Board of Education Meeting 2/21/17

0011st, 2017 workshop regular meeting of the West Milford Board of Education. I would ask that you notice where the emergency exits are and please silence your or turn off your cell phones. Um, I didn't have any uh moment of silence. Can I did anybody I know we have some employees But do you have >> a moment of silence for the family of uh Bill Barry Connie was a teacher in our district for many years. So >> please stand for the pledge. 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. In accordance with the provisions of the Open Public Meetings Act, the public notice of this meeting has been sent to board members, all

002district schools, the Herald News, the trends, the record, the messenger, West Milford town hall, county superintendent's office, the board attorney, cable vision, and war and has been posted on the district's website. Copies of the board meeting calendar resolution were provided to all local media, town hall, township, library, and all district schools. Um before we do roll call, um Joe, would you like to administer the oath of office to Miss Fritz, please? >> Mrs. Fritz, >> how are you? Nice to see you. All right, if you'd raise your right hand. >> I >> state your name. Nicole Fri >> do solemnly swear >> 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

003the Constitution of the State of New Jersey >> and that I will bear true faith >> that I will bear true faith >> and allegiance to the same >> and to the governments >> and to the government >> established in the United States >> and the state >> under the authority of the people. >> So help me God. >> Okay. I >> I >> state your name. do solemnly swear >> do solemnly swear >> that I possess the qualifications prescribed by law >> that I possess the qualifications prescribed by law >> for the office of member of a board of education >> for office of the member of the board of education >> and that I am not disqualified as a voter >> that I am not disqualified as a voter >> pursuant to >>

004RS >> 19 colon >> 19 col >> 4-1 >> nor disqualified >> due to conviction of a crime crime >> due to conviction of a crime >> or offense listed in >> NJSA >> 18A >> colon >> 12-1 >> and that I will faithfully >> impartially >> and justly >> perform all the duties >> I perform all the duties >> of that office >> according to the best of my ability >> so help me God >> congratulations [Applause] Thank you. >> I saw you first over there. >> I didn't know. Nicole, before we do uh roll call, do you have any uh words that you want to words of wisdom you want to bestow upon us? >> Words of wisdom late in the day. Um I just want to thank the board um for giving

005me this opportunity and for selecting me to to the board. Um, I look forward to working and getting to know each and every one of you to the community. Um, thank you for for being here and and for those watching and I just uh hope to bring some fresh perspective and new ideas and hopefully um do some great things for our kids and looking forward to the opportunity. So, thank you. >> Thanks. [Applause] >> Roll call, please. Barbers, >> Mr. Bailey. Mr. Mr. Sidowitz >> here. >> Mr. Drew >> here. >> Mrs. Dwire >> here. Mr. Foody >> present. >> Mrs. Fritz >> here. >> Mr. Yuber >> here. >> Mr. O'Brien >> here. >> Mr. Robbins. Okay. Uh Gwen, would you read the executive session resolution, please? Yes. I'll move um the resolution that

006the board go through the executive session at 900 p.m. for approximately 60 minutes for the purpose of discussing personnel HIVs and matters at returning client privilege. Executive session events will not be released until such time as the privilege of confidentiality is no longer applicable. >> Second. >> Thank you. All in favor? >> I. >> Any opposed? Um, I probably should have asked that before that. Is there anything else that we need to discuss besides those >> personnel hibs? >> That's it, right? >> That's it. >> Yeah. Okay. Okay. That uh you're up, Dr. Anamone. Superintendent report. >> All right. Good evening, everybody. Uh before I start on our state of the district report on my state of the district report um I would uh like to make notice we have a special friend one of

007my newest friends here in the audience tonight Dr. Joan Ober she is on the board of the west of the new West Milford Township Library as is Mr. go back and we are been under construction for some time now. We are almost finished and we have a group called the friends of the West Milford Township Public Library and we are accepting donations for that little extra something that's just not in the budget. So, um we've se I've seen the building. It's beautiful. We've to taken the board uh some board members on a tour. Uh we hope to take our library media specialists on a special soft opening tour prior to opening >> and Mrs. Dwire as well. >> Thank you. >> And we should have we should be open up for the entire community very

008shortly. Um so I want to call Dr. Over up. I have a special gift for you now and I'd like to wish you and the rest of the friends of the West Milford Township Library the best of luck. I have a real check in my pocket. But for us today, I would like to thank Mr. Cali from Makipin Middle School. He's our art teacher. He did create a nice novelty check for us. So, if you can hold this up, [Laughter] [Music] >> I really would like to see them put that through the machine. I really would like to see them put try to put that in the machine. >> That's right. It's money. They'll figure it out. >> The wheelchair is here. >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you so much. >> That's the

009lock. >> Thank you. >> This is reusable. [Laughter] >> That's a smart check. Smartboard. It's a smart check. >> I bought the tax library and the numbers and I would just like to I'm Joan Oberer, 350 Durban Town Road. I would just like to thank Dr. Anamone very much for his generosity. We very much appreciate it. As he said, we are making our last push push for fundraising and uh we really will use every thing we get efficiently and effectively for the community. But I also want to thank him and I want to thank Mr. Novak and the entire board for their generos generosity in sharing with us your honey well system and getting the word out to the community. It was uh very effective for us and we appreciate you your willingness to do

010that. Mr. Novak certainly brings a wonderful sense of community to the library board and we really appreciate all he does for us. He's insightful and he always has the school community in mind. Thank you very very much. We appreciate it. >> All right. Next up, I have uh you want to back if you want to maybe move. >> Yeah, I'll move. We have some extra copies on the uh need specialist table if you want to follow along the audience. So we have something and uh first want to thank the administrative team, Mr. Novach, Dr. McQuade, Miss Francisco for helping out with this presentation as well as our principles and supervisors. Um Thank you. This is a this is a group endeavor. Also like to thank the board of education uh for all the support for

011this process. So the uh the purpose of a state of the district report it's it's similar to what a governor does or president does. that does a state of the state or a state of the union. And I'd like to hopefully do this annually to sort of because we do it monthly uh but it's small snippets at a time. I think if you do it midy year or about mid year it helps with your long-term and short-term planning. So, as you remember, our district goal number one, and these were voted on, or these decided on last spring, voted on uh probably around July, um it was to improve academic performance through the design and implementation of differentiated instruction. Uh these are some of the things that we've done this year already towards that goal. And

012the differentiated instruction really aims towards the middle of our school. you know, we have our our AP capstone project which is for our really high-end students, our AP programs. We have um some other programs guided geared towards our lower achieving students. And the differentiated instruction helps us meet the goals of all the kids in the middle. Our second district goal was to develop and implement an effective and common communication plan. Um we've done a great job at this. Our high school has monthly newsletters. In fact, the February one is on the table over here today. Um, they've done one per month. The athletic department, they do theirs seasonally, fall, winter, spring. The, uh, visual and performing arts department in the districtwide, they do quarterly newsletters. So, they've already given us two. We're waiting on a

013third one shortly. U, we have our guidance department. They've got a freshman parent newsletter targeted towards our ninth graders. a sophomore parent newsletter targeted towards our 10th graders and our eighth grade parent night which sort of ties it all in together. We have a lot of our schools teachers, principles, administrators using social media to improve communication with families. We just mostly started a new app this year called Remind. And it popped up early this year when some of the buses were running late for one reason or the other. We needed a quicker way other than Honeywell to get messages out that a bus was going to be 10 minutes late, 15 minutes late, don't wait to stop. Rather than getting to our computers to get on Honeywell, we use this Remind app which is free.

014So, it's cost effective and it's on everybody's phone and our principal or commun or our transportation can let us know if there's a there's traffic, if there's a detour, if there's a bus accident or something along those lines, which delays us. Uh and of course my blog, which is probably closer to 30,000 kids already uh since July. Our third district goal is to develop respectful and sustainable partnerships, effective relationships with parents, community, students, and staff. So we have all eight of our schools involved with the character.org organization. Makapin School is already a national school of character. Um, so they're applying for different levels of recognition to be a national, to be a state level school of character, or to win something called a promise and practice award. To the best of my knowledge, we're the

015only district in the country that has 100% of their schools involved in this. Certainly the only one in New Jersey. Um, our athletic department at the high school won the most prestigious award the athletic department could win in New Jersey. It's called the Excellence in Athletics Award. It's given to one high school, one athletic department in the state every year. And this year, West Smoker won it. It's not based on wins and losses. It's based on character development and how you do with your student athletes to take young boys and young girls and turn them to young men and young women. And our fine and visual performing arts department, they host a number of uh events every year. the districtwide arts festival coming up very shortly, the empty bowls fundraiser at Makapin Middle School, which

016I encourage everybody to attend. It's a wonderful event. Our test scores, this is not new information. This is from last spring. So, we we reviewed this already in October, but as you can see, I'll I'll kind of hustle through the scores here. I compared West Milford to the state and to the national average. And by national average, I just mean other states that are taking the park. Uh which is not 50 other states. Um it's down to about 10 or nine nine or 10 right now. So it's uh it's getting even smaller as we speak. Um but we did very well on our test scores. There's room for improvements and I know we can do better. Um but we exceeded the state and national average on most all of these. So I have a highlights

017page at the end. our AP exams. This again, this is from last school year. Um, and you know, scores that students that score three, four, or five on the AP exams have the ability to earn those credits for college. So, you can see the majority of our students in math, almost 93% of our students earned three, four, or five on their AP exams. uh my world language was 100% and all the other areas it was in the high 70s. So our data analysis overall compared with our first year of the park we had over a thousand students or a thousand more tests taken uh in year two. So about 500 extra in math about 500 extra in English language arts across the district. That's year one to year. Of the nine tested grades in English

018language arts, our scores went up in seven out of nine areas, including an at almost 25% increase in grade nine. In math, our scores increased in eight of nine tested subjects or grades. So, uh the upper grades in high school, you don't take seventh grade math or nth grade, you take algebra, geometry, etc. Uh and that includes the 17% increase in fourth grade. Over 80% of our AP exams were scored as three, four, or five. And for next year, looking ahead, uh we're implementing a lot of different strategies and measures that we think will help our students learn these standards that are assessed on the park. And the park tells us which of our students are college and career ready. All right, curriculum highlights. Mr. Nova, can you slid for us? Thanks. Uh just to

019highlight a few of our uh major initiatives from this school year. Uh we we had our first um attempt at creating a pre-AP environment in our uh middle school. This was a uh precursor when we first presented the ability to um get our district involved in the AP Capstone program. We talked about the ability to start this at McAppen so that we would be able to uh create students who are going to be ready for AP Capstone when when we offer it next year. Uh the first implementation of that was our uh preap program at Makip. We had um probably uh close to 20 students enrolled in that class. The feedback was that it was very uh rigorous. It truly was a a pre-advanced placement environment. And we've been um working with some of the

020growing pains of that with with having uh middle school uh students experience that level of rigor, which we thought was great. And we're working with the team who who developed that to um bolster it and make it even better for next year. Uh we've also been accepted into the world language biiteracy diploma program where some of our advanced biiteracy students will be able to get a seal of biiteracy on their diploma. So it's one more thing for our high school seniors going off and and filling out applications a um to have a a uh endorsement on their diploma that sets them apart from uh from other candidates. As I just mentioned, we were accepted to the AP Capstone program. It will be in place for next year. We're doing all the work, the budgeting, the

021um scheduling um investigations to make sure that we put that in place the way that it begins. We've spoken about AP Capstone quite a few times. It's essentially a uh similar to biiteracy, the biiteracy diploma. A student who completes the AP capstone program will have an advanced placement capstone diploma when they graduate from the West Milford public school. So again another uh another another level of endorsement for our students uh students coming out of West Milford. Uh readers writers workshop has been an ongoing development. We um started it many years ago. We had a sort of a reinvigorated um return to readers and writers workshop this this school year where we're working with our third, fourth, and seventh grade um classes to our teachers to work on best practices in writing instruction in particular. in

022third and fourth and in seventh grade we're working on readers workshop. That's a um a process of training that hasn't reached that grade level yet. So we're producing sixth graders each year sending them to Makipin. Next year our students who are leaving the elementary schools will be going into a seventh grade environment where our teachers are using the the um readers workshop approach. We're very excited about that. Uh we've also been working at the development. Next year we're going to be offering a uh honors math program at Macin. We have been doing some of the preliminary work leading up to that where we are um we have some common assessments that we're laying out in all of our sixth grade classrooms. Uh and through that process, we'll get recommendations from the sixth grades with some

023tangible data to show students who can perform at that level and they'll be recommended for the honors program academ. I I alluded to some of this in that last slide. um AP capstone will be in place next year and we are going to continue with our uh preapp and makapen. The importance of this slide is just talking about our needs assessment. One of the things that we've been struggling with um over time is the uh current schedule structure at the high school. So we are in the process we have a committee put together where we're investigating a number of the different scheduling and progressive scheduling structures that are out there. We've taken site visit. There's a slide later about some of the site visits we've taken uh to a variety of other high schools around

024the state uh in and out of our county who have a very progressive schedule that will allow our students to you know to be able to take more electives to access longer lab courses to uh benefit from AP AP capstone. So it's a lot of a lot of moving parts to the process and um we're looking at that for for next year to really investigate that. Uh we're also in the process with PA County Community College to have uh the process for a dual enrollment with our senior students. There's a um group of uh there's a dynamic of our seniors who are not necessarily our are our honors kids who are looking to be part of preap but are those kids who are looking for a bit of an edge whether going into the workforce

025or or seeking uh four-year school. So, we're looking to partner with City County Community College where our students will be able to be dually enrolled. They'll be high school seniors getting their credits for for graduation as well as earning credits uh for PA County Community College that can be instantly applied to their um upon graduation. We're also looking at a district-wide assessment similar. We've we've spoken in in these in this room quite a few times about our ability to assess a student's reading level through the Francis Francis and Penel benchmark assessment. Uh we're now looking for something similar in mathematics where we can, you know, with with our reading assessment. We know a student at the Westbrook school who's reading at a level K is equal to a student in another district who is also

026reading at a level K. It's standardized. It goes from goes across this across the state and across the nation. We're looking for something similar in math where we can see if our students are at this level in third grade, that's a comparable assessment to a third grader in another district, another state. So, we're looking into we've met with a couple vendors and we're really looking to uh investigate that process for next year. And through um Dr. Dr. Edone's work, we've been able to really, you know, through the blogs and through communication like this at the board meeting, we're able to bring these things a little bit more to the community, to the board, uh, for discussion, especially ed committees and that sort of thing. Along with our curriculum highlights, I thought it was important to

027add a specific slide for our our science and industrial arts. um for working with our new um science industrial arts supervisor. We've been able to implement um you know some pretty progressive things in in terms of what we're doing with industrial arts and science. One of the uh most effective that we've just hit the ground running with uh is our professional development in grades K through three where our uh kindergarten through third grade teachers. They're meeting with um Miss Vajisik and they are really getting involved in what used to be called the next generation science standards are now the I'm going to mess it up. New Jersey student learning standards for science. Got it. Practice it in a minute. Um, so you know, next generation science, it really connects to the hands-on uh approach for

028for science. It's not just about vocabulary anymore. It's not about learning what photosynthesis is. It's learning about how do we use it and how does it help us grow crops and and those types of things. So, it's uh it's a very important transition that we're working uh quite a bit with our our staff this year. will continue in um we've developed a pretty comprehensive three-year plan how we're going to get everybody who needs to be trained and implementing those standards. Industrial arts, we've had some um we've had some developments to to really elevate the things that we're doing. We've got great programs in place in our industrial arts. Uh we just are now looking to you know revitalize some of the course titles, the course structures. We've been investigating things such as similar to what

029a PCTI might offer, a micro credential. We're hoping that through our industrial arts program, we'll be able to offer micro credentials to our students who complete a 4-year wood program, they'll be able to come out and and maintain a and receive a micro credential that they can bring into the workforce or or to a uh secondary institution. U similar to uh we're also off trying to offer that in our uh autoshop program. Uh we're having a little transition right now with autoshop. One of the programs we're investigating is my auto lab. Yet that's another program that we can put in place that can offer our students a micro credential when they come out. They can go to the workforce and they can apply that to a uh trade school at the next level. I skipped

030over uh site visits. I mentioned site visits in terms of looking at structures. We've also been taking site visits to the schools that are listed. We went to Livingston and High Point who both have very cutting edge uh STEM programs. So, we're able to see these programs in action. Uh one of the I guess most validating and and enjoyable parts of those trips was seeing that our uh our industrial arts staff were sitting with these cutting edge groups of people and we're able to talk into conversations about and speak with pride about the things we're doing compared to the things that they're doing. So, we're on the right track. We're just repackaging a little bit. reorganizing so that we can progress toward that micro credential and not just have standalone industrial arts. Learning unlimited is

031our uh gifted and talented program in in West Milford Public Schools. And uh basically what I put on here is the little overview of the cycles that Mrs. Cheshure works on when she is working with our learning unlimited students. I'm just going to read the the last blurb in the description. differentiated curriculum interdisciplinary with an emphasis on problem solving, creativity and critical thinking. So these students who are involved in this program get to really um really engage with with hands-on interdisciplinary activities. Uh just for example, design the design lab in Graves 3 and 4 um really connects to the maker space things that we've been doing in the district. Um students will will you know they create and they design and they will put their projects on display at the at the LU project. Okay.

032>> So, also in the special services department, we have obviously some highlights that are listed there. One of the things we are very proud of is opening some new programs that we believe has led us to better educational opportunities as well as becoming more of a more cost-effective and costefficient type of operation. That is our new ABA and autism programs at Marshall Hill. We have a preschool autism class. We also have the multiple disabilities class now at the high school as well as our LLD classes. So, we're very very proud of those um new classes and programs that we are expanding every year in the district. The second thing is we did offer first time ever this year a CPAC open forum. So, that's our special education parent advisory committee forum and in that forum

033we allowed parents to basically share with us any concerns, comments, ideas that they may have. We were able to take from that and take from our Facebook page and um the feedback we got from parents and then begin to implement it. One of the concerns I had was about a social skills curriculum. We then were able to make sure that we were adopting that districtwide. Another thing parents asked for at the high school was to have their students more involved in some afterchool activities with non-disabled peers and we did most recently have a join um performance with our MD class that went beautifully and they're planning to also perform at the district arts festival. So the parent feedback was definitely helpful with that. We have another forum open in the spring in case anyone did

034not have a chance to come to our first forum and that's scheduled in April. The coordination and joint training with the West Milford Police Department, I myself and Dr. Hesnne did train our our local police department on autism as well as mental illness with some strategies as far as um dealing with those types of students or adults with those disabilities and how to handle um that which I think was really important. The feedback was very positive from the department. Physical therapists are currently implementing yoga programs that started out last year in a pilot program at the preschool. They use the get ready tolearn approach, which is an evidence-based yoga practice. And they started it at the preschool, but I'm happy to tell you that now they launched it last year, but now it's also in

035our multiply disabled elementary class and our multiply disabled high school class. They're piloting it in one of the LLD classes. It is in our autism and ABA classes and even Mr. Anderson in the back I know that they are doing it in the behavior disabilities classes as well. Occupational therapists in the summer launched curriculum work for handwriting program and for a handwriting program and created their own program using the best practices if you will that they got from um all different you know a whole different variety of tools. They created that curriculum in the summer and they currently launched it today. The OT spent the whole day in professional development tweaking it and revising that so that they can get push that out to the rest of the teachers again. But the feedback has been

036positive. So we do plan to continue doing that. The last item actually Mr. Anderson, one of my teachers in my behavior disabilities program at aua decided to come tonight. So thank you for coming Mr. Anderson. I know last year we piloted the caretaker parent support group, but if you just want to comment as to what that is about, I think the audience would like to hear from >> Anderson behavioral disabilities teacher down at Aptua. Um I've been thinking about this for quite some time and wasn't really quite sure how to get it off the ground. So I mentioned it to Wendy Becker who's our social worker down there and she said, "Rick, you got to do this." I said, "Okay." So she helped me put it together. She comes to the meetings. What it is

037is I get my parents, we meet once a month. It's our second year and it's beyond my wildest dreams of how well it's taken off. Um I get guest speakers in. Uh Wilson Santos Highland Family Sex Center was our first guest speaker two years ago in September. So it was nice to see him on back to school night. I had a good conversation with him. And the parents use this uh the family success center. But we meet once a month. Uh the first year I kind of developed what was going on. This year I kind of said, "Earer, it's your your group. You're going to run run the show." Um back in September the first year, I said, "Your homework is to come up with a group name." So one of my former students who

038is now Makipin, not in the BD program anymore, um mother said, "Oh man, I forgot to do my homework." And he said, "Mom, you take care of us, Mr. A. Samantha Pedarini who teaches the primary disabilities class down there. She takes care. Why don't you just call it the caretakers group? And all the parents loved it. So when we even have a logo, which I should have brought, but I'm going to do something with the logo. I want to get t-shirts or something made, but it's my parents have tough time relating to the community. And since I started this group, I've had parents um volunteer for doing things for the PTA. They ran a Halloween thing. So, it kind of gets them involved. So, it's just been it's been been great. And I offered board

039members. Our next meeting is the 14th of March. Uh there's a parent training group down in Quanic. The parents are interested in starting a social skills group for the kids. So, she's going to come and talk to our parents on March 13th. So, anybody's ever wants to come see what it's all about. We do a holiday program. Um, this year's highlight was I I asked one of my former students to come back and speak to the group and it was really touching what the mother and the and the son said about the BD program. So, um, but we have a picnic at the end of the year. We cook hamburgers and so it's it's taken off and it's doing a great job. We got 10 to 12 parents that come on a regular basis. Self

040trickle in trickle out, but it's great a great thing building that community partnership which is aligned with the district goal number three. So >> thank you Mr. Anderson. Yes. So we're definitely very proud of a lot of the community outreach that that we've been doing within the department and like I said we're always open to piloting things and then if it works out we're happy about it and then we just continue it. So those are just some highlights. I can continue Mr. Novak. Thank you. >> Just a little update on on uh the things we've been doing in our our technology development. I'm sure everyone's aware over the last few years. We talked about it a lot with the um upgrading we've been doing to our technology infrastructure. So, six, seven years ago, we started

041with uh wireless. We've implemented uh iPads. We have now uh within the last four years we've moved toward uh a completely Chrome environment, Google Apps for Education. And the real exciting stuff has really been the last the last couple years where we've been able to um not just see them as new and trendy toys that we have in some staff member students hands, but now they're used for day-to-day instruction. We have examples of teachers using Google classroom across the district and that's growing you know by faculty meeting and PLC meetings uh each and every month another teacher decides they want to give it a shot and want to want to keep on continuing with it. So uh we're very excited with the um implementation of our technology you know here in West Milford. Um some

042of the as you can see we've been maintaining our purchasing program for Chromebooks. So each year we add another uh round of Chromebook carts. The Chromebook cart houses about 30 Chromebooks. So that's one more class section or two more class sections that have access to the Chromebooks per building each year as we add them. So in a six, you know, for in Westbrook, for example, we have enough Chromebooks where fifth and sixth grade students could be on them when we include the lab over there, uh, can be on Chrome at the same time. So as we continue to purge, and I thank the board for that. I mean, we couldn't we couldn't do it without that support. uh the more access that we have, it's it really works out for our students. Um to to

043combine with that, we've also we're going to pilot a one-to-one environment. Onetoone meaning a signed Chromebook to a student that they can bring back and forth uh to home and that it becomes part of their materials like your notebooks and your textbook, etc. U we're going to pilot that with our AP capstone group that we pilot that we implement this year and we're going to see how that goes and then we'll work with the board and the community to see if a onetoone initiative is something we want to move forward in the future. >> How many kids do you expect to be in that uh AP capstone program? >> The last number we talked about was about 30. >> Okay. >> Yeah. Two two sections of 15 is what we're hoping to have. >> And

044out of what grades? >> Uh nine and 10. nine and 10 and 10. >> Thanks. >> So, we're hopeless. I said that's a that's a projection. We'll we'll know once we go through all the u you know the recommendations and and all those types of things how we're able to put it together. But we're budgeting for and planning for the potential for two sections of 15 and that would be for the research um the seminar in 910. That would then group would stay you know if they stayed in capstone they would then have the seminar in years 11 12. Uh also one of the one of the things we've been very excited about we actually presented it as a we were accepted by um the as it says there the largest technology conference in the

045state is called Texo. Uh our educational technology committee in the district was accepted to present at this prestigious event and we presented two initiatives from the school district. One was our uh implementation of the SAMR model which I've mentioned in this room quite a few times. Uh SAMR is an acronym for the um try and nutshell, it's the correlation between strategies using technology to Bloom's taxonomy in classic educational vocabulary. So the letters in the acronym are substitution, augmentation, modification, redefinition. So our our goals through SAM is that we've changed the convers and I've seen it in in our schools, I've seen it in our classrooms and our conversations and faculty meetings. We changed the conversation from are you are are you not using technology to how are you using technology and we have a wide

046range of you know we have a wide range of uh competencies right now with staff members who are connected and can just implement technology and Chromebooks and Google classroom with every aspect of their teaching and then we have those who are kind of dipping their toe in the waters and moving in that direction. So through the use of the SAM model we are increasing those the comfort level of those staff members to get engaged. a perfect example of it. Today we had our and I'll talk about it later. Um in our professional development day we had a presenter from um he was a supervisor in Chadam and he was presenting on differentiated instruction to our uh math, business and family consumer sciences department this afternoon and he was presenting a bunch of strategies for how

047do you get students engaged high level of student engagement for all all learners not just your top or or your or your bottom. Um and in that presentation he was throwing out sample technologies that you could use to foster that engagement and um we have access to everything that he was throwing out there. So all of the all of the cutting edge uh ideas that he was throwing out from a district like Chadam uh we have access to we have the document cameras, we have the projectors, we have the Chromebooks, we have the devices and we have the we have the infrastructure and discussions in place to to move us in that direction. So, it was really really uh rewarding to see a presenter come in and propose some new strategy instruction and having the

048um infrastructure already in place to to put it into action right away. So, that was that was an exciting moment for me knowing you know the work that we've done. Um the other thing that we presented at Texo was our work in uh our digital citizenship night which I'll plug later. It's coming up in the date March 20th. I'm going to say it probably a thousand times between now and that date. So, get ready. Um I'll come back to that later. We did present that night and was a was a big hit. Uh updates on Encore program. If you're not familiar with the term Encore, uh it's because it's a West Milford term. It's not a state name for basic skills instruction. Laughing, Mrs. D. We had a long discussion at a previous meeting. Should

049we just change the name? No one really knows what it is. We're going to leave it as is for now as it's on all our paperwork. Um but Encore program does does represent our basic skills instruction in the district. Uh we've had some great um we've had some great conversations and meetings. Uh first step was we revised our encore handbook. We've streamlined a lot of the um a lot of the forms, a lot of the policies, a lot of the procedures in place for the um how do we assess who is eligible for our basic skills program and how do we assess who is eligible to exit our basic skills program. And those are one of the those are some of the the um things we're working on is that often a student becomes eligible

050and enters a basic skills program and then they never really get to that point of exit. So those are structures that we're putting in place. How do we fine-tune the instruction so that it's not um so that it's that's more effective is really what what we're working on. So we've we've worked towards uh greater coordination districtwide so that the program that's happening at the Westbrook school is uh very similar in in dynamics to the program that we have at the Upper Green Lake school or the Paradise Middle School that we're targeting instruction. We're targeting the skills of the students that we need to u that we need to improve in order for them to to reach grade level expectations. Uh we also implemented starting last year, this is our second year with the program in

051response to some of the dyslexia legislation, we implemented our early literacy program where we have our uh district literacy specialists going in daily into our kindergarten classrooms and they're working hands-on with our kindergarten students to assist the kindergarten teacher in some of these early literacy skills. Uh a assessment that we added, every kindergartener takes it in the December time period. It's our test of phological awareness. So, not only are we assessing reading level, but now we're also assessing their phonological skills, their connection between letters and sounds. Dr. >> Thank you. I touched briefly our athletic department before. Obviously, you know about our award uh and we have a we understand high school athletics is not always about winning. about picking young boys and young girls and teaching how to mature and become young men and

052young women. Uh however, uh we do have two team champions this year, uh field hockey and gymnastics. So, congratulations to those coaches and those athletes and we have uh over 40 students uh honored by state county coaches association and over 40 recognized by a conference. Uh and this is dates back to land from the baseball program. It's really more of a 15 16 award, but we got it over the summer. So, I snuck it into this year's slide. Um, they won an award for the academic achievement award from the ABCA, which is the American Baseball Coaches Association. It means that their team GPA was super high. Basically, um, the athletic department also won a promising practice award from character.org. Visual Performing Arts. Again, it's not always about winning. However, you look at our Highlander marching

053band. Um, we're shocked when they don't win first place and they get second place, but these are huge events. Uh, they draw bands from all over the states, in some cases all over the region, all over the Northeast. And they're placed in one, two, or three in just about every event they go in. So, they're wonderful event. We had students from our concert choir perform at Carnegie Hall earlier this year. Our elementary choir will be performing at Credential Center in Newark in a few weeks, a little bit later in the spring. We've had boatloads of students selected to and honored in other areas uh area North Jersey band, region one band, orchestra, etc. Um just uh about two weeks ago, our jazz ensemble went to Boston, Massachusetts. They won first place. Our jazz choir got

054fourth place. This is in Boston. So this is really a huge regional event. Our theater art students did very well at the state theater competition at Ruckers. We participated in Wal Valley Art Show and many many more. They've all been to the concerts that we put on our our visual performing arts. Uh really are second to none. It's a wonderful uh program that we have here from K through 12. Most of the performing events are typically high school, but the foundation comes up from our elementary schools. and we graduate 30 seniors off our band and we take in 30 freshmen or thereabouts. So, it's a wonderful program that sustains itself. Okay, Mr. Novak, our PD plans, can you touch on those a little bit? >> Sure. Uh there's a few parts of of professional development

055that I want to talk about. what is the I guess the big picture the long-term vision of what the professional development plans are and then also what we did on our you know for today example we had a professional development day where their students are not in session but our staff are here working and and trying to uh fine-tune some of our skills. We have a couple uh five-year plans that are out there. Um we're in year two of um sorry we're in year one. We're budgeting for year two of um the five-year plans for readers and writers workshop. As I mentioned earlier, we're right now targeting third and fourth grade for writer workshop and seventh grade for readers workshop. Um, in that five-year plan, the the goal is that we will have uh K

056through eight training completed for readers and writers workshop and and all those best practices put in place. The overall goal and the bullet point in their commitment to writing every day. Um, writing and no matter what discipline you're looking at, no matter what uh subject area, writing is essential to every aspect of what we're doing at the middle school and high school level. It's very important. elementary school, that's where we're grasping those skills. But as you move along, when you're talking about um placement in honors or a placement in AP or even decisions between a B-level or a C-level student, it's a student's ability to write and can and take thoughts and convey them in a coherent manner that make a big difference for our students. Applications, I mean, all you can imagine all of

057the career benefits that that come from from being able to write. Um, that's the the main vision of this five-year plan is that we're going to develop better writers from kindergarten on up. Uh, and and that, like I said, we're in year one of that. We started with grades three and four. Um, that's always sort of the um a good starting point. Our K through our K through two um classrooms have um you know, they have a a program in place that that helps them develop some some basic writing skills, but the third and fourth grade is where we saw the greatest need. and some of those those fundamental shifts. The second five-year plan is in best ma best practices in math instruction. Uh we've started in grades five and six. Uh as you can

058see, we've got two five-year plans working simultaneously. So when we're working on grades three and four for writer workshop, grades five and six will be in math. And as we move forward and and and get into years two through five, you know, we'll have to coordinate who's getting the training. So we'll never have um two one group getting both of those trainings at the same time. Basically what best practices mathematics instruction boils down to is our efforts in differentiated instruction. Um you know there's a there's a way of instructing math um that is very classic where it's you know here's the algorithm now go practice. And that's a classic approach to to the instruction of math. Now, we've got so many different learners and we're aware of the different types of learners that we have

059that we're looking at a more hands-on approach so we can engage all of our students. Um, that's one of the, you know, the New Jersey, the New Jersey student learning standards, formerly known as Common Core, took a lot of heat in math because we as adults can't connect to it. Um, we look at it, we can't help our kids with homework. We have to watch YouTube clips and I'm guilty of it as well. Um, I have to do it too, but I wasn't taught that way. Uh, old classic math instru. Jump in if I'm if I get off track. Old classic math instruction theoretically is best for 30 to 40% of our kids. The process for using hands-on and varying the different ways of instructing math would engage more of our students in math. So,

060we're trying to get away from uh children saying, "Well, I'm just I just don't get it. I just I'm not a good math student." uh we're trying to get away from that approach and and starting at the very early ages getting more number sense number awareness and students be able to get and grasp a strategy that works for them. That's one of the things I think that um drives parents crazy at home is that there's multiple strategies being taught and four out of the five are different than the ones that we learned when we were in school. Um the idea is that there's a strategy for everyone and we have we have to find it and that's what our work in differentiated instruction and that's what our work in in best practices in mathematics is

061is aiming at is that we're looking for the strategy that works for the individual kid. >> Yes. Since we're on math I guess I decided to sort of talk to you guys about it now instead of at the end. Our park scores of math and eight nine algebra, geometry are below the nation, below New Jersey. We're not doing great. So, shouldn't we be doing some professional development for our high school age kids in >> for the teachers who are teaching? >> It actually starts with a fifth grade. I was looking at the numbers. Well, one way or another, I don't want to give up on helping our teachers. >> Well, this this five-year plan is K8. This is a K8 model and in one of and you asked me that question before and I'm going

062to give you the same answer I gave you last time. The goal, yes, we have to work with our our secondary staff and we they work they have PLC meetings and training and and all the things that go along with best practice. That's the group who was with the differentiated structure training differentiated instructure instruction training today. So they were there today full day with the with the gentleman from Chadam schools working on exactly what they're talking about or best practices in mathematics. This plan feeds into that vision. So it you know you can't do it all at once. Um so this is a system in my opinion this is a systematic approach to making sure that we're building better math students from the ground up. >> Let's get them you know, get them early, get

063them get them trained, get them not to be afraid, so on and so forth. But I sure don't want to give up on our high school kids. >> This I don't think this is a give up. This is this is the opposite of that. This is that we we have more able learners coming into the high school each and every year. And we did have training today for that group. Like I said, math, business, family, consumer sciences, that's a group today. Targeted differentiated instruction training. >> Yeah, this is not supposed to be inclusive of everything we did today or this year. It's sort of a a highlights really. >> This is where we're focusing moving forward. But okay, >> this is just a highlight. We've done, you know, other things beside this. We just It's

064already 32 slides. It could be 96 slides if we >> Yeah, >> we did everything. So, we can give you some highlights, but like Dan said, and I'm not a huge believer in school rankings because they don't measure everything, but Chattam's a Chattam High School is a very well- reggarded high school. And when we wanted to reach out to somebody to help us with math, you know, what are you doing? We look for the best, you know, the best of the best. And we brought them in here uh to help us and to collaborate with us uh to see what we can be better. It's not on here as a bullet point. You know, perhaps it could be, but u it just wasn't. But you know, we are doing it. And in an earlier slide,

065we presented that we're looking at a um honors algebra program in MCA. >> Yeah. So again, that's going to enable those students who can achieve at those levels to to be able to get there. Um so it's it's a really um I think an elaborate you know if you want to do slides 45 46 we can talk about the course of our layout of our um program of studies for mathematics and how we investigate that and how we're adding things at the elementary and middle school levels so that we're feeding into the high school and and building more able math learners. Dan, I know that Chadam and Livingston have very very um high standards in their elementary schools in their mathematics program. >> Do we know what programs they're using? What curriculum I know we

066use >> text like a text series? Yeah, we're using >> I'm not familiar with >> there's there's there's a few that are very >> I hear the >> Yeah, there's there's a couple trendy that that when when the shift to New Jersey student learning standards are common for some major technical >> I'm just wondering how we compare how our program that we're teaching our kids compare with more competitive programs that I'm just wondering. >> I I don't know that information. >> Okay. uh differentiate instruction as I touched on in this in this conversation uh it is a K12 initiative and although we're working on some specific targeted training in the elementary schools and makipin with readers workshop and um and math instruction at the middle school and high school level we're working on more of

067the approach our teachers in 7 through 12 are content specialists they're certified in history or language arts or math we are um confident in their content knowledge. The efforts in our uh training model for that group is more in the delivery and student engagement and the ability to use technology and to enhance curriculum and lesson design and that sort of thing. So um today I'm just going to give a recap of the the standalone days. Professional development is ongoing goes on throughout the year happens at faculty meetings PLC and all the teachers who you know dedicate their times time and are sitting with a cup of coffee on Sunday morning and working on their lesson plans. Um that's ongoing but we have uh we had three standalone days this year. Uh in September we brought

068in our speaker Angela Myers. If you saw the uh you matter uh statements across the district you may have seen it on t-shirts or chalkboards or back to school night displays. that was a presenter who connected to the idea that every student matters and talked about the uh I think one of her themes was releasing genius that every student contains genius in some way and it's our job as educators to find what that is and to bring that out of them. Um so we started off with that that was the launch of our district goal for for differentiation of instruction. Following that, we um that was a session in the morning. Our staff broke off for the rest of the day and they looked at their current practice and they tried to identify the things

069that they already do that they could determine to be differentiated or or address multiple learners. Excuse me. We had a full day in in November where we brought in a trainer similar to the trainer I described today working with uh a variation of different departments 7 through 12. That was a full day in November and today we continued that. We completed all of our departments uh across the 712. The last remaining department who hasn't been trained specifically in the differentiated instruction range of strategies is our fizzed department and they'll be getting that early next year. We also worked with our um our fifth and sixth grade math teachers work today with with the teachers to teachers group who's been working with them. The other one is the the one that I'm mostly uh really excited

070about today because it was a great uh a great um presentation. We had the Gurian Institute in um it's the the author is Michael Gurian. He presents the brainbased research behind the differences in learning styles for genders. He first piloted he first authored the book Boys and Girls Learn Differently. Talks about all the brainbased approaches that we as uh educators should realize. and he had the you know he had a room of K through6 educators and he you know he had the dynamics 95% or so female in the room as instructors and trying to make the case that we potentially instruct for the female brain and he really went on many different structures and and things you can implement in the classroom that um can entice all of our all of our learners. Again, to

071me, that connects to what we're doing with differentiated instruction. One of the the one of the great stats we we u pulled out of the the instruction today was that um the male brain is most alert when standing. And as a third and fourth grade teacher, um I you know, you struggle with everyone, you know, the boys who want to standing work. I have a son now who does his homework on a hoverboard at the at the counter and I just let it happen because he gets his work done. I try to make him sit down, it won't happen. Um, I had a fifth grade I'm going to say it out loud. I didn't think I was going to. I had a fifth grade report card where the comment that I took home and teachers

072in a room. Imagine this was on your kids report card. You put those report cards. How I don't know how you stand him at home was on a report card that I came home from school with. >> Um, that was in the old days where you know you didn't get that. However, um, I was the male brain and I wanted to stand while I worked. You just didn't you just didn't do those things. Um the group who came in today, they presented us with a gift for bringing them in. Um they gave us six standing chairs. Um we're going to use four of them at the Maple Road School in a in a pilot setting in first grade. And uh some of the feedback Dr. Schwarz, current principal of Westbrook, formerly a teacher at UGL

073in the learning language disabled course, had a few uh standing desks in the classroom and was able to see some of the benefits not only for boys. It's not just a boy thing. It's about the different learning styles that you have and that was what the training um the training really went on today is that there's there's different styles of of the brain not necessarily boys or girls. So it was uh it was really really mind uh I guess eye opening for the staff who were there and um I think we pulled away a lot of great strategies from it. our PE department worked today and we did a bit of a um half the day was focusing on the idea of mindfulness where we have our um project adventure language be here be safe

074be honest be respectful personal best set goals um be here that language that we use and sometimes is used often in the classroom for gaining attention you know if the students are you know they're working in an activity you want the whole class to to gain attention you would say you know be here and the class would all raise their hands and and eyes on you. We're trying to take the idea of might be here to the next level where it's not just about responsiveness to the teacher. It's about understanding your own emotions. It's understanding when you may have lost comprehension or your comprehension is broken down in activity. You might relate to what we did with the Guring Institute. If I'm a student who knows I need to stand right now, we need to

075have staff who identify that and can and allow those opportunities in the in the classroom to to let our students, you know, be in their optimal learning. um environment. So that that's a connection of what we do. We also did a bit of a um internal audit within the phys and health department um specifically to look at the types of mindfulness and mental health and health topics that we currently have in our curriculum as well as our approach to substance abuse. So they did that work today. They went through what we have um from from top to bottom and we're meeting with them soon to just kind of bring all that discussion together and see what we need to implement going forward to make sure that we're at the you know we're at the forefront

076of that that level of education especially in our our health curriculum building off of uh social emotional wellness with hope mindfulness and and and our product dementure Dr. Red mentioned to our district goal about um achieving these levels of of award. We we've really uh we've really hit uh quite a few of our schools in that in that range. And our schools who have not been honored are in the process of applying for promising practices for things that they do or are looking for that next level of something they achieve. And one of the things that we always we always I always say when presenting this is that this isn't a decree of a perfect school. This is a decree that we have put strategies and structures in place to work with the masses. Okay?

077And any school that um commits to this has program in place. So when we when we look at what character.org does, they come in and they take a look at our application. They see they go through they look at the structures and programs that you have. Um often I've heard it said that this is like only on paper kinds of things. And to me, I sometimes find that to be an insulting level of a statement when you think of all the staff and parents and students who have given up their planning periods, their nights, their afterchool hours, and their devotion to um giving our schools this edge. To say that that's only on paper is deeply insulting to them. So, I just want to make sure that the staff is aware of that. Um there's

078a lot of research and actually came out today in our um uh boys and girls learns differently training about when you put a um comment on a kid's report card, you um another report card on the paper and if a student gets a an 85 and you write on it, keep going, great job. That encourages the student to do better. Um that's kind of what this is. when you uh identify a school for having done a great job and give them that sense of encouragement, that positive reinforcement, um it builds towards that. You know, negativity seems to to pull these things down. So, I think this is I I applaud our staff. I applaud the student councils, the parents, and everybody who's really um involved in this issue. It's really uh it's really something we

079should be proud of and and uh take a little bit more seriously. Building off of that, we have our culture and climate survey. Um the one that we put in place is one that has been um recommended in a lot of the districts who who do a real uh baseline analysis year-over-year. Uh we offered this in the November time frame where we could attempt to access as many parents as we could. As you can see in the results, we only had um 488 parents respond. And um if you have ideas for how to get more people to respond, I'm open. Uh we did Honeywell, we did >> One of the important things about something like this is that the people who respond are the people who really care one way or another. A lot of

080the people who don't respond are perfectly happy with what you got. People who do respond have either had a very negative uh interaction or a very positive interaction. So in a lot of ways, even though you don't get higher numbers, you are getting the people you want to hear from. >> I agree with that. I'd still like everyone to do it. 3,500 students would be good. But we got feedback and there just some highlights from the feedback. Um the percentages uh you can you can look through them. Um survey results will be administered annually and we serve as a baseline for future comparisons and continue to inform our professional development activities. So uh we will offer this survey again. Our hope is to have more respondents to compare the data from this year to next

081year and and and see how we see how things work out. Um I shared with the board I shared the district uh the district um survey and I do have the breakdown individually and that's something that Mr. Foody and I discussed if if you want to um break down the different levels of the survey. >> Can you remind me what was the timing of when it comes out? the timing of when the survey came out when >> it's uh late fall is typical the district uh schools that that put these in place they all typically do late late fall it gives you enough time like you know you come back from you do a September you don't you know the assessment is you're not getting a um true assessment you know you're back into school

082November gives you enough time to you know for those I guess the summer euphoria to wear off and you you really get a true assessment of of the state of in that time period. >> Uh I added this slide fairly late to the process of creating the uh state of the district. Uh we was at I was at a castle meeting about a week or so ago and we were talking about amongst other things our random drug testing policy and it just seemed like there was some misunderstanding or at least the level of awareness isn't what I uh I had hoped for or anticipated. our random policies at the high school. Uh it is involves not every student but students who are involved in sports or clubs or students who drive to school. Uh if

083your child is at the high school and is not in one of those groups, parents may opt the child into the program to become part of our random drug testing pool. So out of about 1100 students, we have approximately 950 that are involved. So practically the entire school. So we select 20 names or 20 students selected per week, but we don't use their names. We just have software that randomly selects ID numbers. So the software companies from an outside vendor. They share that with our counseling staff. They match these randomly selected numbers with a student name and we administer the urine screen to 10 panel test. If it's positive, we send out to a lab for a second round of testing. Of course, we notify parents as well. If it's negative, kids go right back

084to class. The focus on this is prevention, education, counseling, and treatment. We're trying to help our kids. Okay. Yes, Mr. Can we set up a program to um communicate and remind parents and encourage them to sign their kids up for this program if they're not already in a voluntary club that has to sign up for it because it seems to me that this is a program that can only benefit the populace uh in the student body. >> Well, I'm I'm added this slide here together. Uh I'm going to be sent this will be posted on our website tomorrow the entire district and it'll be sent out tomorrow with some snippets uh to the entire school community. So hopefully that picks our number up. Um we're fairly high as is but we'd like to have 1100

0851100 students. That's a good point. Um so that's it. Special thanks to our administrative team, our central office staff, teachers who helped out with this project. This last bold one is my favorite. Um, we're doing our kindergarten enrollment now, as you know, and the children entering kindergarten in September will graduate high school around 2030. >> Oh my god. >> And they'll retire around 2080. >> So, we we're going to have prepare them for jobs that perhaps don't even exist yet. >> We're trying to hit a moving. >> So, thank you, Board of Education. Thank you members of the community. I hope you enjoyed this and we'll see you again in 12 months. >> Thank you. >> Excuse me. >> I came tonight to speak. I actually spoke to James Booty via email and I was

086hoping if I could have a chance. Could I talk or is it done? Is the meeting done or >> I saw people leaving so I got a little bit nervous. Thank you. >> Oh no. >> Not even close. >> Sorry. >> Go for it. >> Uh um one more. Uh those are the people I just bored. They left. They couldn't take it anymore. Uh I just want before I hand it off to uh Mrs. Hogan, our student representative. I want to tell the board we did have in the since the last board meeting two students at the high school who were suspended out of school uh inappropriate comments and inappropriate language at school. So, uh thank you all. And Miss Hogan, I know we have your report now. >> Okay. So, I'll I'll make this

087short and sweet. Um in terms of what happened um in the school throughout the month of February and late January since our last meeting, um the guidance department just finished uh its national um school counseling week um in which they read inspirational quotes over the morning announcements basically to motivate students to achieve more and to focus on their future aspirations and future career choices. Um business students in Ms. Whites class uh competed in the H&R Block Budget Challenge and they placed 243rd out of 1,195 competitive teams. So, they made the top 20%. Which is in my opinion incredibly impressive for especially for a business department at West Milford High School. Um Mr. uh Dr. Dr. Anamon talked about this, but at Berkeley um the jazz uh the Berkeley music jazz competition in Boston, Massachusetts, the

088West Milford High School Jazz Choir placed fourth out of 15 in their division um along with an honorable mention award. At that same competition, our high school jazz band placed first out of 13 in their division. Um and then in addition to that, two judges gave awards specifically to two students, Jack McGrath from choir and Alex Kersonen of jazz band. um both of whom are very cool spent mine. So, I'm very proud of them. Um the varsity club collected over $600 for St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital and they hosted a pajama day um to get everyone pumped for that. Yeah. Um last Saturday, the uh the Cinderella Project took place in the lower library and that is an excellent program. I can personally attest to that. Two of my best friends got beautiful dresses from

089that program. Um, and all proceeds, um, if there are extra dresses left over, they're either saved for the Cinderella Project in future, um, upcoming years, or they're donated to, um, people in need of prom dresses. Um, the PALS ran the No One Eats Alone Day on February 10th, which was, uh, very much a success, and the National Art Honor Society hosted a karaoke night on February 15th in the media center. Um, and then there are just three main things that are upcoming um, or four actually. The first upcoming is empty bowls. Everyone in the board got the flyer, but that's Monday, March 13th, and it's hosted by the art um honor society. In the English department on February 23rd, Olivia Delolio is going to be competing in the regional competition at Bergen County Community College.

090Um this is very much upcoming but a push students so AP United States history um they are hosting a history weekend at Long Pond um Iron Works and they're going to be like tour guides and greeters and have events for kids. So that's going to be very fun. And then finally um the Model United Nations team is going to St. Peters University for their uh high school Model United Nations competition. That's it. >> Thank you. >> Wow. Thank you. >> Thank you. Before we move on, may I ask Dr. Anaman and Mr. Novak a question about the uh presentation? >> Absolutely not. >> Um the the methods that you're looking into in terms of scheduling, are you referring to block scheduling? >> Okay, great. Um I think to refer back to Mr. Drew's point, uh,

091I think the ground seems firm and obviously, you know, not to interject into a professional's u identification of needs, but it's really once you reach 9th through 12th grade that the math program seems to to spiral a little bit. The English scores are either at or above the averages, but I would be in full support of more professional development for the higher up professionals of the math department. And uh other than that, I would like to see a slideshow of a math program hopefully as long as the state of the district. >> Thank you. Um, so that's your superintendent report and you got to go for a half hour with your education report. Are >> you done? >> You're done. >> Round two. Go for it. >> On March this on March 20th, we will

092be having our second annual digital citizenship and literacy night. Last year we had um we had about 450 participants, students and families in grades 5 through 5 through 10. This year we're going to be focusing on grades 5 through 8. And we are going to have a similar structure that we had last year. Um we're going to have all of the the key components in place, but we are going to make it different. That was one of the things we promised at the end is to get people coming back is it's going to be uh it's going to maintain and be be a fresh a fresh set of um presentations and activities for everyone to to get involved in. And um I'll be sending a Honeywell out shortly with a placeholder for families and then

093registration will start getting going within the next couple of weeks. So um I appreciate all the support you gave us last year for that and the ED tech is um very excited to to present that again. I mentioned at Texo uh that was one of the other things that we presented and the the turnout for that um session was tremendous and Dr. Andimon has attended this conference you've seen that some sessions get three people and some sessions get 100 with people standing outside the door. We were one of those sessions with hundred and people bringing chairs in and trying to get into the session because we offered something that um no other district was doing and uh we received requests from people who attended that session to come and see us that night on March

09420th to see it in action so they can bring it back and do it in their district. So uh the edtech committee and everyone involved very proud of that. Um presentation went very well. So again I just want to thank you for your support and all the things that we've been able to do with that uh last year and this year. >> Are you looking for donations? We are once again looking for donations. Last year we donated six Chromebooks >> and uh like to do 10. >> So not not you but I will I will reach out to your to your foundation um for that possibility. That would be that would be fantastic. >> Thank you. Just while we're recognizing, I couldn't help but notice in the paper that the dance group that came and

095talked to us a couple of months ago went to a competition and finished fourth in a national competition. So that might be worth looking into a little bit more that those people are working hard and deserve some recognition. Okay. Special reports and correspondence department. >> I have the u minutes from the January meetings, the reorganization and the workshop special action and the January 31st regular meeting. So those are available for board consideration. >> Anybody want to make a motion? >> I move to approve the minutes. I'll second it. >> Any discussion? >> All in favor? >> Iain. Okay. Four, five, five. Yes. >> Okay. We have a full agenda tonight. So, >> hopefully we'll make it by 9. Um, president report. I just want to say welcome to Nicole. Um, thank you for volunteering your

096time. I think you'll find it uh enjoyable. Um, board, we've got we got our budget books. I would hope that everybody is reviewing them. Um, we'll be voting on that formally. What is that? The >> March 14th is the preliminary budget. >> We have to That's when we vote on it. >> That's for the preliminary budget. >> Preliminary. >> Yes. >> Okay. That we send down to the county, >> right? >> So, please review. I have um also want to work on We got a busy night, so I'm not even going to bring it up. Um, as far as our board goals of revising our team charter, has anybody looked at it? Um, did they have any revisions? Um, and also our slogans. I really would like to hit that for the March agenda. Um,

097so >> what is the final on the budget, Barbara? The preliminary budget is March 14th and the final budget I believe is April 24th or 25th. >> 25th. >> We have one more uh opportunity during budget finance, Steve, to go over things. I I went through the budget like no tomorrow. I uh wish I didn't have to look at it the way I do, but um that's it. We got petitions and requests. Petitioners who request speak prior to the meeting will be first with five minutes for each petitioner for a period of 30 minutes and then time permitting. Other petitions and requests limited to five minutes per petitioner will be allowed until the 30 minute period transpires. Petitioners speaking during petitions and requests are asked to address topics listed on the agenda. All speakers are

098asked to give their full names, spell their last name, provide their address. Speakers may not use the names of students during petitions and requests. And I see that we have one person who is requested to speak. >> Yes, Mrs. Huber is a holdover because she was ill last meeting. >> Okay, you're up. >> I'm a holdover. >> Okay. Tracy Huber, West Milford. Um, since you mentioned math and teaching on the agenda, this is about a math teacher. So, I wanted to just kind of do a shout out to someone who's retiring. So, technically not an agenda item, but sort of. Okay. In honor of her impending retirement, I wanted to share a short story about Mrs. Huins. My daughter Shayon had an extreme dislike for math going back to elementary school. When she got her

099class scheduled for 8th grade, an error was made on her Macin schedule and they left out math. Needless to say, she was ecstatic. So, I explained to her that that was a mistake and skipping math was not an option. So, she was quite disappointed. I contacted guidance and since there were no math classes that fit into her honors classes within her cluster, she was placed out of cluster for math. I was a little concerned, but Mr. Ryerson assured me that Mrs. Huins was the best possible place for her, especially given her feelings about math. When the school year started, I reached out to Mrs. Huins just to give her perspective on Shayen's resistance to math and how frustrating it can be for her. We planned a family vacation for one of the short weeks in

100November that year, realizing that once she hit high school, it would be really hard for her to miss almost a week of school. So, we wanted to take one last family vacation and an off- peak travel time. I spoke briefly to her teachers about keeping up with the schoolwork over vacation as much as possible. And I asked for whatever work they could give to us for the plane or any downtime. And each teacher gave us work so that she wouldn't fall behind. When I asked Mrs. Huins what we could do to keep Shayon on track, especially given her extreme dislike for math, her answer caught me off guard. She simply smiled at me and said, "What you can do is have a wonderful vacation. Enjoy it. And if you and Shayon are willing just to

101have her come and sit with me after school for as much time as she needs when you get back for as many days as it takes, I will catch her up. I was kind of stunned and sort of speechless, which almost never happens to me. So, it was a response I never expected given the pile of work I was already collecting from teachers, coupled with the fact that she really had a tough time with math. For her to offer to stay after school that week was more work and time for her. Time that was she was never required to offer or give to my daughter. However, she did it anyway. Even knowing how much my daughter hated math. I told her of course we were willing and we were just so appreciative of her kindness

102and her wanting to help in this way so that she could enjoy her vacation. She was so collaborative throughout the year and it really stuck with me how she did not even think twice about offering to help. I will never forget the kindness and her willingness and her willingness to help. Shay did well in math that year with almost no complaints about it at home. Mrs. Huins is one of the rare math teachers we have encountered here that teaches math in a way that somehow makes it less confusing or intimidating even for math haters like my daughter. For some for the rare year of mathematics peace in my house and no complaints, I will be eternally grateful to Mrs. Huins. She is not only a good math teacher, but she is also a kind person

103who truly cared about her students. I know this does not not sound like much of an epic story, but to me as a parent, her openness, timely and cordial communication, collaboration, and selflessness with which she approached her job was very much appreciated. We need more of that. She will be missed. >> Thank you. [Applause] >> Is there anybody else who would like to speak? Hello, my name is Alicia London, Morristown Road. Good evening, board members and Dr. Anamone, Mr. Novak. I'd like to bring to your attention that the board of education um that next month is music in our schools assembly. Districtwide, all elementary schools participate in this assembly and make accommodations for parents to attend with the exception of Marshall Hill School. I have been in contact with Mr. McCormack and Dr. Anamoney since

104early December 2016. I was given an explanation on Friday, February 17th, 2017 from an Dr. Anamoney that Mr. McCormack was concerned of losing instructional time and therefore parents will not be able to attend. The children of Marshall Hill School will be participating in this musical experience regardless of the parents are there or not. I kindly ask for the board of education to look further into this matter. Why all of our schools are not offering the same options for parental involvement. >> Thank you, Mrs. Luwendowski. I know we spoke briefly uh in the late winter and again on Friday. Um I'd like to facilitate a meeting perhaps with Mr. McCormack and we can get together again uh shortly to discuss this in a little greater detail. >> Louisa Mora, um we were told this year that

105this is the first year that this issue was brought up to the school, but last year I was the PTA president for Marshall Hill Elementary and we brought it up last year. Um Mr. where Rashik has spoke to the music supervisor and we were told that we were promised that the concert was going to happen this year. It might not be a big deal because it's another concert that the kids have, but my son is a sixth grader this year. It's the last year that I've been waiting since kindergarten. I know UGL does the concert. All the schools do the concert. Marshall Hill is the only one which they're going to lose instructional time, but it's one hour. I'm sure that they can make up the time some other. We've been trying for years. We've

106been asking kindly. A lot of parents complain, but a lot of parents don't don't take the time to come and talk to the board or make the phone calls, um, send the email. So, I will appreciate if everything I was very upset when I was told this year that this is the first time that they hear about it because I've been bringing it up for two years. This is the third year that I've been bringing it up. So, I hope it's under consideration. >> Thank you. >> Anybody else like to speak? I'd just like to thank the parents that came and speak come and speak to us because so many parents don't and the board isn't aware of things uh if the parents don't come and share with us and it's very very important for

107parents to take an active role and inform us of the things that they're concerned with. >> A lot of parents complain but they don't >> exactly the right place. >> Thank you. Is there anybody else who'd like to speak? Seeing none, I'd like to close petitions and requests. >> I'll second it. >> All in favor? >> I. >> Any opposed? >> All right. >> I want to make a administrative amendment. >> Yep. >> To the agenda. Page four. Page four, personnel, student affairs, resolution number nine. We have a late addition to add. The name is Daniel Young Bloodood. This is a school bus driver and this is a asterisk. You could put pending road test. Every appointment is okay. Um, need a motion to adopt to adopt the agenda as presented. like to make a

108motion to adopt the agenda as presented with the addition to number nine under student uh personnel student affairs. >> Second. Any discussion on any of the items for separate vote or anything like that? Wait, wait. I did have something. Um, item number 16 >> under personnel. >> Do you want that as a separate vote or do you just want to discuss it? Because if you want to discuss it, that has to come after the >> Yeah. >> have a comment or some question for a minute. >> Okay. We'll wait. Anything else? >> No further discussion. All in favor? >> I. >> Any opposed? Okay. This is Brian, you're up. >> Yes, I am. Like >> Oh, wait. Before before you uh Sorry. >> Oh. Oh, you want me to do the other thing first? >>

109I I'd like to uh postpone executive session till 9:30. >> I'll make that >> now. It is now 9:00. >> I'll make that motion. >> Okay. >> And I'll second it. >> Okay. Glenn made the motion. Terry saying all in favor? >> I opposed. Okay. Now, >> okay. like to move items one through 28 under personnel student affairs with the additional information under number nine. >> Second. >> Any discussion? >> Yes. Item number 16. Um I don't remember any discussion of this in committee and I want to know why it's a temporary increase to the assignment. This is the one of the greatest unfunded mandates in New Jersey history. This is all park related. Uh this is something we've done every year. Um I I thought it was on the agenda for personnel committee last

110week. Um I'll have to double check my uh when we reviewed agenda items. I'll have to review that. Um but this is something uh we've done every year uh for the testing period in the spring. >> Okay. Thank you. So those days those I guess that from from February 27th through May she'll be fulltime >> 1.0. >> Okay. And so and we'll base that pay during that period on a salary of 565. >> All right. I have a question regarding um number 17 um in speaking with Terry about this um an increase of assignment for Mr. Van Wingard, industrial arts teacher to teach a six period at an additional cost of a thousand per month. Um, I I can't remember exactly how you explained that to me, Terry, so I'm gonna defer to you. >>

111Um, >> teachers traditionally, and and I could be wrong, Mrs. Mrs. Neber, correct me if I'm wrong, teachers teach a five period day with a duty. If they don't have a duty, then they have a sixth period class, but I don't recollect them being paid for that other class. >> We did it. um three years ago when Mr. Holster hired a point six right before school started and he quit and we wanted to preserve the integrity of um a comprehensive high school. So we were left with three industrial arts classes and no teacher. So we took three teachers who taught that already and gave them each a sixth class to get us through the year and to be able to keep the comprehensive high school status. This is the same situation because I believe the

112new auto shop teacher doesn't have a wood certification. >> Okay. But did we pay them the $1,000? >> We pay them $10,000 each a year for the >> Okay. >> Thank you. >> Any other discussion on any of items one through 28? >> Right. >> Okay. Uh, number eight. Are any of those substitutes math teachers? >> I ask every I'll have to look at that for you. >> Number five. Uh, is this person a new hire or is this a shift from another >> department? Yeah. All right, with no further discussion, roll call, please. >> Mr. Bailey, >> yes. >> Miss O'Brien, >> yes. >> Mr. Yuber, >> yes. >> Mr. Sidowitz, >> yes. >> Mr. Drew, >> yes. >> Mrs. Dwire, >> yes. >> Mrs. Fritz. >> Yes. >> Mr. Foody. >> Yes. >>

113That concludes personnel student affairs. >> You're right. >> Do I have to read these resolutions? >> No. Okay. Good. Okay. Good. Okay. >> They're law. >> I'd like to move items 1 through 10 on education for approval. >> Second. Any discussion? >> Quick question. These are these prorising amounts. So number eight is that prorated amount or is that for the full year? >> It's retroactive. It says >> but an annual proration is >> prorated prorated >> right that is the prorated amount. >> Thank you. >> Number six and seven are those related? >> Yes, those two are related. You can see um the tuition remains the same and then the transportation is really the difference due to just the student changing um resident resident's location. Same student ID numbers though >> unfortunately I can't really

114give much more information. >> Yeah. Um, number five, the cart launch that they're looking for for approval of field trip locations for sports and clubs and such anywhere in New Jersey. I do I have a reservation about places like Camden or something. Um, >> why the aquarium? Why? Well, you know, we took this guys to battleship New Jersey there. We had gunfire. We took the kids back downstairs, okay, into the battleship. Okay, it's not the safest place in the world. But I mean, there are places in New Jersey that maybe we don't want to give a blanket yes to. Uh I'm not sure how to phrase that um to make it more flexible. >> Maybe we trust the professional judgement or has to be uh still has to be approved at the principal or supervisor

115level as well as the director of the superintendent. So there are some safeguards in place and there are places in the inner cities which are nowhere near a bad neighborhood. NJPAC is in Newark for example we send kids there. Um it could be a public school that's across the street from NJC or safeguards in in place already. We think more along the lines of we get a a location change for our spelling be that we're going and it just shifted from wood to parameters but it wasn't approved for parame we just go with it like that. anything that could be sensitive or that could put our kids in harm's way. We certainly think twice about >> I've just got one more question um with regards to find the Pine Creek miniature golf course. Um I

116see one putting kids on a bus for an hour 45 minutes to get down there and an hour 45 minutes to get back. That's three and a half hours a day. of the day lost and they're going down to a miniature golf course. I didn't see anything particularly um unique to this place when I looked online. The thing that bothered me is said the country club of miniature golf. I mean, you know that that to me um we've got a miniature golf course down on Route 23. We got a miniature golf course down 46 and I don't know why we're not doing it closer if it's you know in instruction on math. I was having this conversation with Steve you know a pool table if you want to get angles and and and all that

117a pool table >> you know it it it shows you the same thing. So, you know, and and there was nothing on that website that said specifically, you know, oh, great for math, the angles, the way that the place is built, any of that. So, I I really got a problem with kids losing I mean, you were talking about one hour at an elementary school to to lose instructional time when these kids are going to lose the whole day going down to a a miniature golf course. So, I mean, I just I get >> I don't know if I you know, not gonna I don't know how to say we got a camera here. Um, there's miniature golf courses that are closer that don't give you that >> country club feel, >> miniature golf beach

118feeling. >> Okay. >> This is a this is a and we deal with especially I mean just building with our training today. Um, kids ask and they're probably every parent in this room kid, why am I going to use this in life? This is it. I mean, this is where they're going to use their life. The guys who designed this make pretty good money. And to take our kids in that geometry course and show them, you know, you could do it on a pool table, you could do it on a video game, you can do it on a pool video game, but that I think that experiential learning, talking about how boys and girls learn differently, all the training we did today, >> that's true. >> I my opinion, I I see it as a

119worth worthwhile endeavor. Um, could we do it closer? Are there other golf courses that are closer? I don't know, to be honest with you. I don't know how the investigative process went for finding a golf course of that level that's open during the time that we need it, how close it is. I'm sure we could, you know, take a look at that. I think it's worthwhile for the kids to see the math that goes into designing the phys. I mean, it's just a and if you had a discussion, you you get the math involved. Um, and we talked about it today, the discussion of um when am I going to use this? When am I ever going to need this in life? And I this is a perfect living breathing example of that. So >>

120that's true. >> You know, I I support it if you want us to take a look at, you know, if we have something of that level that's closer. I at least I don't know. I know the ones that we have closer. Um and I don't know if they have all the angles. A lot of them are straight and you go through the windmill and that's, you know, we're under the bear's legs. That's not giving all the the things you get. So that's my my opinion on >> the idea that they're more complicated courses the structures themselves so you could really see where >> Go ahead Debbie >> uh since I wasn't at the committee meeting last week um who picked out this who who picked this out was that a teacher >> I think it

121was it was a combination with the um the ge teachers of geometry and the and the math supervisor >> okay so we're talking about middle school high school high school. >> Do you want me to speak? >> Okay. Thank you. >> Um the course was selected specifically by Dr. Holland who is a professional miniature golf herb and he also teaches our intro to college math dynamics college math courses and pre-cal. We are designing this one field trip. We have two field trips in the high school math department all year long. This is the second one. We talk about time away from instruction. This is only one of two field trips where other content areas have many, many field trips that pull children out of the classroom on a regular basis. We would like to let

122the children see where the applications are for the angled measures for the trigonome trigonometry that's behind the design of the golf course. This is a professional golf course and that's why this was selected. Dr. Holland does golf at this course on his um private time and knowing that he knows the sport, we chose this course together because it was the best one to fit the needs of the mathematics behind the golf. It's in Huntington County. It's not that far away. It's not It's not It's not a golf course that has windmills and clouds. It's a golf course that has angles and measures lettuce. >> Any other discussion? >> Mrs. Dwire. >> Yes. >> Miss O'Brien. >> Yes. Mr. Yuber, >> yes. >> Mrs. Fritz, >> yes. >> Mr. Sidowitz, >> yes. >> Mr. Bailey, >>

123yes. >> Mr. Drew, >> yes. >> Mr. Foody. >> Although Although I don't think that going all the way out to him. Well, I'll I'll say yes. something. Can we get a kid with a GoPro? >> Mr. Drew, budget finance, please. >> Don't we have more education? >> No, that's afterwards. Bear with me. Second. I would like to move items 1 through 10. >> Second. >> Uh discussion. >> Well, in number six, regarding additional testing for Hillrest, >> I'd rather see Hillrest done. I'm going to vote no on that. I want it to be a under the rug. operational and just not put a penny into it unless convinced otherwise. But at this point, I'm not convinced about the building. Uh number seven, I will be voting yes for because of the time constraints that

124were provided by land and council suggesting that we are down to the wire with this project that for over two decades has been there looming. So I I hope that there are others on the board that are for taking that recommendation of the superintendent and allowing the professional to to at least put us in a place where the state won't be riding on our backs. That's all. >> I agree with Mr. say it's that I think the best plan for M for uh Hillrest is to just make it go away, sell it and and don't invest anything in it. I would have to agree with you >> Mr. Barley >> Sawitz tremendous idea. I'll be following your road map on this. I totally agree. uh the Hillrest building and to a lesser degree our other

125favorite place. We've been discussing forever here and it's time to uh move on in my opinion. So, >> can I make >> unless you know proven otherwise or persuaded otherwise, I think it's time to uh move in another direction. Yes, ma'am. >> Fisher cupbait. Um the this resolution specifically uh the board had approved uh environmental sampling at Hillrest I believe in December and the amount was for $6,770. What happened and I I thought I tried to cover it in my minutes from the budget and finance meeting. Um the sampling required um different testing because the building was built at different times over three different periods. And um when the proposal initially went out, the I I guess the law wasn't as apparent to the architects as it was to the specialist. So once the specialists

126got into the building, they realized that according to the Ahira regulations, certain areas needed to have additional samples taken and certain samples needed to be tested until they, you know, unless they came up clean. So this resolution is just for the additional expense because they ended up spending additional time in the building under the requirements of a hera. >> Go ahead. >> Question for the BA. So, are you saying in essence this is I hesitate to use the term change order uh to provide payment for work that's already been completed or could I vote no and in theory could this number six be voted down? Would that pose a problem for you and for a vendor who's already completed their work? >> Right. Exactly. He he he was compliant >> with with the law. >>

127Okay. Got it. Thank you. >> All right. >> Yeah. >> Am I wrong in thinking that we had a contract with a vendor to provide the testing and he came back and said, "Oh, nope. It's going to be $4,000." >> What happened was when they got into the building, he realized that because of the different laws that were involved, he had to do additional sampling. He couldn't have provided you with a an accurate assessment. if he didn't do the sampling, it wouldn't have been it wouldn't have been accurate if he if he didn't do what he he needed to do according to the law. >> What I saw in the the committee report though it was because the Hillrest was built in three different time periods, >> right? >> And but he they did do

128or Okay. They did do didn't they did go do a walk through of the building before they gave us their bid, right? >> Yes. >> So, they made a contract. I would hold them to the car. >> Okay. >> I would >> it took more time based upon the variables of the material in each of the three construction periods. So until you start to do the samples, I don't know that you really know what the the materials are that you need to sample. I've been in situations before where we've had to do sampling and, you know, one one professional service wouldn't sample the um the caulking around a window frame and yet you need to sample the caulking around a window frame. So, if you're going to adhere to the law and you get into

129a building afterwards and you see that there are issues that were not addressed initially, you either stop work and then have to go back a second time. It probably costs less money to do it while you're there, take the samples, test what needs to be tested based upon the law. because if they found a hot sample, then they didn't have to pursue any further tests. So, you probably save money on the testing aspect, but the samples still needed to be obtained, if that makes any sense. >> Feels like a baby switch, but we we voted on one thing and now we're we're paying almost twice as much. >> Did they ask about it? Do they have an expectation that so they said something to you, I need to do this? It'll You said that's probably

130>> I They didn't tell me about it initially >> until you got the >> Yeah. So once he was in there, I mean, he might have said something to the supervisor of buildings and grounds. I'm not sure because he was involved with the the sampling, but um I was told after after the fact. Uh I you know my my concern here is one you know you said the architect wasn't aware of the law or didn't understand it. >> I don't know I'm only assuming that if if an architect doesn't know the details of the AHA law um and what the requirements are for sampling because they're not in that service. They depend on other professionals to do things like that. >> No, he was the our architect was the one who recommended this firm to

131us to do the sampling >> only because >> no I >> that they responded to the RFP. No one else >> responded to the RFP. I I understand that. Um, so you know, I I would I think that maybe what we should do is um table this till our next meeting >> and have Joe and have Joe re Joe Joe review the contract. >> But I mean I I got to agree with Glenn. We we gave them we signed a contract for them to do it. I know the architect had walked through before members of the committee walked through it with them a second time. So they were fully aware when we were walking through that there were different time periods >> that the building was built. So you als I don't know that if

132you I don't know that they were aware of all of the substances that needed to be sampled, all of the different materials >> in that building. That's their profession. They should know that. >> But unless you're in there doing it, they probably I I can't speak to whether they went into every nook and cranny. Are you saying some of it was like behind a wall or things? Yeah. Kind of like when you have like a contractor coming to your house and you get an estimate, a proposal, and they go to do the work, but then they open the walls and you've got, you know, all wrong wiring and you have to Some of those things you don't know even though you signed the contract. >> They didn't open walls, though. That's the whole thing. >>

133Well, they had to >> they couldn't do >> they couldn't damage everything either. >> The motion's out. Don't we have to to amend the motion? >> Well, we can make a motion to table. Did you accept a motion or the amendment to table the resolution to table resolution number six until attorney review of the contract? >> Wait, so you're making a motion to table, right? Well, >> uh, yeah, >> just make a motion to table this. >> You got it. Okay. Sorry. Just vote on it. >> Requires two. >> That's all you got to do. >> Got it. >> Requires two table. >> Yeah. >> Majority. >> Okay. Is this a motion to table? >> Motion to table until >> Mr. Bailey. >> Mr. Sidowitz. >> Motion to table. >> Mr. Drew. >> Yes. >>

134Mr. Dwire. >> Yes. >> Mr. Foody. >> Yes. >> Mr. Yuber. >> Yes. >> Miss O'Brien. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Fritz. >> Yes. >> Okay. >> Company. Thanks. I don't think we want to stiff a contractor either. >> No. >> If they hadn't done it, then we'd say, "Well, you didn't do >> We can revisit this next month, but we'll pay we'll get the right answer." >> I do have another question about item three. What is that? >> Um -ate is monies that we get from the federal government and there's um a series of um documents that have to be filed. We have a consultant that does the filing from for us. And um if you recall >> um a couple years ago, we did the wireless through category 2 funding through schools and library

135and they had to file all the paperwork for us in order to become eligible for any um rebate. >> Okay. Thank you. Um Laura's photography item eight. Is that for the yearbook for >> the yearbook? >> It is the yearbook. >> Yes. All that. Yes. >> Yeah. We They've been they've been we've been using that company for years and they do the the high school graduation pictures at the packets and stuff. >> Um >> All right. That's right. >> Okay. >> Y ahead. Um, I'm just going to ask that we hold that till after executive session. I do have some information that I haven't had time to share. >> What's that item number five? >> Number five. Yeah. >> I haven't had time to share that information. I think it' be more discreetly shared in

136executive session. >> Is there any legal implications to it? >> Possible. >> Okay. >> All right. that I remove item five from consideration >> until after executive session. Till >> just till after executive session. >> Modifying your motion. >> Yeah. Just >> thank you. >> And I just I item 10. Did anybody look at this list? >> I have a question about that as well. >> Is any of this equipment still usable? uh over 300 computers. That's how I read that that list that we're just gonna >> Okay, take a second. The reason I ask is because it seems to me that we have students that can't do their homework. >> But this >> electronically because they don't have a computer. If we have if we're getting rid of that many pieces of equipment, there's

137got to be something in there that can be salvaged to be given to these kids. But the the parts are are taken out and used in other computers in the district. >> Oh, they're not complete. >> No. So, it's not that you could hand something over to somebody and they can connect. >> You take a hard drive out of one and you took a I don't know what you know memory module out of another then you can combine two of them and still get a hard drive and memory module. >> But we don't have the ability to have our technicians take the time to do that. there. >> I understand that we don't have the staff to do that, but I'm fairly certain that between 300 computers, we probably have at least 150 useful computers.

138And I can just tell you in my own business, I've got computers that are 15 and 20 years old where you take a piece from this and a piece from that, you put it together and it'll still load Linux and access the internet. So, I have some interest in not all of them, by the way, but but there are some >> I have some interest in in sort of assessing where we are to see if we have some that can be salvaged and reused. I understand we don't have the staff, but I' I'd like to assess that because I know we have people in the district who need computers and can't afford them. team. >> Dad, do we have any computer science classes that teach how to put together a computer? >> But we got

139a whole bunch of people. >> I think we're we're starting that work with maker space, >> you know. So, we have damaged that are not functioning at all that the kids can take apart and with that's a that's a beginning of that process. But as far as far as a course that is teaching them the physical, you know, PCI slots enroll and all that kind of that's not that's not >> is there a club that might be interested in trying to help >> our LU I mean our LU um kids are doing stuff like that now and we have a lot of we have that's the thing you know you don't want them all we have >> though these are being donated we still have plenty to tinker with and play with >> district this

140size you're gonna >> kind of get some stuff that needs to be thrown out every so often So I think it's fairly common. So 340 >> comput, >> right? They can't load current programs. >> Data that you can't make them. >> No, there's there's programs that we can download onto these computers and and effectively turn them into Chromebooks, which just allows kids to surf the internet. they're not going to be downloading things because, you know, it'll be in the cloud. But, um, I just, you know, there's par there there's there's kids in the district who don't have, you know, the ability to get computers. You know, their parents don't have the ability to pay. And this might be a way if if we can salvage 20 or 30 and let some parents have them, that

141that might be a good thing. Will >> and I move to extend executive session till 9:45. >> I'll second it. >> Okay. All in favor? >> I Okay. Any opposed? >> Okay. Um should can we uh should we table 10 until we can get a little bit of a further explanation and see what you know maybe Learning Unlimited can use it if there's something >> they're not going to be able to use all of these. We don't have any place to store everything. >> We got some classrooms down in Hillrest that are >> we could we could we could Yeah. that we could put in. That's, you know, um I just >> Yeah. No, I know. I know. I just hate to see us, you know, lose out on something. I mean, there's value to

142that. They're taking it because they know there's value to it. So, uh Mr. Bailey, >> I want the record noted. First of all, I would like to know we get to the agenda at a board meeting, which is an important time, productive time. We got serious business to conduct yet these questions come up. So I wonder what's going on at the committee setting where a lot of this stuff is vetted and discussed. >> Well, I'll tell you where it is, Greg. None of this was proposed. None of this was proposed yet. May I have the floor? >> None of this was given to us. >> Now you can have the floor. But none of this was given to us. >> I'm going to rewind. I want the record noted. I don't understand why at this

143important productive time of conducting our business these items are picked apart ad nauseium one at a time. That's number one. Number two, I might be wrong about this, but I don't think so. When we get an agenda item such as this, I would think this has been carefully thought out, carefully planned, run by our techie people, run by our BA, etc. So, I would think something like this is the final stop. Yet, when it arrives here, as a board, we're compelled to weigh in with all different ideas and opinions, which are well respected and I hope well thought out. But I think night in night out we miss the boat on what we're trying to do here which is to conduct the business of the school system. Is that correct or am I missing something?

144In other words, when this item gets here, haven't these questions been asked if these things are obsolete, if they're relevant, if they could be put back together. >> Mr. Food is correct in that it was not on a previous committee agenda. He's absolutely correct. sold. >> But when our technicians have this surplus equipment, >> yes, >> they take whatever they can >> from it in order to reuse it in other machines that we're still um using. And then what's left needs to be disposed of because we don't have room to store it and there's no useful life left to it. So as a quick followup, not to be labored the point when we an item like number 10 comes to us, you can say you and you can say and even you know that that

145unequivocably every option has been explored and this is the last stop. I mean, we all understand the obsolescence of uh laptops and desktops and stuff. >> In the past, what we've done is we've put it on a surplus sale and we've gotten no response. >> And it actually takes manh hours to catalog all the stuff and to to track it all for the surplus sales. So you're taking the time of the employees and you're taking them away from other more important tasks in order to do something like this. If there was any way that we can use it, they they would use it. >> Yes, >> Debbie. >> All right. Um I'm sorry. I'm going to be labor on this for just a quick second though. Um Upcycle LLC, that's a company, correct? >> I

146believe it's a recycling company, Mr. I'll tell you. Um, the reason why I I asked this is u my uh one of my children works at New Beginnings and they have a program with the um young adults there and one of their skills is to work with dismantling computers. Okay. And selling them for scrap and and doing that. But it it has the kids working in in teams and doing um you know learning skills >> down in Fairfield. >> And that's in Fairfield. Hence why I kind of thought 1 plus 2 equals three, which obviously didn't work for this instance. So I don't know I don't know if if not necessarily tonight with this item, but maybe down the road we can consider, you know, not necessarily 7300 computers, but some something along the lines

147donating it to that school. >> Well, I think a lot better educational purpose. So I >> to be to be honest with you because I was just recently at um the Fairfield New Beginnings location. They are actually through a larger organization a site. Are we sure that this upcycle is not actually at their location? >> That's what I Mr. Do you >> know? I I don't know. But Upcycle is a 503C charity that um scraps the computers uh well scraps non-usable computers and does the work of slapping together multiple computers to try to get one functional computer together. Then they either donate those computers to educational uh institutions that need them or they use the money from the scrapping to be donated towards such organizations. You could look them up. I guess they have more.

148>> Is it possible to negotiate and say listen if you put it together and there's some useful computers here. Keep all the scrap and you will donate them to the students. I mean, I don't dictate where they >> what they do with the par themselves, but I guess I can float that. I don't necessarily know how >> you'd ask me the inquity anyway. >> They kind of have their own um I'm sure they have their own process to go through whatever that >> a certain amount of you can buy a new Chromebook or computer for $250 to $300. When you junk a whole bunch of pieces together, it has some value but not much. doesn't have one. >> Absolutely. >> There is we do have potential for we are working towards accommodating uh the population

149of our students in the district that don't have access to technology at home. We're in the we're in the process of of doing that. Bars, >> we're researching uh options with our one. >> Okay. >> What do we want to do with it? >> I guess at this point I think Vivvars gave me a a pretty decent explanation as to what they're doing and um sounds like Debbie, they might be >> That's fine. So I don't This is good. >> If if it's a 503C and they're doing it and helping. >> Okay. I >> We're going to generate some new ops computers over time. Yeah. We just keep generating them. We buy new ones. So uh there something to take into consideration. Could our kids help us out here? Can our texts, etc. So we'll

150take I have number seven. Um I made some inquiries and Barbara gave me some information and mainly because we probably had a day off uh yesterday in between. We didn't quite get all the information done. I asked another five questions which I haven't got the answers because it was only this afternoon that I was able to respond to the answer I got today. Um now on this the transportation depot's uh fuel oil release and gasoline release was discovered in 1998. As far as I can tell the board may have spent a half a million dollars on this up to date >> probably >> just monitoring it. But in 2012 we had an estimate somewhere around $200,000 to clean it up. So, what are we doing? >> I think to clean it up. >> We have

151to stop monitoring and actually get it cleaned up. >> But you're not at that point yet >> because water contamination. >> Yes, you do. >> But you're not at the point where it can get cleaned up because you're you still have to put a report together that is going to be accepted by the NJ for the actual remediation. You don't want to remove all that soil. And there are other options available to us. And what they've discovered with the last probe is that the size of the plume is actually smaller than they had originally anticipated. The problem has been that they've had to delineate the size of the the contamination. And so they had to put monitoring wells on all of the exterior areas in order to see whether it had um whether groundwater was

152was moving past the site of the original spill. So it's it's a process and believe me I'm as anxious as you are to come to some kind of conclusion with this. And one of the concerns that I've had when we went through the two years of well monitoring, well, you've been doing this and you keep, you know, do do we have to continue to do it? And the NJ requires certain steps and we have to go along with the steps. Um, our our environmental attorney has been um reviewing everything and and has been very critical at times of some of the um proposed um services and he has asked questions and he has been able to narrow things down and I think he is totally on board with this next phase. that's in front of

153you tonight because he knows that we're coming to a point where we have to have a plan that is going to be approved by the NJ. You don't want the NJ to come in and possibly take over the site because they don't feel that you've been moving ahead as you should be. And that while it might not happen, >> might have been cheaper. >> I don't Well, no, because then whatever they determine needs to be done, you have to fund. >> It's not thation. >> It's not that the NJP is going to come in and they're going to have a super fund site cleanup and you're not going to have to be responsible. I know I know this partly predates you, but I mean >> very much so taxpayers half million dollars for nothing at

154this point. >> We have nothing to show. >> Well, that's not exactly true because they do have all the reports that have been submitted to the NJP. We had a we had a March a May 7th, 2014 deadline in order to do some kind of investigation that was going to be accepted by the NJP and and we met that compliance state and now we're in this next phase of compliance, >> right? We paid $230,000 roughly according to an article through land associates with these subcontractors and so on and so forth. At the same time as two years after we had an estimate to do the entire cleanup of less than that. I don't recall ever getting an estimate of to do the cleanup only because there was no plan in place. Robert, we got that

155in in I want to say 2000 February 2011 >> and that was >> right around the time >> that wasn't from land that was from the other company >> that was from >> water resources who absolutely did not do any delineation. They had absolutely nothing mapped out. And you can pretty much say that because they didn't comply with the requirements of the NJ at that time. Um, I think that that's the reason why we ended up and the the light and all of the regulations were changed because they were not LSRPs and once the regulations changed and we needed an LSRP, we had to go to a company and we had to jump through hoops because it's their certificate on the line. It's not just something that we can do willy-nilly. And so we've had

156to go under the direction of the LSRP because that's what the the Environmental Protection Agency says resol reg I touch on this in my practice. I I do I have deal with properties that have issues like this. >> Mhm. >> And this does not look like Okay. I've checked with people who are more much more knowledgeable than I am >> and they don't seem to think a 3D um analysis is necessary. >> Well, >> and so I'm going to have to vote no on this because I think we're throwing good money after bad instead of spending it on cleaning it up. Well, I think that with the $14,000, you're going to be that much closer to determining how you can clean it up. And quite honestly, and I correct me if I'm wrong, >> correct

157me if I'm wrong. You may never clean it up. >> I think that that was one of the things that was stated. >> You may never clean it up. No matter what, you're going to still have to get the soil contaminated soil out of there. >> Not necessarily. >> No, we we have to comply. We have to end up complying. >> It's all a compliance issue >> with it with less than five years of a time frame. If we don't, then the state provides us with the solution of pumping at a million dollars and there is almost no guarantee of that even coming close to doing it. So, if we don't spend now, we will have to spend it later. you will have to spend at least a million dollars. >> The sooner you get

158the contaminated soil out, the sooner you know that it's not going to spread and get worse. >> Well, the model the model that you know means nothing to us but a lot to the professionals is is coming up with depths of where this plume is spreading. So, if you're if you have a plume that's 10 foot, you're not going to try treating something 20 feet into the ground. So this is really coming up with a model to to incorporate the next phase of the program which is a biological treatment and then after the biological treatment it's the these continuing moni monitoring of the wells. So at that point, if we fulfill all that land gives us the stamp to say that, you know, we gave it our old college effort, you know, that's that's it.

159And instead of spending a million dollars, we'll end up spending half a million dollars. But either way, when I went to the presentation, it seemed like this is as close to a solution as we'll ever get to this problem. Can I call the question? It's 9:45. >> Yep. Yes, you can. >> So, we're going to um >> we're voting on one to four table five to after exec >> table number six until next meeting. >> Yep. >> And 7 to 10. >> Yes. 7 to 10. >> Right. Miss Dwire, >> yes. >> Mr. Sidowitz, >> yes. >> Mr. Yuber, >> no to seven. Yes to the rest. >> Mr. Drew, >> yes. >> Mr. Bailey, >> yes. >> Miss O'Brien, >> yes. >> Mrs. Fritz, >> on seven and yes to the >> rest. >>

160Mr. foodie. >> I'm going to abstain on seven because I have some more questions. Yeah. Um and yes on everything else. >> Okay, Steve. Number 11 to move item 11. >> Second. >> Any discussion? >> Roll call, please. Barbara. >> Mr. Sidowitz. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Fritz. >> Yes. Mrs. Dwire. >> Yes. >> Mr. O'Brien. >> Yes. >> Mr. Yuber. >> Yes. Payroll and utilities. >> Yes. >> Mr. Drew. >> Yes. >> Mr. Foody. >> Uh, yes on payroll. Um, no to the rest. >> What was that? >> I said yes on payroll. No to the rest. Mr. Drew number 12 like move item number 12 please transfer fund >> second. >> Thank you Debbie discussion. Uh I just have one question Barbara. We seem to be moving a lot from our regular to our

161sublist on the on the transfers. Mhm. >> Any reason why? I mean, is it just did we have a mass sick out or something or I mean it just >> Well, we've had a lot more long-term subs up to this point in the school year. The other issue is and you'll recall this discussion comes up during budget presentation. Sometimes what you do is you I can't possibly budget $300,000 in the sub account because you're literally taking money away from other areas of the budget. And so at this point in the school year when you can see how your budget is is is working out, you know, areas that you can take where you're not going to spend everything that you budgeted in order to support your substitutes. We have no control over the number of

162people that go out on leaves of absences and maternity leaves. So rather than rather than restrict your money in your sub accounts that you may not need, it's easier to budget in another area and then see where you have money left over and transfer it. >> Okay. Any other discussion? >> See none. Roll call, please. Barber. >> Miss O'Brien. >> Yes. >> Mr. Bailey, >> yes. >> Mrs. Dwire, >> yes. >> Mr. Sidowitz, >> yes. Mr. Yuber. >> Mrs. Fritz. >> Yes. >> Mr. Drew. >> Yes. >> Mr. Foody. >> I'm going to abstain as well. >> Like to move items 13 and 14, please. >> Second. >> Thank you, Debbie and Steve. Any discussion? Mrs. O'Brien. >> Yes. >> Mr. Sidowitz. >> Yes. >> Mr. Yuber. >> Yes. >> Mr. Bailey. >> Yes. >>

163Mr. Foody. >> Yes. >> Policy Glenn. >> Items one to nine. >> Second. >> Any discussion? point out that student recognition policies offer regions. >> Any other discussion? >> Roll call, please. Barbara on the same point of student. >> Sorry, Will. >> Mr. Huber, that's awesome. Thank you. >> Sorry about Sorry about that, Will. >> That's okay. >> Okay, roll call. Bummer. >> Mr. Uer. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Dwire. >> Yes. >> Mr. Sidowitz. >> Yes. >> Miss O'Brien. >> Yes. >> Mr. Drew. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Fritz. >> Abstain. >> Mr. Bailey. >> Yes. >> Mr. Foody. >> Uh, yes. Special committees and liaison reports. Will parks and recreation. >> I did not attend the uh most recent parks and recreation meeting. I reached out to uh Mr. Roman and I'll report back next

164meeting and I'll attend the next meeting. >> Okay, that's it. >> That's it for that report. >> Uh safety, there is no report at this time. There's a meeting coming up. There will be a report at the next the next meeting. Uh Terry, uh superintendent's round table. >> Yes, we have a meeting on Thursday and I'll report at the next meeting about that. >> Okay. Uh, Mrs. O'Brien, State County School Board. >> Excuse me. Um, there's a joint meeting with the Bergen County uh, uh, school board association on Thursday, March 30th at Medino's in Hack. >> That sounds even better. Uh, so register, come and have fun. And that's better. >> Will New Jersey school boards >> came most importantly for Mrs. Fritz from March 10th to 12th is governance one which is a mandatory

165training and that's at Princeton at the Chony Conference Center. Uh for the veterans on May 3rd, 11th and 15th they are offer NJSBA is offering governance 2, three, and four. On February 28th is a school law conference at the Renaissance Woodbridge Hotel. March 2nd is the NJSBA technology conference at the conference center at Mercer. On the 4th of March is I steam US Army Career Day at Fort Dicks. I think I try to go to that one. Um, and on the 18th and 31st of March is analyzing and constructing salary guards offered by the New Jersey Manufacturers Insurance Group in West Trenton. Almost done. April 7th, there's a school PR forum offered at the NJ offered by the New Jersey Manufacturers Insurance Group in West Trenton. And lastly, on May 24th is a sustainability conference

166at the conference center at Mercer in West Windsor. And that is my report. >> Okay. Uh Mr. Drew, legislative and technology oversight, please. >> Uh we discuss technology and the bigger issue. We'll have to decide some point in this year is about one to one on the legislating. I haven't seen anything that sticks out to me that would likely, but do you know of anything in particular, any action that's been taken? >> Well, the the most important thing facing all of us is next um Thursday's state aid numbers. Um we'll get those and we don't know if the legislature is going to do anything uh with with the formula. Other than that, I think that that's not everybody's sitting on the edge of their seat at this point. >> I would be really surprised if

167they change the habit, >> but who knows? >> I don't know. I don't know. >> Okay. Uh, Mrs. O'Brien, West Milford Education Foundation. >> Um, we're having a meeting on Tuesday the 28th of February at 7:15 p.m. at the high school. Um, I'll have report next month. >> I got nothing to report with the joint committee for the township council and board of ed and Mr. Yuber. >> There's a cast committee community against substance abuse uh meeting uh February 13th. They welcomed the new um director Rebecca Stump. She's a nurse and um she's getting her her feet wet at this point. And um there was discussion at the meeting with the mixing of of fentanol into other drugs which is extremely dangerous. Um they're having a um community awareness dinner on Saturday, March 11th from

1686:30 to 8:30 at the rec center and uh people can go to the CASA committee website and uh sign up for that. Um it's for parents. It'll have a parental level of information given uh and it will help parents recognize problems, find things that are hidden, things like that. Um I recommend it very highly uh for anybody who uh wants to be aware of these things to protect their children. Uh and on April 7th, uh they're having their annual semiformal um which is open to middle schoolers and that's also going to be at the rec center this year. Okay, thank you, Glenn. Um, old business. Oh, go ahead, Steve. China just agreed to stop producing fentanyl. They are the world's primary producer of that. That's major. Nobody expected that. So, I think fentanyl is something

169that's has been put in the drugs and it's caused a lot of deaths in the United States. It appears that the world's source of fentanyl is about to disappear. >> That's great. >> Okay. Old business. Anything under old business? >> See none like to close old business. >> Okay. >> Second. >> All in favor? >> Any opposed? Okay. New business. Anything under new business? Flynn, >> I'd like to make a motion to create a position for and hire human resources director. >> Got a second. >> Well, you you can make a motion to create a position. You can't make a motion to hire until there's a candidate. >> Yeah. >> Well, all right. To create a candidate. >> All right. So he made the you're making a motion to create the position. >> Create the

170position >> for what year was that? For what? What school year? >> As soon as possible. >> I guess starting for next year's >> not teaching position. I think as soon as possible to there's a lot to do. >> I think it would have purpose for 16 years. >> Yeah, it wasn't. So it would have to be for next year. >> The job description >> job description and Y >> actually a couple position. >> Steve, you you made the second. >> Okay. Um discussion. >> I I just have something to say. We we are looking at a budget that has an awful lot of increases that we that I feel, you know, are are maybe not necessary and I would rather talk about those first before we go and add another salary. I'm I don't

171believe that we need a human resource um person. I believe that we have a superintendent. We have supervisors. We have a director of education. I think we have enough I I I really think we have enough positions in place. To add another position, I think is absolutely wrong. But that's my opinion. >> Oh, go ahead. Will >> Well, we could agree to the position. I mean, we're not hiring yet, so I mean at this point it's just discussion, >> right? >> Well, you can always discussed >> you can always create a position to feel it. and I'll be there if it ever is filled. >> Um, we've recently had issues where it it's been proven through third party report that we have management issues. Um and an HR person will provide support for supervisors, administrators,

172any kind of management personnel uh in providing professional assistance in hiring, vetting candidates, um helping with you know issues of difficult employees, subordinates, uh they help with training, the list goes on and on and on. And I think that for the largest employer in West Milford, it seems a uh it seems odd that we don't already have one. Um most of the large districts in the area have them have have HR staff. Uh BCTI has five. Wayne I know has at least one. I think more than one, but I'm not sure, but I know they have at least one. uh you know so it's one of those things where it helps in um managing the employees it also protects the employee employees so does they have then somebody to go to that's a neutral to

173help work things out in interviews Dr. even said it was something that uh a district of our size should have >> possibly have. No, he said yes, we should have that was part of the interview. >> Who handles those things now? Is it across multiple jobs now? >> On you or >> it's bottleneck comes through my office but with the assistance of director, supervisor, principles, secretary staff, but it all comes through my office. The personnel recommendations come through my office to the board. It would still go through your office. >> Yeah, >> it still would, but uh it would >> it would just be another person help >> one per it would be one person versus seven or eight people that are now doing it and it would free up Dan to do what he

174needs to do, free up Liz that needs what she needs to do and so on so forth down the line. So, um I think that uh creating the position uh would bring about some good discussions. We don't necessarily have to fill it, but I think creating the position might not be a bad thing. Um, that's me. I I think I'm I'm going to I'm going to support it. Um, but that's me. So, we'll >> The motion is out there. Is Is there any more discussion? >> Steve, go ahead. >> Just briefly, there are some things that >> you don't have the time to follow up on. usual people don't have time to follow up on. If there's any kind of a um action plan for an employee, then somebody might be looking at does it

175meet the requirements on hasn't been followed up on. Uh we have policies that are out there for example nepotism that nobody's really think >> I'm sorry. We have policies, for example, in nepotism that nobody's really asking those questions and making sure that we're complying with them. So on and so forth. I know, in fact, I think we all know that the quality of West Milford Township public schools is dependent on the quality of the people we've got. And so, um, you know, it behooves us to make sure we understand what the positions are, that we hire the best people for those positions. >> Hold up, guys. Can we listen here? If you want a conversation somewhere else, but we're trying to conduct a meeting here. Who are you talking to? I'm talking to you, Greg.

176I'm absolutely talking to you. So, can we please be quiet? Why the give the courteous uh courtesy to another board member to let them speak and give their opinion. We gave it to you when you wanted to speak. Let's please give it to Mr. Drew. >> What's that? You interrupted. >> No, I know. To pro to make a point. Go ahead, Steve. >> So, at the end of the day, I think frankly if if it helps us to hire better people, if we get if we were to even get a 1 or 2% improvement in our staff, it would be more than worth it. So, I sure I mean I think everybody by now understands that I really watch every penny, but this is an area where I think we can improve. We can make

177sure we get training classes, etc., etc., etc. Having somebody who's got responsibility to follow up on those things instead of expecting each one of our managers to do that will do a more thorough job and ultimately wind up with better personnel. That's why I support any other discussion. >> Mr. B, I'll be voting no. I'll tell you why. The model in education is you have area supervisors, building principles, building vice principles, directors of education. Uh by the time it gets to the part where we're approving a motion at a board of education meeting for any kind of a new hire, instructional person, bus driver, you know, anything in this district, it's been thoroughly vetted. And that's the job of our superintendent. And what I'm hearing, what I'm hearing here is that we want to bring

178on an additional level of management to oversee other levels of management. That's a waste of taxpayer dollars and we need to streamline as much as possible to get as much bang as we can for a tax buck not to add on to it. So I'll be voting no. >> Just to give Mr. There's barely another perspective. Human resources person is specifically trained in things that academic administrators are not. They're specifically trained to deal with um uh people in a different level to vet things for interviewing things that are not um intensely included in in in the academic world whereas more so in the business world. And this is becoming a trend of a lot of other schools. And I have to believe that they wouldn't be doing it if it wasn't a good idea and

179working for them. >> Right. >> Glenn, thank you for updating me on what a human resources director is. One. Two, I disagree with your assessment that this is like the new wave in education. Okay. I'm not so sure of neighboring district that I know of in this immediate area that has such a thing and I stick by my earlier statements. I'm not saying it's not a bad idea. I'm just saying in this model in the education business, I don't think this would be the norm. I might be proven wrong and this person might be um you know very qualified and really provide a benefit to our district but my message is that I have full faith in the existing system as it exists today and that every person who's hired in this district is properly

180vetted you know interviewed thought about you know to me what's going on here now through our superintendent's office and those under him is more than satisfactory. So don't hit me with those blanket statements that this is the new wave in education because I've not read about it. I don't know about it. >> Question. >> Um so this is to create the position of a human resources manager. Um Barber, can you do a roll call, please? >> Mr. Bailey, >> no. >> Mr. Sidowitz, >> yes. >> Mr. Drew, >> yes. Mrs. Dwire, >> no. >> Mr. Foody, >> yes. >> Mr. Yuber, >> yes. >> Miss O'Brien, >> I am going to abstain for the following reasons. Number one, um I personally don't like getting hit with something new like this without the opportunity to really

181talk to other people outside the board of education and get and get their um professional opinion. I'm not saying I like the idea or I dislike the idea. I just don't know. So, since I don't know, I'm not going to go yes or no. Number two, and u Mrs. Dwire brought it up. We're looking at the budget for 1718. I would really not like to ex to uh overextend our budget any more than absolutely necessary. >> This is Fritz. >> I agree. I'm going to abstain. I don't think we have enough information to decide whether it's really necessary at this point. Motion doesn't pass. >> Motion doesn't pass. >> Um, anything else under new business? It's come to my attention that the turf field has crumb rubber and it may be a health hazard to

182the students using it. Um, I'd like to make motion to approve funding to have it tested and confirm whether or not it's safe for the students to be playing on that field. >> I'll I'll second that. Why don't we just say get proposals to see what that would be because we don't to say approve funding. There's no way to really know. >> All right. Approved funding not to exceed $10,000. It we need to have it done. We need to have it done before the sports season starts. >> Right. So So I think the better >> I think the better way to word that is to direct the business administrator to put out a request for proposals for that and then it would be on the agenda as soon as they come in. All right, fine.

183We'll change motion to >> Okay. >> Yeah, I >> Any other discussion? >> Roll call, please. >> Mr. Bailey, >> no. >> Mr. Sidtowawitz. >> Yes. >> Mr. Drew. >> Can you come back for me, please? >> Mrs. Dwire? >> Yes. >> Mr. Foody? >> Yes. >> Mr. Yuber? >> Yes. >> Mr. O'Brien, >> I'm going to abstain once again. >> Mrs. Fritz. >> Yes. >> Go ahead. >> Mr. Drew. >> It did pass. >> I have five guesses. >> M. Mrs. Fritz, did you say yes? >> Oh, I thought you said abstain. Okay. >> Anything else under new business? >> Seeing none >> like to close new business. >> Second. >> All in favor? >> I opposed. >> Okay. Request. >> Well, let's Why don't we uh Was that 10? Why don't we just

184say >> petition petitioners who have requests to speak prior to the meeting will be first in five minutes for each petitioner for a period of 30 minutes and a time permitting other petitioners request limited to five minutes per petitioner will be allowed until the 30 minute period transpires. All speakers are asked to give their full name, spell or last name for by their address. Speakers may not use the names of students during petitions and requests. Anybody like to speak? See none like to close petitions requests. Second. >> All in favor? >> I opposed. >> Uh Glenn, executive session resolution, please. >> At 10:15, we go into uh executive session for the purpose of discussing personnel, HIV, and matters of attorney. >> Thank you. Will. >> All in favor? I >> I >> any opposed and

185we will be doing >> some action afterwards. >> I may not be staying at [Music] You think I'm kidding. I'm bringing my car next time. I'd be on like my third cup by now. >> Be a long day tomorrow. >> What? >> Turmeric. >> Take the turmeric. I'm telling you unbelievable. You don't