001the schedule for this meeting the date time and locations meeting were actually set forth there in on january 8th 2021 this notice was provided to all schools all pto presidents to be a ga president posted at the administration building the same data copy was emailed to the public library tapped into berkeley heights the courier news and filed with the municipal clerk to file and posted town hall the meeting will also be announced on the district sign at columbia roll call mike takuya present joy young president robert c and truly jordan hyman president angela penna present chris raleigh here helen kirsch here and i'm doug reinstein and i am of course here uh clever motion to move into executive session i'd like to make a motion to move into executive session second question the second for
002the couple of members of the public we are going to adjourn to executive session we will return to this public session at 7 30 to start our meeting in approximately one hour thanks and we'll see you shortly so moved thank you we are back in the public section can everybody please rise for the pledge of allegiance states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all rob he's he's not on video i can't do that right now i'll text mike good evening everybody welcome to our meeting tonight we have uh two agenda topics that we'll cover this evening uh the first one is uh is a recognition of our one of our athletic teams and the second one is a discussion about full
003day kindergarten so let me let me begin the meeting let me begin by hoping everyone had an enjoyable spring break wherever and however you celebrate it with your family tomorrow marks the end of our all remote week following spring break and we'll soon enter the next phase of our pandemic challenge school year as we welcome both columbia and jail students to plan a we look forward to seeing those students in school this upcoming monday let me address the focus of tonight's meeting full day kindergarten is an incredible opportunity for our district to enhance and improve early childhood education it's long overdue in berkeley heights the challenge in front of us is how can we best implement it utilizing our existing resources tonight is another step along the journey of building the best long-term academic solution
004aka our school structure for all of our students you'll hear words like developmentally appropriate schools providing equity programs and services for all of our students and consistent staffing and class sizes you won't hear them because they're the latest buzzwords you'll hear them because they're the bedrock for building and maintaining the best academically focused school system we can where all students regardless of the elementary school they attend or the neighborhood that they live in the greatest chance to succeed each and every day to reiterate this is a huge opportunity it's a change from our existing school structure one that will be impactful in many ways it is significant in its benefits to all of us in berkeley heights and one that i and our team want to make sure is transparent and well understood so that
005we collectively embrace it from the onset the success of implementing any proposed changes hinges on your full understanding of the recommendation and you're providing input and feedback to the process that is the primary reason why we'll be having three sessions for parent and residents to ask questions and provide feedback we'll answer questions at tonight's meeting we'll be conducting two town halls on the evenings of wednesday april 14th and the following thursday april 22nd additionally we will survey the elementary school community so families can select which scenario they prefer in a few minutes you'll hear from dr varley and her administrative team about the scenarios that were considered and the recommendation of how best to implement full-day kindergarten in our district we began with a problem statement and a set of guiding principles we started with
006a clear crisp definition of what challenge we were trying to solve it's quite simply a mary kay capacity issue mary k macmillan doesn't have the capacity to house all of the kindergarten or first grade students when the district implements our comprehensive full-day kindergarten september 2021. to guide us for the data the research and ultimately the scenarios and recommendations it was important that we outlined five guiding principles we believe it's critical for parents to understand these principles as they represent the philosophy and the values that guided the team and allowed us to sharpen our focus on what outcomes were important as well as preventing the team for pursuing scenarios that weren't in the best interest of students the guiding principles are as follows number one make our schools developmentally appropriate for like aged children and provide
007equitable services for all students you're going to hear much more about these two topics tonight number two optimize the efficiency of our resources by balancing enrollment across all elementary schools currently our elementary schools range from enrollment of 177 at woodruff to 320 at mary kay we have the capacity however it's not aligned with our current enrollment number three provide for future growth given new housing developments our district can comfortably handle the expected growth however it still needs to be planned and accounted for number four minimize the change impact where possible for students changing schools a great deal of time was spent on this principle with multiple scenarios being evaluated and number five maximize where possible the number of children who could walk to their neighborhood schools was encouraging to see the most recent lawn signs
008that say quote save our neighborhood schools because in fact that is exactly what we are doing our team evaluated three fundamental scenarios one do nothing to postpone full day kindergarten two move first grade students to the existing elementary schools and three reorganize our district into two k to two schools and two grades three to five schools tonight there will be a recommendation for changing our school district structure to have two k-2 schools at mary king mcmillan and woodruff and two grades three to five schools at hughes and mountain park this recommendation is backed by both experts in the field of instruction along with best practices in the discipline of early childhood education there are two implementation scenarios one scenario is a one year transition where all changes happen to september and a second scenario which
009spreads the changes over the course of two years with full day kindergarten happening this september with no redistricting and redistricting happening the following year in year two which would be in september 2022 whether you wind up supporting the one or two year transition in both cases less than 20 percent of elementary school students will be going to a different school this fact bear is repeating in the k-2 and 3-5 going forward school structure less than 20 percent of students will experience a change in their school location for those who believe this was a large scale or wholesale movement of students to other schools it simply isn't true for those who thought we were dismantling woodruff and sending everyone to hughes and mountain park we'll see that exceptions have been made to minimize the transitions for
010example rising fifth grade students attending woodruff or hughes will have the option of remaining at their current school for their fifth grade year for the students who are impacted by the redistricting yes it does represent change however we'll work with both the students and the families to make the transitions as smooth as possible however the large majority again roughly 80 will see no change to where they go to school today or in the future similar to my comments last year about the pandemic there is no perfect implementation solution perfection simply does not exist and the last thing we want collectively is to have perfection stand in the way of progress moreover there is no clear-cut no fully right or wrong scenario when it comes to the timing whether it be one years or two years
011over the past few weeks some members of our community have distracted from this discussion with comments about upcoming elections superintendents contract renewal open public meeting law violations that require contacting the attorney general inaccurate claims about what was said at previous board of ed and town council meetings and finally that the board of ed isn't interested in parent feedback that these upcoming meetings are just part of their marketing pitch we strongly encourage you to ignore these distractions learn the facts with the scenarios that we're sharing with the public this evening the truth is quite the opposite there'll be three multi-hour sessions where parent input is not only welcomed it's encouraged further demonstrating the value the board places on parent input elementary school parents will be surveyed and have the opportunity to indicate their preferred scenario this
012way those both those who are vocal and the larger more silent majority will have an equal say in the outcome in closing we have an opportunity to implement full-day kindergarten improve early childhood education with more developmentally appropriate schools expand equity in our programs and services and do so with as minimal impact as possible what we ask from you tonight and over the next few weeks simply listen to the presentation ask questions to better understand the scenarios and how it might impact your child provide feedback and indicate your preferred scenario when asked thanks for listening with that could i get a motion for the approval of minutes of our march 18th meeting so move second uh all in favor those those minutes are not part of the public record donna correspondence there are several pieces of
013correspondence on the agenda there is an email from mrs noonan newman regarding the sro at the high school there are two emails from mr martinez regarding diversity equity and inclusion there are three emails and a petition regarding concerns about full-day kindergarten and redistricting there is an email from mrs pogue regarding the little lord house and there is a thank you for mr larson regarding full day kindergarten and then we have 12 new oprah requests since our last meeting great thanks donna uh the next we have our student representatives do i see our student represents representatives let's give mike a second to promote our students emily and thomas okay emily should be coming online emily i just unmuted you there you are perfect thank you emily emily emily good evening how are you tonight good how
014are you great all right so sports are in full full swing season three is coming to a close with wrestling heading towards the regional tournaments and volleyball towards their state tournaments where they are seated fifth as those games final matches play play out season four is going into full swing today softball had their first game and won this is a moment to remember just a short time ago or should i say a long time ago over the past year no games were allowed to be played in all sports for shut down as we come full circle things become amped up for the spring boys lacrosse have their first scrimmage saturday tennis is having challenge matches to decide the lineup golf track girls lacrosse and baseball all begin within the next week all are happy to
015be able to play from last year and hopefully get some ones as for school after spring break all the students are all looking forward to the new schedules and cohorts that are being decided seniors are anxious to see their whole class in for the start of the fourth marketing period as more people come back to school overall there are a lot of exciting moments happening at gl as we look to more normalcy thank you emily great thanks very much tomas good evening how are you tonight doing well how are you i am very well okay so with the beginning of the fourth market period many clubs are preparing for their final events to wrap up the year the year about club is actively pulling the student body for their preferences in fast food video games
016books and more which helps students remember this point on the lot of their lives later on the sophomore junior class student governments have been holding fundraisers at nearby restaurants to raise money for their prompts the geo marching band will be holding a socially distant basket raffle this saturday and in a year that has been so challenging for teachers and administrators the student ambassadors are planning staff appreciation projects to show their appreciation for all of their work the students are making many gifts videos and pictures slideshows mini goodie bags and more additionally the guitar club music club and coding club continue to host regular meetings the understanding asian culture club has also continued to hold regular meetings sharing an informative presentation on character day a thai holiday in one of those meetings in another meeting the
017club discussed the recent stop asian hate rally and announced a poster contest to spread awareness towards hate crimes directed towards asians though time is drawing short students continue to pursue a multitude of activities as the year ends great tomos thank you very much any questions from the board members for our student reps i have a not a question but a comment i just want to thank tomas at the last board meeting i had a question about the spring musical play and hamas didn't have the answer the very next day i had an email from tomas with the answer very responsive thank you very much for the follow-up that's very very impressive so i just want to thank you tomas it's a great representation as a student representative to the board thank you are there any
018other questions for our student reps none emily and tomas thank you very much uh now we'll move on to the report of the superintendent dr varley good evening everyone thank you for coming tonight as several community members have told me full day kindergarten has been discussed in berkeley heights for many years i know that everyone here will say that they support full day kindergarten they are right for doing so the research is overwhelming that the benefits for students in full day kindergarten are literally life changing they positively impact student learning for years to come the issue that has caused many emotions to run high is redistricting if you ask any superintendent they will tell you that redistricting is one of the most difficult decisions that a community faces four months ago district administration was tasked
019with creating a plan to implement full-day kindergarten we have spent the last four months crunching numbers and exploring every possible option and very quickly determined that redistricting was the best solution for the implementation of full day kindergarten i would venture a guess that is why berkeley heights is one of the few irj districts in the state of new jersey not to already have implemented a program that everyone knows is so educationally beneficial i will not reiterate any of mr einstein's points and i will let the presentation lay out the reasons and details for our proposals but i have to thank the administrative team who worked tirelessly for months doing the research and putting the proposal together i have to thank donna felizola scott mckinney and mary beth kopas for going above and beyond i also
020without fail must mention diane azalean my administrative assistant and kelly sheehan our busing coordinator who work through their vacations to provide finishing details and they know we have about 473 versions of this presentation in other news on april 12th we welcome back all students for grades 1 through 12 for in-person instruction in addition governor murphy has given guidance that school districts can provide lunch to students as long as students are socially distant six feet building principals are currently working through plans to meet these requirements and we hope to have an announcement soon about returning to school for their normal school day with lunch in other great news to celebrate dr genosko our guidance directly director recently shared with me some recent recently impressive college admission acceptance decisions from the class of 2021. we have princeton
021university three students going to cornell university brown university georgetown university duke university university of south carolina uc berkeley university of virginia boston college with four students washington university in st louis wesleyan college wake forest university washington lee northeastern university villanova university and george washington university and finally i am pleased to announce that the hockey team has won the kelly cup i would like to introduce coach michael christotello to introduce our athletes as they are honored by the board of education and mr reinstein okay so we're going to mike good evening how are you tonight good evening thank you for having me dr varley thank you for the introduction great mike i'm going to read the resolution uh honoring uh the hockey team and then we'll ask you to speak about the team in the season
022sound good sounds great where is the varsity ice hockey cooperative team of governor livingston new providence high school located in berkeley heights in the providence new jersey consists of jordan baum jackson benward shane cook brandon pacharo matthew rada colin de croix dr ferrigno brandon phallus sebastian gratson tommy hoy philip custofis brian kramer franklin marco jack norton brady sylvan drewska tarzak josh feydman matthew wallen and jimmy wellin whereas the team is coached by head coach mike cristello assistant coach matthew altmere and volunteer coaches ryan daley and travis dillo whereas the varsity ice hockey team of governor living governor livingston providence high schools earned the title of 2021 kelly cup champions by defeating cranford high school by the score of 5-4 in double overtime on march 1st march 4th at the cody arena whereas the highlanders completed
023the season with a record of 12 wins one loss and a statewide ranking of number 18 whereas the gl in the province also won the jersey intersclassic ice hockey division regular season whereas the 2021 kelly cup is only the second such title in the history of governor livingston school's ice hockey program whereas the team so each of its members contribute individually to the team during its championship run was berkeley heights mountainside and new province communities are very proud of the accomplishments of this team and its coaches therefore be resolved that berkeley heights board of education members applaud the 2021 varsity ice hockey team and gradually the student athletes and coaching staff on their outstanding championship season be it resolve the assigned and sealed copy of this resolution be framed and kept on display at governor
024livingston high school signed the seal this eighth day of april of the year 2021 uh mike i'll turn i'll turn it over to you all i can say mike is i didn't attend the final ice hockey game but i did see many videos of the final play and i was excited sitting in my living room watching it and i probably replayed it four or five times the night it happened i i don't know who posted it i suspect a parent but i knew the game was going on it was exciting to know that we got to the finals and it's exciting to watch a win in double overtime i can't even imagine what it was like for you and the team to be there so tell us about the team tell us about the season
025tell us about the exciting championship well even uh getting to hear you talk about it one more time kind of brings back the uh the goosebumps that feeling that we got in that moment um for a very different year we still managed to find a very special component to our program our team and our success i think everyone in the program parents players coaches were all very nervous going into the season you know typically our season starts in the months of november and as closer we got the dates kept getting pushed back pushed back and we had this level of uncertainty not knowing what was in front of us and what was going to come of our actual season with the excitement knowing we had a special team that had the capability of doing something
026uh remarkable for our program being able to get started and get on the ice and to just go game to game finding success through the entire season finding 12 wins only one loss and all pretty much filling out uh what we're allowed to for a full schedule this season which is a remarkable feat within itself uh finding a way to push through the adversity that this team endured you know being willing to sacrifice the parents the players the coaches knowing that we needed to do everything we could to keep keep ourselves going through our schedule and every team that we wanted to face and wanted to be i couldn't be more proud of everybody that's involved um from everyone from the board of education allowing us to have this opportunity this year to our administration
027for supporting us and helping us through these times from our parents being willing and flexible to all the changes of the schedules whether it be cancellations from teams because of the pandemic or the the consistent snow that wanted to find us every monday in february um you know it really took a lot of adversity and and for me i feel that all athletes and and and student athletes at the high school level you know this is the experience for these young men and women to be able to experience adversity and learn how to to find a path through it all right learn from your failures learn from your mistakes and learn through the struggles that you have and this could have been more of a season to show for it and i couldn't be more
028proud of everybody's effort that they put forth to find success this season in the win and loss column but also find the consistency and the sacrifice to keep us on the ice and and to get to that special moment that you were talking about um going into that final game you know win or lose it was the last game of the season and we sure made it interesting going to a double overtime and it was at that moment one of the longest games in high school hockey history up until the following night when there was another triple overtime game up in north jersey but uh to come out on top and to know what was put in to get to that moment in this year through all of the uncertainty that we've experienced in the
029adversity that we faced it really put the cherry on top and i couldn't be more proud of our team our parents our community for coming together and helping us get to that point great mike uh thanks again um uh thanks to you again uh everything you mentioned difficulties and pandemic all the challenges that you had congratulations to you i'd love to welcome you back next year with another kelly cup we've only got two but why not back to back why not back-to-back championships so to all the returning uh players who are coming back i don't know how many seniors you're losing this year versus incoming freshmen that you'll get next year but thanks for everything you've done good luck to you in the off season and we'd love to welcome you back next year with
030a with another with another championship thanks again mike thank you we're looking forward to next season and we're going for the big one when it's available to us sounds good um we're going to continue with the next part of the superintendent's report let me just make one administrative comment dr varley will be sharing the full day kindergarten presentation the presentation is now posted up on our website so if you go to our website you can go access that so you can obviously watch it on on the on the zoom is also available for you to download so when we get to the questions and answer period if anybody wants to access that to better frame their question you'll have the opportunity to get it again it's posted now on our website dr varley mike can
031you just promote uh mary beth and annie okay i see annie's here uh and let's see let me just have mary beth [Music] okay i see i see mary beth is promoted also okay got annie and we have mary beth we got both of them oh mike can you also promote the podium okay okay we're good dr varley get to the of presentation it's no longer up hold on one second okay good evening everyone this is the moment you have been waiting for reimagining k-5 education which talks about redistricting but making sure we implement full-day kindergarten i would like to take a moment to thank miss fellazola who has worked diligently on this presentation miss copez and miss corley who have spent a lot of time with me working through this we will get started
032so if you look at our agenda tonight we have you can follow along with us online we do have the presentation posted on our website so we're going to go through our overview and background our current school configuration and concerns recommendation and benefits our scenarios and our next steps so our problem statement is basically that mary kay mcmillan does not have the capacity to house all of our kindergarten and first grade students when the district implements our comprehensive full day kindergarten in september 2021. that isn't the only problem we have we also know that we have inequity amongst our four school buildings so our guiding when we met together and we started working on this presentation we came up with five guiding principles that directed us through this process i can assure you we have
033multiple iterations over a 32-page spreadsheet of multiple scenarios we have come up with and we are only presenting the five that could possibly work so our guiding principles are to make schools developmentally appropriate for like age children and provide equitable services for all students and i want to make sure everyone understands equity here is not talking about race we are talking about the same programs the same policies the same services for all students we are going to optimize the efficiency of our resources by balancing enrollment across all of our elementary schools provide for future growth given the new housing developments we have over a thousand developments coming in the next few years and i can assure you they will have children in those houses minimize the change impact where possible for students changing schools and
034maximize where possible the number of students who can walk to school so you look at our timeline of discussions for full day kindergarten way before i was even here in october of the board of education started a feasibility study about full day kindergarten then in 2015 to 2018 there were many discussions again before i was part of berkeley heights and parent feedback in march of 2009 the board presented and had a discussion on the case for full-day kindergarten a pilot versus universal free kindergarten for parents and students in november of 2019 when i was here we announced full a pilot full day kindergarten for the 2021 school year and talked about full day kindergarten for 2021 2022 in october of 2020 we postponed the referendum due to the pandemic and postponed universal full-day kindergarten to
0352022-2023 in february 4th of 2021 we announced full day kindergarten for the 2020 2021 school year and then at april 8th which is tonight we are doing the board of education full-day kindergarten presentation with options and scenarios and then on april 14th we will hold our first town hall after that town hall we will send out a survey for parents to give us feedback on which scenario they would like to choose on april 22nd of 2021 we will have our second town hall for parents and community members and then on april 29th there will be a board of education discussion and vote i'm going to turn it over now to annie corley and she's going to talk about the history of hamilton terrace good evening everyone i feel like i've been talking about full day
036kindergarten for many many years um so here we go so reorganization and reimagining our school configuration is not new to berkeley heights during the de-regionalization in 1997 berkeley heights became a k-12 district and as a way to relieve overcrowding at the elementary schools opened hamilton terrace which have been leased to the union county ed services commission was known as west lake school in 1997 hamilton's harris early childhood center now known as mary kay macmillan opened its doors welcoming all the districts kindergarten students and expanding the following school year to include first graders and preschoolers change is never easy there was a great deal of apprehension among teachers and staff and not an overwhelming not overwhelming support from the community in implementing this new school structure what was viewed as dismantling our neighborhood schools siblings attending
037different schools and bussing many of our youngest youngest students was not looked on favorably by the public once the early childhood center opened and the benefits of such a facility became clear the tide began to turn and public opinion was swayed playgrounds designed for younger children were installed assemblies and events were planned with a deliberate focus on this age group and the culture of the school soon became to reflect what we know as best practice in early childhood education across the state mkm has become a model for other districts and is frequently visited from from my colleagues from the department of ed professional organizations and universities change does not come quietly or without friction we are now poised to expand this early childhood model and reimagine our elementary schools to the betterment of all of
038berkeley heights students go to the next slide please is the next is are we up with that slide okay as you can see in this slide there's a tremendous disparity in enrollment numbers across the four schools with our current configuration we are unable to implement a universal full day kindergarten program as both dr varley and mr reinstein has mentioned a full day k program is a much needed component of a comprehensive preschool through 12 school district it's important to consider more than physical space and number of students when discussing disparity in enrollment one must consider the differences and expectations for staff and accessibility to students in various buildings for example at one school a school counselor is limited in her ability to connect with 320 students more easily a school with 177 students reading specialists
039interventionists and even the principal there is a significant disparity between school buildings dr varley will discuss this in greater detail throughout the presentation next next slide we can talk about numbers and make comparisons but as a visual learner my learning style prefers using pictures charts and graphs when you look at this bar graph it clearly demonstrates the disparity between schools and attests to the compelling need to make some change as we continue the presentation you will be presented with two scenarios both will create more balanced enrollment across our schools provide full day kindergarten and in turn positively positively impact our elementary students for years to come dr varley so our current concern our current concerns are that we have insufficient space to implement full-day kindergarten within our current school configuration maintain we want to maintain
040our commitment to developmentally appropriate practices in early childhood education and focus on our enrollment disparity in elementary schools which leads to lack of equity and services provided amongst the buildings and our inability to maximize the use of staff example given here is our specialist the greatest concern is lack of equity and i'm going to repeat what equity means again equity means that fair policies programs and practices are put into place to ensure that every single child has the academic social and emotional supports needed to succeed in essence they are all on the same playing field our goal is to ensure that staffing and class sizes are more consistent across all four buildings each support staff member has an equitable schedule to service the maximum number of students planning time is equitable so that teachers can
041design common lessons and assessments to support student learning and elementary principles supervise similar number of staff and support similar numbers of students and families and our facilities and resources are realized to their full potential so when i talk when i talk about lack of equity i'm going to give you a couple of examples so miss corley gave you an example of a counselor and i'm going to talk about a reading specialist let's use an example reading specialist at mountain park who would meet with 20 students per day while a reading specialist specialist mary kay mcmillan could see up to 40 students a day thus the students at mountain park receive more individualized instruction than those at mary kay mcmillan this whole trip holds true for school counselors psychologists cst and other specialists and support staff
042on the flip side of that let's say that mary kay had a fourth grade class that had 48 students in that as a grade level 48 students i would not and the board and i would not open a new section for 48 students we would hold two classes of 24 class students in a class on the flip side of that part if hughes has 76 students i would not hold just three sections with 76 i would do four and that would be a 19 side 19 students in one class thus creating mountain park having 24 students in a class and hughes handling having 19. if you look at our enrollment sheets across grade levels right now we have that disparity throughout our buildings where there are large class sizes in some grade levels and small
043class sizes and other grade levels based on the data and i can tell you i have spoken to multiple early childhood and elementary education professors and they talk about if you walked into a district and you could build it from scratch you would have specialists in each grade band such as k to two pre-k to two and three to five six to eight and nine to twelve we are doing the specialist model six to eight and nine to twelve however we are not doing the specialist specialist model in our two to five schools and we need to focus on best practices so based on data research and the best interests of the students of berkeley heights public schools the superintendent recommends the creation of two k-2 schools mary kay and william woodruff and two three
044to five schools mountain park and thomas hughes the discussion will occur tonight and at the two upcoming town hall meetings as to whether this recommendation will be implemented next school year or in two school years and i'm going to turn it over to mary beth kopez for the next portion good evening everyone i'm happy to discuss why we strongly believe that the k2 and 35 model is the best structure for our district moving forward and specifically the curricular benefits of that model first and foremost it's recognized by many leaders in the field as best practice there's a preponderance of evidence to support this structure many researchers such as doug reaves a harvard university distinguished author ellie drago severson from columbia teachers college founders and pinell the robert wood johnson foundation all discuss how early childhood
045education and interventions improve student learning as well as the health and well-being of young children norwood who has conducted cross-sectional studies have shown that when students are placed in k2 young primary elementary schools superior student achievement is observed not only in those early grades but also in grades four and five obviously it's because the students have a strong foundation which allows them to succeed as they move up the grades the new jersey department of education even recognizes these grade bands as best practice for example we have our learning standards grouped that way according to k2 and 35 bands our new new jersey student learning standards for social studies and our computer science frameworks are banded this way when grades pre-k through two and three through five are grouped together there's a school-wide focus on the
046developmental and educational needs of those specific age bands one example of this is professional development work that we're doing and that we're engaged in as many of you know we are have a partnership with columbia teachers college and their staff developers are even trained in this way we have pre-k through two experts who work with our k through two teachers and then we have our staff developers who are three through five experts and they work with our teachers in grades three through five so in our grade two through five schools we actually have two different staff developers working with our staff one who has the second grade focus and then another one who has the grades three through five focus also school routines assemblies and activities can be more grade and age focused for example
047students in grades pre-k through two will not have routines interrupted during the administration of district testing or state testing when we house grades k pre-k through two together it allows for the focus to be on developmentally appropriate practices you've heard that phrase used a lot integrated curriculum and instruction as well as focus on early literacy and numerous numeracy skills whereas when we focus on grades three through five and they are housed together it fosters vertical and horizontal content specific articulation to address standards in preparation for state testing i'm sure many of you have heard the phrase that in grades pre-k through two children are learning to read and then by grades three through five children are reading to learn the new configuration will foster more staff with specialized knowledge and expertise in the specific developmental
048stages of educational growth for example intervention resources will be rather than spread across greater great spans and because the focus and the concentration of services is such as special key expand is and provide appropriate services for the smaller range of grade levels and finally the structure will allow for common planning periods to promote curricular consistency across grade levels this is very important to us because we will have schedules that are a bit more flexible because they only cover three grade levels teachers will be able to plan together and we're very happy about the consistency that will be created next slide okay i'm going to turn it over to miss fellazola for staffing facilities and cost benefits overall our goal was to establish with balanced total enrollments we looked at many configurations as dr varley mentioned
049to come up with this balance it was a big jigsaw puzzle and we just kept on massaging it to get the best allocation of students that we could the reason for this is balanced enrollments allow us to more efficiently utilize our buildings than our staff as dr varley mentions this will allow us to create classes with equal or as equal as we can get class sizes one school won't have 23 students per class while another school has 17 students per class in the recommended configuration related arts teachers and special teachers will be able to focus their lessons on a more cohesive group of students either the k to two group or the three to five level this will give the teachers more focus and they'll be able to concentrate on a group of students that
050is more cohesive in their in where they are in their learning currently we have staff share between buildings and these staff spend a portion of their day traveling from one school to another the recommended scenarios will reduce the need for teachers to travel and will allow them to spend more time with their students in the buildings they're assigned to teachers who teach the same grade will have more opportunities to collaborate with colleagues and share resources and best practices so by concentrating with the teachers within two schools with the same grades we'll have more people who can work together and share their knowledge regarding the curriculum and what is best practices for the students professional development will also be more effective as mrs cope has explains many much of it is geared to the k to
051two level and the three to five level so when we have professional development opportunities for our teachers they will be more effective and the teachers and the staff developers will be able to work together in reference to classroom utilization there is a noticeable difference when you walk through the schools one school has empty and used classrooms and other schools have staff sharing spaces in certain instances teachers are providing small group instruction lesson in carved out spaces from larger classrooms receiving small group instruction in this type environment reduces the quality and effectiveness for the students who are receiving those services another benefit which was a result of all of this was a savings and transportation costs later in the presentation we have a slide that shows the differences in transportation costs for each scenario and we'll
052summarize that later okay so we did not share with you every single scenario that we have looked at because we would be here until next tuesday so we chose five of the scenarios that would possibly work we talked about and mr reinstein mentioned this that same structures today with no full day kindergarten and we know if you look at research that a student is who falls behind in first grade without interventions will stay behind we know that other states are looking at universal pre-k and we are looking at re universal full-day kindergarten we need to make sure we are giving our students the foundation so that they have the the need the the ability to be successful and then i'm going to go into more detail in scenarios 2 3 5. if you look at
053scenario 2 this is something that was talked about years ago before i was a member of the berkeley heights public school district and that's just moving the first grade down and we have mary kay mcmillan with preschool to kindergarten and then we have the three schools hughes mountain park and woodruff with first through five first of all we don't fix our enrollment disparity so we continue with the equity issue that we have and this is not developmentally appropriate we would have 11 year olds in the same building with six years or six-year-olds and if you look at it it reduces our common planning time and we know how important the whatever i need period is that we have in those elementary schools that would basically be gone for so our students would not receive the
054intervention services so this is not something that we would wholeheartedly embrace if you also look at it you see that our largest our school with the largest capacity is woodruff with 380 students and in this scenario it would have 219 students hughes is over capacity at 321 students which it's one student but in the end we know more students move in if you look at mary kay mcmillan we would have 207 students total 58 of that 207 students would be pre-k so just want you to take a look i'll pause for a minute so you can see the number discrepancies there and just to show you that we would not fix our equity issue and we still have an enrollment disparity so then we talked about scenario three and this is where we moved the
055murray hill neighborhood to woodruff and we have the configuration is mary kay macmillan is preschool to kindergarten and hughes mountain park and woodruff are grades one through five we still redistrict a little we just move one neighborhood and we do get a more balanced approach here however we're still not developmentally appropriate we are not addressing our equity we are we are addressing our equity issues but we are not addressing the developmentally appropriateness which across the board research research shows we need specialized schools it still reduces our common planning time and our win periods and we have an inefficient use of our staff and i will show you the bar graph which i like mrs corley and a very visual learner we still we have disparity in enrollment with mary kay mcmillan only having 207 students
056and if you can see the others are about on the same level there but still not developmentally appropriate so i'm going to leave that for a second so you can take a look at it we move to scenario four which is two early childhood centers we are would be developmentally appropriate two grade three to five buildings which would be elementary schools and we look at mary kay mcmillan preschool to grade two woodruff kindergarten degree two grade five has the option to stay should they not want to move on to hughes and mountain park and using mountain park are grades three to five if you look at the enrollments yes they are a little off if you look at hughes hughes is higher and one thing i noticed when i looked at the enrollment of our
057incoming fifth grade we have a larger fifth grade this incoming fifth grade for next year than we do currently so it would bump hughes up a little bit over the remaining schools every year we have what we call baby boom grades this year's ninth grade is a larger ninth grade than last year's significantly larger than last year's ninth grade so if you take a look at the benefits of this we have almost balanced enrollment we leave room for the incoming house developments and housing developments and one thing if you look at the housing developments the majority of them are coming in on the mary kay mcmillan mountain park side and that would leave room for growth over and mary kay mcmillan i mean in woodruff and hughes students in all buildings will have equitably equitable
058access to all services we will efficiently use our staff it reduces the travel between buildings and schools and we have common planning and consistent instruction i have talked to multiple parents in my year and a half that i've been here who complain about the lack of consistent instruction across the four elementary schools our enrollment numbers above do not include the keep remaining fifth grade at woodruff just so you're aware i just want to make sure that's clear if you take a look at our enrollment across the board in our bar graph again mary kay mcmillan has 283 total students 58 of those students are pre-k and then you have woodruff with 238 hues with 276. and mountain park with and i'll leave that slide up here for a second so you can keep keep a
059look at it keep looking at it so moving on to scenario five scenario five is basically moving to scenario four but in a two-year transition period i know we've had some parents say that they want at least one more year of normalcy before we make these changes so if you take a look at it for next year this is year one year one mary kay mcmillan would be pre-k to one woodruff would be k in grades three to five q's in mountain park grades two to five if you notice woodruff would not have a second grade those first graders would leave mary kay mcmillan and go to either hughes or mountain park so it reduces a transition for them and if you take a look we still have an enrollment disparity but it is for
060one year we know we have to fix our equity issue and we can either do it in one year or we can do it in two years take a look at our slide here we have mary kay macmillan with 283 students and i realize it's the same number of students that were in scenario four for mary kay mcmillan but oddly enough the numbers add up to 283 for pre-k and one or um pre-k 2-2 for mary kay mcmillan 58 of those students are pre-k students and then you see woodruff with 195 hughes with 267 and mountain park with the largest number at 282. so i'll turn it over to donna again for the transportation cost when we looked at all of the scenarios we looked at staffing we looked at all aspects of the scenarios
061and one of the things that we consistently looked at was a transportation costs so you can see here the transportation costs for each of the five scenarios the scenario one which is our current year the costs are the highest at 390 000 uh each of the following scenarios you can see transportation cost savings and admittedly one of the big reasons that there will be savings is that we'll be eliminating the midday kindergarten bus routes there are currently six routes associated with the half day kindergarten program and based on the shifts in the grade levels and the neighborhoods for each of the scenarios is the reason that some of these numbers are varying the greatest savings are with scenario four where we're cutting our costs in half but with each of the scenarios there will be
062savings overall the savings range from 120 000 to 180 000 so let's talk about how we decided to do this redistricting consideration we began the process by splitting the town in half with snyder avenue as the central point center point it's the way berkeley heights does the recycling um the recycling process so then we talked about we started looking at the map and we wanted to look at the guiding principles and minimize the change impacts as well as maximize the amount of students who can walk to school and we took a look at spring ridge spring ridge they open their front door and they look right at hughes so it did not make sense to have those students turn around and then probably be bussed or their parents have to drive them to school to
063mountain park so spring ridge will stay where they are at woodruff and and move well moved to woodruff and hughes sutton and the hampton neighborhoods we kept them at woodruff and used to make a more balanced um a balance balance our enrollment numbers there as well so here's our map you can see the left is mary kay mcmillan and mountain park and the right is hughes and woodruff it's all divided down snyder except for a few neighborhoods you take a look at what we have here and what we've moved so we have right here in front of cms you have a school that would normally this neighborhood would normally go to hughes but they will now go to mary kay macmillan and mountain park then you take it look at springfield which is behind the
064hardware store they normally go to woodruff they would now go to mountain park and we kept everything else basically the same as much as we possibly could so you can take a look at that i'll leave it up for a moment so you can process the map and again this is on our website if you want to take a look at it so our biggest changes will be the students who face are near cms columbia middle school and the students who are behind the hardware store those students will be moved so in our student impact slide rising fifth grade students at woodruff and hughes will have the option to stay at their current school for fifth grade or move to hughes or mountain park regardless of the one or two year transition period of the
065k to five students across all schools less than 20 percent basically one out of every five students will be attending a different school that means the school they're not currently attending versus our current model children may not attend the same school as their siblings or the school they anticipated on attending so our next steps we have the town hall forum on wednesday april 14th which is next week and thursday april 22nd after the town hall forum on april 14th i will be sending out a survey to parents to determine their their choice and give us feedback on scenario 4 or scenario 5. my recommendation will be based on the feedback from the community it will then be recommended to the board of education and their decision will happen at the april 29th board meeting we
066will have construction of new bathrooms for our kindergarten classrooms the department of education mandates that kindergarten classrooms must have must have a bathroom within the classroom or at least within the line of sight and we will determine teacher and administrative personnel changes to support the recommended option and we will continue communicating with our community and i'm going to take my screen share off turn it over to mr reinstein for the student for student flow scenario okay what i'm about to share with you is the exact same information that dr brawley just shared in a slightly different format and this is formatted to look at the student flows so what you have here is scenario four in the first year which is september of 21 of 2021 and this involves the redistricting in so rising kindergartners
067young children who are today currently in preschool would either go to mary kay or woodruff based on the map of the community rising first graders these will be young children today who are either at mary kay or in a private kindergarten would do the same thing they would go to mary kay or to woodruff rising second graders uh students who are in first grade today again would go to woodruff or uh to mary kay rolling forward again this is still with this scenario four and this is in september 21 with redistricting so students who are currently at woodruff would either go to hughes or to mountain park most of them would go to hughes the group that will go to mountain park again is the group that lives currently behind the hardware store who are
068currently at woodruff and would go to mountain park the same thing same thing for hughes slightly different neighborhood so the rising third and fourth grade students who are currently at hughes would stay at hughes or go to mountain park again that students those students are the ones who currently live opposite columbia middle school and lastly the third and fourth grade students who were at mountain park would stay at mountain park if we go forward in fifth grade and here's the exception that i talked about in my opening remarks and with dr for rising fifth grade students and these are students who would be spending their last year at the elementary school um would your students would go to woodruff huge students go to hughes mountain park would go to mountain park it's the important footnote
069is right here on on the bottom there will be an option for rising fifth grade students at woodruff and rising fifth grade students at hughes will have the option to stay at their current school and reduce the number of transitions one of the areas of feedback that we got and one of our it didn't rise up to the level of a guiding principle but we talked about minimizing the student impacts and minimizing the number of transitions by allowing these rising fifth graders to stay at their current school for the fifth grade year we minimize the student impact and we reduce the number of transitions so that's scenario number four let's move on to scenario number five this one's a little bit more detailed because covers two years so this is scenario five in year one
070where the majority of the redistricting will happen in september 22 which is year two so this option has the rising kindergartners again those students coming from preschool would go to mary kay and woodruff based on the community map but that is the only group that would uh move to the new structure all the other students would stay where they are so rising first graders again the young students who are at mary kay or pre-k or or private school would go to mary kay because we would not be moving the first graders rising second graders students who are currently in first gate and rising from mary kay would go to hughes or to mountain park you'll note on the bottom here for those students that would have gone to woodruff we will not be sending them
071to woodruff in the first year for the same reason i mentioned in the previous slide for us to minimize the number of transitions minimize the student impact those students would go to either hughes or mountain park because that will become their home for their third through fifth grade elementary year so again another example where we're minimizing the number of transitions minimizing the student impact for students if we go forward again this is still scenario five year one and because there's no change for rising third fourth and fifth graders no change which if goes to woodruff hughes to hughes park to mountain park so again scenario five year one i'll go backwards for a second the really only change is the rising kindergartners will so we'll we'll implement full day kindergarten and we'll it will split
072up mary kay mcmillan and woodruff will each get half of the rising kindergartners but for first grade second grade third fourth and fifth in year one no redistricting and very very minimal change let's roll the clock forward this is now scenario five year two so this is in september 22 roughly a year and a half from now this is when the majority rejection would take place so this is the year year two of scenario five no change here rising kindergartners would still get split rising first graders who previously were at mary kay and woodruff would stay where they are so mary kay students would stay there would you students would stay there as well rising second graders would go from mary kay macmillan to woodruff or or mary kay again because those were our second
073grade students are housed then for the third grade students these are the rising third grade students again this is in year two those students would go to hughes or mountain park and the reason for that is there's nobody at woodruff as i mentioned the previous slide in year one we didn't send any students to woodruff so there wouldn't be any students that would drift minimizing the transition so those students would go from uh from hughes uh to hughes and from mountain park park again that's the third grade students rising fourth grade students again this is scenario five year two again and here's where you begin to see where the where the map and the redistricting comes in so you students again would either go from hughes or they'd go to mountain park again um this
074is uh this is the students who live opposite columbia it's important to note the footnote at the bottom the thickness of the arrows is is done by design here the thicker the arrow the the greater number of students the reason that there's a thin arrow over here from hughes to mountain park as well as the thin arrow from going from woodruff to mount marcus those are a small number of students again the hughes community is that is the group that lives opposite columbia and this that i'm circling right here is the group behind the hardware store that is currently at woodruff and goes to mountain park those are the fourth grade students again mountain park no change in fourth grade the fifth grade students again as we said previously there will be an option for
075rising fifth grade students regardless of the scenario in both scenario four which is a one year transition and scenario five which is a two year transition rising fifth grade students will have the option to stay at the school that they were at so we'll just students can stay at woodruff again you see the footnote as well as the same thing with uh with hughes these slides are all posted on the deck the hope was that these i call them student flows the hope is that this makes it easier for people to understand what scenario four and scenario five is so you can track the movement of students both in year one for scenario 4 which is the only year we'd have it if we do a one year transition as well as scenario 5 which
076has a two year transition the other hope of course was that it's easier for you to find your student and find out you know if there is an impact for them we do realize that in the last i think it's been about 45 minutes we have we have shared a great deal of information with you both in terms of what the options were the benefits and the ideas behind them and now these student flows that hopefully give you a better understanding of the different scenarios we realized that it will take time for people to digest this to form their questions uh to ask questions and to provide feedback but again our hope was to share with you as much information as we could the background and then these student flows uh we're going to get
077to questions in a in a couple of minutes i want to add my thanks uh to everybody uh that dr volley thanks and i will add my personal thanks to dr varley she has really brought this entire concept as she mentioned this was not a new concept when she came here she inherited the concept of full-day kindergarten but she is the person who drove this administrative team uh to build these recommendations understand the impacts uh and work with uh educational experts to truly design and run the process of and we will implement a full day kindergarten solution that i think i don't think i know be a big step forward and a huge opportunity for us to improve educational excellence in berkeley heights so dr volley i assume that concludes your superintendent's report that is
078the end of my superintendent's report and thank you very much for the acknowledgment you're welcome uh we're going to do one or two little administrative items before we prepare to do the citizens hearing tonight um so with that uh or do any board members have uh liaison reports yeah you want to go just on march 22nd the truth and racial healing task force with the town met unfortunately i was not able to attend but they're um working on an ordinance which is under review to really define what the group will do um they also met with the maplewood south orange community coalition on race to get an introduction and see um get an introduction and overview of that program um and and see if you know if there was anything that they could glean from
079that so there's more to come and um a cultural fair is being planned for the fall um and details will be uh you know forthcoming um so that's really what's been going on um and they also introduced the new um berkeley heights police department officers to the group who have been part of that uh organ or committee so that's it you thanks troy anybody else robert hey robert just come off mute the classic i was unused okay i have two liaison reports the first one is environmental commission liaison report this past monday i attended the bi-monthly environmental commission meeting as the district's co-liaison to the township commission for the environment uh the one thing that came up that well cms will have sort of a minor role in is uh in case you don't know
080though as the residents of new jersey rebuild their commitments to counter the effects of the storms like super storm sandy the new jersey tree recovery campaign and the arbor day foundation are wondering i'm sorry and are bringing back the beauty of the tree line these trees which are seedlings acquired through the new jersey tree recovery campaign will be distributed to berkeley heights residents on saturday april 24th from 11 to 2 in the columbia middle school semicircle out front due to covid it will be a drive-through this is the same process that was followed last year the seedlings are free but you do have to sign up in advance and directions for planning are included please complete the sign up on the townships website not the school districts legal liaison report governor murphy on april 15th
081announced that all new jerseyans from age 16 and up will be eligible to receive vaccinations as of april 19th this is a development that will affect more than 100 000 high school students in new jersey second there was a bill passed by the state senate on school regionalization on march 25th the state senate unanimously approved the bill which would provide financial incentives for smaller districts to regionalize if merging makes sense for them the bill would establish criteria for state-funded regionalization studies while making sure that any regionalization plan remains subject to voter approval a key priority supported by the new jersey school boards association the new jersey school boards association supports the bill because quote it represents a voluntary incentive-based opportunity for districts to explore regionalization and determine if it would be beneficial to their students
082and their communities and lastly this is just an update no state including new jersey will receive a waiver from the government the federal government with respect to the required student achievement tests new jersey like other states had requested that these tests be waived again this year due to covet as they had been last year the federal government declined to go along with that that's it great thanks robert are there any other liaison reports okay not seeing any we'll move on donna facilities um our our staff has used these two weeks to prepare the buildings for the return of students they have serviced the hvac units installed desktop barriers and did deep cleaning of the schools additionally they worked on outside projects did drainage repairs and have been working with the township on field maintenance projects
083that's it okay thanks donna uh we'll now move into the citizens hearing portion of the meeting uh this evening uh to be recognized please ensure that your first and last name is listed on the on your device and you should use your razer hand function i will unmute you which allow you to come off mute address the board although not required we prefer that you turn your camera on as well you'll need to wait for a second it does take a second for you to both unmute as well as turn on your camera if you have more than one question please ask all your questions at the beginning the board recognizes students and staff members right of privacy and therefore encourages all members of the public to address their concerns regarding individual students or staff
084members by meeting privately with the appropriate administrative staff when addressing the board in a public forum members of the public refrain from identifying any students or staff member by name and are solely responsible for their comments which could be considered defamatory or slanderous according to the laws of the state of new jersey each resident will have three minutes to speak given the large number of residents who expect to want to speak tonight and address the board we will be keeping to that three-minute guideline with that i see several people who have raised their hand the first person says tom or daniel francisco hi sorry those are my kids i didn't realize i had i had a feeling that was two students who share a device two students who share the same device so i'm sandi
085francisco i have two kids at mary kay macmillan and we are very happy and fortunate i just have a question um thank you for all the work you've done but it seems to me in scenario four we're addressing you know the age-appropriate learning we're addressing equitable across the board and it also seems to be the most cost-saving um you know for the district so my question is more why and you know specifically as a parent of a first grader which would be rising second grader um it seems like option five wouldn't be getting us all of that and specifically would be penalizing you know any rising um second grader that would not get you know age-appropriate learning for the sake of what specifically especially when it's a more expensive option so just trying to understand
086why we included option five specifically and thank you all the work thank you thank you for your for your support uh to address that betty when we looked at doing this uh both option four and option five get us to the same end game uh the two different scenarios they one just gets us there a little bit more aggressively over one year and one gets us there slightly less aggressively over two years the reason for the two different options there are a number of people who believe that when students come back to school in september that they should come back to and i i i cringe a little bit to say what is a normal september return to school because i don't know that we've defined what the new normal is but some people believe
087that students should come back to the same school with the same grade structure with the same teachers and principals in the building with the same recess with the same group and let them get back to a regular environment the one that they left on march 11th of last year let them experience that let them go back to what they're comfortable with and delay the larger scale change of the redistricting until the second year and that's the reason for option five versus option four there are plenty of other people who believe that option uh scenario four which is the slightly more aggressive and make the changes in september so um we are recommending the k to two and three to five structure but we're looking for the community input to see whether we get there over
088one year or two years that's why we have that's why we have the two scenarios so really we're not really gaining anything in option five besides you know just wanting somewhat normalcy for handling various scenario five provides a little bit more um regular return in in september but thanks thanks for your question uh the next person i see uh on here just says i t so i'm gonna ask you to mute i.t and then i'm gonna first ask you to uh to give us your name that's the person whose device says i t i'll ask you one more time to unmute if not we'll come back to you all right i'm going to move on and we'll come back to it in a second vic mori i'll unmute you victoria good evening victoria good evening
089how are you tonight pretty good how are you we are well thanks for joining thank you my name is victoria mowry and i am a senior at gl i understand that this meeting is heavily focused on the issues regarding full-day kindergarten but i wanted to take a moment to address something that was brought up at last meeting dr barley has stated multiple times that the reason we were remote this week was a result of a handful of teachers traveling and needing to quarantine upon their return she also stated in last month's meeting that she was hoping governor murphy would eliminate the mandatory quarantine period after traveling out of state so there was no reason to close schools for a week i was extremely concerned to hear that our district superintendent was willing to take the
090risk of opening schools after break and risking the spread of cover 19. i wanted to share a small list of places in which students and families within the district traveled over break universal studios walt disney world multiple beach towns in florida virginia north carolina south carolina colorado arizona california georgia vermont aruba cancun mexico and st thomas if schools had opened for in-person instruction this past monday who knows how many people may have been exposed to or contracted the virus i believe the decision to go remote should not have been placed solely on the teachers of the district mr mcgovern stated in his remarks at the last meeting that over the past year the teachers have gone from heroes to villains over my time in the district i have not encountered one teacher who does not
091put their students in their education first it's disheartening that many of the members of the community and their own superintendent do not support them in their decisions these teachers have worked twice as hard over the last year to make sure that we all receive a quality education despite the current situation my mother is a teacher in a fully remote district and i see how challenging it is to keep the students engaged and to change their lessons to fit the virtual or hybrid platform they should not be demonized for taking a much needed vacation i applaud them for following the necessary quarantine guidelines because i can guarantee that many of the families within the district did not the teachers in this district are incredible and they need to stop being the ones to blame when in
092reality the blame should be placed on the families of the district i would also like you to consider staying remote next week as well because i have noticed that many individuals have extended their vacations or went on vacation this week since the district was remote thank you victoria thank you very much for your comments the next person is just registered here as as iphone it looks like you're unmuted so the person whose device says iphone you can speak can you start out with just telling us your name hi how are you my name is anna schwenk i have a daughter who is currently in the sixth sixth grade mom so sorry in the second grade at william woodruff um i am concerned uh you know first she was in mary kay from there she lost
093her friends you know her friends went on to hughes um so now she goes into a new school with covet it makes it even more stressful so now she's in a new school in woodruff second grade now she's being told because i do live behind berkeley hardware that she's most likely gonna go to mountain park next year okay so now the majority of her friends are gonna go to hughes again so now here's a child who lost all her friends in mary kay now she's going to lose all her friends again in william woodruff and now if we delay this two years it's just going to make it harder on her so i'm not happy with this but the laying it isn't going to help either it's just going to make it harder on her
094and and harder for everyone else and you know if you look at other school districts outside of that for instance you have the elizabeth school district that they're claiming that you're claiming you're saying that it's beneficial to separate second grade from third grade if you look at the elizabeth school district they actually merged middle they did away with their middle school program and they merged their middle school program with the elementary school program and those those kids excelled by being with the younger students their test scores went up their standardized test scores went up everything went up in that school district so i'm not understanding why are we separating these children um so uh two two two thoughts for you uh um uh and thanks for sharing your comments uh number one is we tried
095to you know in the presentation talk about developmentally appropriate and like aged children being together as well as providing more equity with our programs and services and the k-2 3-5 structure does improve that other districts who have other challenges and other building configurations have made other decisions uh but for our district and our configurations we believe this is the best uh configuration i understand that but i think that you should let me just let me just finish please um and we do understand that you know you live in one of the neighborhoods that uh has an additional transition uh and we do understand that and we are going to work uh with you and uh and your your students with that but let me also just clarify one thing um yours your your young child
096today goes to goes to woodruff and obviously has a set of uh friends at woodruff and yes you are where you live they will be moving uh to mountain park however the entire community i don't know what uh i think you said your student was in second grade so all of the second graders who live behind the hardware store so whatever the whoever live in your local surrounding streets back there all of those students will be traveling together to mountain park so whoever his or her local friends are on the block i do understand that's not all the kids at woodruff but all of the local students in your local neighborhood behind the hardware store will be going to mountain park and i understand that so why not work with the parents and say listen
097we understand this is going to happen but speak to the parents also if there's a possibility where my kid could go to hughes where there's probably another kid that's going to be forced to go to hughes that would probably want to go to mountain park we're really what we're doing to our kids we're not helping them especially right now thank you for your feedback i i understand and i understand that uh your that your student is in the crosshairs of of of the change and i can assure you we have looked at dozens of scenarios and multiple neighborhood configurations to come up with what is the most equitable way to do this to go back to our guiding principles minimize the number of students who have to change maximize the number of students who have
098to who can walk to school but it's not foolproof it's not perfect there is no perfect solution to this so uh thank you for your comments i will um on to uh normal ortega norma you can unmute oh sorry about that a second normal good evening how are you tonight good evening i'm fine thank you hello everyone um thank you for allowing the parents to uh have a voice and this discussion and thank you for your work i i'm speaking um i believe on behalf of my daughter and my husband um my daughter goes is in second grade uh she goes to hughes uh tonight i'm speaking as a parent but also um as a psychologist i worked with a number of children i don't believe we should undermine the fact that we have gone
099through a pandemic that has been very taxing on our children emotionally to have more changes will be i believe very stressful for many children and now whether my child is affected by a redistricting decision or not i am speaking to support the parents who are speaking for their child who know they will be i feel like our children you know the discussion of full day care has been for years why do it when we have undergone so much trauma and stress due to pandemic many people have lost loved ones we have seen it and you know uh tv we'll we're dealing with a lot minor changes will mean a lot my daughter may not be moved but her friends may be moved my daughter just came back after uh remote virtual learning in february now
100she's in in class she's now developing friends and having a sense of normalcy to change that i think is undermining her you know sense of structure stability which she needs so i feel i feel like we need to put the children first okay all children and keep that in mind so thank you for allow me the space to say that and please consider parents discussions and transparencies extremely important when making decisions that affect our children thank you great noma thank you very much for your comment uh marissa shurik hopefully i pronounced your name right hi there marissa good evening how are you tonight uh i'm well thank you i'm trying to i don't know why i can't get my camera on but anyway um i completely i appreciate the board's um work on this initiative
101i feel strongly that folded kindergarten is needed um at the same time i empathize with all the parents out there um my son is currently a kindergartner at mary kay i just want to make sure i'm understanding correctly so if i were to opt or show my support for the transition to happen in september of 2022 that would mean he would stay at mary kay for first grade but then moved to a different school only for second grade and then moved to a different school for third grade is that right that is correct okay i just wanted to make sure i was understanding that correctly that's it thank you great great marissa thank you very much uh tina faba tina good evening good evening doug good evening all sorry i am unable to start my
102video otherwise i would no worries no worries at all um so i have two things that i'd like to address uh first is i'd really love to see the data that embraces this bracket or grade bracket of developmentally appropriate education being three to five and k to one or k to two or what have you i'd also love to see the data comparing our students current population in terms of how they are faring regarding content retention and percentage of students meeting the benchmarks determined by the common core and so on so to see whether or not that is already [Music] showing any kind of impact on our students currently and how we can address that the second population of students that i have not heard about because for whatever reason is our growing special education
103population and how that will be handled by this redistricting and specifically for the students who are already out of district placed do we have any current programs ideas that are going to be more catering to those age brackets and what would we do with our special needs students who need additional support but would be in third grade uh but needing first and second grade interventions tina thanks for your question let me break those down uh for the first for the first one i would encourage you to drop a note to mary beth kopez mary beth is our uh early child and elementary education leader and i think she can share with you a lot of the research and the data behind uh that that decision so uh i know mary beth's on tonight so just
104drop her a note tomorrow i'm sure she'll respond and get you what you're looking for of dr raleigh do you want to talk about the benchmark and uh the work we've done to think through uh this impact the special education population so i can definitely talk about the special education pro discussion right now some of our special ed students even though they're slated for hues and if they have a specific i guess disability they go to mountain park or they go to a different elementary school because we house those students together that would not be affected in this prop in this process our students will get all the services they need it just it will be up to michelle gardner and her team on how they're going to distribute our special education kids our more
105specialized special education kids so i would assume some of our programs will stay at mountain park that include multiple grades in the end this is really under michelle gardner's expertise not mine and we are out of district that's another question i would shoot her an email for i we do have a low out of district enrollment we do everything in our power to keep our students in district but that is a good question for her um i do my part and will most certainly follow up with miss kopez as well as miss gardner but i also think that those points should be integrated into your next plan for when you have a commun community hearing so that way they can see the data themselves as well great tina thank you very much for your comments
106uh renee cesla renee good evening hi good evening everyone uh renee cesla i'm a hey hey renee can you get a little closer to your microphone or just speak maybe a little bit more uh louder can you hear me better now just a little bit it's still kind of low okay you know what why don't you switch to the next person i'll try to adjust my audio okay we'll come back to you i promise uh cyber garvey psy you can unmute yeah um hi everyone uh good evening um how are you tonight oh good how are you well um so i have couple questions uh first is um has have the scenarios that you just shared with us have been approved by the board members so just give us all your questions and then we'll
107answer them here's all the questions up front um so i would like to actually individually ask um this question to all the board members if they reviewed all the scenarios that are being presented to the parents right now and if they had a chance to give any input and if they approve them before the survey sent to us also um on the student impact slides i'm not sure i got disconnected for a bit because i was driving and was there any student impact uh analysis done for special needs kids um and i would like to know between uh what was what changed between october 2020 and february 2021 because as of october 2020 uh we were not planning on uh you know going for full day kindergarten in 2021 but then there was an announcement
108that was made in early february 2021 that we're gonna uh have full day kindergarten we've got a commitment and we're going to have that in starting 2021. so where um my question is there was no public discussion uh by the board in terms of making this announcement so i would like to know if there if there was a discussion that was had with the board members to prior to making this announcement in feb 2021 and on whose recommendation was this announcement made by our superintendent that we're going to go ahead with full day kindergarten in 2021 was it a committee was it all the board members and if there was any discussions help the public wasn't privy to it so do you think it's a violation of opmah open public meeting open public meetings act
109by the state of new jersey those are my questions thank you great site thanks very much on three different questions i'm going to take them in reverse in reverse order in terms of what changed from october to february let me address that in october the board decided to postpone a referendum due to the coveted pandemic that we're facing the board did not feel that going out to the residents in the community with the referendum was very sensitive at the time unfortunately one of the unintended consequences of that was that we had to postpone full-day kindergarten until 22-23 that was something that both the administrative team and the board we're not happy about because our community wants full day kindergarten in between october and february both the facilities committee met as well as the finance and
110facilities committee met to look at ways that we could implement full-day kindergarten those committees met met with the superintendent and as you as you correctly stated at that february 4th meeting we made an announcement that all the board was supportive of when we discussed it at that live at that board meeting that we would be bringing back full day kindergarten in february why did we make the announcement at that february meeting we knew that if we were going to bring back full day kindergarten in september of 21 we knew that parents would be would want to know that because if we didn't have it they would be making deposits at other full-day kindergarten schools we actually called around to look at what the deposit and the refund policies were at all of those full-day kindergarten
111programs because the last thing we wanted to do was have a parent make a a deposit a non-refundable deposit to something like primrose or westminster or any other program and be out that money so we thought it was very important as early as we could and people told us that if we got to them six months or seven months in advance which was what february was that we would prevent that problem from happening at the same time we knew that even though we announced that full day kindergarten was coming in september we didn't have our plans ready and at that time we knew we had to work on the plans so from february 4th uh that meeting on february 4th until tonight we've been working on those plans so that's what's changed between october and
112february the answer to on the student impact for special education dr varley and her team along with michelle gardner has looked at the special ed population where we have our child study teams where our students are and they are part of that team we looked at of course regular education and special education and as some of you know uh michelle gardner is one of the best in the business and her team supports that entire population so they have looked at the impacts if you have a specific question about um either you know your child or broadly about what we're doing with special education i am quite sure that michelle gardner can answer your question uh as opposed to to your first question if i could ask all the board members to go off mute i
113will call on you one at a time and to go off mute and uh sy asked you know a specific question you know did were you aware of and approve the scenarios uh that were there i think for the most part it's a yes or no question were you aware of and did you approve the scenarios that were presented i'm going to do it at how i see you on the screen so jordan uh you're up first you want to comment on that jordan yeah it's a yes and yes for me great thanks jordan chris uh yes i'm aware of all the scenarios as far as approving anything i don't i don't think we're proving anything until april 29th great thank you angela yes i'm aware of all the scenarios but just like chris um
114the approval hasn't taken place until april 29th we're still interested in feedback from parents and tunnels and all that information so as yet no yeah and let me clarify that before i go around the room to mike and joy and robert um so awareness of the uh scenarios that were included in the deck all of the board members are aware as we said in the deck uh that the eventual vote will be april 29th uh keep going mike yeah i have nothing to hide that no guess i'll wear the scenarios yeah great thank you uh joy yes aware of the scenarios but again like angela said waiting for town halls and other input before finalizing any judgment great thank you robert yes i was aware of the scenarios before tonight um i haven't really provided
115any input that i you know at all and um i'm just waiting until the vote the evening of the vote great thank you and helen yes i've been aware of all the scenarios there's been no formal approval great uh thank you very much um renee hopefully i have uh so i thank you for your questions i have uh one qua one follow-up question so basically so we the board made the announcement that full-day kindergarten will be implemented in 2021 but the board didn't approve it so without the board's approval the board of like you know the elected representatives approval we made the announcement that we're going to make full day kindergarten happen yeah so let me address the follow-up to your last questions so yes at that february 4th discussion the board actively announced with
116all the board members in attendance and with discussion that we did that let me address the last piece of that before i move on to the next person you brought the open public meetings act there was no violation uh at all of the open public uh meeting act at all uh sai thank you for your question uh renee uh hopefully you're back renee and we can hear you a little bit better now yes i'm back can you hear me better now oh much better renee thank you very much now we can hear you crisp and clear perfect so thank you everyone i appreciate the engagement the the prep the presentation um so i'm a current mom of a fourth and seventh grader um i am a taxpayer i'm a 20-plus year project manager in clinical
117research so um i appreciate that this is a challenge it's a huge undertaking and it's a problem that we need to solve a couple of questions so stakeholder engagement is huge right and i just want to ask how the parents will be able to help engage in the decision making for the april 29th vote i believe will there be a survey i know there's town halls um but that's q a um i've heard a lot of questions today that were just asked and weren't necessarily answered um so how will the board of ed kind of address the questions that were posed and how will the board of ed kind of address the wishes of the parents who you know were at the core of what we're deciding on here great renee thanks for your question
118uh so uh as we as we stated and it's in one of the slides in the deck there will be a survey going out to all the stakeholders who are directly impacted uh by this uh and and all those stakeholders will be surveyed and they will have an uh they will have a chance to indicate their preferred scenario whether it be scenario four which is the one year transition or scenario five which is the two year transition so every person who's a stakeholder uh it'll uh who's a stakeholder in that will have a chance to vote we'll have a chance to indicate their preference as far as the the q a uh we will do everything in our power tonight to answer as many questions as we can as well as the two upcoming town
119hall sessions we will be at those meetings and we will answer as many questions as we can if we can't answer your question or if we don't answer it in a way that is digestible uh we will follow up with you uh accordingly but it is our goal to both take feedback so you might have just a comment and if you do we'll certainly record the comment and if you have a question of course we'll do our best to answer those questions tonight as well as at those two sessions prior to coming back on the 29th uh and in advance of that decision okay and can i just suggest that the questions that are asked and that aren't answered formally um can can there be like a written response by the board of fed that's
120posted so that we can see it publicly and view it yes we can do that uh they'll be in the minutes and uh if there's something that we can't uh answer we'll do our best to uh update those minutes accordingly to reflect the answers to those questions okay thank you great rene renee thanks for for sticking with us and coming back uh to us with uh so we could hear you uh pamela stanley pamela good evening how are you tonight hi i'm good thank you so um i am a parent of a soon-to-be kindergartner so i want to thank you for finally implementing full-day kindergarten um i have a daughter who will be going into fourth grade next year we live in the murray hill section of berkeley heights so she may or may not
121be affected next year um but i think that overall we have to look at all of the children right my son did not get to go to pre-k this year his school did not open and he has been home with me um full-day kindergarten for him will be a blessing something he really needs um and he's had to go through a big transition as well he was in school for the three-year-old program and now he's home so i want to thank you for making this happen i want to thank you for thinking about the pandemic and trying to help students the best you can it's been a tough year from everyone's perspective um and i just wanted everyone to remember that there are lots of students who will be affected in one way or another
122but we're all berkeley heights residents and um we really need to think about all the students and all the students needs um so i just want to thank you for your time great pamela thank you very much for your comments uh next up is ayanna joseph ayanna good evening how are you tonight i'm doing well i'm not going to give you video because it's been a long week but i just i had um two things i wanted to say i just wanted to ask um with all these different things going on where the teachers involved in any of this discussion and planning and stuff like that i mean at the end of the day the teachers are going to be the ones that have to you know deal with the students and stuff like that
123so i just wanted know if they had some type of say and then my second question is not even a question it's more of a statement i just wanted to say like no matter what happens the kids will all see each other in middle school no matter what school they went to so i just want to keep that in mind i know a lot of people are emotional about this and i understand that trust me i have four kids my own but i just want to keep in mind the bigger picture is that all these children will be together in middle school so that's pretty much what i wanted to say but i more so was concerned whether or not the teachers were involved great ayanna thanks for your comment uh doctor talk about the
124teacher involvement so um a couple of weeks ago we met i i personally met with the teachers the k to pre-k to five and we talked we went through the one of the iterations of the presentation and looked at all the scenarios basically the same thing you saw tonight with some ch well we've made plenty of changes since then but gave them a disc we had a real discussion about what's coming how how how it's going to impact them and then we sent out a survey after that for them to give us feedback as well as talk when we know there's going to be transitions we can't do a k-2 3-5 without moving teachers around moving staff around and so we are it gave them options to choose if they would prefer their building their
125grade or if they wanted to move buildings or move grades so we have received feedback from the teaching staff great dr volley thank you for that heidi warner richardson if you could just hold on one second i'm going to come to you in a second we do have a resident who's here with us at columbia tonight who oh who wants to speak um so actually todd i'll come back to you in a second um so heidi warner richardson i'm going to come to you actually right now uh let's see it looks like you're muted heidi good evening how are you tonight hi good thank you um i i just had one question um i don't have a long list of my credentials i'm just a parent but uh i think that's a big big credential
126um we agree with you wholeheartedly uh what i wanted to know is uh the survey that you're sending um i assume it's just first scenario four and five and um how are those results uh once they're they're tallied how are they used from there what happens with them and and where did they come into play as far as the uh end result and the end vote where at what point did they come into play and how so once we receive the survey results and it will be a short window because we i need the results before i can give the recommendation there is i will take the larger majority and i know doug's going to speak to the percentage on that but i will work on taking the recommendation and the community feedback before i
127make my recommendation to the board so let me just add to that a little bit so um heidi you're right uh this survey will have scenario four and scenario five right now the survey will open on april 15th and will stay open until april 25th that will cover both of the town hall sessions it will be released right after the first town hall there'll be a 10 day window from april 15 to april 25th for for for the stakeholders to indicate their preference in that the way we're thinking about it right right now is uh and the survey will be for the uh stakeholders of of those uh students who are impacted by the uh by the uh by the change if there is greater than 55 of the community uh that votes for uh
128one of the scenarios uh the committee will have spoken loudly and clearly and indicated that they are in favor of that if the number is is between 50 and 54 or so uh then that will be that within a margin of error and that will indicate that the community is relatively equal equally divided by that and the superintendent um has indicated uh that uh as long as that the the community has spoken she will she will abide by that and recommend uh the scenario that the community uh has uh spoken clearly about so that's how that's how we'll do it that recommendation will be on the agenda for the april 29th meeting there'll be discussion by the board and then we will move forward well thanks for your question thank you i just um to
129add to that uh i've heard the word stakeholders um what exactly does that mean when you say stakeholders so what i mean stakeholders uh the people the families who currently have a pre-k through fourth grade student those are the those are the families who will the survey will go to because those are when i say stakeholders those are the people who are impacted by the changes we've been talking about this evening gotcha okay thank you so much great heidi thanks for for for joining tonight okay we'll we'll keep going michael lebland i see you next michael good evening how are you tonight good evening um i appreciate the time this evening um a couple comments before i go into my rest of it um i really can't support any of these plans that will move
130my oldest son out of woodruff to another school again uh if this if either of those plans are not selected he'll be put in five schools in a span of seven years he'll have done kindergarten in a catholic school first grade at mary kay two through four at woodruff and a year and a half that woodruff has been remote he'll go to ben hughes and then yet another school that kind of transitional change is way too much for one child to deal with so i can't support moving him early out of woodruff in any manner um i'd like to just i've got some questions to the end but a couple more comments i appreciate the concept of common planning i'm a veteran teacher common planning time sounds fantastic but it's not practical teachers teach with
131different styles different methods different models of ideas so common planning may sound great and it sounds great to parents all my kids at the same class and the same things that never works out that way i'm a common planning teacher with another 10th grade teacher this year myself and we tried it for about two weeks and our styles are so different we abandoned it to pursue the curriculum with our own preferences and specializations um the biggest concern i have here is there is no discussion about the impact this is going to have on the teachers and administrators it was there's no discussion there and i'm going to go in read part of my letter that i sent to the entire board earlier this week to really go into the details of that and i'll share
132the questions that i sent to the entire board on monday as well my greatest concerns about redistricting are the impact we'll have on students families teachers and administrators forcing dramatic change upon students who've already suffered from a year plus of chaos and turmoil is questionable i've seen how students react to changing schools unexpectedly in my 17 years of experience as a teacher some will transition with no problems others will struggle and some will suffer greatly discipline issues emotional and behavior issues will impact learning of the students who are moved and the students who weren't moved positions could see bullying arise as new students are treated differently by their peers in new schools families will have to adjust to new teachers administrators and staff which would cause further stress on children staff and families shuffling teachers
133and staff around different buildings is likely to cause a similar problem the teachers of our district have worked tirelessly for more than a year of this pandemic more changes will further tax and stress the staff forced to change buildings which will impact teaching performance attendance stress and student learning when i was forced to change schools years ago my teaching and performance suffered my wife experienced similar stress and anxiety when she was forced to change schools in her district all of these issues combined make it impossible my friend to support any redistricting that moves students families and teachers against their will i don't believe it's in the best interest of anyone to make these changes in 2021 um i'm going to share the list of questions i sent to the entire board and district i would
134prefer you did address some of them partially but some of them were not addressed in any way so i'm just going to share my list this is the 10 i sent the entire board in that order how were the boundaries for determined what demographic statistics were used to redraw school districts what public input was used in redistricting dates of meetings minutes and attendance records from january to now how are the members of the board of education and their families children grandchildren nieces and nephews impacted by rezoning are they impacted at all why has the district delayed the oprah process for the documents related to this process will be published all the documents this process to the public on the bmw website when will they be available for public review how the redistribution impact budgets and
135district expenses notably student transportation moving materials and teaching materials between buildings what will this facilities district deal with students concerns when the plan is announced are old schools staff students and teachers equally impacted by these changes was the town council and mayor included in redistricting are they impacted by the rezoning at number 10 will the ble actually take the feedback to the community seriously we're making final decisions on this plan michael thank you very much for your comments and double thank you for sending us your questions in advance dr varley and i will answer all 10 of your questions um for you uh this evening as we've had a chance uh to talk about them um dr raleigh why don't you take your questions and then i'll do mine uh all right i'll feed them
136to you uh the first one was how were the boundaries for redistricting determined so we used the recycling map and then worked on our guiding principles which were could students walk to school and how could we minimize change impact we did not take into account any kind of race issue or anything along those lines that was not something we considered in that in that process what was the what was the public input was used for in redistricting our public input is coming up in the april tonight april 14th and april 22nd in those meetings as well as our community survey that we'll be sending out will the board of ed published all the documents related to this process to the boe website for public review we will we will post the presentation and some of
137the questions that have been asked tonight that we did not have answers to we'll propose the answers we have a great deal of working papers which have people's addresses and information on so that we can try we could try to delineate students that needed to be moved so we would not share that those are working papers they will not be shared uh how would the redistricting plan impact buyers and district expenses transportation moving materials teacher materials we definitely saw on the presentation we are saving money in whichever scenario for scenario five we went with as far as moving materials i know miss miss felizzle and i've discussed ordering boxes and tape and the cost of that would be minimal and our own maintenance crew would move the boxes and the teachers over to to their
138new buildings and new classrooms great thanks and michael i think you asked also about the bathrooms uh the overall capital cost to upgrade the bathrooms at mary kay and a woodruff is approximately 500 thousand dollars to your other questions how are members of the board of edna families uh children grandchildren impacted by their redistricting or the impact at all there are a couple of board members who have children uh in in in the district uh and at least one that i know of who has grandchildren uh in the district uh that was not a consideration at all we obviously split the town by the recycling map and we made two changes uh based on doing that uh but i can get back to you very specifically with that i'll i'll i'll drop you a note
139about that uh when i get the answers from each of each of the board members why is the district delayed the oprah process for document related to the process the district is not by any means delaying it on purpose at all a number of people have submitted oprah requests some of them have been quite large in their open requests in terms of the number of documents they're looking for some people also have overly broad oprah requests in fact they're all listed in our in our meeting minutes and we are working through those uh as quickly and as expeditiously as possible i do realize that some people want it a little sooner than we are responding when will the plan be finalized announced uh to the community obviously the plan was shared with the community tonight
140it will be finalized at our april 29th uh meeting how will the district deal with students concerns when the plan is is announced well i assume that uh students will have uh will be hearing the plan uh potentially from their families now and we'll deal with it the way we always do hopefully it will be dealt with a combination at school if it comes up also i assume parents will be sharing potential impacts with their students all school staff student teachers equally impacted by these changes no they're not if you have a chance to go through the student flows you'll see that there are different impacts to different grades at different schools and in my opening remarks i shared that less than 20 percent of the students are our impact in terms of the teachers
141uh dr varley shared that teachers will be indicating their preference based on uh on building or or school and uh once we know those of course uh we'll have a better sense of that was the town council mayor included in redistricting and they're impacted by the rezoning uh there is no rezoning we're not moving anybody in or out so there's no rezoning every student who lives in berkeley heights will still be attending school in berkeley heights uh the mayor and the town council will not part of this process as there's no impact to them or or no input required will the board of actually take the feedback from the community seriously when making the final decision i couldn't be more emphatic about that where as i shared previously giving the community the chance to indicate
142their preferred scenario via the vote michael as always thank you very much for your comments and your questions uh matt seidi i apologize matt if i got your i didn't get your last name right matt good evening hi how are you good so in the presentation tonight they showed about five options but at the end it looks like the only two that are really up for discussion are options four and five which while it seems like is you know you're asking the community for their opinion and to vote on something it is essentially the same option albeit one is delayed by one year so is there a reason why we are only giving the option which is really one option and not giving the community the option to vote on any of the other prior
143options because again like i said it's you're giving us the the ability to vote but it really is just the same option it which is it sounds like this is what the board wants to do second of all second question is for option three option three seemed at least equal if not more favorable in terms of an allocation of equity from a student perspective across the different schools but it sounds like that that option was not proceeded with because of the um quote-unquote best practices of having the k through three or i'm sorry k through two and three through five so is it uh what is the board's uh i guess idea in terms of why option three was not uh more considered and is if that's if the option four and five is the
144way to go uh would you consider that the board is putting a premium on uh the the uh best practices of having uh and uh these uh specialists allowed to go into these schools versus having the uh the equity amongst the the the different schools thanks for your question uh uh so you are correct uh the the superintendent recommended a k to two and three five structure and there is two different scenarios uh whether that be a one-year transition or a two-year transition so you're exactly right you're exactly correct that is what the survey will be on it as to why we didn't include all of the options uh you know the superintendent as well as some of the others who spoke tonight uh talked about uh developmentally appropriate schools and fixing some of the
145equity and having a first through fifth grade school structure really does not provide that and that's what our experts are telling us that's what the research is and although that was a scenario that was considered it is not part of the recommendation and the recommendation is the k-2 3-5 structure with again a question about doing that in one year uh versus two years so that's why uh scenario three was was looked at but it was it was not part of the recommendation again our goal tonight was to share all the scenarios but also narrow it down to the recommendations that the superintendent provided to the board and that the community will vote on okay so is it fair to say that the that the board and the superintendent have kind of narrowed down what they
146want to do and now we're being asked to make a decision on something that is the lesser of two evils of what the board is looking to do anyway um i would agree with what you said except for the lesser of two evils uh so i would agree with yes the recommendation of the superintendent of the board is running okay so there's no option to to vote on any other options except for what the board is proposing right now that's correct great thank you matt thank you very much stephanie zee stephanie good evening hi good evening uh thank you for sharing the uh the much anticipated plans and uh i think doc you commented earlier about the teacher impact and what i would like to know in either of scenario four or five if the
147current principal at woodruff will be displaced as a result of the uh school changing from a two to five to a k to two school i'm interested to know uh given woodruff will be impacted by most impacted by this change with the school going to a more of a kind of like a younger child uh children's school rather than a kind of like the higher grades in the and for the rising fifth graders who choose to stay in woodruff i think they would probably want to graduate the school with the same principle whom they are familiar with and love and so i just want to know if these changes will mean leadership changes as well since because i really i don't know i don't work in education i don't know if you need different qualifications
148for at least you know these kindergarten or younger children um grades uh so stephanie just one just administrative question before i answer the question what's your last name so we can report zia zia great thank you very much um regarding the question about the displacement of the woodruff principle it's not appropriate for us right now to talk about any individual any principle or any teacher movements uh there are going to be some teacher and administrative impacts we actually outlined that on our next step slide when we know those when we know the recommended solution we know those we will actively proactively and at our earliest opportunity communicate those changes uh to uh to the community right now uh we don't know we don't know what the community will will recommend as far as part of
149that solution either scenario four or scenario five and depending on what scenario the community uh indicates is their preference that will have an impact on our teacher and administrative changes so when we have that we'll be happy to share that as quickly and as expeditiously as possible stephanie thanks for your question this evening uh uh okay you're ready todd's ready not yet uh oh um ty did you raise your hand on the zoom if you raise your hand i can unmute you can you're gonna meet me now is that good okay great thank you okay okay thank you so uh first of all thank you for allowing me to be here this evening uh very unique uh to be here in person rather than on zoom so thank you very much to all of you
150um so i appreciate what the gentleman just spoke about and to clarify again that we're really only voting on scenario four and five so the decision is made the mind the the minds have been made up and when you say you're going to actually take community feedback frankly you're not because you're asking for us either do you want to delay a year if you want to do this now that's what it really boils down to so unfortunately that's very troubling because when you say and you talk about having these opening listing sessions and now literally all we're doing is basically debating on whether we want it now or later it's not really community feedback at its finest in my opinion um with that being said i have a few questions that i wrote out and
151i'd like to ask them quick and i actually decided to identify specific individuals on the board to answer the questions so i'll go ahead and read them all and i have a statement at the end and then i can come back to the questions if you'd like um so first of all uh mr d aquila if you can as vice president um i'd like to understand a little bit more additionally the superintendent tonight mentioned the plan has been formed over the last four months but there's no community involvement in that period can you explain or help us understand why not and why this was essentially kept from us being announced in february doesn't really necessarily cover the four months that have just transpired so why would there have not been community involvement throughout that period
152um to understand what was happening and we're now being given this information with three weeks to go uh number two mr uh chinchilly excuse me if i promise um the board of ed started discussing a plan to roll out full day kindergarten 2021. uh why did no one feel was necessary to share the public i like your opinion of that it seems based on what has been discussed tonight scenario 5 has been somewhat founded in the last few weeks based on recent concerns raised and i say that with strong conviction because some of the comments made regarding feedback received why we moved to have offer scenario five sure does speak to what is being said around the community now and if that's the fact that's great but again it doesn't seem like it's really much
153of a choice um mrs young question to you and i am trying to go fast um why did you neglect to reach out to parents or community members when coming up with a plan to announce full-day kindergarten following the february announcement did you not think there'd be reaction from the community from parents when redistricting came up the board of ed and superintendent have access to every parent you could have used pto and others as a sounding board however you clearly chosen to keep the community in the dark until now with only 21 days and you're saying we're having listening sessions and we're saying we're having town halls but yet you're really not giving us a choice so do you honestly think cramming this meeting in two listening sessions is proper communication is they're really going
154to create awareness desired knowledge necessary to affect positive change next question number four to mrs penna can you please understand the direct understanding and detail on what portion of the one million dollar capital expense is being allocated to the front that excuse me to the full day kindergarten project as was listed in the previous board meeting and last last meeting i did ask this question at the last meeting and i was not given an answer i would like to understand how the funds are being used for the project and what is not being done as a result these funds are coming from capital reserve so where were they before and how are they ending up there now and also can you explain why in october of 2020 there was a referendum that was required and
155now all of a sudden there's a shift and we're able to use these capital reserve funds so it seems like something has been either eliminated or not done as a result to be able to utilize these funds so i'm hoping miss pena you can answer that and then additionally for the remaining members um mrs reilly mrs kirsch if you can both respond please how do you respond to the 400 plus members in the community who all signed a petition asking for this effort to be paused and that more transparency and dialogue occur are you aware of the cranford count example that has been brought to the attention of the community they used a seven month process had significant dialogue to discuss engage and debate a major decision like this i don't think it's unreasonable so
156do these 400 members of our community matter and if so will you take their positions seriously and what will you do about it mrs barley i have a question for you you mentioned tonight about developmentally appropriate structure but i would like to ask you out of new providence summit westfield millburn and chatham none of which have that why it is so important that berkeley heights now must have it when these are our surrounding communities and towns that are very competitive in fact not highly rate more highly rated than berkeley high schools they don't have a developmentally appropriate structure so why do we and why are you pushing this lastly i'm a parent who recently moved here to this town my wife and i moved here for the education for our children we chose the house
157we bought based on the reputation of woodruff and the principal we did our research and we knew where we wanted to be others have done the same all across town i'm sharing this because you're about to make a decision that has a great impact far beyond busing kids people have planned and made major life decisions home purchases with exorbitant taxes based on schools not just a district it's important to understand this please don't ignore this when considering the option to redistrict it's a bad idea personally when i collected signatures walking door to door yes i did do that each person who i spoke to who signed that that petition said how on earth can they think to do this to kids at a time like this following a pandemic just think about that for a
158second please thanks many many individuals said that i've had many people share with me multiple options none of which were even presented here tonight that might just work outside of what you're trying to forge ahead with which will keep kids in schools that are currently in allow full-day kindergarten without redistricting please pause this effort now do the right thing um and attempt what they did in cranford or even go back to the presentation that was extended in 2014 here in this town with the previous superintendent there was almost seven to eight months of engagement listed in the timeline the timeline actually that was posted recently on the district's facebook website it's actually pictured here on the slideshow tonight that presentation that is posted that is available was over eight months of engagement with the community
159in that engagement it actually said that there would be a coalition sorry it was it's actually slide 45 in that deck create a feasibility committee inclusive of board members administrators teachers and parents this obviously hasn't been done why not again that was our own district in 2014. so out of all this i think that it's important that we realize this is being rushed this is ridiculous to think that through three weeks 21 days exactly that a decision will be made when you're just now tonight making the community aware seriously think about that you're asking everyone to digest major changes with 21 days so i'd also like to leave you a quote from an author who i feel um as the book is still on spot for what we're going through in our town adam grant
160an organizational psychologist at wharton think again the power of knowing what you don't know that's the name of the book his quote we learn more from people who challenge our thought process than those who affirm our conclusions strong leaders engage their critics and make themselves stronger weak leaders silence their critics and make themselves weaker this reaction isn't limited to people in power although we might be on board with the principle and practice we often miss out on the value of a challenge network so please think about that there are more ideas and options to be considered please consider them and be wise don't rush to thinking you know what's best be the community leaders you were all elected to be do the right thing now is not the time to make this change please do
161not redistribute our children and i recommend all of you get a copy of this book it's a fast read and it might be very applicable to what we're all going through right now thank you for your time great todd thanks for your question uh let's let's do this uh let's take them i'll ask each of [Music] oh sorry yes certainly sorry uh so for each of the board members i'll i'll do it in the order that todd asks the question i'll ask you to keep your comments uh brief since there are seven or so questions uh to answer um i'll start with you mike question about community involvement mike right todd can you repeat that question i'm sorry it's a little bit late so okay can you hear me great um so what i wanted
162to understand was uh the plan has uh it was mentioned by the superintendent this evening that the plan has been formed for the last four months with no community involvement how can this be um and why do you feel that the community is now only being given 21 days to know i've been involved with the science just being on the school board many boards being in higher education everything we're putting a plan together to develop and to present administration the superintendent put the plan together to come up with the best scenario presented to the public this is how i i do a lot of business like this myself so i'm just not understanding why you're saying that we were keeping it to a cell coming up with the best plan to recommend forward to the
163community to review robert you want to ask the second question about full day kindergarten and why it was or wasn't shared with the public can you please repeat your question sorry todd okay um i did say uh when the board of ed discarded started discussing plans to roll out full day kindergarten in 2021 why did no one feel that it was necessary to share the input based on what has been discussed tonight scenario five has been found in the last few weeks on concerns raised because of comments made tonight that literally it seems those addresses are being addressed with the attempt of scenario five so can you answer why it was necessary to not share this in the beginning of 2021 until now great thanks robert well i don't know that i'd say whether it's
164necessary or not necessary i think it was a judgment call and that would really generally come from the administration and the board president i don't know that i had a feeling because i i don't know really how long this the redistricting part has been around um regarding kindergarten i really think that we're trying to do the right thing as doug mentioned a moment ago trying to make sure that people didn't waste their money on putting down deposits uh for full day kindergarten that were non-refundable that's why it was february and it came kind of quick and all of a sudden especially when you look at the slide comparing it to october so i think that that's very fair but i think our hearts were in the right place we don't want people to lose money
165um i i like uh your second part of your question about the fourth and the fifth scenarios i don't i don't know how the fifth scenario came to be or i i think the question is why you're you're placing it on social media um i can't repeat that all right great thanks robert um why don't we'll help you out uh todd why don't you repeat your question to joy uh it'll just make it easier uh because now i see the pattern here okay i think it was regarding neglecting to reach out to the community right go ahead i'll let you say your question go ahead yeah absolutely so uh why did you neglect to reach out to parents or community members when coming up with a plan to announce fully kindergarten following a february announcement
166um and it does seem interesting that there's you know between full day kindergarten and redistricting because it sure seems that maybe one would be possible without the other uh did you not think there would be a reaction from the community from parents when registered came up the board had many opportunities in and every avenue to reach out to parents or pto as a sounding board however clearly you're choosing the community in the dark until now uh and then again do you think cramming two listing sessions is proper communication it's going to create the awareness desire knowledge necessary to affect positive change that's a long one okay um so i believe that um getting we were wanted to have the plan from dr barley like a plan that they that could be presented to the community
167that was vetted i do think that during the listening sessions that although options four and five are at the top of the list that all of the options if if families want to discuss them should be discussed i you know there's still an opportunity for feedback that's why it was put in the presentation um i think there's passion behind those scenarios based on what dr barley had mentioned and you know the expertise that they have there so um i do think that there's still opportunity for conversation i mean if and and i would want to hear you know other feedback from from individuals i also feel like you know we have we set the schedule and if i felt that there was more feedback to come or that there was not we weren't receiving what
168we needed to i would say maybe we need to see if if we need to talk more um so i mean that's the plan is to have those two sessions and then and the vote but if i felt uncomfortable with it i would raise it and say okay maybe we should we should talk more about it i cannot hear what he's saying oh she can't hear you hopefully i think i'm there now sorry i keep having to keep going on and off um so i was just saying thank you very much for for your uh real and honest answer i think that it's great that you're willing to hear the feedback i would like to ask is it possible then that we actually open this up to real dialogue and have an opportunity where additional
169suggestions are actually presented considered and voted on rather than voting on two scenarios which are basically the same minus a year delay because if you really do want to take public feedback then i think the opportunity to solicit new ideas and put them out there as a possible option that's real engagement at that point so thank you for your honest answer in that regard hey todd i'm going to meet you for a second um if you don't if you don't mind um did did you have a specific reason for asking the individuals the questions you asked the next question you asked to someone who i can think of a better board member who's qualified to answer your question so if you'll give me a little leeway i would prefer to have chris riley answer your
170question about the capital cost because she's the chair of our finance committee and i think she could provide a better answer to your question if you're okay with me just juggling around the questions you're good with that okay um uh so uh todd i'm gonna take you off from you if you could repeat your question for chris and i'll let chris answer the question uh as she's our finance person okay so chris uh the question was can you explain your direct understanding in detail of what portion of the one million dollar capital expense that is being allocated to the a full-day kindergarten project was listed in the previous board budget meeting presentation how is this fun how is this being used for this project and what is not being done as a result where are
171the funds coming from in the reserve can you also explain why in october a referendum was needed and now it's not a shift of position with no communication from october 1 would really like to try and understand that better well i don't know why um you think a shift in position from carving this out of a referendum is a big deal um i really don't understand your question but um well so well respectfully let me answer okay therefore that is a big deal and that's a i don't think it is okay because i don't think it's a big deal that's the thing i don't think that your specific question about pulling full the money allocated to full day kindergarten out of the referendum i think it's actually a very good thing for the community that
172we don't have to go to a referendum to do full day kindergarten because we have you know we've kicked this can down the road for a really long time and um we have been you know focused on trying to build a capital reserve over the years now that is um that is not easy because the vast majority of our budget every year our operating budget is for salaries and benefits and things like you know books and textbooks and technology um but every year where we manage to put some money away um for an emergency um every 15 or 20 years we have to go out for a referendum for you know significant infrastructure needs because we have six buildings and we have roofs and boilers and and security and all sorts of things that are
173big ticket items that we cannot fund out of our annual operating budget but you know to save for a rainy day we do over time try to build a capital reserve and when i went to i went to the board um this i guess early this year and i said you know we've had a substantial increase in in state aid getting us back to the levels we were at uh in 2010 when it was almost cut by 50 percent and over the years that state ages has been increasing along with extraordinary aid our transportation uh savings um definitely helped us um we had a number of retirements um you know where we're able to replace teachers with you know lower-cost um uh teachers and all of those things combined allowed us to you know really
174consider doing full day kindergarten without having to go to referendum to the community and and and and when you think about it you know one of the questions you asked me was one how on earth would we would we want to do this well you know our kids have just you know gone through a year or maybe more where you know they've they've potentially fallen behind and our job here on the board is to be unbiased and with all due respect i think you're quite biased and we're considering all the students in this in this district that's our responsibility and i i unfortunately i mean i i'm very sensitive to the people who are caught in the cross hairs as as doug mentioned before but i think whatever we do here you know we're going
175to make somebody unhappy and i think my colleagues on this board and i have listened very carefully to the experts those guiding principles were extremely important to us in terms of minimizing change and we were able to find the money to be able to get this you know get full day kindergarten done being sensitive to the fact that it's coming on the heels of of you know a very difficult year and that's what we want to hear from the from the um from the parents now i agree with joy i mean i don't think that you know these listening sessions you know if parents want to express other potential um you know ideas i'm all ears but like i said we've kicked this can down the road for a really long time this is way
176overdue we found the money to do it which i think is a really good thing it's not going to cost a million dollars it's basically half a million dollars in capital expense and then we have you know we have to hire three additional teachers um and so i i just think it's i think it's a really good thing for the community and i hope that answers your question chris yeah if if i could just respond to one moment to her comment i'll be very brief first of all concerned parent i don't think is necessarily biased and second of all um you basically just said that the reserve fund is a rainy day fund and you're now allocating rainy day funds to a new initiative so just let that be stated yeah well i'll tell you
177something else todd you know like a few years ago we um we used we used uh we had built up a reserve um over several years and then we needed to make some significant improvements at the high school and we didn't want to go out for a referendum for that we you know it was the track and the field and uh doug helped me out there were some other things and we pretty much you know depleted the capital reserve to make these changes which we really felt we couldn't put off and then we started rebuilding the capital reserve and we have sufficient money to be able to do the construction for the bathrooms because we've been thinking about this for several years this is not something that just kind of you know you know fell
178out of the sky and um look i don't need to be disrespectful um in terms of saying you're a concerned parent i know you're concerned and i'm very sensitive to that but i'm just saying that our job on the board is to be unbiased and to find a solution that is in the best interest from all the students in our district all the students in berkeley heights and if i have to tell you as chair of the budget committee i know why you wanted to do that because every year i struggle when i look at you know the budget for woodruff when they're 6 16 17 18 kids in a class and then i look at the budget for hughes when there's 23 24 kids in a class and i really struggle with that all
179right chris thank you i know todd there's two more questions that you have and i want to move on uh this is you know long seven-part question uh helen uh can you repeat your question uh sure absolutely um helen how do you respond to the 400 parents and the community members who all signed the petition asking for this effort to be paused and more transparency and dialogue occur are you aware of the crown further town example that has been brought to attention by the community they use the seven months process had significant dialogue and discussion engaged and debated a major decision like this do these 400 members of our community matter and if so how will you take their position seriously what will you do about it i think we have to take everybody in
180the community seriously it is not a closed book and as we said you know to one of the questions previously there has been no final vote on this i do understand the passion of everybody involved i did go through this process when they closed hamilton terrace when my three children were in that school so i understand and my ears are open and we will listen and discuss thank you great the last question of the pleasure uh yes you referred this evening to uh developmentally appropriate structure but from the surrounding communities new providence summit westfield milburn and chatham do not have it so where do you feel that those communities um differ from us and why are you putting this recommendation in because some of those schools are actually rated much higher than ours here in
181berkeley heights so how can you say this does have a similar structure adam is k-3 then this four to five school six to eight and nine to twelve so my children go to chatham school so i do know their structure very well um one thing that we did talk about is that we have the ability to do this not every district has this ability we have the ability to do best practices make developmentally develop mentally appropriate education not other schools have it i know chatham is adding kindergarten to one of their buildings just throwing all the kindergarten putting all the kindergarten kids in one building and not redistricting because redistricting does cause emotion and we understand that but if we want to be developmentally appropriate if we want to have best practices and we need
182to fix the equity issue and once i know there's an equity issue we need to fix it then this is the best way to go about it okay uh dr varley thank you uh very much for for that and todd thanks for for your questions um i'm just going to do a little bit of an administrative piece it's now approaching 10 20 in the evening we have been at this for close to three hours i see i see nine more people who have their hands raised i'm going to propose that uh the nine people and i'll read out their names in a second who have raised their hand those will be the last nine that we're going to take this evening i've set a goal of not staying here past 11 o'clock we have administrators
183and teachers who are on uh who have work to do tomorrow so do board members and so do many parents from the public we also have two more open sessions town hall sessions so doug grober lisa porris lee timmerman jay montoya frank pizzani elena toya facey john migues and tom farger those are the remaining people that we're going to uh i will have a chance to address the board uh tonight uh we've had the session open now for for close to two hours i don't know how many total people we've had uh we're gonna end the citizens hearing after those 10 people speak and then again there is multiple other sessions to do that so i am moving forward and doug grober is here doug good evening uh good evening can you hear me i
184can't hear you very well okay uh so um i'm a resident of berkeley heights i have a daughter in woodruff third grade a daughter in gl at ninth grade um a lot of things have already been covered uh i do have a couple of questions um and mrs barley actually left but i'm gonna just continue carving kindergarten out of the referendum that was just commented on you want to be fair put all the options on the survey you want to be fair have a community vote this is not about full day kindergarten this is about redistricting okay um the board was very very transparent with covid very transparent and upfront about it they were very informative about it they were not informative about this i know of nobody in my neighborhood who knew about the
185possibility of their kid being sent to a different school that is why people are upset i'm still sitting here and i'm upset i get infuriated at some of the comments that i hear you talked about studies that you've had from people there have been other communities that have had studies uh cranford was mentioned everybody can see it cranford and pitman both had k through two three through five suggested by uh by people that are doctorates and experts they neglect they rejected those plans because there was too much backlash from the community there was too much negative feedback from the community about it you guys your responsibility is to the will of this community you mention it in your handbook there's not enough input here hands down your communication on this was horrible it was a
186reaction to uh it was a reaction to a petition and that's the way it looks and you have to own that i'm sorry okay um my questions are actually this uh and i'll be brief why is there not a community vote to this i don't really call a survey a vote maybe it is but um this is a bigger issue we have votes on stop signs okay why is the community only involved in a two-week window three meetings in two weeks transferred had ten meetings in three months i understand that that situation included k-12 and bussing and it was slightly different but this is huge this is huge you guys want to permanently change the district uh like somebody said there's emotions there's all certain factors into this um so that's one question why did
187you wait to expose the plan to the community now you did so well being transparent about kovid why didn't you start in january communicating to the community what you were planning on doing what you were trying to develop um i think that's all i have thank you doug for your comments uh on your first question about is the survey a community vote or no i'm just gonna mute you doug for a second just review the echo um uh as far as uh the community vote and is it a survey uh we are allowing all the stakeholders in pre-k to four who have a will have skin in this game to indicate their preferred scenario uh some people want to call it a vote some people want to call it call the survey i'm not sure
188there's a the difference between that so the parents are having direct input uh and the community will speak as as a group i don't know what more we could do to have every single person share their input than doing that in terms of uh the second your second question was why are we doing it now why didn't we do it in january uh i think i answered part of that question a few before in terms of when we changed our plan from moving faulty kindergarten forward one year to september of 21 we announced it in february when we figured out that we could afford to do it at that time we didn't have a plan to share with you we didn't withhold a plan or not share a plan or hide a plan or anything
189like that we didn't have a plan we had a direction we had a vision to introduce that but it took us time to build that plan and yes there was a window from february until tonight that we didn't share the plan with you not because we didn't want to because it wasn't built and yes i do understand the frustration thank you for your compliments on what we did for for the pandemic and that and we do accept full responsibility for the fact that we didn't communicate uh this plan between february now because we didn't have one tonight hopefully you saw the rigor and the comprehensiveness of our plan uh and now there are things for people to react to to your last question it was more of a comment of uh we now have a
190couple of meetings to talk about this yes it is a more condensed plan you and i have talked before about the differences between cranford and and berkeley heights uh there are three nights to provide input there is a parent vote and that is how we are doing uh parent input we think we're going to get a lot of it if there are other ideas there are plenty of meetings to do that and provide that input so doug thanks for your your comments this evening uh lisa poros lisa good evening hi good evening um folks far more articulate than me have said a lot about their reactions to how this was rolled out so i will not make the whole speech about that uh but i did have a lot of concerns about that that were
191already expressed by others um i have a second grader and a fourth grader at hughes um and i'm so glad to hear that fourth graders rise in rising fifth graders are being taken into account as part of this what does that mean for their siblings so if my my soon-to-be fifth grader wanted to stay at hughes i'm also in the area you've designated us across from columbia although i'm not actually across from columbia but we are in that um crosshairs as you guys used that word earlier um so my kids would be split between two different schools or are there any plans for siblings that might be in this kind of situation because i can't imagine we're the only ones like that um i also wanted to find out i'm so glad that ms riley
192and ms young both expressed um openness to hearing parental feedback on other potential plans other than plan four and plan five i wondered if it was ever considered a plan to roll this out over three years to minimize the impact on the younger students as well so students could have completed their entirety at the same school and slowly integrated this or implemented this over a series of years i understand we're all anxious to get full day kindergarten in i was really disappointed when it didn't happen for my kids i fully on board for getting it in as soon as we can um but obviously with as minimal impact as possible to others um and i had stepped away for a little bit so maybe i missed it but i just wanted to also express my
193disappointment that i didn't hear anything about the impact of this on students who have 504s and ieps um i would have liked to have seen something about that as part of this presentation this evening um because obviously that can have significant impacts on students if they do have to change schools potentially different therapists different connections with their service providers in the school so i would have liked to have heard something about that um and lastly i know that um you guys earlier talked about one of the guiding principles being maximizing students ability to walk to school as ms penna may remember i was on the safe route to school committee for a while i was did not have the time i wanted to donate to give to that um so unfortunately had to resign but
194that is an issue that i am very passionate about um this change would actually mean that i am geographically closer to mountain park than i am to hughes but i live in an area of plainfield where we don't have a sidewalk um and it's not logistically safe for second graders third graders to cross over plainfield um without having a sidewalk there without being able to get to a crossing guard so i wondered if there was any consideration in terms of how this would impact students that maybe now are closer but still can't actually walk to schools and how that might actually be addressed thank you great lisa thanks for your questions i wrote down a couple of them uh to your first question with your current second grader and fourth grader so again it depends
195a little bit on what scenario is voted for but let me just address scenario four which would happen in the in the current year so your your fourth grader at hughes would have the option to stay at hughes instead of going um to mountain park that's an option that you have as a family given that you have a second grader that second grader will go to mountain park um so you have an option you could have one at hughes and one at mountain park or you could have both of them go to mountain park and and you're right i think there are people like you who have kids two years apart and we did provide that option you know and uh and you obviously are in in that group where you have two children who
196are impacted so so it would not be an option for the two kids to stay at hughes for that one year correct that is not an option we cannot we cannot offer that we can only offer the transition option for for the for for the rising fifth grade students we talked earlier tonight about how many different options and permutations and combinations we did we looked at how many grade levels at each school could we could we let's stay there and the short answer is we could only do it for the rising fifth grade students we could not offer it for other students uh in terms of your three-year plan uh i don't believe we had a three-year plan but if someone wants to you know push that one forward we did look at we looked
197at a three-year plan we looked at a four-year plan we went through when i say we looked at multiple options we definitely did however our school capacity wouldn't hold any of the plans when we tried to transition it any longer than two years okay thank you dr varley uh 504 in ieps i think lisa said you might have missed part of it we have had the special education uh michelle gardner and her team uh looking at this of course and looking at the needs of special education students dr volley talked about this equity of programs and services and child study teams is one of the things that we're trying to better balance so the answer is yes we have that it didn't make a certain specific slide but a couple of people have mentioned it
198tonight so we will we will go back and we will begin to share a little bit more information that's good feedback from the from the community tonight uh because a couple people have mentioned that so we can make sure that we're sharing a little bit more information about that uh in terms of the specifics of of your situation uh regarding the crosswalk and the school uh if you don't mind let's take that offline uh i'll probably ask you to reach out to a donna felizola our business administrator tomorrow i can't really speak to sidewalks no i understand that's a very specific question i just was more generally wondering if there had been when you were looking at the um ability to increase the number of students being able to walk to school if there had
199been any considerations of additional cross crossing guards as needed or whatever other accommodations might be needed i know you're not going to look at my house personally i wasn't expecting you to have the answer to that that's okay we did look at transportation we did look at the walking dead screws we we did look at the walking paths because some of the schools have better walking paths than than others uh we have been in touch with the police department regarding overall crossing guards uh once we obviously have a final resolution and the timing uh that will be one of our to-do's and thank you that's a good reminder for us that we do need to go back and make sure if we have to adjust the walking patterns uh from different neighborhoods to look at
200the crossing guards lisa thanks for your question uh thank you this evening lee timmerman lee good evening thanks for joining tonight thank you can you hear me i can hear you loud and clear okay i have uh three points i think there's one question in here um first of all i think based on the conversations of multiple people i think it would be beneficial to the board and administration if they would expand the survey a little bit to include scenario three as an option that seems to be balancing the staffing and the educational sizes in the schools with more less impact on redistricting i understand the issue about grouping grades together k through two and three through five that seems to be the the hinge on number four but i be if i was on
201the board i'd be interested to see how the community feels about that and whether they would be more interested in scenario three if you want community input so if you're doing a survey i think it'd be worthwhile just to get the communities feel about that that may eliminate some of the concern about neighborhood schools and everything else it does impact the people up in countryside or murray hill as you call it i've lived through closing hamilton tears i've lived through moving sixth graders to columbia i've lived through opening back up mary kay so i've seen this happen many times and there's been a lot more discussion than the few meetings we've had on this or will have on this when each of those happened before so that's just a comment that i think it would
202be beneficial to the board to get more input on another scenario and just not scenario four aka five my second comment or is it more of a question i didn't hear any discussion about the impact on busing under any of these scenarios especially scenario four if you go to if we go to a k-2 school are we going to continue to bust first graders like we do to mary kay are we now going to bust second graders to to the two k through two schools i didn't hear any discussion about if there's a change in the blessing for younger kids and i think that would be valuable for the community to know that the third the third point i was going to make you just answered the question doug and and dr varley i was
203going to suggest that maybe you give the two districts or the two sections of town that this is most impacting the section behind the hardware store and the section next to columbia give those people who are people in grades three through five right now the option of continuing in their current schools through that time period not putting anybody new in there but give them the option to continue in their current school if they want to so those are my three points lee thank you very much for your questions uh as always uh regarding the impact uh so your first one's the comment uh the second one the impact on busing so we have looked at the impact on on busing and we will we will bus all the children in this district per the guidelines
204which is greater than two miles so if you live greater than two miles from any of our k to two or three to five schools you will get buses um obviously uh people live you know uh in and around one of the neighborhoods uh so there is some busing you mentioned obviously locations that are you know far away from these elementary schools you mentioned countryside or murray hill obviously they get bussing to to some of these schools you know in the old model in the pre-covet model so pre-kovet we used to offer courtesy bussing to mary kay mcmillan for kindergarten first graders that will not be offered anymore in the in the new k-2 and 3-5 structure we will offer uh busing for all students that live greater than two miles uh and to your
205last thing what i think was the question uh was about the people who are in the impacted areas by the hardware store and opposite columbia we do not have the option to offer them to stay we can't offer it for the rising fifth graders again we've run multiple scenarios but we are not able uh to do that lee as always thanks for your your questions the next person i see is jay mon montoya good evening my name is rina lipa j montoya's my husband thank you for the opportunity to speak today um just i want to start with an overall statement i think many have said this already this is not about full daycare and the decision has been made by the berkeley heights community or by the bboe actually i think as a bh
206wrestling it's it's it's a welcome decision this is more about redistricting and how this is going to affect our kids i live in berkeley heights um for about seven years now i have a sixth grader in cms and now i have an upcoming third grader in woodroff these are decisions that will affect our kids and of course emotions should be validated and considered and not being labeled as biased because we are sensitive there are 400 parents that have signed a petition that should be considered now we have taught you have talked about a survey being as a way for the community to uh voice their opinion i i don't think having a survey that's giving me an option to choose from option a plus and another option that is a-plus it's it's it's giving me
207an opportunity to voice my opinion it's just making forcing me to make a decision on on two options that are very similar either my kid is going to go to one school to another school uh earlier or later um i think as uh mentioned by others it just should be expanded to other scenarios because otherwise there's no point to vote it's going to be the same uh and my i have two questions uh where grades three and five are critical for kids when these decisions were being made was great uh three considered um in the decisions and i would also like to see where is the data that grades one through five is not a proper uh conductive way for uh providing alerting benefit to kids thank you so much great thanks for your question
208uh i'll take the first question i'll let dr barley answer the second one uh grade three what was considered and obviously when we move from a structure that has two through five in three buildings to a structure that has k to two and three to five two sets into different buildings obviously all the grades are impacted third grade is impact so yes we did look at um at multiple models and different ways to configure this and all the grade levels were looked at and the reality is some grades do have more impact than others and in some instances again depending on which scenario is selected uh grade three um has different impacts depending on the one year or two year uh dr do you want to talk about uh again about the research about the
209to three to five so yes so um and it's not that one to five is i guess inappropriate it's just not a best practice i reached out to multiple professors for early childhood and elementary education and each one of them stated if you had the ability to do a best practice and make a developmentally appropriate school building for all children you would do it in the pre-k to two three to five some of them did expand it pre-k to 3 and as an elementary as an early childhood but most of them talked about pre-k to 2 3-5 being the best practice and being developmentally appropriate and allowing specialists in those buildings right now we have specialists six through eight nine through twelve our children deserve specialists and pre-k to two as well as three to
210five great dr volley thank you and thank you for asking your question next up i'm so sorry and can you maybe uh my question about the uh survey um great um the the scenario four and five are the only options can we can you consider to add another option like a scenario three or that was proposed earlier yes we can certainly consider that i mean the board has right now do that but the whole purpose of having these meetings is to take parent feedback and i understand your feedback as well as others people including lee timmerman who just spoke uh want um to include scenario three in there so yes i do hear you we do register thank you so much great uh frank frank pizzani i see you next frank good evening good evening
211how are you uh so i'm gonna come back just from a little different angle uh what i heard tonight um was uh that you uh announced this in february to uh forego parents um putting deposits down at private uh programs so i just want to understand in scenario five kindergarten in 2021 would be our current situation with a half day uh so all the parents that didn't put down those deposits on private programs or aftercare are sort of in a bind because most of those programs have you know have filled up already uh so what do you say to those parents sorry frank was that your only question that was my only question great thanks for that uh so uh in all of these it's full day kindergarten it's not half day kindergarten so in
212all of these scenarios we'll be implementing a full day kindergarten for all students it'll be a full day just like for second third or fifth grade and do that in 2021 though for yes in 2021 regardless of scenario four or scenario five it is full day kindergarten yes okay great all right thank you frank uh what happened to the i'm gonna pause for a second because there were other people who raised their hand whose hands are not raised okay all right now they're back uh okay next i see is john miguez john good evening good evening everybody how are you well you don't have to answer this that's okay we're well john thanks for joining um you know i've been pretty vocal i stand by everything i've said out there and i know you've looked
213at it i'm i'm really angry dr varley you brought up best practice best practice includes including family input and feedback to say that this follows to to say that you are coming to a decision on best practice without a process that incorporates kids and families and this isn't a process that incorporates kids and families you're talking about a three-week process you guys are saying that you haven't had a plan since february that you're coming up you were kind of coming up with this as we landed on these three weeks and that these three meanings are some are sort of a legitimate way of getting that and yeah i mean it's emotion and emotion is a balance of both logic and feeling so just because something's emotional doesn't make it invalid um and i get that
214you surveyed professors and coming up or formulating a plan but would have been helpful if you talk to parents as well these terms of kicking the can down the road we're doing this too long you know those were terms that were used to pass other decisions it's slogans municipal building that was a term that was used over and over again and it was another decision that people felt kind of locked up but a lot more transparent process a lot more feedback for building than for this prac for this decision um bypassing referendums you know so i guess i want to ask each and every board member to answer this individually do you agree that this process three meetings or two meetings is sufficient to get feedback from parents on a decision of this magnitude i
215would like every single board member to respond to that individually great john thanks for your question uh i'll do it around the world so the question from john is do you agree the three meetings is sufficient to get board member feedback again i'll do it the parent feedback by getting parent feedback thank you for clarifying i'll do it the way i see it on my screen um joy i would say that this is a starting point and if we saw that in my opinion if we saw that more meetings were needed then we would add but this was the starting point to get feedback great thanks joy robert hold on robert you're a mute okay i agree with joy i i don't think we're locked into uh three meetings um if you include this one
216and the two town uh halls but also keep in mind we have a survey as well and we're getting other feedback in other ways you should see our inboxes right so hold on let's keep going uh helen i agree with uh joy and robert if we need more meetings we need more meetings and we will listen to the public as well as especially again great helen thanks chris yeah i i think this is the feedback process and you know we're listening that doesn't answer the question i think that the next three meetings will provide residents with a good opportunity to voice their concerns and we'll take it from there great thanks chris uh mike yeah same sentiment as chris said the next three meetings will give us the inputs great thank you jordan i i
217think uh three meetings is ample actually um considering you know they're not 30-minute meetings you know we're taking the time we're listening to feedback sure there's no one saying that there's not an opportunity to have further conversation but i do think that three well thought out meetings planned out with plenty of advance notice and lots of circulation of information in advance is a is a great place to start yeah great george thanks lastly angela yeah um i agree with the sentiment of the members it is a starting point um i'm sure there's going to be a lot of discussions we're going to be listening there's going to be communication we're open to hearing what people have to say interested in their feedback and decisions will be made based on what the community has to say
218great so i have a follow-up question to that then so what so how credible or how legitimate or how confident am i going to be in feedback that largely indicates that this process needs to pause what or that a plan that isn't on there needs to happen with the turnaround time for september so you guys are saying three meetings are enough at this time frame this is going to be shot in september and and i guess you're asking you're asking us to to have confidence in a process that's going to land with significant feedback if that's the overwhelming opinion that none of these options are viable right and this blows up that september timeline how credible or you know how confident can i be that you're going to get that that you're going to sort
219of follow through on that feedback well john i mean i'll answer that question i mean yeah sure uh listen we're open to the feedback you know that's why we're doing these things we're listening to the feedback if we think there's a reason or a need to course correct because we heard some feedback and we think there's another option or another way to go we'll do that that's why we're doing these meetings uh we're doing it so we can listen we're gonna spend probably close to eight or nine hours uh listening to parents feedback and uh answering questions listening to feedback and potentially coming up with options we've already heard some good suggestions tonight uh that has you know added to our edit to our thinking so i'm confident that the process is going going to
220work and if over the course of this process you know there's something else that comes up as i think a couple of my fellow board members said if we need to course correct on that you know we can could i have one more question doug no i want to make one no no though we are still doing full-day kindergarten somehow some way this fall i want to make sure we as the problem with that mike okay i just want to make sure john last question educational experts first to make sure that we had a plan that was viable and making sure that we were using best practices and fixing our equity issue we knew we had an equity issue and i didn't want to bring families in until we had a plan there's no need
221to give a half plan we need to come in with all the information and then present the plan to the families why why couldn't families be part of developing the plan why couldn't they have access to that at the table and help you and work with you in developing options inform this from the beginning in the end the plan the families wouldn't have the access to the information that we have a lot of this is confidential information that we have access to and i need the people who have the educational expertise to push this forward yeah of data all right thank you guys i appreciate your time and we appreciate your question two two more speakers tonight um toyah facey you're up next toya good evening i hi i wasn't sure um just really quickly
222i just wanted to make a quick statement um and just provide just a little bit of i think levity to kind of the situation is um you know there are children in this country who um have to be bust an hour outside of their community just to go to good schools um you know our situation in terms of redistricting is staying within our very small community um and we are lucky that we actually have that privilege that we have such good schools in berkeley heights um so i do want to make that statement because i do think that it's it's very important um um to say that um i also want to say thank you to the board of education um for walking into the 21st century and bringing full day kindergarten finally to berkeley
223heights um i have been following full day kindergarten for the last eight years i think discussion started when my child was three she is now 11 years old um and then while the impact um of the possibility of the impact of schools in terms of children having to change schools has not been explicitly stated it has been implied and so i do think that that's very important i don't think in any situation every time we evaluated full day kindergarten um it has always been implied that there would be changes right um so it's not new information this is not kind of a situation where um oh hey by the way we're doing full day kindergarten and now here's this this is we've had these discussions for at least the last eight years that i'm aware
224of so um i just want to also point that out as well this is not a gotcha this isn't new information we all knew that there was going to be um impact to the schools um and then the last thing is that i want to say is that while i recognize personally that my son might be impacted in terms of going to a different school we all have our preferences in terms of schools um i know i do um and i've been in the district for many many years um i also am willing to um have that impact my son for the greater good of the community and i think that that is very important this is community it's not about us individually it's about what are we doing to make our community better and
225i'm willing to have a potential impact to my child um in a situation that i may not necessarily like um because i know it's going to be better for the community so that after my son is done with f full day kindergarten um the people who come after me also have that opportunity as well so again i just want to thank the board um i know that we're talking a lot about process um but then this whole discussion around full day kindergarten is getting mixed into this um and the two are linked um as much as people are trying not to make it length they are linked um and there is going to be an impact and i think that that has always been implied for every single discussion that we've had around full day
226kindergarten so that's it thank you toya thank you very much for your comments and your broader perspective much appreciated um the last speaker tonight is tom farker tom good evening how are you tonight all right thank you can you hear me i can hear you loud and clear okay uh it was clear to me from the presentation that the district operates about 75 percent of capacity based on your enrollments so there is really no need to do any construction and certainly no need to spend five hundred thousand dollars on making new bathrooms in woodruff the district operated with great success for many years with the k-5 elementary schools i have serious doubts that anyone would find this is not a best practice berkeley heights is a top performing district for many years and sadly i
227don't think that is true any longer i urge you to go back to the k-5 model of schools each school being a k-5 i i want you to ask the entire community about it not just the current uh parents that have children in the schools make it part of the survey make all the options part of the survey include all residents in your survey all residents will be paying for whatever you do so their voice is also important and make the costs of each scenario part of the survey second i'd like you to present a table of where the students will attend the elementary school for each grade under each scenario i would put in the rows would be the elementary districts fused mountain park and woodruff and mary kay mcmillan uh the columns would
228be the grades k through five and each school that we attended for that grade and that district would be shown in the cell okay the impact of changing schools on standardized test scores has been studied there's a literature on this subject you should be aware of that such studies are not hard to do i did one myself i urge you to consider the results changing schools will hurt your test scores that's easy to demonstrate from using standardized test scores and the configuration type of the school whether it be k-8 or whatever there was a claim in the presentation that class sizes of 17 versus 24 makes a difference and that the larger size is inequitable i would like to see any peer-reviewed literature that can support such a claim uh and finally there seems to
229be a claim that a referendum is a bad thing i disagree a referendum is a good thing if you truly want broad community input and i think you do to avoid a referendum conveys a message that essentially you're saying you want to impose a solution and you don't trust the public ask the public if you have a good idea you can convince them if it's no good they will tell you it's no good don't bypass a referendum thank you tom thank you very much for your comments i'll just offer two perspectives one is it sounds like you have designed a spreadsheet in your mind i've seen some of your spreadsheets in the past if you want to send to me the spreadsheet that you envisioned i will uh i'd be happy to see that that'd
230be great and uh i will i will make sure that somebody on our team shares with you uh the class size research that we're aware of as well because that's something else you ask for i just want to say something in response to tom i was not implying in my comments that a referendum is a bad thing from a community input i was simply talking about it from a financial perspective not having to go out and raise debt in order to do this i just wanted to clarify that great thanks chris and tom thanks for your question uh with that i am going to close the citizens hearing tonight first of all i want to thank everybody who spoke i don't have my i haven't counted on my list how many people spoke this evening
231but i want to thank uh everybody who spoke this evening i uh i think we've learned some things we've got some good feedback uh from people hopefully we answered most if not all of the questions i do expect similar comments questions and feedback at our upcoming sessions so again there will be ample opportunity to continue this dialogue both on wednesday night april 14th and thursday night uh april 22nd will be our two town or town sessions and we welcome feedback with that uh with that we'll move to the remaining parts of our agenda and i was pretty close 10 58 pretty close to our goal of 11 o'clock okay moving on to administration you could have a recommendation for administrative items a through g and could i have all board members go off mute for
232voting thank you i'll move items 14 8 through g second motion of second edge discussion roll call mr hyman yes mrs young yes mr chinchuli yes mr d'aquila yes this is penna yes miss riley yes mrs kirsch yes mr weinstein yes education items 15 a through c i move items 15 a through c second ocean second any discussion roll call mr hyman yes mrs young yes mr chinchilly yes mr jaquilla yes mrs penner yes ms riley yes mrs kirsch yes mr reinstein yes personnel item 16. i move that we accept personnel items a through d for all board members and ether k for berkeley heights members only second motion is second on any discussion roll call mr hyman yes on items a through d mrs young yes on all items mr chinchilly yes i know
233wagons mr jacqueline yes and all items mrs penner yes no items miss riley yes on all items mrs kirsch yes mr reinstein yes 17 business yes i'll move 17 a through d oh second in a second any discussion roll call mr hyman yes on all items mrs young yes mr chinchuli yes mr aquila yes mrs yes ms riley yes mrs kirsch yes mr reinstein yes 18 finance i'm moved that we approve the payment the payment of the bills is listed below item a motion in a second and discussion roll call mr hyman yes mrs young yes mr chinchilly yes mr jaquilla yes mr spena yes miss riley yes mrs kirsch yes mr reinstein yes is there any other business to come before the board yes robert usually right after there's a presentation you always say
234questions from the board he went straight to the public and no board member got a chance to ask a question uh so the thinking behind that was we would use most of our meeting this evening to get feedback from the public as we will at our two sessions and we will use our april 29th meeting where all board members will have had the opportunity to listen to the public have all of their input and then board members can summarize their own thoughts after they've heard all of the board all the all the resident feedback that was the thinking behind it that's great i like it good thank you enjoy i just have a question um regarding like faqs with all these questions coming out and i know they're stuffed in the minutes are we considering
235having just like an faq spot on the website where people could just see like a running list and as they come through an email and everything we just sort of add on to it so that they can look at we're in the process of working on one right now we're we're we keep going back and forth and editing and tonight's a good example of things we can add to that faq document okay and where will it be we'll post it i'll also eventually send it out in a letter once it's able to be you know seen right now we got a lot of comments and edits okay great i think the hope joy is that we'll have our first draft you know in the next couple of days with the initial questions and as more
236questions come up we'll update that you know within reason right you don't want the document to be too long but yes we're doing that any other any other business or question i have a question i mean i i know that all of us are going to be listening in on these um town halls but are we going to publish anything after these individual uh town halls i mean there won't be minutes because it's not a formal board meeting but are do we have an intention to put something out to the community that summarizes what was discussed or um yeah yes we do even though you're right it's technically not a board meeting but i think it's in uh it's in everybody's best interest both in the board's best interest and the community's best interest to
237summarize it within reason you know for that so yes we do plan to summarize um the discussion and the questions that were answered some of it will go into the faq and some of it will be more like a minutes kind of summary documentation yeah because depending on people's schedules and i'm talking about community members they may not be able to make both both um town halls correct that's right doug i had a quick question on the town halls as well what will the process be for those how is that going to be yeah the process will be kind of like a an uber level citizens hearing so we're not going to repeat the presentation there'll be no other board business it won't be an official board board meeting it will be a board of
238education town hall meeting it will be an open zoom and it will look and feel like a citizen's hearing you know just like a a a one item citizens hearing we'll open it and we'll we'll we'll take questions and and provide feedback and answer questions uh for that there'll be no other board business covered uh for that it'll be truly like a town hall q a session it'll be via zoom it'll be it'll like i said the best way for me to describe it is it will be a citizen's hearing-only kind of meeting okay one other question so what other than putting this presentation up on the um the website i mean frankly i was a little bit surprised that i think we had at some point 350 people listening in today i i i
239expected twice that many people um so other than putting it up on the website do we have thoughts as to how we can get this presentation out to a greater number of people before these town hall meetings so that the more community members can see what's being proposed and and hopefully weigh in yeah so so dr varley will be sending uh an email out to the entire school community tomorrow as she often time does uh it will include a link to the our website for that presentation we're also going to actively uh promote it uh promote it through our social media channels someone gave me a suggestion earlier today that we should put it on not both rsign at columbia but also the district signed downtown by the hardware store with just letting people know
240that there is an updated presentation so we'll do everything we can to do two things one make people have access to the presentation and to uh broadly communicate the two town hall meetings on uh on the wednesday and the following thursday on the 14th and 22nd in addition to that normal i'm sure letter to the editor or whatever the right publication is to tap into to get through electronic distribution correct other questions from the board seeing that i want to uh first of all thank uh again the administrative team the board i see 105 people still stuck around with us until 1106 uh this evening so thank you to the 106 who uh stayed on i think you're right chris i think it was about 350 or uh at the peak uh so glad we
241had that level of engagement and involvement and uh we look forward to seeing others on april 14th with that i'll take a motion to adjourn slow emotion oh moved so moved and we'll see many from the community back on april 14th good night everybody see you soon good night