001okay good evening sorry for the delay uh the executive session of the wayne board of education regular meeting of december 21st 2020 was convened in the media center of anthony wayne middle school 2014 avenue wayne new jersey the statement of compliance setting forth time 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 please rise for a flag salute i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay let me get a mover to reconvene mrs share mr giordano okay thank you dr toback let's begin with you so one of the highlights
002of the year for the board of ed is always the holiday musical performance and while this year we're not able to bring a live performance to the board into the community we do have a virtual holiday musical performance so dr bashard if you could what's up no sounds for organizing and teaching these students have a great day [Music] uh [Music] oh [Music] hey [Music] do [Music] and [Music] huh [Music] is [Music] by [Music] um [Music] ah [Music] foreign [Music] wraps [Music] be [Music] blah [Music] huh [Music] foreign [Music] me [Music] a [Music] so [Music] hey [Music] oh [Music] oh [Music] what a wonderful performance thank you to all of our elementary students and the staff who put this terrific show together thank you so much dr tellback so board members as you can see our
003agenda is packed for this evening so based on the many presentations that we have i'm going to limit my administrative summary to just three items uh the first is a notification first of all the board of ed meeting is being held at anthony wayne middle school other than a handful of employees and our board members and our board attorney it's a virtual meeting as has been the case throughout the pandemic the meeting is available for public view and public comment on zoom although this evening is not available on channel 77 second item required to report on hiv cases during this reporting period there was one case reported as hiv after thorough investigation it was determined to not be a case of hiv and thirdly i'd just like to take a moment to wish everyone a
004happy holiday to all of our students our employees our residents and last but not least our board fed members happy holidays i assume this will be rerun on channel it can be re-run on channel 77 channel 77 was not available this evening yeah for uh like a simulcast right okay thank you i just want the public to know that there'll be a second opportunity if they didn't tune in okay so dr burchard can you please pull up the thought exchange diversity survey results i can see that again too that was great okay so board members i'm going to move through this fairly quickly because some of the content will be covered later in some of the other presentations that we're going to do but i would like to provide the community with feedback about the
005thought exchange i would like to share the results with the community and also it should be noted that for anyone looking for more information the presentation as well as a press release will be sent out tomorrow so ultimately the presentation will be available for public view on the board of education website um so dr burchard if you can move on okay so um you have a diversity equity and inclusion goal that we've been working on and we're going to talk a lot about that tonight but um as far as the thought exchange goes the purpose of the thought exchange i'm looking to see a little bit more about how the community sees things so the question we ask is what are the most important priorities we should consider as we work towards our goal of
006having a more diverse inclusive and culturally competent school system okay so a very general question that allows any participant to weigh in on a variety of topics so if you can move ahead we had pretty good participation um so you can see the numbers there and you can also see there's 31 052 ratings so that is one of the highest numbers we've ever achieved in terms of ratings what that means is that there are many people um there was a thousand thoughts and there were many people that weighed in but they may not have shared a thought but what they did was they came in and they raided different thoughts so they felt very strongly so people came in they went through the thoughts that were shared by others and they rated them and so
007that's a that's a that's a great number for it's as far as the ratings go you go to the next page please okay so you can see the participation by subgroup and you can see the vast majority of people that participated in this thought exchange were parents um and you can see basically the other information one of the groups that we had hoped um would be more involved in the thought exchange are the students and so we only have six percent participation from the students so we're going to take some additional steps to make sure the voices of our students are heard um we're going to do focus groups we're going to look at maybe learning some focus groups for our students about some of these issues and we're also looking of into doing another
008thought exchange specifically for students next slide please and so just give everybody time to read our top 10 thoughts so these are the first five dr chard if you move on second set okay dr bashar if you want now okay so what i'm going to talk about now for the next few slides are themes that were established so dot exchange is software it's artificial intelligence that basically goes in and evaluates all the different thoughts and all the different ideas shared by the community and the weight that different people assigned to each of the thoughts and it comes up with some major themes within the exchange okay so one of the words that surfaced regularly is different so you can see the themes that emerged around differences okay equal was another word that the artificial intelligence
009identified and then they organized three themes around that word then you have history okay so history was an important topic and how to history is taught um and what history is taught was a very important topic for your participants let me start next slide okay so this slide will take a little bit of time to explain and like i said if you're interested in knowing more this is the differences report okay and what that means is it's not only differences if it was just differences you would have side a side b you would have no middle ground so in other words there would not be a third column in the middle there is a third column in the middle the third column in the middle is the middle ground it's what people agree on so
010you could see that the thought exchange organized 271 participants into one group that's in the blue circle on top on the left and then on the right is a green circle there's 171 participants that were organized into the into that group and you can see side a you can see side b and then you can see the middle ground okay all right dr burchard can go to the next slide okay so this was another major difference okay so you can see the numbers 257 on side a 126 on side b and then you can see the common ground which is similar to the common ground that was expressed in the prior differences slide okay if you can go to the next slide so you can see in this case there was four more people on
011side a than side b but there's also common ground that was similar to the common ground identified in the other slides okay okay this is the word cloud so the word cloud basically takes wording important wording from the top rated thoughts and so these are the words that emerged from the top thoughts okay and that's it so thank you for all of our participants i said this sheds a lot of insight for the district to pursue as we look forward to advance on this goal this allows us to share um some more information with all of our committees that have been organized to undertake this project and to help with this goal so all this information will be very useful like i said it will be posted for public tomorrow at this point we're on
012the student representative reports if you could admit the students welcome sorry welcome okay gina would you like to go first uh yeah good evening thank you for having me wayne valley girls soccer ended the season with an outstanding 12-2 record the team's lockdown defense came in at number nine in the state for girls soccer with an 0.43 goals lag per game congratulations to junior ryan pena who was selected to the 2020 all north jersey boys cross country team ryan had an exceptional season this year and won the big north one championship as well as the cairo mountain invitational congratulations to the wayne valley marching band on winning the 2020 division one regional championship with an outstanding score of 94.33 the band was crowned mid-atlantic regional champions as the highest scoring band from new jersey new
013york pennsylvania connecticut delaware and maryland this marking period mrs aspiaz's senior health classes have been working on a culminating life project modeled after the gaming real life board game students have applied the skills and lessons learned in class to plan out important parts of life such as marriage and careers while taking various potential challenges into account wayne valley's chapter the national honor society has had a very successful start to the year the chapter modified their signature kids health and kids tutoring program to meet covid guidelines the chapter also organized beautiful handcrafted greeting cards and almost three thousand dollars in store gift cards for their fall food drive these contributions provided assistance to wayne valley and ryerson families in need as well as the wayne interfaith network food pantry wayne valley's model united nations club has
014me has been meeting weekly to analyze current global issues they are diligently preparing for their first practice conference on the topic managing global infectious disease outbreaks that will take place virtually in early january this week the student council has been leading a virtual spirit week students dressed up for pink out monday anti-pajama day tuesday college gear wednesday valley gear thursday and festive friday although it could not be held in person the valley is one in instagram page has been sharing photos of students dressed up to continue the tradition joseph thank you for having me this evening the wayne hills 2020 2021 governors educator of the year winners are mrs del morro english teacher and mr keough guidance counselor congratulations this fall we had to put our traditional spirit week activities on hold in the meantime
015our student council collected donations to provide supermarket gift cards for wayne hills high school families in need in the pto food pantry each class was given a community pass account to be used strictly for this gift card food drive this is where the individual classes work to sway as many donations their way so that their classes collected the most money which will be added to the point totals for spirit week in the spring the wayne hills student council was able to collect over five thousand dollars which will make the holiday season a little bit brighter for those in need the wayne hills junior board members of chilton hospital sold candy after school on tuesday to raise money for the soothing paws pet therapy program at chilton hospital with the current team of 13 dogs this
016program provides pet therapy visits for patients and hospital staff the tri-m national music honor society held their virtual inductions on tuesday december 15th the program featured recognition of new members guest speaker mr john terry and a featured essay by new member darnya yashenko thank you okay did you have donations to read either of you no there were no donations for us nothing okay thank you both and thank you for your work this year we look forward to seeing you back in 2021 have a great holiday thank you good night hold on we're looking to see if our auditor is here for her presentation hello are you there i am oh there you are hi kathy hello how are you good hey well you're you're on welcome all right thank you i appreciate that um happy
017to be here and thanks for fitting me into your busy december meeting the music was lovely i have musicians in my own house um so 2020 unusual on every front so it was a challenge as far as audits were concerned but our firm decided we were going to be out of the gate looking at how to do it and i think that we put together a really good plan we worked with software companies we worked with all the school staff and i have to say we were embraced and we embraced the change that came about and we made it through and now we are desperately trying to get audits issued so in case i get so wrapped up that i forgot to mention we were waiting to issue the report because we were waiting for
018other post-benefit information from the division of pensions that information was released last monday and so we are working to get all our reports updated for that information and released and i was hopeful to have wayne's report released this week but it looks like we'll probably go into next week so we will do that as quickly as possible so again i tell you every year that the comprehensive annual financial report is in the neighborhood of 200 pages i like to extract information that's useful for a board member to be familiar with so we always talk about fund balance we compare what we had at june of 20 compared to june of 19 and as you can see the overall increase is 1.5 million and all of that was in the way of capital reserve so at
019the end of the year when the district determines how much money they had left over and available you can maintain two percent as un assigned fund balance that's the 4.2 million you have at the end of the year in that 4.2 million it's also extra state aid so you'll see down below in the middle of the first page the 985 000 is extraordinary aid and non-public transportation aid that the district received for 20. the money came in in the summer and you're allowed to appropriate that during 2021 so that'll be helpful with any expenses that you're facing as far as copic 19. we show how the district generated 1.5 million when the pandemic hit i remember saying to myself that the savings in school districts would be marginal because you were still paying salaries you
020were paying tuitions you were paying health benefits you were paying all the major costs the discretionary portion is very small but i was very happily surprised as we've gone through audits we do over 80 school audits in our firm to find out that there really was some savings so wayne experienced that as well so the unexpected balance of the budget was 6.2 million we only had 300 000 in open purchase orders at the end of the year so it was 5.9 million that was up about 1.2 million over last year so that's really what you achieved in the year of the three and a half months of the pandemic and then your budget fund balance each year you withdrew money from capital reserve and that's how you ended up with 1.5 each year i also
021say that it's great to be able to um achieve that continuity from year to year so for the last three years the district has budgeted one million seven hundred fifty thousand to offset taxes in each year and i'm going to take a very slight pause to say that we had an exit conference with ba and the assistant ba and we talked about how you're doing in 2021 what resources are available what type of expenses have you faced to know that you're set as far as if there's maintenance expenditures or capital expenditures and again i'll reiterate that the extraordinary aid from last year that 985 000 is available to appropriate for any purpose in 2021. i think all my confidence with that um move on to the capital reserve account itself you started with 5.2 million
022you were able to deposit 4.7 million during the year and you were through 3 million 253. there are some other little changes in there but that was the primary um activity ending with 6.8 million at the end of the year and then i went a little further to say at june 30th you had 6.8 million but in the 2021 budget you withdrew a million so you're looking at 5.8 million at this point until the board determines if there's anything else that is needed before the end of the year in the capital projects funds that's referendums and other projects that the board has authorized you have several small balances on projects and i found that the first five that i've listed had the ecif lease and the sda grants associated with them they have all been
023closed out in the fall i think it was october and so all of that is gone and cleaned up um move into your enterprise funds the food service fund i remember the day of the pandemic hit i happened to be with two of my good friends who were school business officials and the first thing that they talked about was feeding the students and i said oh my god of all the things that you have to worry about in a day that was the number one so i show you the difference in revenues and expenditures for the year obviously the revenue was down the expenses were down and the district has negotiated with your food service management company to compromise on the guarantees and try to help the district um sustain so in a conversation with
024the ba in the system ba we talked about um you know continuing to work with food service contractor and um you know trying to estimate what the um what the shortfalls will be and try to end up in a um not so bad can't say positive but there will probably be some costs associated with that um enterprise fund meaning that the board would send money over to subsidize but again um bill and cheryl will be in touch with me and we share ideas as to how to manage it the extended day program um this year the district goes for the certificate of excellence and one of the comments was that if there are salaries being paid out of an enterprise fund it has to bear part of that long-term liability for pension so this year
025we implemented that so when i show you the change in revenue and expenditures it's off by 700 000 because we did a proration of the pension liability so where we say at the end of the year the unrestricted net position was a negative 411. if you had the 700 back you really had a positive balance of 300 000 there again in conversations with bill and cheryl it's going to be challenging um both of them have their eyes and ears on it and they're going to make whatever changes necessary the wraparound program for the half day after kindergarten ended with an unrestricted net position of 41 000. then we talk about the long-term liabilities of the district you have bonds you have premiums with the bonds you have some capital leases you have the net pension
026liability which in the last three years has been decreasing and compensated absences which are the unused days but um that the staff have accrued and then you see where we um allocated a portion of the net pension to the extended day program one comment i wanted to make is that the district's bonds are going to be paid off in the year to 2024 and so you know whatever the district's capital needs are i don't know if you've already started to think about a referendum or what what the needs are but the debt service will be paid off in another three years and that was pretty much the financial end of it um you know we started this year with the new assistant um ba right when we were trying to do the audit and i
027have to say she hit the ground running on the first day closing out funds in her very first days in the district and she and bill work well together and they they're a great team to work with also um we have any treasures so some of the issues that we've had in the past two or three years are no longer an issue so i'm so happy to report that um wayne is in great shape great people and there's really reason why there are no recommendations people take everything to heart and seriously and it makes our jobs wonderful so we just made a little management suggestion making the board aware that gatsby 84 deals with fiduciary funds was supposed to be implemented for this past fiscal year ending june of 20. they extended it because of
028the pandemic until june of next year again you have wonderful staff we are educated on the topic and so we will interact and we will plan and work with your people to make sure they're in the best of shape and that's all i have to report so if anyone has any questions i'd be happy to answer them board members well you're getting a clap well that was a very substantive report kathy thank you so much uh we had it in advance so i'm sure if anyone had questions they planned ahead for that and i don't see any hands raised um and if we have anything going forward we certainly know how to reach out to you or mr moffatt so thank you so much thank you for all your hard work under the circumstances virtually
029you did a phenomenal job as always and uh have a happy holiday you too wishing you and your families the best thank you take care i'm sorry mr b i'm sorry dr toback wanted to say something before you go yeah i just wanted to uh make a very um brief comment regarding the performance of the business office anytime that there is an audit that involves no findings especially for an organization of this size that really is a pretty extraordinary accomplishment something that does not happen every day it shows obviously that the employees of the district are serious about meeting requirements following board policies following financial standards reporting standards every other type of standard an audit is a very comprehensive look at a school district's budget and a school district's performance financially during the course of
030the year and so like i said to to meet that standard there are no recommendations is really exceptional so i just wanted to once again thank congratulate the business office for a great job this year absolutely thank you you're 100 correct dr tobacc we have phenomenal staff okay moving on mr moffatt i believe you're up yes thank you um of the official results of the past school election that is a certification that i received from the office of the county clerk county of passaic i'll read them into the record the actual report will be available in the past four minutes don pavlak i'll read first uh with a total vote count of 17 116 this is kathryn kazan uh with the total uh vote count of 16457 and mr sean duffy total vote count of
03116 and 70 votes again this will be part of our minutes if anyone wants to look at that certification by the county clerk and uh congratulations on all the members that uh voted in this election here mr moffatt and congrats to my colleagues once again on their successful race and return to the board so next we have our district goal did you want to start off on that one mrs reichman joe you can pull up the presentation tonight we have with us our district consultant tamika reese and principal of pakanak lake school mr roger raglan they have been working to advance our goal we invited mr roglin to join us tonight because he recently worked with the committee of staff members to devise our district mission statement and he will be able to share that
032tonight um ms reese has been working with a number of our committees and she's going to provide an update with just to detail the work that has been accomplished and the work that's in progress tamika i will turn it over to you at this point so that you can get started good evening good evening president kazan vice president buddha members of the board dr toback miss rachman staff and community members i'm so pleased to be here tonight to share the district will update with you dr burchard please advance thank you from the district goal there were several action items that we've been working on in committees develop a district mission statement with a commitment to equity diversity and inclusion review curriculum and instruction specifically english language arts and history review human resource policies procedures and
033hiring practices develop new place for hate 2.0 assess nicknames mascots slogans and school symbols review student achievement outcomes schedules and related data and review social emotional learning programs and professional development [Music] i'd like to now present mr rosalind the chairperson of the mission committee he will go over the process that we use to develop a mission statement as well as present the final draft of the mission statement good evening good evening uh president kazan and board members and dr kobach and mrs reichman uh this was a privilege to uh take on this assignment uh it's something that i think everybody on the committee i was very committed to not just for this but probably years before i'd like to describe the process and then i'll tell you who was on the committee we had three
034major meetings first meeting was identifying what exactly is a mission statement how's that going to work what's the process going forward we then divided the committee into three teams we tried to keep the teams diverse in terms of their role and their level of school elementary middle or high school each of those teams came up with a number of bulleted items or statements that they thought were important to be included in the mission statement we then took one writer from each of the three teams and they work collaboratively to do the final draft the final draft was then reviewed by the committee as a whole and i have to say we were probably a role model for the u.s congress right tamika it was absolutely absolute civility respect people didn't always agree but they did
035it respectfully and we came up with what we believe is a strong statement that everybody on the committee could buy into and agree on i think that process was very important because we now have all these evangelists who are on the committee who are going to go forward and promote it in their various schools so the committee comprised of team one was denise malone counselor at fallon sabrina brewer social studies teacher at schuyler colfax middle school talia hampton teacher at wayne valley high school kelly venezia crilley high school counselor at hills team two was jamie morano a grade one teacher at ryerson claire donahue a um ell teacher at jfk jasmine just went up we had a parent uh brad siegel apparent long-term parent in wayne uh i'll also mention that he's a superintendent in
036another district but that was an aside sarah schilachi a high school teacher english teacher at hills and kim mapp actually the substance abuse coordinator at valley team three was michelle maturo special ed teacher at ap touring kate morsenowski language arts teacher at anthony wayne patricia trish montini middle school counselor at gw and john terry social studies teacher at hills the three writers were john terry sarah solachi and sabrina brewer and that is the team that worked together to to develop this particular mission statement would you like me to read this statement i don't know what the next step okay oh there you go i can read it off of there um the final that we submitted was the wayne township public school district is strengthened by the collective efforts of its community to raise informed
037inquisitive and compassionate members of society we are committed to delivering a culturally responsive critically engaging curriculum for students of all backgrounds we provide instruction that is academically rigorous and affirms the human the humanity and dignity of all learners we are dedicated to a constant evaluation this is an important part 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 to positively engage in our democratic society and contribute to the global community thank you mr roglin um before miss reece moves on i just wanted to say i was able to join this committee and um i had such admiration for all
038the participants the the heart the passion the level of compassion and um the overall inspiration was truly remarkable there was a great deal of time and thoughtfulness that went into it and i'm seeing this with all the committees so um you know i'm really proud that the district has embraced this goal um the work has been phenomenal and we'll continue to share out but um this was the first step in driving our mission and we're really proud of what the committee presented to us thank you on the committee i need to acknowledge and that's tamiko reese tamika was inspiring motivating knowledgeable i really enjoyed working with tamika so thank you for uh setting that up that way thank you thank you and have a happy holiday everybody you too okay thank you i just want
039to add it was an incredible experience working with the members of that committee i mean we worked hard and long sentenced my sentence word by word and you know it was just fabulous group to work with and i was proud to be a part of the team okay so we'll move on to curriculum and instruction the curriculum instruction committees have been created at the elementary and middle high school levels training has been provided when identifying seven types of bias found in instructional materials i.e invisibility stereotyping imbalance and selectivity unreality fragmentation and isolation linguistic bias and cosmetic bias committees have begun to review books texts and novels used in english language arts for bias committees are identifying diversity of author i.e male female white black native american hispanic latinx asian lgbtq plus disabled non-christian and other
040doctor sure you can advance thank you a spreadsheet is being compiled that contains the name of the instructional resource diversity of author and any instructional bias found in each resource this will enable any gaps to be identified the history committee is reviewing the topics covered in each textbook to identify types of bias and begin identifying supplementary material that might be used to present a balanced perspective of specific topics human resources and hiring practices the human resources and hiring committee has received foundational training on using human resources as a lever for equity the first step in our work will be to analyze the applicant pool for a variety of jobs to determine the diversity of candidates who applied then data will be analyzed to ascertain at what point in the process those candidates were eliminated the
041goal is to determine if candidates were eliminated through initial screening criteria the selection of candidates to interview or doing the interview process this will provide valuable information regarding any biases that need inherent within the hiring process in addition three committees are being created to examine the following areas for equity diversity and inclusion advertising job postings job descriptions and application recruitment sources hiring process we're going to look at the application again through that lens candidate screening committee structure interview questions candidate selection and onboarding no place for hate 2.0 the committee is exploring a variety of ways to publicize the activities that are being conducted at each school this will enhance community awareness of the work being done to foster a bias-free and inclusive school climate as they begin to plan for next year the committee is
042researching activities that can be scaffolded across grade levels along an anti-racist continuum i.e in the mel elementary identify and self-awareness through an intersectional lens middle school stereotyping prejudice and implicit bias high school social justice and activism nicknames mascots slogans and symbols the committee met and discussed possible ways to gather community input primarily related to the varying viewpoints regarding the mascot as dr toback mentioned the thought exchange was conducted in order to ascertain the perception of priority issues related to diversity equity and inclusion in the district the data collected is being reviewed for themes and as dr toback mentioned that was completed and we're continuing to look and go deeper as well and in particular the majority of the participants were parents and there is a need to obtain additional input from students and staff possible
043next steps include two additional thought exchanges with one specifically targeted to students and another targeted to staff or conducting focus groups with those populations to obtain their input and feedback as dr toback previously mentioned data analysis the data analysis team is collecting quantitative information disaggregated by students with disabilities english language learners socioeconomically disadvantaged race and gender in the following areas hiv ap classes gnt placement discipline graduation rates attendance rates academic achievement and growth in english language arts and mathematics this initial analysis will be the f that will be the foundation of a root cause and gap analysis social emotional learning this area has been divided into three committees school culture professional development seo programs and seo vision the school culture professional development committee is exploring various school climate surveys for distribution to staff and students
044to assess perceptions of school climate in addition this committee is focusing on types of professional development that would be beneficial to staff with an emphasis on self-awareness implicit bias microaggressions and empathy and the effect on students this is similar to professional development that was provided to the full diversity equity and inclusion committee the sel programs committee is obtaining information from each school regarding the type of sel programming that is conducted and its effectiveness this will provide a foundation for determining whether to continue revise or eliminate a current program the seo vision committee is drafting a mission vision statement in order to provide a district-wide umbrella to guide the goals objectives and outcomes of seo programming and that concludes the gold update thank you miss reece um i just want to echo what mr roblin has
045said um it's been truly wonderful and such a valuable resource for us to have an expert from the field we've really brought in our thinking and expanded our knowledge just today i was we were conducting interviews and sitting with the committee listening to comments about how we've changed our practice um we're much more reflective we're already implementing so many of the strategies but um what resonated most with me was a tribute to you tamika um just um sharing what a positive experience professional development has been and a desire from our staff members to have more professional development so we're excited that this is a multi-year goal and we will continue to hear from you and work with you at this time if there's any questions we're happy to come and respond anyone board members well
046i think we're off to a an amazing start as we can see this is quite substantive it crosses every area of how we operate a school district and um if anyone thinks we haven't really delved into this deeply they would be mistaken and it will take time and patience uh for us to reach the end of this goal but i think we're making tremendous progress and under your guidance uh miss reese i think we're moving in a very positive direction um as ms reichman just said it's already being implemented in our hiring practices and that's wonderful so thank you for that and i'm sure we'll hear from you again in the next update and we appreciate your work on this project so thank you very much it's a been a truly a privilege and i'm
047glad to be continuing the work and i wish everyone a wonderful and safe holiday same to you thank you very much thank you human resources district staff line number two technology specialist can be revived first name from tim start date from december 18 2020 to january 4 2021. number three 993 for m4 is withdrawal appointment of christian toadman l-t-r-e-l-a-w number four cinza rodano revised start date from january 20 2021 to january 19 2021. we also have an addition in the emergency section under x emergent school source legal we are adding number one which is x1 approval of examination for cause recommended action reads as follows resolve at the board of education upon the recommendation of the superintendent hereby approves dr anthony demarco to perform a psychological slash psychiatric examination of employee id number 8704 at
048board of education expense and the written report detailing the results of such examinations the is to be provided confidentiality to the board within 30 days of this date december 21st 2020 and that concludes the changes or updates to the agenda tonight thank you mr moffat this point we're moving to our first public session 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 five minutes 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 subsequent meetings under
049old business can i get a mover mr duffy mr giordano okay dr bouchard are you there miss cluck jeremy yep okay hi um my name's katie cluck i'm at 34 hellcrest drive um i just really wanted to thank you for all of your commitment to the work um on diversity equity and inclusion and i thought everything tonight was really really great i really encourage you in the student and faculty focus groups um and just the mission statement and all of the plans for the curriculum were just really really great um i i'm an alumni of wayne valley and i worked on the uh no place for hate um when i was in school but seeing no place for hate 2.0 i really think uh focusing specifically on anti-racism and intersex and intersectionality will be and
050putting the focus on that will make it more useful and more effective and i'm just really really great uh happy to see that and i just want to commend you for your work and thank you have a nice day madam presidency no other hands are raised and moved too close well sorry we do have one hand can you admit that person dr burchard hi so i just wanted to say thank you to um i really see the commitment and like change and like um the district goals this time like i see like um the like the things you planned and everything absolutely i'm sorry i don't want to interrupt you but you need to state your name and address i'm sorry um my name's levine middaugher uh 23 villains avenue i'm a student at wayne
051valley um so yeah thank you for like all the change uh changes you've done i've seen like actual um change like happening my own problems and stuff and yeah i just want to like put that out there thank you mrs cher madam president seeing no more hands raised i move to close second this is cher and mr giordano okay thank you we had some committees meet this evening or this week i would like to go first mr giordano good evening uh the communications committee met this evening uh president were dr toback uh miss uh albanese and myself most of the stuff that was covered from the meeting uh regarded the thought exchange which dr toback has presented in great detail uh and uh presented a very thoughtfully thank you very much um we further talked
052about um the extensive coverage of the wayne school system in the media there have been many uh articles placed out between uh opening closing of schools between coven between sports uh it was a very very comprehensive set of weeks uh covered by the press uh and the third thing we talked about was uh the concept of how to publicize the future school budgets uh with the changing virtual times how do we get this out to the public and and get a better understanding of it uh kind of move the times here and anticipate any issues that will be coming up in the future and that's basically what we covered in our meeting this evening thank you thank you mr giordano mr sheriff i think you were next yes uh this evening personnel what met met
053with miss clark mr pavlock miss kumar and myself we went over a stipend request the minutes from last meeting the hr items on the agenda for tonight a unionization of dispatchers and we were told that they're in the process of interviewing for the assistant principal at schuyler colfax and we talked about adding a possible position in the tech world that's it anyone else does that cover it for tonight okay well we have a whole agenda to move who'd like to begin mr duffy you need to unmute please unmute your mic madam president if we can move the entire agenda it's one second okay mr duffy mr mr um i'm sorry pavlak um it's been a long day sorry is there any question or discussion on the agenda okay well seeing none roll call mr muffett
054mr bubba um no to m1 number nine yes to the rest mr duffy yeah mr giordano yes mrs kumar yes mr pavlak uh yes to everything no to m1 number nine mrs put up guests mrs share yes this is command yes motion carries okay now i have to find the second public portion to read okay this portion of the meeting is open to citizens for comment on any topic oh i'm sorry go ahead mrs albanese we had one retirement my apollo thank you mrs kazan linda van wingerden has served the wayne community for 21 years as a power professional during her time at pines lake she has worked in our self-contained programs providing her students with support and encouragement she has always been an advocate for her students ensuring they get the resources they need
055also maintaining high expectation for their pros progress we are so very grateful for her dedication to our community and we wish her all the best in her retirement congratulations thank you very much 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 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 be responded to by the board other comments may be responded to tonight or at subsequent meetings under old business can i get a mover move mr giordano mr chair so you have to raise your hand because i
056can't always hear you through your masks if you could just that would be helpful thank you if i didn't hear you correctly okay i don't see any hands madam presidency no hands raised i moved to close public portion mr pavlak mr duffy okay well good uh all right old business new business mrs share um i just wanted to say a few things one is i'm hoping that the cohorts for the high school going to the two cohorts will be discussed and taken care of by the time we come back in january not that that's when we're going to start our discussion that's what i'm hoping for um my second thing is i just want to say that i love the virtual holiday show it was so adorable it's so sad we couldn't have it in
057person but that definitely made up for it that was very very cute and a happy holidays to everybody in the district and the employees and wayne and all around everybody stay safe that's it anyone else mr bubba i just want to say that in the past week one of my favorite teachers from wayne hill's past mr raffini who was a very dedicated science teacher also did a lot of work with charity and also coached me on the bowling team for one year um i just wanted to say that he was a really great guy and to his family i hope they understand how much he meant to all of his students and rest in peace mr rafini thank you mr bubba and he also ran the leo club which was an amazing organization and he
058really taught children about community service this is put up i think you had your hand up i just want to share everyone a happy healthy holiday i want to thank our high school students for helping their neighbors thank you sorry i was on mute i'll wrap it up i'm happy to say we are finally bidding a not so fun farewell to the year 2020. while this has been a challenging year to say the least i want to focus on the positive and a feeling of gratitude i'm grateful to the scientists who are working hard every day to come up with therapies and vaccines to bring this virus to an end i'm grateful to the first responders police officers firefighters ems nurses and doctors who continue to fight this virus every day and put themselves at
059risk for us also all our essential workers who kept our deliveries coming and our shelves stopped i'm grateful to all the parents who've done their best to adapt to the online learning they were thrust into and for their patience and understanding i'm grateful to the bus drivers custodians paraprofessionals food service workers and support staff who have come to work every day to ensure our children continue to get the education they need and deserve i'm grateful to the administrators who keep their buildings running despite difficulties with staffing and obstacles out of their control i'm grateful to our central office administration and superintendent for all their hard work to get the schools ready for hybrid learning and to come up with the plan to give our students the most we could despite the restrictions my screen went
060blank can you all hear me still okay i'm most grateful to our teachers we know how difficult this has been and we do so appreciate all that you do for your students they need to know they need you now more than ever and as always you stepped up and continued to show up every day for our children i'm grateful for the members of our school community who we lost this year they will be misremembered for their contributions and lives they touched suzanne karanski senora apaza dr rasa and maureen casenas and finally i'm grateful to my colleagues on the board of education the decisions we've made all year have not been easy but everyone showed up they asked the important questions and made the best decisions necessary to keep our schools open and safe for everyone
061i want to wish you all a safe and happy holiday season and look forward to seeing everyone in the new year let's continue to work together as a community and support each other in this shared challenge of covid it's not over yet but i see the light at the end of the tunnel and i'm hoping for a much brighter 2021 at this time we need to resume executive session i can't say whether or not we will take action uh but if we do we'll come back into public to do so um so again that's the end of this portion of the meeting have a good night you