001So, uh, we're reconvening from, um, executive session and so we need to discuss item number 10, which is the replacement item under education. And would somebody like to move that? I'd like to make a motion to approve the following agenda item. The recommendation of the superintendent to approve the following resolution or as in accordance with the requirements set forth in PL 20110 chapter 122. The Westford Board of Education has received the follow uh we have has received results of HIP investigation reports on March 10th, 2015. Therefore, be it resolved that the West Board of Education approves issuance of a written decision affirming the superintendent's decision in the following investigations. There are four investigations. One is substantiated. That's E7, E8 unsubstantiated. H13 and H14 unsubstanti. Yes. Mr. Robins. Yes. Mr. De. Yes. Mr. Drew. Yes. Mr.
002Foody. Y Mr. Bab, yes. Mr. Schultz, yes. Motion to adjurnn motion to a second. Oh, I'll second. Okay. All in favor? Any opposed? Thank you. The meeting is officially note the locations of the emergency exits. If we could just have a moment of silence for our men and women in the military. Please stand for the flag salute to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all. In accordance with the provisions of the open public's meeting act, a public notice of this meeting has been sent to board members, all district schools, the Herald news, the trends, the record, AI West Milford, the messenger, West Milford town hall, the county superintendent's office, the board attorney, and cable vision of Warwick and
003posted in the administration building. Copies of the board meeting calendar resolution will provide to all local media, town hall, township, library, and all district schools. Roll call, please. Mrs. Francisco. Mr. Bab here. Mr. Bailey here. Mr. De here. Mr. Drew. Mr. Booty. Mrs. M. O'Brien here. Mr. Robins here. Mrs. Schultz here. Thank you. Um, executive resolution resolved that the board go into executive session at 9:00 p.m. for approximately 60 minutes for the purpose of discussing negotiations, student matters, personnel, HIVs, the superintendent search, and matters of attorney client privilege. The executive session minutes will not be released until such time their privilege or confidentiality is no longer applicable. Second. Move her first. Oh, how about I move it first? Thank you, Debbie. Second. Thank you, Kevin. All in favor? I. Thank you. Sorry report. Uh couple
004of topics I have to talk about. First would be the park assessments that have been taking place since uh actually a full week now since last Tuesday because we had delayed opening on the first day of the testing. Um so uh things are moving along nicely. Um the infrastructure is holding up. Uh there is some problems. We did have some problems with interface. Uh few glitches where the screens were frozen and the kids were being kicked out of the test and a popup blocker and so forth. All those things have been rectified. So that's okay. Didn't hurt anything. Just took up some time. Um the examiners are doing a good job. It's the first time for everybody. So, so far the students involved in the testing have been uh very resilient and the uh proctors
005and everyone uh participating again doing a very good job. um little disturbance we had last week. I'm sure you saw it in the paper and I know the board saw it uh from my email that we had a uh gas leak problem over at Mackin School where a couple of um well I shouldn't say the entire student body was uh sent over to the high school uh till we could resolve the issue. And uh kudos to the entire administration at both both schools and the staff. It was all handled very very well. Um in fact the cafeteria at the high school even offered food, made food for the middle school students, which I thought was a wonderful gesture. But uh again, kudos to the administrative staff and to the students. Uh Miss Ryan Hold and
006myself did greet students once they came back to M school to explain the situation and uh I did congratulate everybody at that point. It really it really worked just the way it's supposed to go when you have an evacuation. So very happy with that. Uh as As far as the kindergarten registration, as of today, we are up to about 117 students. So, we know that there's still quite a few out there that have not registered. So, that's a concern. So, we're going to keep reminding parents um besides which by the 15th, which is what is like Sunday, Monday, 15th. Yeah. Uh coming up so quickly, those parents who have their children registered by that time will be able to participate in the actual kindergarten kickoff. program that we do. So hopefully we get considerable amount
007more of students registered by that time. Um and so that's what's happening there. You look at um the high school musical that took place that was outstanding totally outstanding from the sets to the choreography to the music. It was just wonderful. Just a wonderful production. Uh hope you had a chance to see that. And uh also from the high school uh a very positive thing last night was the empty bowl program that John Barno was talking about I believe the last meeting we had. Uh and you know I walked in there I had ticket number 168. So I'm assuming that there probably was close to maybe 200 by the time all was said and done. Um and the students and the staff members did a wonderful job in making the bowls and getting them out
008to everybody. I thought that was a wonderful opportunity for the community to take part in something in the district. So, and Mrs. Gallagher for heading up the whole thing. So, it was great. I mean, the art department was involved. U I believe the cooking class was involved. There were just numerous so many people involved that it was just great. I was talking to the Rotary uh members today at our meeting to tell them how great that was as well. uh something coming up on March 26th. Um Charlie Ba from our bus department was having a meeting transportation. Um and it it uh came out that Homeland Security's actually making themselves available for training for bus drivers and transportation. Uh so we're going to use March 26. We're going to take advantage of this free training
009uh to come over to uh West Milford High School. We'll have all our bus drivers in. So, we're looking at approximately 60 to 70 70 drivers come in and uh have them train and go through all the information that they have to send to us or share with us. Uh we're also thinking of reaching out to one or two close closer districts who also have transportation school buses and see if they want to participate. It's free uh and they can accommodate up to 150 people. And again, we're ahead of the curve on this one. Barber knows that uh I believe once uh Charlie came back with the information, we spoke about it, we jumped on it. So we're the first ones in the state to actually take advantage of this program. So we're excited about
010it. So that will take place on the 26th. Um, other than that, uh, you know, we continue with park and, uh, we'll get through this and everybody's doing the best they can and, um, I think I think everything's going smoothly and I'm happy to report that, uh, we're moving along and everything is just fine. Thank you very Thank you very much. Um we have um Barbara special reports and correspondence board members will see that we have some minutes that um are on tonight's agenda that have been sitting there since of February because of the meeting. Also um I believe we're going to use the February 24th meeting talk a little bit about the budget and deal with any questions that people any of the board members might have had up to this point. I've not
011received any questions through email. So, um I'm not quite sure if anyone has any questions that they want to present or they want to wait until next Tuesday which is the tenative budget hearing and we'll have a presentation at that point. So, no one has any questions. I could just give you an update. We're uh you know, Tony and Iris and I have continued to uh go through the requests that we originally received which are part of your budget book. Uh we continue to um those requests. We were trying to come um tax levy. Um but the reality is that um not going to be able to happen there's reasons for it which more than happy to share even those things will be discussed on Tuesday night I I have I didn't bring with me
012but I I a bunch that stick out in my head. Um, we have a lot of paving projects. Um, what gets me is it's all the you know like 7,000 8,000 50,000 nothing,000 any estimates? Yeah, it's the project by the footage the square footage that's being paid because through a data um you can use your contractors and they have an approved price. Even though we talked about this before that data just because we're using that cooperative purchasing doesn'tclude us from still going out the bid processes are usually a six to eight week process. Number one the that you can have a professional draw up the specifications. The um you know every governor has encouraged municipalities and boards of educations to use cooperative purchasing shared services state contractors in order to expedite the work that needs
013to be done. Now this board as a whole decides that they want to use an engineering service in order to develop bids and specifications so that we can have projects the Navy project side um that's certainly a direction that you can give me but certainly um it will take a lot longer to do that I I downloaded um this is from the department of community affairs um cooperative cooperative purchasing guide for local officials. And when we go to page one, at a minimum, each participant is required to certify that has received the goods or services as ordered as a basis for payment. The general obligations under the local public contracts law and public school contracts law with regard to advertising the proper handling of bids and the method of awarding contracts are still applicable. Well,
014can I just explain something from just from my past experience? Uh if we're looking at doing paving that are small sections $50,000 that's over a big threshold. Okay. So generally when you're doing a major project if you're going to do the entire parking lot then you would call in the architect you would have the engineer and then go out to a big process uh there might be the one that's $50,000 that's but generally what's happened if you're doing sections then it's really just done through you can use like data uh where the the cost comes in and you kind of just move ahead with that it speeds along the process you're paying a fair price um and again the cost noted before you're saving the cost on bringing in the architect which is very expensive
015and again the engineer. So that's I just want to add one thing when you use a cooperative purchasing agent like Ed data or you know middle sex county does this they are still following the laws we're signing on to them and they're certifying to us that they've gone out to bid for these and all their bidding laws are being followed. So that's, you know, even if the price is above the bid threshold, we're able to do that through that service. So yes, the laws do apply. Yes, we can still go out for bid on their own, but if we go through the cooperative purchasing agent technically and they're certified us that they do this, they have to abide by the bid loss as well. How much do you estimate budget? We're looking at 2% tax
016increase at this This preliminary budget. Yeah, this is the preliminary budget. Our tax levy is frozen at 2% unless we use that would increase the budget more% but um the budget itself can grow more than 2%. I had I'm sorry. I'll try to find something. I had um since we're we brought up the data um we're actually voting tonight on data for here and we're voting on that. You've got believe it's 12,200 for what? Foring services for the acquisition of supplies. establish 12,200. It's on page 12. First item under budget finance. Um when I look in our budget book for that particular line item, we got 14,800. Um there's $2,600. I found a lot of other places where I think that for no other better word. Um, we've got more in there than necessary for
017those for those line items. And like I said, I didn't bring that book with me tonight. Didn't think we were going to be talking about it, but um, if you want, I'll be more than happy to give you emails and so we can talk about this Thursday. We can talk about it Thursday as well. But didn't we get the budget books before this came up? And we're only voting on it now. So if the budget is ever changing as far as I understand and so we will have to not only that there are other things that come up we just found out that we have to use our right to know surveys because everything is online and we can't do them by paper anymore. So there's a lot of other things that come up throughout
018the school year that we I don't know what's going to happen from basically our budget goes until June of 2016 and quite honestly I'm not I just don't know. So $2,600 is really notific there were other items in there while we're like discuss Thursday. Yeah. Or you can email her the questions so she has them for Thursday night. That way we know answer. Just to remind all board members, I did say that if you emailed me any questions, I would respond to everyone and put some kind of a form together so that everybody was aware of the questions and what the answers were so that everybody was on the same page. And I think yeah, I'm sorry. I'm just saying that the uh the objective from us selectively looking at educational and the buildings and
019so forth. U we're just looking to keep the programs that we have. So it's not like we're developing anything new. If we are developing anything new, it's programs that hopefully will bring revenues to the district. So uh you know, again, we're just trying to maintain what we have and that's stepping out there and and saying we're going to spend lots of money on different projects. But again, we'll discuss all this finance. I think it'll be a healthy discussion as well. like to see pencils sharpen as much as they can. So, getting back to the minutes um special reports and correspondence. We have um a set of minutes here that were from February 24th. All the minutes that are available Okay. Um, need a motion to approve the following minutes. I'd like to make a motion
020to approve the following meeting minutes. Reorganization special meeting of January 6, 2015. Executive session of January 6, 2015. Special meeting of January 13, 2015. Executive session of January 13, 201 Workshop regular meeting January 20th, 2015. Executive session of January 20th, 2015. Second. All in favor? Oh, sorry. Any discussion? Sorry. So, sorry. Seeing none. All in favor? I. Thank you. Any opposed? Any opposed? Sorry, Jim. Any abstensions? Okay, great. Thank you. President's report. The board has been in the process of interviewing candidates for the superintendent position. We've already sat through, I think, two sessions and um more than that. It was four nights. four nights, but it was two sessions. And so now we're at uh I know that we're going to have um a discussion this evening about where we're at at this point. So,
021um at this point, I don't have any candidates names for anybody, but I just wanted everybody to know that we have been doing our due diligence and uh the board will be discussing uh more about it tonight. So, that's where we're at with that. Uh petitions and requests. Guess I should read that. Petitioners who have requested to speak prior to the meeting will be the 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 for special action in the agenda. All speakers are asked to give their name, spell their last name, and provide their address. Speakers may
022not use the names of students during petitions and requests. Need a mover. Anybody want to move that? I'm sorry. I was confused. Is there anybody signed up to speak? No. Would anybody like to speak on any topics of the agenda? Seeing none, like to move uh to close petitions in the past. Thank you. Um, all in favor? Any opposed? Thank you. I'd like to make a motion to adopt the agenda as presented. The hand carries. along with the hand carries under personnel and student affairs number 26 27 and 28 and under education item number 10 it's a replacement item for number 10 sorry no thank you which we will vote on after executive session I also need on number three I need to underel. Any other changes? I need a second to approve the agenda.
023Second as presented with the changes and the amendments. Debbie, thank you. All in favor? I. Any opposed? Okay, moving on to personnel and student affairs. Mrs. O'Brien like to present items 1 through 20 for you this evening. It's 25 original book. A second. Any discussion? Seeing none, we need a roll call, please. Mrs. Key, yes. Mr. Deber, yes. Mr. Bailey, yes. Mr. Drew, yes. Mr. Foody, yes. Mr. Bett, yes. Miss O'Brien, I have to abstain from number three and four. Yes. One and two. from 28. Mr. Robbins. Yes. Mr. Sch. Yes. That concludes first of the evening. Thank you, Mrs. O'Brien. Mrs. Keepy, would you mind doing education? Not at all. Um, under education, I make a motion to approve items one through nine. Second. Any discussion? Roll call, please. Mr. O'Brien. Yes. Mr. Robins.
024Yes. Mr. De. Yes. Mr. Drew. Yes. Mr. Foody. Yes. M.Y. Yes. Mr. B. Yes. Mr. Bailey. Yes. Mrs. Shorts. Yes. Number 10. As Mrs. Kempy said, we will do when we get back from executive session. Mr. Bailey, budget and finance. I'd like to move items one through eight under budget and finance, please. Second. Any discussion? Seeing none, roll call, please. Mr. Drew. Yes, Mr. Foody. Yes, Mr. De. Yes, Mr. Robins. Yes, Mr. Bailey. Yes, Mrs. Kevin. Yes, M. O'Brien. Yes, Mr. Babage. Yes, Mrs. Schulz. Yes. Like to move item number 11 under budget and finance, please. Second. Any questions? Discussions, please. Mr. Robins. Yes. Mr. Foody. No. Mr. Deain. Mr. Drew. Yes. Mr. Bailey. Yes. Mrs. Yes. M. O'Brien. Yes. Mr. Babage. Yes. Mrs. Sh. Yes. like to move item number nine under budget and
025finance. Please second discussion. Roll call, please. Mrs. Ky, yes. Mr. Foody, no. Mr. De? Yes. Mr. Robins? No. Mr. Bailey? Yes. Mr. Drew? Yes. Miss O'Brien? Yes. Mr. Yes, yes, like to move item number 10 under budget and finance, please. Second discussion. I need to abain on the last parting. Okay. Oh, thank you. Thank you. So, we're on number 10. I think this is O'Brien. Second. Discussion. Roll call, please. Miss O'Brien. Yes. Mr. Booty. Yes. Mr. De? Yes. Mr. Drew? Yes. Mr. Robins? Yes. Mrs. Keb? Yes. Mr. Bailey? Yes. Mrs. Babbot? What? Mr. Yes. I couldn't even spit it out. You could a little high. She wouldn't be so quiet in this. Yes. Yes. Sorry about that. That was good. Okay. Um, thank you, Mr. Bailey. Mr. Will we see the end of this month?
026And will that be for December? December and then in April you'll have January and February. Okay. Maybe January because all the receipts have been put in for January. So it's just a matter next week. Hold on. Special reports and correspondence. Uh, parks and wreck. Mr. Robbins. Uh, there was no meeting in February. Um, there is a meeting this month on the 19th. So, following that, I should have a report. Okay. Thank you. Safety. Mr. Booty. Uh, meeting was cancelled. Uh, hasn't been rescheduled yet. I would think that it would be Okay. Thank you. Superintendent's round table. Mrs. Kebie. Uh, thank you, Mrs. Schultz. Um, we have our new meeting this Thursday. Um, that's how far behind we are, but uh because of the snow, but Kate Brandon, the supervisor of district testing, was a guest
027speaker who came in to discuss park testing. She also explained and ran through the district website to show parents a sample of park test, which are posted there. Um, up until now, it's school students have been working park test so they can get more familiar and comfortable with the format on the computer when it comes to the actual testing day. It was explained how the park has no bearing on student placement since the results from the test will not be sent back to the district until October 2015. In the future, the district is not going to look only park scores to place children and parents shouldn't worry about the low scores and their child placement for the following year. Uh there is also discussion about transportation department and the continuing confusion regarding snows. Mr. Rashika
028was going to investigate. There's a concern about the town and the lack of snow plowing be done on the side roads and the safety of children. Unfortunately, plowing is a town issue and something the district has no control over. The school does communicate with the town over the status of the roads when there's a storm, but there's a specific issue with the road in a particular neighborhood. It was asked that parents call the town directly. Um during the month of March is uh Pmptonian is offering a nutritional wellness fair which will will place at every elementary district. And finally, parents were informed the district has three snow days, which is actually two now because we use one up and we're all keeping our fingers crossed that u we won't use the rest of them. And
029that's it for SRT. Thank you, Mrs. Kebie. U county school boards association. Mrs. O'Brien, um due to illness, I was unable to attend February's meeting. There is a meeting at the Brownstone the last Monday in March which I have signed up and God willing will be able to attend. I actually did attend. Would you mind if I kind of spoke about it? I absolutely wouldn't mind but go ahead. Okay. Um the meeting took place on February 23rd at the Brownstone. It had been rescheduled. Um there was uh perspectives on teacher evaluations. Dr. Dr. Amy Frz, NJA associate director was on hand. Uh Dr. Michael Ran Rancic, director of governmental relations, New Jersey School Boards Association. Dr. Mike Wanko, interimm superintendent Manchester and Halen and former New Jersey principal of the year. And Mr. Ray Penny
030acted as the moderator. So there was a lot of um talk about park teacher evaluations, the history of park. Um they spoke about working together. They spoke about um how kids need some type of an assessment. Um I'm not going to put my opinion into this, but it was a nice perspective listening to um all those educators that were sitting up there on the deis and then there was a question and answer period. So that was about it. Thank you very much. Thank you. And so now we have New Jersey school boards. Mr. Booty, anything? I I did have something and um my printer spoke with Robin. She directed me to a spot on their website to give the presentation. So, I apologize for for being busy and not grabbing it, but I will have
031it for the next meeting. Sure, no problem. Thank you. Mr. Drew, legislative. No report. Thank you. Technology oversight. Mrs. Pepy. Okay. The technology committee met on Monday, March 2nd. Mr. Barcel Tahib covered several initiatives taking place in the district at this time. First item that was discussed was a Google transition. It was highly successful project that staff has embraced. At this point in time, accounts have been created in the system. Um, however, there are few technicalities to There's student accounts, I'm sorry, student accounts have been created. There are a few technicalities to work out, but students in the high school and the middle school will have their own accounts up and running in the next few weeks. Once accounts are up and running, then the teachers who have received all the training will be able
032to implement Google Classroom, which will allow teachers to create and share documents and links with students. We had a 90minute meeting, so it's kind of hard to summarize it all, but I'm I'm going to try. Um, So much going on. We're going to need uh PC replacements next year. Windows XP will not be allowed for park. Some of these computers can be upgraded, others can't. Bottom line, we have a large number of computers that are cycling out. iPads are still needed to provide a quality interactive operation system for teachers that replaces the necessity of expensive uh presentation systems such as smartboards. Our infrastructure has to be developed and And it's starting with access points. Access points. It has always been the plan to have access points in every classroom in the district. Access points allow
033wireless users to access to the wireless network. If we don't provide enough access points, then students, teachers, and administrators can and will be continually dropped from the network. At this point in time, our vendor Juniper is no longer going to be producing access points. Mr. Elahib is researching all of our options, which include finding a new vendor, looking at the reoccurring yearly costs involved, looking at the backing of larger companies to ensure continued existence, and speaking with other school districts on their experience with specific vendors. The district also has to expand on our existing uh wiring to better support the wireless infrastructure. Once the extra wiring work is completed, that is step one. Then step two will take place which is uh the wireless installation and servicing. And yes, it's confusing because for wireless you
034need to install wires and devices. U Mr. Alte is asking every vendor to break out the cost by school and have bid for wiring cost and provide a separate bid for installation and servicing. Uh there were other issues discussed as well which will involve the cost associated with technology such as the -ate funding but these will be further addressed in the budget and finance committee. The bottom line is that technology costs money and to properly upgrade and meet the technology demands we're doing everything we can to cut and streamline technology expenses through better and more tailored practices. I would uh truly like to thank Mr. Ala. He did an incredible job of presenting and analyzing all the information put forth to the committee and I would like to really thank him for his efforts as
035well. I would too. There was a lot of information at that meeting and um it's very exciting. I agree. Great. Great. Thank you very much. Our next report is the West Milford Education Foundation. I have to follow Mrs. Cathy, so I'm going to say no report. Thank you. Okay. Township board of education joint committee. Mr. Deber, right now the uh town council and board of education is trying to coordinate a softball game. There'll be more information as the day comes closer. It's the end of May and thank you Mr. Deber. Old business. Does anybody have any old business? Seeing none, move to close business. Second. All in favor? Any opposed? Thank you. New business. See, move to close. Second. All in favor? Any opposed? Petitions and requests. Petitioners who have requested to speak prior to
036the 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. All speakers are asked to give their full name, spell their last name, and provide their address. Speakers may not use the names of students during petitions and requests. Would anybody like to come up and speak? Seeing none, move to close. Second. All in favor? I executive session. Somebody like I'd like to make a motion to go into executive session for purpose of discussing negotiations, student matters, personal personnel, hips, and the superintendent search and matters of attorney client privilege.