have a policy the policy itself is not mandated we always have policies for things but certain policies we absolutely have to follow other ones we don't um i'm

105not quite sure but there were different changes that were made like adding a national honor society in middle school which was part of the reason to an extent that the honorable seem to have gone to the wayside but we're looking at that policy like i said we're looking at how we could revise it because it is out of date we can't implement it the way it's written right now so we're looking at it we're having all the administrators are looking at it and seeing what the best way to implement that policy might be and we'll be discussing that the next education committee needing um and there is a couple things that were said that i think are pretty offensive honestly to this whole board um calling out our character in terms of whether or not

106we care about children this is a volunteer position we're all here for long hours we all care about kids we come at it from different angles so just want to make that clear and another piece of misinformation i want to make very very clear if you are vaccinated you have a much much less chance of transmitting the virus from the new york state department of health that is where i got that information everybody we have similar policies related to measles and other vaccines and you have the option that is all i'm going to say thank god well yeah i wanted to address a comment that was made about me personally um i think you said something about i don't think that other people in the church the other people in the community don't come because

107they're busy or with it board meetings are not the only way to communicate we we made that uh very apparent last year when there were competing petitions and there were thousands of signatures on them so while those people may not be able to attend a meeting they can certainly have their voices heard your time is up the people that are anti-mask or anti-backs you're coming to meetings i receive emails but i have to say uh the majority of people do not write do not attend are obviously able to deal with whatever the uh guidance is that's in place whatever the rules are that are in place and they teach their children to cope with them and that's all i have to say look at the new people on your board in a couple months wait

108till next year when more of us are in there um no business we're on board member companies oh so my time to respond to those things yeah was under old business so you're okay with me yeah right so um there were i took notes on the comments that were made many of the people that came to the podium made comments about some different issues but i'm going to try to answer um some of the questions and ask mrs reichman to respond to one of the one of the questions but um so mr biondo so as far as um so you brought up a point about charter buses and you brought up a plane about seat belts so we'll get to some of the other issues as well but to start with the buses so the

109district the board of ed created a standard a few years ago that if the district was to contract with a charter school bus company that ultimately they require seat belts in some fashion so a commercial charter bus it does not require seat belts at all there was this terrible accident that took place right a few years ago around mount olive right somewhere around there and at that point the board um horrified by what happened during that accident decided that it was going to establish a contracting standard where seat belts were required sometimes the three-point sometimes a two-point in fact is there are seat belts even though none are required so some of the companies put in you know they made decisions about what kind of belts they could put in probably the older buses have

110the two seat belts the others have probably the three-point harness so that's the origin of that so that would cost perhaps more money if there's a newer bus you know those are all details i don't know about um with regard to the ordering of weightlifting equipment i've been in the weight room i know that we are we have a very nice weight room at wayne hills and i know that they have all kinds of equipment there um i will have to look into the issue of weight plates and we just received but literally this weekend here okay so it's entirely possible it could be a supply chain issue that i don't know about but i will look into it okay um so as far as um i can't talk about staff members it would be

111inappropriate for me to weigh in about that with regard to the directory there was uh it is correct that there was a directory that was recreated based on input from members of the booster club community so in other words they said well one of the things that should be in this this um document it would be great if we could reach out and contact and communicate more with other of the booster clubs so there was a request to actually create that directory so yes it was published with the intention and belief that it was okay because these people gave their numbers and like i said it was one of the points one more notification okay well that's another story so but it's not a you know it wasn't that there was um there was an

112intent there basically to meet what if if um the booster clubs contributed ideas to this this book right that we put together that was one of them so like i said it was uh it came from a booster club um with regard to the honor roll you want to talk about that yeah go ahead because um because i just wanted to clarify i know there were questions um so i just as a point of clarification of what ms kumar was referencing is we have policy but it's a regulation that we were discussing where all the detail that specifies um how this is played out and what it looks like in terms of administration so the regulations based on the district policy but it's left to the administrative discretion in the design and the implementation what

113we did tonight was we looked at the policy and then we looked at the regulation and we agreed that we would bring it back and we wanted to have a deeper and further discussion and and then we would consider bringing together a committee if we got to a point where we needed to have deeper involvement but it is going back to the next education committee so that we could sit down and look at the regulation and have a discussion about it so that was just a point of clarification we're not going back i'm sorry but it's not a back and forth they just i just wanted to make sure everybody can hear um so the next education committee meeting is not at the next meeting it's the meeting after that and you also have with

114the question from mr battershell yes about curriculum did you have that going on um yeah um just so everyone can hear uh i i know there was a question about um curriculum changes and updates um we have just we're just starting we're working in the budget planning process and planning for all of our curricular updates as dr toback had indicated we have qsat coming in that's our accountability where we produce all of our curriculum documents due to the pandemic all of our curriculum writing is scheduled to happen over the summer our timeline was put together in the beginning of the school year and interrupted obviously by the pandemic and the priority shifted to keeping our schools open every day having all hands on death utilizing any staff we have to make sure we not shut

115down any classes we are scheduling and planning you'll see it on an upcoming board agenda once we approve the budget process then we'll have to advertise for teachers to actually complete the curriculum writing just this week on the i'm sorry i'm looking for my notes with the date last week i'm sorry we had our on february 3rd the internal diversity equity and inclusion committee met to look at all of the new resources i know we had discussed at previous meetings that we were anticipating resources from the state those have all been shared they're all online anyone can access them and then our respective building committees will now reconvene at the building level with their parents to look at those resources um so parents will be involved in the process and anything related i know there

116were questions about social emotional learning right now we are just doing intake in terms of any programs that are out there that may provide a resource bank that would seem suitable to the district but again there's a process and if we were to budget for and decide to make a decision to move ahead with the program we would go through a committee and parents would be involved in the committee right so um the next um there was a few questions from mrs nasak one of them was about filters and how filters are used to filter out what might be deemed as pornographic material so all the software that we have the filters we have are compliant with the child internet protection act so it's something you can google that is a standard that is out

117there that has been established repeat the name okay the child internet protection act if you want to google that that gives you some idea with regard to how the district is spending federal funds that is something that we can understand we have some information on our website we do right and not our partner okay so in other words there is information mr moffat pointed out there's information available on the website um in many cases it has yet to be spent it's been allocated for different purposes and um with regard to um [Music] i am not aware of any afternoon trade school is it the the state county technical school as far as i know did that does not have a half a day program it's full time we that's bergen county so we wouldn't have

118any connection with the bergen county technical school if it's private school that's not that's nothing we would not fund any any student to go to a private trade school yes so my question is that they go to the trees get less money get less money you're asking about a hypothetical situation that doesn't exist there is no share time program first and foremost uh i'd like to address that with your sports the capacity limits were lifted uh and thank you for addressing that situation i do think that that was important for our winter athletes especially our seniors who will not be playing at the college level so i do think that that's important for them to have those memories to finish out their high school career uh i'm happy that we have the policy committee looking

119into the honor roll we will visit the five minutes um everybody march 7th will be here before we know it i know we're all anticipating seeing our kids smiles whoever wants to master children um i as well i'm looking forward to march 7th for multiple reasons and lastly thank you all for emailing i apologize if i didn't get back to anybody i did the best that i could to keep correspondence going i do appreciate everybody's effort on staying on top of everything and um just just keep keep reaching out to us and we'll keep doing our job that's what we're here for so thank you everybody motion close okay