001Good evening everyone and welcome to the reorganization meeting of the West Milford Board of Education. Um this agenda uh was sent to um all the proper whatevers. Um calls of order. That's me. I hate doing this. I just want to let everybody know this is the worst meeting I do every year. Good news is only once a year. >> Thank God it's only one. >> Um I hope everyone had a nice new year. Could you please join me in the flag salute to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. In accordance with the provisions of the open public meeting that public notice of this meeting has been sent to board members, all district schools, the Herald
002News, the suburban trends, the record, the messenger, West Milford town hall, the county superintendent's office, board attorney, cable vision of Warwick, and West Milford TV77 and posted in the administration building. Copies of the board meeting calendar resolution were provided to all local media, town hall, township, library, and all district schools. At this time, I would like to review the election results from the election that was held in November. Um, for the three three-year terms, we had William Seidowitz with 4,635 votes. Um, Mr. Peter Lippy with 4,625 votes. Mrs. Terara Ricano had 393 writein votes. Write in totals amounted to 1,51 votes. Um, at this time I'm going to ask Mr. Brown, our board attorney, to administer the OAL office. Is this good? You guys should be able to do this as a group. I'll fill
003in your name more appropriate and repeat after me. I your name. Do you can if you'd like us to let's do it all together then. I >> I your name here do solemnly swear or affirm or affirm >> that I will support the Constitution of the United States >> that I will support the Constitution of the United States >> and the Constitution of the State of New Jersey >> and the Constitution of the State of New Jersey >> and I and that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same >> and I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same and to the governments established in the United States and this state and to the government established in the United States and this state Under the authority of the people. >> Under
004the authority of the people. >> So help me God. >> Round two. I state your name. >> I >> do solemnly swear or affirm >> I possess the qualifications prescribed by law. >> That I possess the qualifications prescribed by law >> for the office of a member of a board of education. from the member office of the member of the board of education and that I am not disqualified as a voter >> and I am not disqualified as a voter >> pursuant to RS194-1 >> pursuant to RS4 >> nor disqualified due to conviction of a crime >> nor disqualified due to conviction of a crime >> or offense listed in >> NJSA18A 12-1 >> N J S A D A 12-1 >> Try to do it better for you. And I will faithfully and partially
005and justly >> And I will faithfully and partially and justly >> perform all of the duties of that office according to the best of my ability. >> Perform all the duties of that office of my ability. >> Good enough. So help me God. >> So help me God. Congratulations. [Applause] >> Yeah, I don't know when I do the arm up, huh? At this time, Mr. Syus, would you like to say a few words as a newly elected, reelected board member? >> This is the part of the story where I pontificate. >> So, um, >> I'm honestly excited and nervous at the same time because there are challenges that we have to meet. But I do have faith that we will meet them together and my hope is that we have a very fruitful three years
006together. And uh that's it. Ray, is that good? >> Thank you everybody. >> Thank you Mr. Sido. It's Mr. Lippy. Would you like to say a few words? >> Just I'm very excited as long as well. I'm very excited to be here and help out at town. looking forward to three years on a board and working together with this group. >> Thank you. And Mrs. Rakono, you have a few words. >> Um, I just really want to thank everyone um that voted for me. I launched a really um unorthodox campaign in this election being the right candidate and it took a lot of feet on the ground to get me here. So, I want to thank everybody who did that for me. and I've known some members of the board for 30 plus years. Kate
007and Terry was my English teacher in high school. Um I coached Claire's son in soccer, but I'm really looking forward to working with all of you um to do something really positive in the next three years. >> Thank you. And at this time, I'm going to call the role. Mr. Sidowitz >> here, >> Mr. Lippy >> here. >> Mrs. Rico >> here. Miss O'Brien >> here. >> Mrs. Van Djk >> here. >> Mr. Gino >> here. >> Mrs. Dwire is absent. Mrs. Romeo >> here. >> Mrs. Lockwood >> here. >> Okay. And now we're at the point where I would like to call for nominations for the office of board president. Does anyone have anyone they'd like to nominate? Mr. Lippy. >> Nominate Mr. Sidwood. >> Mr. Sidewitz. >> Thanks. Are there any other nominations?
008>> I'll nominate uh Kate Romeo. >> Are there any other nominations? >> Motion to close nominations. >> Second. >> Okay. Um, I'm going to First one I'll call is for Mr. Cidowitz. Um, roll call uh for the um candidate. Mr. Sidowitz. >> Mr. Sidowitz. >> Yes. >> Mr. Lippy? >> Yes. >> Mrs. Rico? >> No. >> Ms. O'Brien. >> No. >> Mrs. Van Djk? >> No. Mr. Gino, >> no. >> Mrs. Romeo, >> no. Mrs. Lockwood, >> no. >> Okay. Uh, for Mrs. Romeo, uh, Mr. Sidtowitz? >> Yes. >> Mrs. Mr. Lippy? >> Yes. >> Mrs. Rico, >> yes. >> Mr. O'Brien, >> no. Mrs. Van Djk? >> No. >> Mr. Gino? >> Yes. >> Mrs. Romeo? >> Yes. >> Mrs. Lockwood? >> Yes. >> Okay. >> Mrs. Lock. Uh, Mrs. Romeo, looks like you're
009our new board president. [Applause] Thanks for the song. Okay. Sorry. Yeah, there's some weird stuff here. >> Um, thank you. I really, uh, am excited for this year. Um, I agree with Will that I'm nervous of, you know, some difficulty and some difficult decisions and some things in our future, but I truly believe, um, that this board is passionate. Um, this district is amazing and um, I'm excited to work together with everyone, all stakeholders to make it the absolute best that it could be. Um, at this time, I would like to ask for nominations for vice president. Do I have any nominations? Well, oh, Linda, >> I'd like to nominate Claire Lwood. Ray. >> Yeah, it's the same. >> Okay. Oh, thank you. >> Nominate Will Simmons. >> Any other nominations? >> Seeing none, motion
010to close nominations. >> Second. And I need a voice boot for the closing. >> What? >> All in favor? >> Sorry. >> Yeah, it's going to be a bumpy road tonight. Sorry. I'm just learning and I guess I should have read this way more. Um, >> I've done it many times and it's always bumpy. >> It's always bumpy. All right. Well, >> I promise I'll get better then tonight. I promise you'll do better. >> Okay. Um, thank you. Barbara, can you please call the role for vice president? >> Sure. Um, first I'm going to do it for Claire uh Lwood. Okay. Um, Mr. Sidowitz, >> no. >> Mr. Lippy, >> no. >> Mrs. Rico, >> yes. >> Miss O'Brien, >> yes. >> Mrs. Van Dyke, >> yes. >> Mr. Greeno, >> yes. >> Mrs. Romeo.
011>> This is for Claire Lockwood. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Lockwood. >> Yes. [Applause] Your seat is ready. >> Oh, can I stay here? >> No. Come on over, sister. Okay. Well, I'll just say it loudly. It's not coming on. Um, thank you all for entrusting me in this new position. Um, I'm going to echo what Will and Kate said. We do have a lot of work to do this year, but I'm confident that we can all come together, work together, listen to each other, work cohesively. We're not all going to agree, but let's just try and agree to disagree sometimes. And um thank you. [Applause] >> So far, we're doing better than the House of Representatives. >> Um You have to adopt the agenda. I'd like to. >> Yeah, there's no changes to the agenda,
012right? So, I need a motion to adopt the agenda. >> I'd like to move the agenda as presented. Second. >> All those in favor say I. >> I. Any opposing? No. >> Any opposed? Okay. Um, can I move all of the board resolutions as one or do we have to go through each one of these? >> No, you can move them as a consent agenda. >> Okay. >> Mr. Brown, >> yes, we can. >> That would be wonderful. >> You have to do we have to have a resolution for the consent agenda? >> Please. Linda, would you like to move um our board resolutions? There's 12 of them. I'd like to move resolution one. One and two. Are we doing Are we doing We're doing the whole agenda, right? 12 >> 1 through 12. >>
013Second call. >> Any questions or comments? >> Right. >> Do can I ask why the one meeting on March 14th? Why does that start at 8? >> Cuz I do the answer to that. Do you want to answer it or do you want me to? Um there is something going on that night. There's a Macan play um and at least two of us will be there. Claire and I will both have children in that play. So uh we requested I actually requested first that we move it back to 8:00 and a bunch of people agreed in a committee meeting. >> Okay. >> Thank you. >> Any other questions, >> comments on the agenda? Yeah. Yeah. Hold on. Sorry. >> Okay. >> Sorry. >> No problem. >> All right. Amongst yourselves, people. Um, >> we have
014Okay. Don't we have these subscribers in here? >> Yeah. >> Okay. Um, yeah, there we are. Just for clarification purposes, if somewhere along the line during the course of this year, if we needed to add a subcommittee, we can do so at that time. Correct. >> Your policy does permit that. >> Our policy permits that. Okay. Thank you. >> Any other questions or comments? Seeing as none, we'll go to a roll call. Uh, this is for resolutions 1 to 12. Mrs. Romeo, >> yes. >> Mr. Sidowitz, >> yes. >> Mrs. Van Dyk, >> yes. >> Mrs. Rico, >> yes. >> Mrs. Lockwood, >> yes. >> Mrs. O'Brien, >> yes. >> Mr. Gino, >> yes. >> Mr. Lippy, >> yes. Okay. Uh, we'll move on to old business. Does anyone have any old business? >> Well,
015I'm back, baby. So now that we have resolved as a board to move on with Westbrook, I think it's time that we bring about a branding task force and perhaps I could be brought into the education or policy committee in order to form it and kind of get that ball rolling. >> Thank you. Any other old business? Okay. Um, I guess Thank you, Tara. I actually wanted to bring up about the website. Um, I had a few questions on the new website. Um, a few comments. Um, I know it went live. Uh, there's definitely some things that need to be tweaked. As a board member, I still can't sign in to the uh website uh that I've brought up to you, I know, three times, Winston. Um I don't know if any of the other
016board members can. Um >> I've had problems signing it, but um that would be a problem especially because we had a meeting tonight. Um the way that it just I I felt like okay I I guess I'm going to do this tactfully nicely, not in a new way, but it just doesn't look right. It doesn't look I thought the point of doing this was it to be user friendly. It's not any user friendly at all. We did approve a web master back in September as that person started. >> And what have they done? Uh cuz it doesn't look any different to me since we did hire them. There's links that aren't working. Uh the Pumptonian, you can't go into Pay Central. It's saying that it's not working. The calendar is showing that there's a board
017meeting for January 17th, which there isn't even a board meeting January 17th. Um, I just feel like we've had plenty of time to make this the best that we could and we failed. >> Well, it's the user the the mobile piece is a lot more user friendly in my opinion. So it fits on your phone. The old website you constantly had to pinch the page in and move your phone differently. So the mobile piece is much more user friendly to me. I'll circle back on these other pieces. >> But the pertinent information isn't even really there. You have to dig for the calendar for the for everything that everybody goes to Facebook and asks what time is early dismissal, what time is delayed opening, what's the calendar? That's not easily accessible. what is accessible is
018the calendar, but when you pull it up, it's huge. It's huge. Like, it's to me, why do we need to know? Um, like I looked at it very briefly. I could pull it up, but there's things on the main page. Half of that main page is the calendar, but it's stuff that's not even pertinent to the district. >> So, that's the debate we've always had internally. If you put everything on there, it's up. If you decide if you don't put everything up there, if you put some pieces up there, it turns into where do you draw the line, you know? So, it's is it just for district events? Is it just for school events? You because it's a district calendar, then there's subcalers underneath it for each school, which may be more drill down. Now,
019if you're a Macapen parent only, you may look at the it might make more sense to look at the Makipin school calendar and you won't get the Maple Ridge PTA uh meeting. You won't get the high school soccer game cuz it is a lot going on all at once. So, we decided to add more with the understanding that we could always take some information off the calendar as opposed to putting fewer items on there and then having to add. But, it's a a balancing act and I don't know that everybody really always agrees anyway. There seems to be a lot of different opinions on the matter. Some want them more streamlined, add the board meetings, add last day of school holiday, stuff like that. and other people want to know that there's you know what
020there's a wrestling match tomorrow night so let me go there so it's a >> but I don't think the most of the district wants to know that there's a wrestling match tomorrow night I don't think that that needs to be the main page when you sign in you know like if I'm looking at it right now and it says school like so if you look at the page this is what it looks like this is the pertinent information the links is so tiny compared to the the calendar and what's on there is linkit benchmark B the board meeting February 20th is president's day it's not even showing that the 21st they have off they have off the next day too that's not even shown on here and then it goes right to March to me
021the information that's on here is not it's it's not what people are going on to look for especially on the opening page and things that you know links that aren't accessible that are just saying you know um it'll say error 404. That's because it's from the old site. It wasn't brought over. These should have all this is live. This is should and especially the pay central for the Pmptonium for the food that and that's only the few that I've just gone on and looked at. And the only reason that I know about this and I looked into it is because I went to go sign in as a board member and I couldn't. So, I just think that, you know, we we need to we need to do better. We've had a long time. We
022hired somebody for $37,000 in September. That means if even if they didn't start until October, they've had three months. We paid a lot of money, you know. So, I just that's that's my gripe at the night. Sorry. Any other old business? >> Can I piggy back off of that? So, I like I would like to see some something brought up at next at our meeting later this month as as far as that being addressed to to the board and to the public. This cla is totally right. We've spent money and time and and if we're still getting slip shot work or it it's not being done properly, we're going to have to put the feet to the fire on this. So, I'd like to I would like to see something later on this month in
023our in our meeting. >> Any other comments or questions under old business? >> Seeing none like to close old business. >> Thank >> any new business tonight. Any questions or comments? >> We have to voice. >> Oh, sorry. Voice vote. Voice. >> Sorry. Voice uh voice vote to close old business. >> I I >> I >> All right. Now to new business. Anybody have any new business? >> Well, >> so I know that everybody around the table is really into the public comment statement that gets read. I'm sure Miss Van Dyke truly is about that long statement that she had to read twice in a meeting. Um, I'd like to refer to the to the policy committee that we revise bylaw 017 or 0167 which is in regards to the public comment section. Uh, I
024will be sending everybody a markup of something that I did and obviously together hopefully we can work on it to address the pressing need of of informing the public commenters that they have rights and so do our students and staff but at the same time minimizing how much is said. >> Any other new business? Will So, I do recall that back in my time, we had administrative presentations that I don't see as often anymore, and I'm not quite sure what the last presentation was. I know that Dr. Matlo had one with regards to testing. Um, perhaps we can bring back administrative presentations. I feel that they're important for the community and for the board. Linda, >> I I just think the reason we haven't had presentations was because we were doing all the restructuring. So,
025those were filling that the restructuring presentations were kind of filling the the gap of the administrative presentations. I I you know, I think we have pushed for different things. I think um Mr. Novak has done some presentations also. it. Yes, it's always great to have those out there, but I think that that's why the last year was deficient of those. Debbie, >> um I also think CO had something to do with it when we went went virtual and that um you know, we're just trying to get reaclimated and our concern at the time was um um the faculty and the staff as well as students getting back into school. And I just want to quickly uh ask for a clarification. Well, are you talking about when the when we had different departments come in and
026do presentations and and and that um which I would like to say maybe 6 years ago we were having on a regular basis. >> Yes. >> Okay. Thank you. Any other new business? >> Well, >> just kidding. >> This feels like groundhog. >> I'm just kidding. Anyone else? >> Seeing none, I'd like to close new business. >> Second. >> There we go. >> Oh gosh. Sorry. Um, all in favor? >> I'm going to have to practice that part. Okay. >> Memorize. >> Any opposed? >> All right. This is the public comment portion of the meeting. This portion of the meeting is open to members of the public having a legitimate interest in the actions of the board for the purpose of addressing any subject matter pertinent to andor directly related to the operation of the
027West Milford Public School District. Members of the public who have requested to speak prior to the meeting will be recognized by the chair first. Each speaker will be given 5 minutes for a period of 30 minutes and then time permitting other public comment limited to 5 minutes per speaker will be allowed until the 30-inut period transpires. All speakers are asked to sign the register provided and give their full names, spell their last name, group affiliation if appropriate, and provide their address. Issues raised by members of the public may or may not be responded to by the board. All comments will be considered and response will be forthcoming if and when appropriate. The board asks that members of the public be courteous and respectful of the rights of other individuals when speaking. Specifically, comments regarding students
028and employees of the board are discouraged and the board and the administration will not respond to them. Students and employees have specific legal rights afforded to them by the laws of New Jersey. The board is not responsible and is not liable for any comments made by members of the public. Members of the public should consider their comments in light of the legal rights of those affected or identified in their comments. Members of the public are reminded that they are legally responsible and liable for their comments. Mrs. Francisco, has anyone signed up to speak tonight? >> No, they have not. >> Do we have any We have a speaker. >> Courtney Stevenson. I'll sign the register when I'm finished. Um I'm speaking tonight as a parent of Westbrook school and I know that we just um
029had all of the meetings and closed Westbrook school. Um but I do have some concerns about the senior walkthrough that um usually happens in the elementary schools coming or the high schoolers coming to the elementary schools. I am aware that there's talks happening with um videos and whatnot. However, I um would like to make it known that I will be asking for the next 6 months that it is brought up publicly what is going to happen with the seniors walking through the elementary schools. As a Westbrook parent, I am concerned where's my kid walking through. Um I would like to suggest maybe bringing back the parade through the town um so that all students feel that they're participating. Anyone else like to speak from the public? >> Seeing none, I'd like to close public comments.
030>> Second. >> All in favor? >> Any opposed? >> All right. And now I would like to have a motion to adjurnn. >> Motion to adjurnn. >> Uh at 7:30. >> Like to make a motion to adjurnn. Second. >> All in favor? >> Any oppose? >> Nope.