BoE Meeting March 18, 2021

001mr hyman here mrs young mr chinchuli here mr aquila present [Music] she's on you but she's here okay mr reinstein here on january 7th 2021 this body by resolution adopted this schedule for this meeting the time and date location meeting were accurately set forth therein on january 8th the nurse was provided to all schools pto presidents the bha president and posted at the administrative building on the same data copy was emailed to the public library tap into berkeley heights the courier news and filed with the municipal clerk to file and post at town hall the meeting was also announced on the district signed at columbia why can i have a motion to move into exact session so moved second motion second we are moving into exact session we will rejoin the public meeting at 7

00230. we'll see you then hey good evening and welcome to our march 18th board of ed meeting uh can i get a motion to return from our executive session motion and a second we are back in our public session could you please rise for the flag salute let me just make one um administrative announcement before we start this meeting at this meeting we have several board members who are live with us here at columbia we also have several board members who needed to be remote for this meeting so if you see board members who are participating for the entire meeting without a mask on it is not because they are not social distances or a mask so robert and chris and angela and helen are all remote for this meeting and will not be wearing

003masks because they will be at home so i just want to make everybody aware of that a year is typically marked by major milestones like birthdays anniversaries and holidays but march marks another major milestone it's been one year since the covet 19 became a global pandemic on march 12th last year at approximately 4 pm i sat in dr varley's office as we finalized her letter to the school community as parents were anxious to hear about our going forward plan she asked me if i was quote ready to close the schools i said no but press send because it's what we need to do and we will figure this out and that we did the previous day new jersey had announced the first state death from covet 19 and there were reported 23 total confirmed cases

004including one right here in berkeley heights that same evening brought forward the postponement of the nba season march madness a 30-day restriction for travel to europe and the world health organization declared a global pandemic disney world announced its closure the next day we were embarking into a world where school districts move their school communities to a virtual environment essentially overnight with shifting health parameters and limited guidance as we cross this one-year mark it's important to pause and recognize the monumental shift that has occurred in education we owe our thanks appreciation and gratitude to the educators who have transitioned from their classroom to virtual environments cared for our students in socially distanced and in person settings provided therapeutic programs to those in need driven our school buses with masks and shields served as school nurses maintained

005a safe and clean educational atmosphere and cared for our most vulnerable students there are probably more that we could have highlighted but have focused on the significant ones that we wanted to acknowledge this evening we'd also like to take an opportunity to thank our parents and guardians who've also worked tirelessly to support children in their education and finally the students themselves not only have you shown up either in personal remote you've demonstrated extraordinary levels of resilience you are living proof that we can work together as a community towards the common goal of top-notch education and learning it's truly been remarkable winston churchill has been credited with saying quote we make a living by what we get we make a life by what we give giving back is at the heart of caring and we did

006plenty of that our community just not just our school system came together in ways that demonstrated we would persevere and get through this pandemic by working together and caring for one another let's pause for a minute and remind ourselves of our community pulling for one another we created the berkeley heights business directory we had the pals feed the first responders and healthcare workers programs to donate food the silver liming foundation's campaign for kindness the virtual mask factory to make mass for frontline workers our frontline appreciation group or flag delivering meals to emergency workers at overlooked and summit medical group our neighbors helping neighbors initiative where anyone who needed assistance could get it and our business aid berkeley heights a community fund to provide assistance grants to our towns small businesses facing covet 19 related hardships

007again there are undoubtedly additional partnerships that took place but these are the ones that came to my mind and to show our true spirit and perseverance and all this goodness continues a year later where we now have a group of berkeley heights parents literally waking up in the middle of the night to secure vaccine appointments for people who have a hard time getting one including helping over a hundred of our teachers get vaccinated this is a school district where i along with a great team i'm honored to lead in a community that i am proud to live in together we have positively impacted our larger community by collectively working towards something much bigger than our own individual needs onward we go as our efforts continue thank you let me provide a little guideline for our

008discussion uh this evening uh we have two topics that we'll cover in our superintendence report the first one is a diversity update which as we have shared our previous meetings we will continue to provide several times a year and melissa has a couple of people joining her and we're very fortunate to have some students join us as well and then we will do our annual budget update uh the finance committee along with the administrative team has put together our budget and we will be sharing that budget this evening can i have a motion for the approval of minutes for our february 25th meeting donna correspondents there are several pieces of correspondence on the agenda there is a letter from ms moretti regarding returning an idea to consider for returning to school there's a letter from

009mrs wallers regarding privacy concerns uh there are two pieces of correspondence from mr martinez regarding teaching and two donations very generous donations one from mr wu the principal of the chinese school and one from mrs kane on behalf of bhea donation and then we had several oprah requests great thanks uh i want to take a minute uh to highlight two of those correspondence that donna just mentioned and the first one is the berkeley heights education foundation those that have heard me talk before i talk often about the partnerships that we have in our community and the berkeley heights education foundation is one that represents probably a probably now close to a 25-year partnership that we've had and we received their annual letter and i i as i'm looking at it here uh the creativity of

010the grants that are given to our district uh continues to amaze me uh both in terms of across the different schools across our areas of technology now in areas of diversity and i'll point out additionally that as we approached our reopening plan this year in the summer in the july august time frame we had a need to upgrade our audio equipment both for teachers having some microphones and having some additional speakers and then when we reached out to the ed foundation they were quick to not only just meet us halfway and partner with us but purchase a variety of audio equipment a lot is listed in this letter that i have in front of me and donate that equipment so we could start our school year with a better audio experience in the schools and

011liz kane who is uh here actually at columbia tonight as our one member of the public uh here i wanted to uh liz i wanted to make sure that you understood and for all the trustees and previous trustees for the foundation you have our heartfelt thanks not just for the money that you donate for the time for the dedication for the generosity and even more so for this year for everything that you've done uh to work with us it's been a long-term partnership it's worked out great for for us i can only hope that the trustees of the ed foundation also uh get a lot of value at it but uh on behalf of the board again we thank you and we couldn't do the programs uh that we do in schools without the grants

012uh from you and your team so you have our thanks for that the second person i'd like to call out is the principal of the chinese school uh principal han wu mike do we have um we have han promoted hanumu if you're on there if you could just raise your hand i'm doing that now okay great thanks mike uh so some people might know that we have had a relationship with a chinese school that represents several of the communities in berkeley heights new providence and summit and over the weekend they use our school uh to deliver a variety of different um chinese uh classes hon good evening how are you this evening good evening everyone good evening great thanks for joining uh and like others in the community uh when we came across the covid

013uh pandemic last year the chinese community did a tremendous job of fundraising not just for the school district but for other parts of the community some of you might recall that there was a an article written about the work that the uh the chinese school community did to help frontline workers they also made very generous donations of both can 95 masks for for our uh uh teaching staff as well as uh mask also for um for our students in in the thousands and thousands of masks not a box or two here and there of the thousands of dollars and multiple thousands of masks uh so i wanted to also again uh principal han you have our thanks you have our gratitude uh we are thrilled that we can offer uh you the school and you

014can continue uh to enhance the the chinese education for all the programs that you do i know some of us have been invited to your program i guess now it's two years ago because there was no program that you've done last year i know myself and other board members have attended that in previous years so again also on behalf of the board uh your entire community's generosity again in time in money is really truly appreciated by our community and especially by our school board so thank you and i'll just turn it over to you if you want to just say a couple of words okay thank you mr reinstein thank you very much for acknowledging our small contribution and uh and thank the board of education for leading the district and during this difficult time

015and uh personally as the volunteer in the chinese community and as a principal of the brokered heights huaya chinese school i i'm feeling i'm honored to be part of the fundraising efforts when they this pandemic began last march and i'm honored to be a part of the volunteers so i come so i can pass along this small contribution and donation to the uh bergen heights the general all the communities and including the the school district and so uh at the member and the parents and residents in bergen heights i want to say thank you to all the board members and the public school districts and all the teachers and school staff during this difficult and changing time and uh really appreciate and we constantly thank enough that what you have been doing to the uh

016school district and uh and we berkeley heights huayja chinese school and the border local trans community and uh want to uh keep supporting the public school from different ways as much as we could and because when we found this chinese school i think that was five years ago and in like 2016 and the one of the two uh we have two institutional missions when we found this school and one is trans culture education and the second is serving the community the community here is the berkeley heights and the neighboring communities so and with this donation during this time pandemic and we feel that we're uh we are the uh essential part of the community of unity and we want to stay together with everybody in this town and in the community and i think we

017can get through this and we can uh return to the normal and very soon and uh hopefully we will we will we will return to the days that we don't wear the masks or the other and the and also i want to thank the all the more than 150 150 chinese families here in the community and with their generous donations we can we raised uh about uh twenty thousand dollars uh last uh the end of last march so with this this dollar those monetary donations so we can purchase the uh tens of thousands of ppe supplies and so we can donate to the overlooked medical center morristown medical center and all the ems teams here in high school new province and also the uh the senior livings and the long-term care facilities and also we

018donated there because we in our chain school we have a 3d printing class so the uh the teacher and all the students they work day and night they printed like a couple of hundreds of years face shield and using their 3d printers at home so they can donate to the overlook medical center and morristown medical center and so i that's all i want to say i don't want to say thank you to everyone and thank the uh public school and uh portal ad leading the effort during this time and wish all the families safe and well hope we can go back to normal soon okay mr reinstein great principle thank you and and all those groups as you mentioned i'm i am going to thank you for all of them who aren't here tonight and

019i'm quite sure that that they've already thank you but again i thank you for that okay let's um move forward uh the report of our student representatives can we bring tomas and emily forward tomas i see you first so i will welcome you good evening happy thursday happy thursday night in march good evening and uh yesterday is yours thomas great thank you um so as the weather improves and we transition into spring the focus of students has shifted to finishing this year preparing for the upcoming year in the past few weeks students have begun meeting virtually with their guidance counselor to choose classes for the following year juniors have also met with guidance counselors and their parents to discuss their post-high school plans in regards to clubs the saga club has begun preparing for their

020pride picnic in the community pride event in june by meeting with members of the berkeley heights ymca and diversity council model u.n and science olympiad are finalizing preparations for upcoming conferences and competitions other clubs meanwhile have been focusing on spreading awareness to actions of hate uac or understanding asian cultures club recently held a discussion on the recent hate actions directed toward asian american americans and students in diversity-based clubs have been selected to produce a video series to target discrimination and stereotyping at gl additionally students teachers and district administrators took part in a meaningful discussion on the literary literary elements and impact of american gordon's poem the hill we climb lastly gl hilltopper players have begun production for a fully virtual version of the 1985 movie clue which will be aired over zoom though streaming the

021play over zoom is a first they're working closely with mr voorhees to enhance the video and audio production quality look out for more information on performance dates and tickets so that you can see it from home though some clubs may be focusing on their final events of the year all continue to work diligently to be as successful as possible in these final endeavors tomas great thanks very much do we have emily i'm here i don't know if you can see me there she is i got you emily good evening good evening so gl sports is approaching the spring season boys basketball has ended with a great season winning 10 games hockey ended their season with a record of 2 12-1 they also finished their season winning the kelly cup championship wrestling just started their season

022winning their first match 66-6 and playing newprov today the gl track participated in two dual meets these past weeks and won most races the team will compete in the county races this sunday looking forward to the spring lacrosse baseball and softball are all beginning their pre-seasons online and their seasons will start in april in school seniors were recently all allowed back in person without cohorts this was a smooth transition for the seniors and allowed everyone to have a hopeful glimpse towards the end of senior year we soon will have more students in the high school as well as the seniors as the seniors but that is start to set set to start in the in motion in the beginning of spring when we come back from spring break thank you emily thanks very much any

023questions from board members for our student reps i have one for thomas thomas you said tickets would be available for the uh video production yes it'll be available over zoom they're still working out over the details you know it's something they've never done before so i'll let you know if any progress is made okay thank you of course do we know the timing or the date of the play i think it's supposed to be in may though i believe dr raleigh i assume that whenever that date is set there'll be other communications we're not to just rely on tomos to be recently i assure you we will put it out we'll put the information in the community so thomas don't feel the weight of your back on the weight on your back for that i

024can assure you we will make sure that i'm sure the hilltoppers will do the communication i'm sure others will so we'll make sure it gets out to everybody um when it when it's available any other questions from board members for student reps and one thing if i may may note um mr hyman you asked about the enrollment numbers on a number of the new electives i think after this week that students have officially begun choosing their classes you'll better you'll get a better sense of those numbers because before it was um it was just a general list that students when they met with their guidance counselors this week they had a better idea and so that these meetings would be more efficient so i think after this week you'll have a better idea appreciate that

025thanks thomas okay with that i will turn over to the next item which is the report of our superintendent dr varley all right good evening everyone in my 13 years of college and graduate education there was not a single class on how to navigate a pandemic while leading a school district i'm sure that this is true for every admit teacher and administrator in this district as it is for me on the anniversary of the coven 19 pandemic lockdown i find myself looking back over the last year marveling over what we have accomplished our custodians who have adjusted to every new cleaning requirement our nurses who managed to out contact trace the department of health our cst in finding creative ways to support their students the administrative team who put pivoted on the fly to what

026seemed like daily changes and direction from the state the support staff whose effort in keeping the administrators on track is so often unsung the teachers who reinvented teaching time and time again often from scratch and finally the board of education for supporting us as we navigated all of it my hope is that we emerge from the pandemic stronger from the experience and leverage the lessons learned to make the district more dynamic for all of our students i want to echo mr reinstein's statements regarding the parents who work so hard to get our teachers vaccinated we are one step closer to a normal school year also the thanks to miss kane and the bhef for their grants that they have provided our teachers making us a better place i also want to thank principal han um

027with his donations of the mask that we received i saw them come in and it was a great amount of mass for our students and our teachers tonight it is with mixed emotions that i announced the retirement of two long time berkeley heart berkeley heights central office fixtures donna fellazola and tom long i am sad to be losing so much wisdom and experience but so happy for them and their families donna fellazola has been our business administrator for 15 years and is retiring effective june 30th 2021. i compliment her for all of her hard work over the years and keeping the district in compliance and in the black but donna's impact on the district is beyond the numbers she will be remembered for her kindness humanity and her care for everyone donna you will be

028missed tom long the assistant to the superintendent has worked for both the union county regional district and after regionalization berkeley heights public schools for 34 years tom has been an invaluable research to the district his understanding of the ins and outs of the department of education and how to navigate it are masterful anyone with experience with the department of education knows how truly impressive this is tom will also be missed we have many other retirements on the agenda and i wish you all the very best i'm also excited to announce that annie corley hand principal of mary k mcmillan since july of 2009 has been selected as the national association of elementary school principals national distinguished principal they also recognized her as the visionary principal of the year this organization has recognized all of miss

029corley hands tireless efforts and critically important work with parents students and staff during her years as principal at mary k mcmillan i would also like to thank everyone for their enthusiastic support of our partnership with the berkeley heights diversity council and the one book one community event we will be reading dr ibram x kennedy's new york times best-selling work how to be an anti-racist we are looking forward to a spirited discussion of this work we are in the final stages of wrapping up our investigation from the defend december 1st 2020 board meeting at this point we do not have any former students who have come forward to file a formal report before we close this investigation we are urging anyone who wishes to make a complaint about any or current current or former situations in

030bhps to come forward now as required by law the current students concerns have to be investigated through the hib process we have the district anonymous reporting system for this former students can file a report at bh former students at cga j law in other news if we do not have another snow day prior to our april 8th board meeting the board will have the calendar on the agenda to approve the give back days of may 28 and june 1st and now we will present our update on the district diversity initiative and i will share my screen mike do you have everyone promoted mr hopkins elissa oh i see alyssa's there why can't i present there we go in february of last year we started an initiative focusing on inclusion inspiration and empowerment little did we

031know how much we needed this initiative in may we wrapped up ramped up our efforts and continued creating committees for the 2021 school year tonight we will be doing update on what we have been doing the diversity equity and inclusion task force as announced in january we started working on creating a diversity equity inclusion task force the board of education approved the formation of that task force in february and we have hit the ground running the purpose of the dei task force is to create a dei strategic plan that will be added to the district's current strategic plan it will also create the metrics by which dei progress will be measured our composition of the dei task force is a consultant two administrators three faculty two students two recent graduates four current parents and one

032parent of a recent graduate now the elementary diversity committee is chaired by mary beth kopaz and i'm going to take care of her portion of this presentation on the elementary diversity committee they gathered and analyzed data on diversity inclusion with the k-5 students over 96 percent of the students feel accepted culturally within our schools however many felt that the books in the libraries do not represent them now the genera the bhef has given generous support of giving more books that across all types of students each building k-5 conducted a black history month project and each child presented information on their person it was very well received we also had mlk kindness and justice challenged challenge lunar new year world day of social justice and women's history month author and storyteller tahara presented a virtual program

033where a musician where music was used to explain the underground railroad so you can see that the elementary diversity committee since our last update has been very busy so now i'm going to turn it over to mr hopkins so that he can start presenting on the gl diversity and cms diversity committees uh good evening at the heart of the diversity uh committee's actions in the middle school in the high school we really are looking to empower our students to take ownership of their culture and so the heart of the presentation today are going to be given by three students as you can see here on slide eight uh alyssa pradhan grade eleven lauren gomez i'm sorry that should be grade 11 and lee brock leah brogdon grade eight uh the first presenter is going to

034be uh leah brogdon for the columbia middle school moving on to slide nine miss brogden hi everyone i'm leah brogdon an eighth grader at columbia middle school last week we held our cms literary circle on angie thomas's critically acclaimed new york times bestseller the hate u give the literary circle was generously supported by the berkeley heights education foundation we had a great turnout of students staff and community members with over 30 participants the literary circle was held on zoom with breakup groups led by student discussion leaders from 6th to 8th grade our discussions included seeing the different perspectives of others trying to engage the community opening our own eyes on diversity and social injustice and ways we can keep these discussions going with our fellow classmates we received a great deal of positive feedback from

035students and staff both about the thought-provoking discussions and the impressive work the students did in leading these discussion groups students also said they had fun and they felt like it was a great way to raise the topic of social justice to our school community in addition to the bhef i want to thank our eighth grade social studies teacher ms coleridis and cms's assistant principal miss acosta for helping to put together the literary circle it was a great experience and both students and staff would like to have another literary circle before the end of the school year thank you thank you miss brock we'll now move on to the next slide with uh alyssa pradon and lauren gomez who we're going to be presenting for gl evening everyone i'm alyssa pradhan a junior at gl and

036i'm so excited to talk about the gl diversity's geo-diversity committees events tonight good evening as well everyone my name is lauren gomez i'm a junior representative of the diversity committee and i'm so excited to tell you guys what we've been focusing on lately so in the past couple of months alone the gl diversity committee has organized and held so many events in february students staff and members of the community read trevor noah's number one new york times best-selling autobiography born a crime in which noah presented the serious issues of apartheid with the eye of a comedian the literary circle was generously funded by the berkeley heights education foundation and mrs deva and mrs avino led the virtual event there were over 60 members of the community who participated in the event and it was a

037wonderfully engaging and productive discussion on the issues of race diversity and importance of knowledge the diversity committee also held a roundtable discussion for geo students and staff which is led by mrs talrico on amanda gorman's inaugural poem the hillbilly climb over 30 students and staff attended and participated in the constructive discussion where we continue the conversation on race identity belonging and the unfinished business of america in both discussions students bravely and thoughtfully engaged in conversations about issues in our community today these two were my favorite because not only did they rekindle my passion for reading memoirs and poetry but they also enabled me and many other students to be part of a community where students and other people were willing to learn and be part of a positive change uh additionally yesterday rwandan genocide symbol

038for kazito kalima gave a virtual presentation and held the question and answer session with the freshman pc program at gl to share his experiences and spread awareness about genocide and holocaust the sexuality and gender acceptance club also known as saga has been hosting a series of lunch and learn titled support zones that work towards opening up dialogue between staff and students and to learn from a student's perspective these sessions help teachers become aware of what lgbtq plus students may go through in classroom settings and how they can be more inclusive and mindful in their everyday closets the understanding asian cultures club also known as uac presented on notable asian women in history to our members and talked about agent representation in the media and occupational fields following this club session we created an informational flyer

039summarizing these amazing people and displayed it on the school's tv this week we also talked about the shocking violence and hate crimes against the asian american community across the country trying to identify the causes of the recent spike to raise awareness on this issue members of our club will create posters with information combating racism and xenophobia against asians now i want to introduce lauren gomez for the next slide so the diversity committee is planning a number of events to round out the school year there are two smaller roundtable events that will proceed and they're open to all staff and students and we are looking to have one large event that will be open to everyone within the community specifically the two roundtable events are going to occur in april specifically april 8th we have the

040honor of the anniversary of women's suffrage and in honor of that we will have a leadership event with mayor angie defaney who will be talking about her experience and perspective as a woman holding in public office and additionally on april 20th we have as part of the holocaust and genocide awareness month mr porik will be hosting what it means to never forget being the grandchild of a holocaust survival so i definitely encourage everyone to go check that out in early may the date is still to be determined however the diversity committee and model un club with the generous support of the berkeley heights education foundation are looking to host a community-wide event presented regarding a presentation with weiwei who is a former political prisoner and founder of the executive director of the women's peace network

041in burma and the president's presentation will basically discuss the play of rowinga as a junior representative myself of the diversity committee i have found the past events to be very informative and enjoyable as a facilitator for the recent bournemouth crime book discussion i was so pleased to hear many different opinions on the novel and different perspectives and it was definitely really inspiring to me to see so many gl students and staff reading the same book and it seems as if the diversity committee has really created a community and almost a culture in a sense and the diversity committee overall is really enthusiastic enthusiastic about our events we've received lots of positive feedback from both staff and students which everyone really appreciates and it encourages us as a committee to take further action and further initiative

042so to conclude we would really like to thank the board for its continuous support and we hope to continue on with the journey and to stay up to date with the gl diversity committee please follow the instagram account at glhs.diversity underscore committee and thank you so much for the opportunity to speak tonight and i cannot wait for the diversity committee's future events and to create an inclusive culture at gl thank you thank you ladies and mr hopkins that was fantastic and i was a part of several of the gl activities and i've got to say we have some smart students i was a part of the trevor noah born of crime discussions and the depth of these i was in a group of all girls and the depth of these girls and how they got

043really involved with this book was fantastic so thank you very much are there any questions of the board i have a quick question i think this is great in all of this uh all the hearing about all the activities that are going on are we also looking at activities around like physical differing physical abilities and neurodiversity as well as part of the diversity and inclusion effort we we have that in our diversity equity and inclusion task force we are addressing it there in our committees we do we do everyone is represented it's just as of right now i'm and i'll have to work through with ms gardner to see what i know she has talked to me about a few things but we have things on on the way and we've had students from our

044dhh program participate in all and in several other events and uh we've discussed at the administrative level and it's certainly an intent some of the um some of the challenges presented by covid have have made that uh a little more difficult at the moment thank you my question is more for um probably for alyssa or for lauren as i look at the list of activities and diverse events that have taken place i i am beyond impressed with how many things that we're doing my question is does the rank and file student at gl feel like we are addressing more proactively diversity does it feel different like to me when i look at this it feels like we're doing so much more than we've done in the past which i know is something that we needed

045to improve on but does it feel different to the average student at gl i definitely think it makes a difference and there is a big impact and it's showing because um so the understanding asian cultures club from that perspective i started that club or my friends and i started that club uh last march so this is kind of like our anniversary this month but um when we started there wasn't an organization or a group such as the asian club and when we started we really wanted to emphasize that it wasn't just for asian students or asian um people from the asian community and in the beginning that's kind of what we only saw and so now when we host our virtual meetings despite the obstacles presented by covid we have students from all different racial

046backgrounds not just asian students and we have students who aren't afraid to ask the question or who aren't hesitant to like not learn about a new topic and every meeting there are new students coming in new students learning about information and saying oh i didn't know this before oh wow i did not know that this is how or i didn't know what this meant and so from that perspective regardless of how small i definitely do feel and see the impact so yes um just to add on to that for sure with the average student we've totally seen an impact i mean i'm the social media manager as well for usc and i've seen we've had as many uh people show up as many as like 30 to 40 which is like our last meeting had

047a large amount of attendees and it was um typical attendees thought you wouldn't really it was atypical attendees because it was new perspectives all different grades all different people we didn't even know um and i've heard i've informed friends and classmates who probably weren't conscious about these events and then would show up to the events and then kind of inform me like wow this was very interesting thank you for informing me about it i had a good time so to the average student it definitely i think has had an effect and that's basically the importance of it is kind of to get to the people who prior to this we're not conscious of these sort these certain subjects and things to talk about so i think it's definitely taken um an effect in the most

048positive way i am so encouraged to hear that i really am especially the fact when i hear that so many students of different backgrounds are joining when you said it's so it's not just the asians as part of the asian club i am so encouraged to hear that the broad participation of others the the amount of discussion debate for that is great i can only hope that that continues and more of that diversity uh creeps into these clubs that we're doing so thank you both for that yeah ladies i would just echo that keep up the great work we love hearing from our students and i would just piggyback on dr varley's comments when she's talking about the depth and the quality of the dialogue you know that is happening at these at these meetings

049i have to say you two ladies are really doing a great job representing what's going on because um i clearly see that and you have our full support and the fact that you're talking to the board so extemporaneously i have to tell you i'm very impressed well done thank you so much there's so much positive movement and i think as much as so many of us are zoomed out i think the fact that this is available on zoom encourages people to just sit back and pop in for a little bit i think it has really opened the door and it is great that you are so overwhelmingly accepting everybody into your group it's it's great movement and i congratulate all of you for a great job thank you so much are there any other questions

050on diversity from board members okay let's keep going okay i'm now going to turn it over to miss chris riley so she can introduce the budget she is our chair um finance chair and i'm handing it over to you chris sure so i think this is my third budget and um before i talk about very briefly some highlights i i do want to do a second shout out to donna felizola who i have worked with very closely over these last three years and she has tolerated all of my questions and educated me on how this animal works which is a little bit different than corporate america and i just want to say thank you donna i really appreciate all the time and energy you've spent with me um you've made me a lot smarter as

051a finance chair and i really appreciate it and uh your retirement is uh well deserved and trust me you're going to like it just a few comments about the budget this budget accomplishes a lot can you all hear me clearly great there are curriculum updates including dei there are technology refreshes and updates and additional support for our students in need especially given some of the challenging events of this year but i do want to highlight um some of the investments that we've made in early childhood education as some of you may recall we do have a five-year strategic plan and when dr varley uh joined us a little over a year and a half ago we were i think at the end of our third year and the board asked her to take a very

052constructive look at that strategic plan and give us her her commentary and one of the things that she felt that we really needed to focus on in order to go from good or arguably very good to great which was our long-term goal to be up there with the top school systems was to focus on early childhood education and we started doing that the last couple of years in terms of you know our partnership with columbia teachers college professional development with a focus on you know early k through five uh curriculum we hired a director who was singularly focused or i shouldn't say singular focus focused on that in with along with some other things and of course one of the key cornerstones was full day kindergarten which we've talked a lot about over the last

053over many years and this budget delivers full day kindergarten finally after um after many years of discussion uh berkeley heights is only i believe one in 40 districts in maybe 600 plus districts in new jersey that does not have full day kindergarten so this this budget delivers that in a fiscally responsible way that we believe will not only benefit um our children but all of our tax paying residents in berkeley heights so with that i'll let donna get into more of the details okay as i start talking about the budget before i actually start talking about it i would like to thank the finance committee and chris riley for helping us through the process the finance committee met several times we talked about what the original requests were we spoke about the long-term goals of

054the district we talked about the immediate goals of the district and we planned ahead they they saw the budget one is was millions of dollars more than when you're seeing tonight and they really helped us to bring it to be financially responsible to the taxpayers so i appreciate all that they did and all the time and the effort that they put into it i would also like to thank the administrative team we they start working on the budget in september and uh we talk about in numerous times we go back and forth with what should be in there what shouldn't be in there they're spending too much money where do they want to focus so it really is a joint effort of the administrative team and the finance committee and i think the product that

055we're presenting you tonight is um is a great budget it's financially responsible it's and it provides the students and the staff with what they need to have a successful school year when we created this budget we're creating a budget that reflects returning to a traditional in-person school setting that is our hope and our goal for september as we move forward we're continuing to look at our strategic plan and work towards the goals of increasing student achievement while addressing student emotional learning as ms riley said we'll be focusing on improving early childhood education and as we look towards september and think about the students and the staff coming back to school we realize that they'll be both academic issues that we're going to have to address and social and emotional issues that we'll have to address

056and we have included supports for that in this budget as was stated before we are very proud to say that this budget includes universal full-day kindergarten for all resident students we have been talking about this for several years there have been several presentations regarding full day kindergarten and we are a point where we can finally introduce it to start in september to accomplish this we will have to hire three additional teachers and we will be making appropriate classroom upgrades to accommodate the full day kindergarten program you'll hear more about this next at our next meeting in uh on april 8th as we looked towards next year we realized we had to make curricular changes to the budget or to the school year so this has been included in the budget we are including curricular materials

057that will address diversity equity and inclusion our uh grade five social studies curriculum is uh aging out let's say it's on the cycle to be upgraded so we are budgeting for a new k-5 social studies curriculum new jersey the state of new jersey updated their science standards so we have included curriculum materials to meet those standards at the middle school we are introducing engineering style design challenges we will also have new english based electives at the high school we'll be adding a math teacher to support the increasing demands for math and business classes as i mentioned mentioned earlier we realize that our students and our staff will need additional and different supports it's going to be different for everyone coming back to school in september so we are looking at how we deliver individualized instructional

058instruction to the students and we will be making some changes to those programs and we are adding a guidance counselor to our staff to help students with with their social and emotional needs at the middle school in the high school we're continuing the in-district inclusive programming for students with disabilities and at the high school we'll be adding a learning consultant to support the inclusive practices the learning consultant will help the other child study team members at the high school work with the students and support and help them with their emotional needs as we looked at our budget another area we looked at was professional development and we are going to be offering additional professional development opportunities for teachers and administrators that support our key initiatives to include diversity equity inclusion and social justice we are

059also partnering with columbia university to provide professional development for k-5 teachers focusing on reading phonics and content literacy as we always do in our budget we look at our five-year technology plan and we see what is needed to move our technology forward we will be replacing the oldest chromebooks in the district these are the chromebooks that are currently used being used by the 5th grade students we'll be purchasing new devices for teachers based on what level the teachers are at some will be getting laptops and some will be getting chromebooks and part of our technology plan is all to look at also to look at the infrastructure at each school last year we upgraded the infrastructure at columbia at the high school next this year we will be doing it at the middle school we'll

060be adding additional access points and we'll be improving the network backbone equipment we will also have an industrial technologist who will help the teachers integrate technology into their classroom if you were at our board meeting last month you heard the presentation about link it which is an assessment management and data analytics tool which helps the teachers and administrators giving them valuable information regarding students in a simple to use interface we have included this in our budget for next year when we look at our budget we look at some of the areas where we have been able to make some efficiencies and one of the things that has been very helpful to us this year is the grant funding that we received we see we received approximately 280 000. which helped us to offset the costs

061related to code the money was used to purchase ppe cleaning supplies and purchase some of the technology and academic and software the academics and software that we needed to respond to covet we will also be getting another cares grant for approximately the same amount and we will be able to this grant is a little bit different and we can do some of our building improvements towards that grant we'll also use technology and curricular materials we continue to share services with the town we have really benefited from their vehicle maintenance program uh they do a great job repairing our buses and our maintenance vehicles we also work on the fields together we share equipment and supplies we are another way we save is by partnering with other school districts for various services share transportation we purchase

062our supplies our telephones our utilities internet there are so many things that we can purchase through our co-ops all of it's saving us money when you look at our expenses this is always an interesting pie chart our salaries are 66 percent of the budget and benefits are 18.3 percent of the budget so approximately 85 percent of our budget is salaries and benefits that leaves 15 percent of budget to cover all of those other things it's the out of district tuition transportation utilities regular supplies are professional services capital everything else is in that small 15 so we really are i want to say a people business salaries and benefits take up a large portion of our budget uh this is a more detailed analysis of our expenses this is a comparison of our budget to the

063adjusted budget to the current year's adjusted budget the salaries are 36 million dollars this represents a 2.9 percent increase over this year's budget included in this we have included five additional staff members and the teachers salary is a 3.2 percent salary increase we are proud to say that this is resulting in only a 2.9 percent change from this year's budget one of the or one of the big reasons is the savings that are being realized from retirements so people retire and then that breakage is used to offset some of these salary increases and the new staff another area that we're really proud of is our employee benefits and that is going up 3.5 and in this day and age and the way that health benefits are increasing this is a a cost that we've been

064able to manage and control and again i have to thank the board they really did good due diligence we looked at other ways of um offering health benefits and we've come up with some good solutions and we are monitoring our costs in this area our child study team does a great job they managed to create programs in district for our students and that results in a savings in our out of district tuition so by creating the programs in district we're saving out of district costs for special ed students so they do a great job with this we are also realizing savings in our transportation the town is helping us keep our repair costs in line and we are also realizing rooting efficiencies maintenance costs are also going down this is really two-fold one is we

065are really monitoring our utility usage we have created schedules for the building we're very conscious of when things are turned on and when things are turned off and we have also changed a lot of our operations the equipment that we're using the materials that we use which affects how we're cleaning the buildings how often and we have realized savings in that area you'll also notice that our instructional supply costs are going down approximately 10 percent this is an interesting phenomenon of the pandemic and schools shutting down the schools were very conscious when they built their budget they went back into the classrooms they saw what was in the classrooms what supplies weren't used from last year what supplies aren't being used this year and when they created their budgets for last year they really were

066careful about this and most of their supply requests were less than what they were this year we're also realizing a savings in our administrative costs some of this might be a result of the pandemic but we've noticed that a lot of the membership fees have been reduced some of the outside conferences professional development and travel has been reduced so we are seeing savings there the capital budget is one area that is increasing we are addressing in addition to the classroom renovations that we have to make for full day kindergarten we are addressing some health and safety issues in the schools mostly addressing classroom ceilings and floor tile that have to be replaced and if you've driven through our parking lots you realize that there are potholes and paving repairs that have to be made so

067that will all be done this summer and the board has looked at the financing of this and will be withdrawing money from the capital reserve account to cover a portion of this cost there is a slight decrease in the co-curricular and athletics account and again this is due to the reduction in supply costs our technology budget is also decreasing there this is two folds um one is a strategy of lease purchasing technology equipment over a three to five year period depending on the life of the equipment and the second portion is that some of these expenses can be charged to the cares grant so some expenses were taken out of the budget and will be charged to the grant our support services are also decreasing by hiring the additional learning consultant we will not rely

068on outside consultants as much as we have in the past so overall our budget for next year is 54 million five hundred thousand dollars this represents a point six percent increase over the current year's adjusted budget the next slide reviews is a revenue comparison and it illustrates where this money is coming from our biggest source of income is the tax levy our tax and the board was very or the finance committee was very conscious of this they really pushed to have a tax levy increase less than two percent and by working together we were able to do that we have a 1.45 tax levy increase um this is a second year in a row where our tax levy increase is less than two percent uh last year we started a little bit over two percent

069and then once the pandemic hit we went back we revisited our budget and our tax levy increase was one point 1.34 so it's really great that we can present this budget and only increase taxes 1.45 there's about a 500 000 increase in our fund balance the fund balance is the money that is left over from the previous year so the state allows us to keep a two percent fund balance and again because of schools shutting down in march of last year we did have excess money that we are now putting into next year's budget as i mentioned before we are making a withdrawal from the capital reserve account to offset the cost of some of our capital projects we receive tuition income from mountainside for our high school students we have a deaf and hard

070of hearing program and we have a paid preschool program and we have some parent paid tuitions we project a slight decrease in our tuition income next year our miscellaneous revenue consists of the activity fee interest that we receive rental income and we anticipate a slight decrease in that also probably about a 20 decrease in that account we have not traditionally budgeted for extraordinary aid we do get extraordinary aid every year we get it at the end of the year for expenses that have occurred during the year but it's an a it's a federal aid that we get every year and after discussions with the finance committee we have decided to budget 300 000 of our extraordinary aid into the budget and our final revenue source is state aid we're getting 26.4 percent more in state

071aid which if you have been to our budget presentations in the past there were many times where our state aid was flat governor murphy recently they did an analysis of all of the districts to see which districts were over some districts were over funded some districts were underfunded they he made a commitment to fund the districts that were underfunded and to take money away from over-funded districts berkeley heights was an underfunded district so we are slated to get additional state aid for a five-year period um last year at that when the budget or when the state budget came out in february we did get additional state aid but when the governor we recast his budget in august that state aid was taken away from us so it's surprising but we got two years worth of

072state aid increase in one year so that what that is what makes up the 54 million dollars in revenues now you might ask how does this impact your individual taxes um when you look at the taxes that are paid for the schools that's really two-fold there's a general fund tax levy which is everything that we just discussed which is the 1.45 percent increase and then there's the debt service portion of the tax levy the debt service portion is the previous year's bonds and referendums that are being paid off so there are two bonds that are being paid off and that tax tax levy is decreasing so when you combine the two it results in a one point three three eight percent increase in the tax levy and when you look at how this factors down

073into the average homeowner based on the average home value we did an analysis of the taxes and in addition to the tax the school taxes you also have to look at the ratable base and as the ratable base increases it decreases the impact of the school tax levy so overall there's a 75 change to the average homeowner the next steps are if the board is in agreement tonight and they approve a tentative budget it gets sent down to the county office the county will review it and they look at it for technical issues they look at it to make sure we're offering the right programs have the right programs in place the right people in place they'll give us their approval and then at the april 29th meaning the board adopts the final budget for

074the next school year again i'm very proud of this budget i think we're accomplishing a lot and i think it's financially responsible budget and the results of many people working together to get us to this point any questions from the board hey donna i have a question uh more of a comment and a question well first off uh i want to echo what chris said and congratulations and your retirement uh again thank you for your hard work and everything that you've done i remember the first time we met when we were working on solar panels way back when many many years ago so long time uh a question i do have uh you talk about the chaos grant and i know i mentioned this at the last meeting thinking that the word grant was a

075competitive grant but maybe just for everyone to explain what to care grant how it's calculated it's really a calculation versus a competitive type grant right um what the state you know the state gets the money and they really give you an allocation so it's an allocation that we get um we do have to do an application which i think is probably where the confusion comes in we have to present an allocation an application to the state saying how we're going to use the money so we have to make a commitment that we're going to spend um x amount on [Music] you know rooftop fan replacement we're going to spend y amount on technology we're going to spend uh you know 500 000 on curriculum to help students bridge that learning gap so we have to

076do an application but they tell us how much money we get and the money is based a lot of times it's based on our financial need they look um a couple of the grants now have looked at if you're a title one district so if you're a title one district which means that you have more uh families that are in financial need that's how they identify a title one district so those districts will get more money than districts that do not have that need right so essentially it's an allocation that we demonstrate how we're going to spend the money but it's not a grant in the typical terms that we apply for a certain dollar amount or anything so all right thank you yes i have a question can you hear me uh yes okay

077great great job on the uh budget as well as are there questions from board members oh robert can everyone hear me i can hear you robert okay um um my first of all congratulations on a great job that you did and um sorry to be even voting on your retirement you were missed already by me and you haven't even gone anywhere um my question is this year cove is a bit different in terms of getting um how am i having awareness of how much feedback we're getting from the public on the development of the budget so have we been getting a lot of public feedback has coveted changed that and if so how is it coming through these days um we have not been getting a lot or as of now i have not received

078many questions about the budget i don't know if this is an impact of covet or not um this is the first time that we're presenting the full budget to the board okay miss riley in past years didn't you used to have a for the committee that opened meetings or at least one of them i should say was open to the public for during budget development yeah instead of having this meeting robert which is open to the public and the public can ask questions we had some years we had one we had two um no one ever attended those meetings okay i mean i think there might have been one person in here in the audience elizabeth kane or originally she was here you know that the berkeley heights educational foundation representative angela was there but

079um and we would have all of our administrators come and present um and quite frankly it just isn't necessary um especially if they're they're you know they're all controlling their budgets less than two percent so this is the same uh the same forum um we are now you know um have accumulated all of the um you know inputs from all of the administrators and you know footed it all across and now we're presenting it to the public okay thank you so donna i have a quick question um firstly congratulations on your retirement and we've worked together for years so i really am going to miss you um so my question is um on one of the slides you were talking about the continuing in district inclusive programming for students with disabilities can you elaborate a

080little bit on the expansion of the collaborative consultant approach of the middle school and government living system we started this program at the elementary schools and it was really very successful we had the special ed teacher and the regular ed teacher working together with a group of students and our goal was to expand that into the middle school and the high school and we started that last year and again with this year being a little bit um you know working the hybrid remote mode we haven't been able to fully implement it but our goal is to fully implement that next year at both schools so it has been very successful and we just want to continue moving forward with that program great thank you donna can i ask the line item for extraordinary aid that's

081300 000 is that traditionally or historically is that earmarked for a specific use case is it facilities related or is it um you know are there any parameters around how that works that's a great question yes there are parameters this is one piece of aid that we do have to apply for it's actually related to special education and it's supposed to be for special ed expenses over a certain amount um and when they started the grant they would give you uh like you know 50 of your out of district and 80 of your in-district costs because the goal of the grant was for you to keep your students in district so they do um so they still follow that model but the amount of the reimbursement changes every year so and it really is based

082on i want to say how generous the federal government is or how much money they have available so some years you might get 80 of what you have applied for other years you might get 65 of what you applied for so you never know what you're going to get or what percentage you're going to get but jordan 300 000 is a conservative number okay got it any other board questions okay donna i thank you very much for that uh chris as as well and the committee and the committee too uh dr well does that finish your superintendent's report that concludes my superintendent's report great thank you uh next we will move to uh adopt the budget um first could have a motion to i'll move item 10a [Music] is there any additional discussion that hasn't

083been had already mr hyman yes mrs young jeremy yes yes mr chinchuli yes mr dequilla yes yes mrs penna yes miss riley i don't know yes mrs kirsch yes mr weinstein yes uh item number 11 liaison reports are there any liaison reports tonight i'll defer my report helen yeah i'll defer my report okay so so i don't have a report for the bhf it's it's more of a comment um i just would like to add to what doug said uh earlier tonight um as a former member and trustee of the class education foundation i've seen firsthand the hard work and education that these parents commit to this organization uh countless hours i've spent organizing fundraisers programs events grants and i just wanted to say thank you and commend all of you once again for your

084hard work and for the great donations i was proud to be part of the bhef and the team when i was a member and i was equally proud to be aboard liaison to this wonderful organization so thank you very much for your support and your generous donations i have one liaison report from environmental commission as the school board liaison uh this past monday i attended the township environmental commission apparently one of the members mentioned a sustainable jersey meeting that happened recently in which food waste was discussed particularly in the context of school districts um apparently there are guidelines as of 2019 that are quite voluminous i believe over 50 pages in writing that would include measuring food waste collecting food waste and designating a faculty leader creating a club group or committee things like that

085and apparently there's some sustainability uh jersey points that could be gotten if we went down this path so i did explain we're currently not really having lunch in the school so it's not really as as current but we'll certainly take it under advisement and i refer the materials to mrs bellazola the other thing i wanted to point out to the the board as a whole and administration recycling keeps coming up so in these meetings so if you ever have an issue or temporary discontinuation of any recycling at any of our buildings for any reason please let me know because it's a standing item on the agenda for the environmental commission so just give me a heads up hopefully it won't but that's it any other liaison reports i have one um we had a meeting

086of the technology committee um a little over a week ago and our primary focus was to discuss the technology budget uh in detail and to um also uh review a five-year look forward on major technology expenditures that mike and his team have put together uh and i just want to thank mike for doing that because it is a um it is a very uh very helpful uh document or plan for us to have um as you know when we're able to look beyond one year out three four five years technology purchases are a major component of our budget we are becoming uh more and more dependent on technology and i just got to give a shout out to um you know the decisions that were made in prior years to push technology one to one

087down through our school system down at first grade because if we hadn't made those investments and if we hadn't been forward thinking we would not have been able to flip the switch back in march of last year the way we were able to do and many districts were not so um as we become reliant on technology for the delivery of educational curriculum not to replace reading writing and arithmetic um it's just really important for us to have a longer term view and mike and his team did a very good job in walking us through that so it was a good meeting thank you i have two updates uh to share one is regarding the berkeley heights diversity committee melissa and i met with the berkeley ice diversity committee we have been partnering with them for

088quite some time but we talked about the listening session that we did last november and how that went uh talked about uh changes and what we've implemented since that and we're also beginning to plan our next listening session with them we believe that will be sometime uh in the may time frame uh with an agenda and information coming forward with that the other item i will share is there is an item on the agenda tonight regarding our continued shared service with the township we have been partnering with the township regarding the tv studio that we have up at gl and the township came forward to us uh to see if we could do a little bit more structured programming uh for the seniors and uh we've been working with them and we now have an

089agreement that the board will be voting on tonight uh to put a little bit more structure to our tv agreement with them that involves a little bit more structured programming and allows the seniors whose primary means of getting information is via tv allowing them to get a greater amount of of programming during more scheduled hours than we were able to do previously a combination of some technology and software and hardware upgrades as well as a little bit more work on our part we now have a new agreement to share so we're happy about that and we're hoping that that vehicle for the seniors is also helpful um with that i'm sorry were there any any other final liaison reports sound like we're good okay uh moving on facilities report donna donna you muted you're still

090muted donna we continue to plan for students to come back into the classroom and we're purchasing additional ppe tonight on the agenda is the purchase of additional desk shields and this should be it for desk shields once we purchase these i think every student in the district every desk will have a shield on it um we are also as i said earlier uh doing assessment of our parking lots and identify identifying areas that need immediate repairs and those that will be repaved or repaired over the summer and also on the agenda tonight is approval of summer sports camps we are working with the counselors to make sure they follow the cove protocols but we realize that this is an important program for our community so we are moving forward with those programs that's it great

091thanks donna just a quick question donna i'll let the last thing you indicated that the district is going to be entering into the energy audit by the state program you have an update on that um i have not we have not heard back i had a one conference call with them where they asked for some additional information but since then i have not heard from them okay thank you okay thanks donna we will now move into our questions one citizen's here donna doug i have a question for donna just real quick um so this is can you hear me chris has it yeah that's right chris yeah so this coveted relief build that was recently signed um i know that there's a big chunk of money i think it's like something i know enough to

092be dangerous 600 billion for school districts do we have any line of sight on to as to whether or not you know we can apply for that or you know it can fund some of these you know recurring covert related costs like you're talking about facilities wise or is it just too soon um the one grant that we have commitment for the one grant that i mentioned earlier which is about 280 000 but the larger grant or the larger funding that was just released unfortunately we might not get any of it and this is just preliminary the um these numbers are not official yet but the numbers that were released were based on districts that did get title one funding we didn't get any title one funding um us new provenance chatham we all looked

093at our allocations and we saw zeros there and we were kind of surprised so we reached out to the county and they reached they're trying to get they're trying to get us money somehow and work with the state or the federal government to change that application they told us not to you know hang our hats yet that there's still the possibility that they would get us some money but when you look at some of those districts are getting millions and millions of dollars and we're not getting anything it's really disheartening but um they said nothing is set and cement yet these the numbers that were in the paper or that were initially out there are not they're not definitely the following numbers okay thank you okay any other final questions on that okay moving forward

094we will now open the the citizens hearing this will be the one citizens hearing meeting we have for this meeting to be recognized please ensure that your first name and your last name is listed on your device you should use the raise your hand function to to be recognized i will unmute you which allows you to come off mute on your own device and address the board it will take you a second before you're unmuted for you to be able to turn on your camera if you'd like wait a second because it does take zoom a second before it allows you to do that if you have more than one question please ask them all at the beginning the board recognizes students and staff members rights of privacy and therefore encourages all members of the

095public to address their concerns regarding individual students and our staff members by meeting privately with the appropriate ministers administrative staff when addressing the board and the public forum members of the public should refrain from identifying any student and our staff member by name and are solely responsible for the comments which could be considered defamatory or slanderous according to the laws of new jersey each resident will have three minutes to speak with that we will open up the citizens hearing again if you want to be recognized raise your hand the first person i see is cheryl harris cheryl you should be you should be unmuted hi yes can you hear me i can good evening cheryl how are you tonight hi good thank you how are you outstanding um you know i recall from previous discussions

096at the board on technology plans that for the 21 22 school year the devices for gl students were going to be updated and i was wondering if that's part of this budget actually there was a slight change to the plans when we did an analysis of the devices at the high school we found that what they have is actually best for them at this point um the way that they're using it and the um the function of it is really what they need now at the high school and that decision was put off for a year so next year we'll be upgrading the devices at uh for the students at the high school okay i just like to add the comment that i know for my gl students there are times that they have to

097pull out a laptop because the the ipads just can't run some of the apps or whatever they're doing in their classes so i hope that does make it into the budget and i'm glad you mentioned that joe that is one of the things uh like we didn't feel that the chromebooks met all of the requirements like that ipads did certain things and the chromebooks did other things so there wasn't one perfect device out there so we're still looking into that thank you but cheryl this is chris um all gl uh laptops will be ipads will be replaced with chromebooks next year in the next budget year so that's 20 20 23 school year and in the in the following year it'll be it'll be pushed down to cms right we can only do so much

098in one year because that's almost a half a million dollars thank you sure great thanks cheryl the next person who i see is liz kane i don't have to have you raise your hand because i can actually see you i do see you hold on i'm gonna i'm gonna unmute you i'm gonna i'm gonna unmute you so you can speak and then everybody else can hear you as well all right you're good now i'm good now okay thank you so yes i am the in person member of the public i am the one person who usually comes to the budget meeting so i'm going to ask you my question i ask every year with the new curriculum is there something that's in this budget is there something to still buy physical books i still feel

099that there's a percentage of the population that greatly benefits from the physical book i understand you don't need one for every student to bring home especially with today's society but i still think there's a good need for at least a percentage of physical books to be available for those students i was going to ask the chromebook question and um that cheryl already asked the guidance counselor that's on here uh where are they going to be located and going forward with that question i know the ed foundation funded something called doxy.me it was a software that was used by the counseling department and i'm curious if that's something that made into the budget for next year for them to continue that use and do i bring up a new thing now too like everything or wait

100i'm sorry i have one other new topic i wanted to address the board if this is the only citizen's hearing because usually i would wait till the end of the meeting or do you want me to come back in line no no i want you to have all these guys all right so some of you know like i've been advocating for full day kindergarten since my daughter was in kindergarten and every year saying and i want to see it by the time she graduates so all y'all know she's a senior next year she just squeaked it in so hopefully [Music] so i always knew it wasn't going to be to the advantage of my family but that's fine it's definitely an advantage so the other thing i want to discuss or put on the radar

101and i'm sure it won't take another 12 years is discussions i've been having both in education with my children's pediatricians and other members of staff about how adolescents and the physical changes that they're going through make it almost impossible for them to function early in the morning so seeing these high schoolers outside at 7 30 in the morning waiting for a bus and um trying to get into school starting and thinking at 7 50 it's just not physically possible i've been told by pediatricians and other psychological professionals that it's like possible their rhythms have changed during this time of their life and they can't they can't go to bed at a regular normal time and therefore have trouble getting up so i ask you and i have no answers so it's just the first seed

102and i'll do some research and send some more um especially with this hybrid situation i've noticed the change in my own students when they get to be home instead and having that extra hour makes a huge difference in their life i have a middle schooler and a high schooler so it does make a big difference in how they function so i would ask that with this change and all the other changes that are happening to start looking into how we can maybe flip that schedule or make some of these changes i know little kids the kindergartners first graders are probably up at six saying when's the bus coming where my high schooler is not getting out of bed well some are very ready and could get in for that 7 30 8 o'clock morning instead

103of the high schoolers being in that early and i know additionally when parents were you know back in the old days when parents were going to work and dropping off um waiting to get that drop off at 8 30 or whatever it is sometimes it was really difficult in regards to getting your own children off to school and then getting to your job on time so just a new thing to add to the list of things to consider going forward for next year so that's all my stuff so let me break that down into a couple different pieces so i'm gonna work backwards so thank you there are some districts that are looking at piloting uh changing the times uh i i know a couple of them are are looking at that um dr vale

104i'm sure you've probably heard in some of your superintendent forums yeah chad was going to do it this year but obviously with the and milburn but with the pandemic they they halted it yeah so i would say thank you and you know we're we're we're looking at that as well as watching others on that one um thank you for your comments on full day kindergarten uh the guidance counselor is is where the guy it's going to be one guidance counselor we do not we know where we may be moving some guidance counselors around but it is hired for the elementary section not one per building but probably 0.75 per building as opposed to 0.50 if that makes sense baby steps it's quite a budget hit so we're slowly moving in that direction to get one

105per building i know i know and then scott for the last piece i know during uh those applications we talked a lot about text or physical textbooks versus uh online textbooks and workflows can you just comment uh i know all the trend of sure i'll be glad to share the the trend remains that most of our purchases for new text materials include both an online and a classroom version and we have found that to be the most successful also for a number of reasons up to and including the fact that after online subscriptions expire we still have something that students can use so um that is the most cost effective model and it's also the one as a district we generally embrace as we purchase and make these decisions for new books so we are

106we're in agreement there okay liz thank you lee timmerman i'm going to unmute you lee if you can unmute and then ask your question oh maybe there we go how's that we got it lee good evening how are you today i'm fine how are you doing we are well um i'm not even going to try my video because i'll probably screw it up um first of all congratulations on the finance committee and the budget presentation having done this for many many years as a technology controller i appreciate what you've done appreciate how hard it is and also i thought the presentation by donna was just excellent so i understood everything and good job everything um with that said i i'm a little disappointed that we aren't putting money as i said several meetings ago into

107at least the study of our ventilation system and whether we can upgrade it i know we don't have the money to do it all but i think we should preparing for the future as we did for technology and looking at what it might cost to do that secondly uh which ties to this is we have over a thousand additional units going into berkeley heights in the construction area and even if you eliminate the units across from the ymca pool that are 55 plus that still leaves according to some information 857 new units going into berkeley heights and the school population over the next few years and five six years is going to grow so that concerns me as well i think we need to be taking a broader picture for the future i don't know

108if we have a five-year plan for facilities or what but we should be doing something that way just like we did for technology as well what are we going to do where are we going to build where would we have to build out and how would that fit into our planning for financial planning over a five-year period so those are just comments and not really looking for feedback unless we do have a five-year plan that i don't know about um the second thing or the third thing is uh when when will parents know if we're going to full day kindergarten there was a lot of discussion i think two years ago about changing woodruff to i think was first and second grade and putting all the kindergarten mary kay and moving kids around so this

109would impact if that's still the plan or the or the design it would definitely impact all the second graders at woodruff right now because they would be having a third school within three years they would be at mary kay for their first grade they'd be at wooder for the second grade and they would either have to go to hughes or mountain park for third grade and that's an awful big change of changing of friends changing of patterns for for delivery of students the buses etc so i don't know when you're planning to let that information out but i think it'd be interesting for the parents to know so they can think about it and how they talk to them i got my video on i'm sorry um and the last thing is um is there

110a scorecard anywhere or any information that's available to the public about how many cases we've had in the school how many classrooms have been closed and you know because one of my grandsons just was spent two weeks off remotely a huge because of of a student getting coveted and i'm just wondering do we have a record of that any place that the public can see those are my questions greatly thank you very much you mentioned five things let me address all of them um first of all your thanks for the budget thank you uh we appreciate the feedback uh you have mentioned to us the ventilation study we do as a facilities team look at that and are always looking at ventilation uh as part as part of our constant upgrades our facility seems i

111don't we're not doing an actual study per se but you have it talk to us about that and we continue to look at ventilation and ways to improve uh you mentioned enrollment uh we are aware of all the development in town uh we hired a demographer last year to look at helping us plan what the enrollment would be uh right now our enrollment is under what it's been over the past eight to ten years so we do have extra capacity in schools right now we do not foresee a need to build on to any building of course we don't know if what number of students would come into one two or three bedroom houses we are prepared for that we have uh projections based on the different sizes of the communities uh and and the

112potential number of students obviously we'll look at that each year as that goes forward as relates to full day kindergarten and what changes might come out of that as donna indicated before at our next april 8th meeting we are planning to do a full presentation of full-day kindergarten and how we will be implementing full-day kindergarten there are a lot of components to full day kindergarten around resourcing around buildings around students around educational groupings around transportation there's a lot to discuss we will be having a full discussion about that we are in the process of finalizing that uh we do not want to kind of give it to you in peace parts it is really uh a very comprehensive discussion and will be many conversations about that that is scheduled for our april 8th meeting we

113will advertise that um i know you mentioned um you said you have a do you say a grandchild uh there we know that this is something that is important to a lot of members of the of the community and there will be ample time to discuss this and to ask answer questions to your last question on the scorecard we do have a scorecard on our website it gets updated every friday it indicates the number of cases that we have for staff and students by school by week and you can go back i think through i want to say november of last year and it's updated on fridays and you can see the number of cases by school by week does a doc does it uh does it list how many classes had to go remote

114because of the cases or not it doesn't it doesn't list the number of classes uh it does list the number of students um dr varley in her communications to the parents which are quite often it feels like their weekly she does try to include that uh with uh with that if there is um uh for example uh we've had to uh go remote with some fifth grade classes at mountain park and hughes and that is communicated to the parents uh weekly as well well you know it's communicated to those parents but i think it would be better for the public to see the total picture like how many schools how many classes throughout i mean individual parents get notified but we don't know how big the problem really is right okay we can we can

115look at ways to better share that outside of just the parent community we as always thank you very much for your questions tonight thank you can i just add something lee we do have a um long-term capital plan it's outside of the annual budget um you know as you could see from that pie chart in the budget um with 85 percent of our annual budget going to people cost we don't have a lot of room for major expenditures so we do track boilers and heaters and all sorts of things um on a five-year plus rolling capital plan and a lot of times when we have major expenditures like that like repairing a roof or boilers in six buildings we have to go out uh for bond through a referendum reserve one of the other capital

116reserve accounts it's with with you know with with uh trying to keep taxes down um you know there's not a lot of room we do build up a reserve but it's it's you know maybe a million or a million and a half or two million dollars over so time why we and to answer that i mean right in the long term facility plan is put together by the district's uh outside consultant so it's done by a professional engineer looking at all an architect looking at everything so it is done by a professional firm that does that long-term facility plan good i'm glad to hear we have we have some long-term planning so thank you very much greatly thanks again for your comments michael lebland michael you're up next good evening there were other people ahead

117of me i did raise my hand late but that's fine um just two uh items and then two questions one request is if they could suspend the district making automated calls between six and seven pm uh i frequently get calls from my school my my children's schools you know during dinner time and it's disruptive to the family environment just we can do them before six or after seven just not during that dinner time i would be appreciated uh for next year's budget if we could have a further breakdown of the salaries again not looking for individuals i'm talking about blocks by teachers coaches custodial staff admin about the major groups so we can see where the money is really going but i've been having a huge portion just showing up salaries it doesn't give detail

118and we just appreciate some further detail on where the money is actually going in the salary pool all right my two questions uh one this is a repeat question from the last meeting the cost of the lawyers for the bullying investigation um still waiting for that number i've asked about it i'm still looking for that number to be shared with the public and the second one from the district's plan to go remote the week following the easter break with staff extending breaks based on the pandemic are taking personal days would these staff be taking disciplinary actions for extending breaks i know for my district where i work if i were to extend a break for any reason i would face disciplinary action and i didn't get a solid answer from them from previous emails i

119sent regarding that because it seems that the district closing because staff are going um on vacations frankly seems irresponsible by the staff traveling during a pandemic and then having to put your job on hold because you chose to travel doesn't seem fair to the public or fair to our students who are now missing out on a better quality education because people are choosing to travel and then take extending their vacations because they chose to travel when i doubt they plan these things before the pandemic started more than a year ago michael thank you four things so i've got you on the feedback on the automated calls and the timing um we can get you a further breakdown of the salaries by the major groups um give us a day or two and we can share

120that with you uh cost of what a cost of lawyers dr do you have a sense of that i know the the investigation is not over yet but uh we can prop what we can do uh michael is we can get you a uh a cost to date um obviously it's not over yet uh but we can provide you uh with uh a cost of this to uh to date uh you have asked that before and uh we will get we'll get back to you and we'll share it publicly this there's nothing that we're gonna tell you that we can't share with the public so we'll get back to you with a cost to date and we'll try to also figure out what the total cost will be by the end of that um dr

121barley do you want to talk about uh questions about the staff in terms of extending versus how that impacts the remote week after spring break so um i don't want it to be portrayed as they're extending their vacation they are some of our staff members i sent out a survey and they indicated how many days they would have to quarantine and there were approximately 25 staff members who would have to quarantine at least four or more days after they returned from wherever they went therefore we cannot operate classrooms or have a school it wasn't just in one building it was across almost every building so i don't want it to be portrayed as they're extending their vacations they are taking a spring break and thus have to quarantine after as i stated in many of

122my letters i was really hopeful that governor murphy would follow governor cuomo and eliminate the 14 the 10 to 14 day quarantine however i don't see that happening at this point but as far as disciplinary action only if i can prove that they tried to stop the opening of school can i do anything disciplinary great drawing thank you uh very much uh next dan mcgovern dan good evening good evening doug let me uh see if i can get my video going there you are there okay thanks god you said i didn't follow the device to wait a second uh so good evening as mr einstein said i'm dan mcgovern teacher of physics at governor livingston and president of the berkeley heights education association we have a few issues we would like to discuss with the

123board of education tonight before i get to that i would like to take a few moments to mention donna and tom long in my role as a teacher you typically wouldn't interact with the school business administrator but in my role as president i have and i just want to thank donna for her timely and knowledgeable responses to my questions um i really appreciate it during the situation that i know i'm going to get a response from you very quickly that's going to help answer my questions and for tom long just to throw it after i know he's not on the meeting as both the teacher and the president of the association he also is the same with a timely and very knowledgeable response when it comes to all of those matters and i know i

124am not alone in appreciating that from him all right so now to my other remarks for tonight first relates to the week after spring break a year ago educators were hailed as heroes after pivoting to remote instruction with virtually no notice or time to plan members of the bhea have been leaders amongst the state and nation and how we delivered instruction and supported students since the beginning of this crisis over a year ago this school year however educators have been demonized by some for daring to demand a safe working environment we are saddened that despite the nice comments made earlier this evening and comments made just now in response to a question that dr varley has added her name to that chorus by publicly placing all the blame that the week of april 5th through

125the 9th will be virtual at the teacher's doorstop by stating that the only reason the district will be virtual is because the teachers willing to quarantine while some teachers will need to quarantine after using their vacation from work as they choose the past actions of this community indicate we should be quarantining after spring break just like we did after winter break from the halloween parties to teachers seeing unrelated students in the same zoom screen while on a ski weekend it is actions like these that have been causing the surge in cases in berkeley heights and the need to move to virtual instruction after spring break to help curb the spread speaking of sturgeon cases berkeley hides his leapfrog back into the orange zone yet we still anticipate moving grades 6 through 12 to plan a

126on april 12th the district is now also planning to move to full day in-person instruction necessitating full-scale lunch service in the buildings come may yes the vaccine is available to staff but there is more to consider than simply that fact we must consider state and cdc guidance and data when deciding when to escalate the reopening plan not simply picking a date on the calendar we must recognize that all of the reopening guidance says that students must wear masks while in school an impossibility while eating lunch we must realize that just because a vaccine is available doesn't mean everyone who wants it is able to get it yet our students are not eligible for this vaccine yet has there been any thought that some of the students we have recently welcomed back or will welcome back

127soon to in-person instruction we'll go back to all virtual instruction given the daily super spreader that lunch will become how will the district handle contact tracing when so many students are in the cafeteria for longer than 15 minutes at a time we've had multiple staff members placed in quarantine from exposures in district how many times does the staff member need to be placed in quarantine from exposure at work before the district realizes we are escalating the reopening too quickly we understand the desire for normalcy we want things to go back to normal personally i never want to teach a class via zoom ever again but the data suggests it does not suggest returning to full capacity for a full in-person day with lunch is safe yet let's move to plan a for grades 6 through

12812 operating under the current schedule when the data suggests it is safe to do so let's spend the majority of the day in person with our students continue to break for lunch and offer remediation science labs and other services during the pm virtual session let's not offend the schedule again for the sake of normalcy regardless of the danger to the unvaccinated students and staff thank you dan thank you for your comments uh next i see todd nigerian todd good evening good evening doug can you see me or can you hear me i can hear you okay great thank you um doug i'd like to take a moment and i appreciate the fact that you um indicated the april 8th meeting will be dedicated to the full day kindergarten however i would like to bring a

129few concerns uh to the table now because i feel like the april 8th meeting frankly is a little late um and i say that honestly because it's already out in town about what some of the plans are what's happening and as a result you know two months ago in the february meeting it was touted that we were going to be going to full day kindergarten next year and i think when that announcement was made coinciding with that announcement a plan for how exactly this is going to be rolled out would have made sense waiting an additional three months to kind of talk about it later when the town is already starting to hear about what might happen i think is is concerning so i i'd like to take a moment and i'd like to ask

130for clarification about the full day kindergarten plan um that was originally mentioned um i've been recently made aware by a credible source that the plan incorporates redistricting of the town with the greatest impact on woodruff as a woodruff parent personally i find it completely unacceptable that the boe would put together a plan with such magnitude that has an effect like this make an announcement that's going to happen and still not present the plan or framework around how exactly that will happen as a taxpayer here in this town and a taxpayer who is on the higher end of taxes i chose and i live on this side of town because i wanted my kids to go to woodruff i knew about woodruff before coming to this town it is a great school and i think that

131it's very um it's a shame that what might be rolled out and i think that it's very important that all stakeholders input taxpayers should be taken for a change of this matter for a change of this magnitude furthermore following covid an absolute most abnormal year why would you want to impose additional changes and stress on the community and the children which they have to change or relocate schools i believe the gentleman that spoke earlier mentioned this briefly as well as you've said multiple times getting kids back to normal is what matters at this time this is anything but normal when you force a school change at the beginning of next year it doesn't set the right tone enrollment is down this year it's not accurate data set judging on class size we all know families

132who remove kids from school do the pandemic for whatever various reason so what numbers are you truly evaluating on to determine the redistricting there's not been a successful full day kindergarten pilot with this year being so upside down as a result again i ask how can this decision be made and based on what facts so additionally i'd like to ask what is the plan can each board member explain to me their understanding of the plan and i would also like each to indicate their understanding with the best detail they can of how the portion of the one million capital that was just allocated in the budget presentation on the fdk project is being used for the project it was discussed in that capital portion that there are potholes in our parking lot but the full

133day kindergarten portion wasn't mentioned so again can each board member share with me their understanding of what that number looks like and do you all agree will stakeholders be made aware and their input taken seriously will there be a survey administered that actually has a sample data set that is worth evaluating not a survey with a forty percent response and a sixty percent feel good that forty percent were in favor a survey that has close to all the families who are truly going to be impacted by this real data represent the true feeling of what's gonna happen one idea please exercise out-of-the-box thinking one example rather than redistricting everything would be possibly again i don't know for certain but could there be one full day kindergarten and two first-year classes that go to woodruff and

134keep the others at mary kay i don't think this would derail the plan and woodruff might stay as is um finally and frankly i can't help but feel this decision the timing of this decision seems to be looking like to mark an achievement in an election year rather than the betterment following such a difficult and unique year and i would like that to be on the record todd thanks for your comments you mentioned a lot of things let me see if i can address some of them uh to address some of the comments you made and some of the questions you made so number number one we are going to have a full discussion of the rollout of full day kindergarten at our april 8th meeting uh your comments about have we designed a plan

135that uh either greatly or unfairly unfairly impacts one school you mentioned woodruff at the expense of other schools uh frankly is just is not true that's not the case we have looked at a number of options and we are prepared at our april 8th meeting to walk the public through all of those options of what we what we have considered uh the guiding principles that we've used uh to to do that uh and to make sure that we have tried to keep kids at local schools as best as best as possible uh so we are prepared to do all of those things in terms of your question uh about capital uh the capital money that is uh apportioned next year in next year's budget is to is to address uh what we need to uh

136extend some of the bathrooms kindergarten classrooms require a bathroom so part of our planning involves making investments to some of the classrooms that we'll need that will need bathrooms for kindergarten again that will also be something that we will be sharing uh it's really not appropriate right now uh for each board member to comment on on on what what they know uh that will be a very fair comment to ask them at the next meeting after we've shared everything with with the with the public uh we are in the process of finalizing everything we are doing uh i i understand the spirit and intent of your question i understand the angst uh from people that have about full day kindergarten and the idea of redistricting i can tell you that we have talked a lot

137about this both internally we are looking forward to engaging obviously the full public about this there will be multiple conversations about that i expect a lot of questions about that to your last point of when we did announce this and you're reflecting on on the pilot full day kindergarten as i think some of the people have said tonight has been something that's been talked about this district for probably close to 20 years it is highly sought of by many it is not in favor by every single person but it's something that directly has a lot of support and people are looking forward to full-day kindergarten we have gone back and forth on this both in terms of when we originally wanted to do it and then with covid we thought we couldn't do it and

138now we found a way uh to do it so yes it does represent uh change i believe it's positive change i believe you know improving our early childhood education is something that benefits a great portion of our community and has a lot of community support i do understand it represents an amount of change well i would say to todd is three weeks from tonight i can assure you we will have a very comprehensive discussion about this uh and there will be ample opportunity for the public to uh to comment on that hopefully i've addressed all of yours i am not giving you all the answers that you want this evening i couldn't do that unless i pulled out uh and we're ready to present the full presentation i can assure you with great confidence we

139will have that at the april 8th eighth meeting it'll be comprehensive and will be plenty of time for parent input that's great doug and one thing just to enter um i i did speak to one parent who uh was very excited about full day kindergarten but also has a current student at woodruff and their comment to me was i would not even consider full-day kindergarten if i knew my kids wouldn't be able to attend woodruff in the future so i think you know it's very important to understand that feeling and that excitement that you desire but i would also go back to the statement that i made initially which is this seems somewhat ludicrous that you know after a 20-year plight to try and make this happen that now is the time when so much

140is upside down and getting back to normalcy for our students and yet a significant change is on the horizon potentially based on decisions being made so i look forward to the next meeting great todd thanks for your comments dawn phillips hi um my name is dawn phillips i'm the mother of a current am kindergartner and uh a hughes student um i'm mostly talking about kindergarten today um i have to say that i was doubly disappointed uh when i got the full day kindergarten email from dr varley um one in that i knew that redistricting was going to happen and there was no mention no discussion here we are a month later i know it's coming but it was disappointing uh it's also disappointing to hear the extolling of virtues of full day kindergarten when my

141kindergartner has finally this month made it to double digits in school um so i guess my question is about getting kindergarteners more school i know there was a survey sent out and i know that um parents chose to you know keep the schedule the way it was um my only problem with the survey you know and the the way the schedule worked was pm kindergartners would have gotten picked up at 2 15. uh it doesn't address the issue of older children who are home on zoom during that time uh you know my seven-year-old no it doesn't it doesn't affect me i'm an am kindergarten parent but if my pickup was at 2 15 i would have to leave my seven-year-old home alone uh in order to make that pick up so i'm just wondering if

142there is a more feasible plan that could get children back in school more that doesn't involve kind of volleying back and forth between older children zoom and a pm pickup because that had to be a consideration in a lot of parents minds doctor well you want to talk about both the survey results and the other options absolutely so one thing um and this may not be a common knowledge our teachers need prep time and they also need lunch time and they need those breaks during the day so the only way we could do bringing am and pm in was to have a shortened stay schedule and give them that prep time give those teachers that prep time in the afternoon but make sure they had time to eat lunch as well before the pm students

143came in we looked at in the end i think and i can't remember off the top of my head i think it only gave two and a half hours and a two week period of extra in-person instruction when we did it that way working with miss kopaz miss corley and formerly miss miss carroll we also took into consideration that our remote students would then have to zoom and watch a teacher teach while the other kids are in the classroom and we know that's a little more difficult we wouldn't have those small groups for kindergarten students that we currently have right now am npm and so it kind of it when we sent out the survey it was the only option we had as you know i know mr mcgovern spoke about i do have the

144goal of getting us back into a normal school day and you know it's just working on making sure the teachers are vaccinated and that parents are comfortable with sending their students back in at that time and then at that point we would have am and pm the way it's supposed to be so the only way that kindergarten is going to be able to go back to school a reasonable you know amount of time would be to wait for everyone to go back to school including having lunch time because you know my son my older son went to mary kay macmillan for pre-k3 pre-k for kindergarten at first he was in that building for hundreds of days and my kindergartner might be in that building for three dozen because he could be redistrict i don't know

145he goes to school a handful of days a month and i think it's terrible i think it's terrible i feel like kindergarten has been abandoned um the full-day kindergarten pilot program you know they're getting every day hours at school and the the half-day kindergarten kids are getting virtually nothing my son was in school two days this week he did not even have a zoom on wednesday it is taxing for him on the days when he does have to go to school because it is so unscheduled and frustrating and i know that that's happening to a lot of other students too because you only go to school for two days and in the month like february when there were snow days you know he goes to school six days it is a sad testament especially given

146how powerful your message about full day kindergarten how amazing it's going to be it's a message to me saying that my kindergartner doesn't matter this year because they're a covid kindergartner i can assure you my message did not and mean that i think the kindergartners are very important just like first through 12th graders however with the limited time and also those teachers needing that their lunch and their prep time it was our only option to offer up and the parents did not choose to go with that option i i understand that they didn't choose to go with that option i don't know how they physically could have with older students do that pick up so presenting an option to allow the students back into school when it's physically impossible for some of them doesn't seem

147like a fair option to be given thank you it was our only option thank you dawn uh psy good evening hi um good evening everyone can you hear me we can hear you very well yeah uh thank you for taking my uh questions um i have couple of questions uh one was on the budget that was reviewed tonight so we didn't get to see so i i was very happy to hear from chris riley that we have a very fiscally responsible option for enabling full-day kindergarten this year and donna was going to give additional details but when we had the actual review i did not um get to hear or see any clear details on how the full day kindergarten was going to be planned like what were the budgetary details and i think i

148sent a chat text um to a couple of board members and because donna was obviously presenting so and i know that the timeline that was shared with us was today was the initial adoption and the board members will get to vote on this and then it will be sent over to the county superintendent and we didn't see a date on when they get to okay it or i don't know what the pro uh i don't understand the actual process so if you can walk me through that and then on april 8th will be the final adoption so if we got like a 30 minute presentation with without any clear details and i know there was an option to attend in person but um i unfortunately some of us couldn't so would we have uh i

149was hoping that there would be some sort of an attachment or like we could see line by line details and if we had any concerns or questions between now and april 8 we could have reached out to the board members um so what are the so what are there any additional sessions planned or will you plan to share the proposed budget that you will vote on today will it be shared on the school website later on okay those are your questions uh no i have three more go ahead keep going okay um and also i heard about the five-year strategic plan and i know that a referendum was planned and it was supposed to happen in 2020 but due to pandemic it was postponed to and we are in march 2021 right now i haven't

150heard any update on if there is a referendum planned for 2021 are we gonna have it and if it's going to happen when is it going to be is it going to be a special election is it going to be um in november 2021 uh also i think previously when i went to the berkeley heights school website i could see like a detailed presentation on the strategic plan but currently when we go there i think we just see a couple of documents so is there a way that you can share with the residents what's the five-year strategic plan what's the budgetary impact so if we have a strategic plan what is the dollar amounts associated with these uh you know i initiatives that we plan to accomplish in the five-year strategic plan so that we

151can plan like we get an idea that hey if we're getting a new um media center at gl it's going to cost us this much if we are planning to i think um i heard earlier on that if you're going to replace the ipads with the chromebooks for gl it's a half a million dollar tab so what's in this strategic plan and how much is it going to cost us if you can put if you can share that i know all these initiatives have to be voted on by the board but if i know if we are speaking of a five-year strategic plan but we don't have any additional details on what the cost associated with them so if you can put that up for the residents to view um ahead of time that would

152be great um also in regards to the woodruff like you know the rollout for the full day kindergarten um i heard that the final decision and the presentation the detailed presentation will be made on april 8th so is that the day that we will the parents and the residents will get to hear the plan the proposed plan but will we be given an option to kind of like will there be a survey or will you give us given option for the parents to provide our feedback because my i have one kid and she she just started walking to school this year and if they are going to be moved to a different school we are losing a neighborhood school like you know i i walk and pick up my kid and i know a lot

153of third graders and fourth graders in my neighborhood walk to woodruff so i know there will be additional options but when you present this proposal to us will you give additional time for the residents to provide feedback will there be an email survey sent by the superintendent asking for feedback on what the residents feel about this redistricting or moving certain grades to a different school um and have you will you will the presentation on april 8th have an impact analysis like what's the business case what's the reasoning behind um the proposed solution so if you have a solution a and a b how did you arrive at it and what are the pros and cons and have you done it impact analysis on what it's going to do to these young kids because each neighborhood

154school has a vibe to it and they have a like you know they have made these friendships and they were expecting to graduate from this particular school and if i put if third to fifth graders are moved to a different school and let's say in the case of my child she will be asked to move to a different school and then in a year's time they will have to move again to middle school and have you looked at an option of maybe converting going back to having four elementary schools like how it was originally intended for berkeley heights because from what i've heard from some of the old-timers or who have been here for quite some time that mkm was originally hamilton terrace and it was leased out um to uh to have and then

155it was con it was leased out and then converted to an early childhood uh center but now that there is more need maybe we should look at maybe is that an option like can we see that as an option in the proposal that you plan to present to the residents like how about the town went back to four elementary schools and divide all the kids and have them go from kindergarten to fifth grade yes i know it's a big change but will we be provided a choice or to at least voice our feedback and what's the date by when you will make the final decision on the way to go like which plan are you choosing thank you i got all your questions uh okay let me you asked a number of different things in

156three main areas so let me address each one of them um as it relates as it relates to the budget uh tonight uh is the budget presentation the tentative budget which the board approved uh there is no there is no additional uh presentation that the board is planning to do that the process is that once the board approves it goes to the executive county superintendent it will go there within the next couple of days when they do it we will have another final budget adoption at our april 29th meeting so not at the april 8th meeting our next meeting is april 8th and as you know that will be focused on full day kindergarten and then the final adoption of our budget will be on april 29th as it relates to additional details on some

157of the budget items if you want to send an email to donna with some so i wrote down some of your questions uh but we can certainly answer some of some of your questions the the presentation that we shared tonight will be posted on our website um tomorrow if there are additional uh questions that you have about that i'm sure um donna would be happy to answer those questions for you to your second question or to your second area about the um about the strategic plan uh so the strategic plan is done on our website is on our website um i will double check i have not looked at that presentation uh recently but i will ask donna to make sure that the the most current version of the strategic plan is on our is

158on our website uh in our budget presentations each year we oftentimes refer to the strategic plan and the investments that we're making whether they be under student achievement whether they be under technology sometimes they're under social emotional learning we typically do not annotate our specific strategic plan with dollars invested oftentimes because it's multiple year investments so it is difficult to look at that and say well we invested this this year but again if you have some questions we're happy to answer that we certainly can uh talk about where we make our investments in technology happy to share uh where we uh upgrade our devices where we upgrade our backbone related to that you asked about the referendum uh as you correctly stated the the board did have a referendum planned we have postponed it the

159board has uh has not taken any action nor has the facilities committee recommended uh a new date for the referendum so i don't have an answer for you whenever uh the board does uh choose to take that back up the facilities committee will will discuss it it will come back to the to the full board for discussion and then a date will be set when that will be voted on uh and and lastly to your questions about full day kindergarten and you had several so yes obviously april 8th you'll do that that is the date that you'll hear the plan will you have a chance to provide feedback absolutely so not only will we have a chance to provide feedback at that meeting we are planning additional uh information exchanges information forums on that we

160do realize that this will be a topic that people want to provide feedback very specifically on uh so it it will be discussed again on april 8th and at least for right now we are planning some additional information sessions to do that uh right now we have not committed to do a survey per se on that that's an option should we choose uh to do that uh the reasoning behind that i can assure you the reason it will be shared or the pros and cons discussed absolutely has an impact analysis has been done absolutely and all of that will be included in the presentation that we share on april 8th so anyway thank you for your question um i don't see any other hands being raised so i'll just one um follow-up uh question doc

161is on the strategic plan like how we have capital so we have a five-year strategic plan but you're saying that every year we will get to hear what the budgetary impact for some of the initiatives is but we cannot get so for the next five years starting 2021 to 2026 we cannot say we we have ten initiatives planned as part of five-year strategic plan and this is going to be the overall cost for it yeah that's true it is difficult for us to do that i think each year when we do the budget one of the inputs that goes into the budget is the five-year strategic plan and uh and that's one of the things that we look at to make sure that we are investing in the areas that we said was part of

162our strategy it's what any that's what any uh planning focused organization would do and we're happy to talk about those it would be difficult for me to project in years two or three or in the out years to say three years from now we're going to invest this much in this area of professional development or in this area of technology so again we tend to do it um one year at a time but again um if you have the plan um we we can certainly address where we've made the investments uh in those respective areas yeah the only thing i would add say is that many strategic plans are more aspirational in terms of you know their focus and it doesn't mean that everything's going to happen exactly like that plan aspires to um and

163we try to we try to accomplish the overall goals over a period of time but they may not even happen you know literally like year one year two year three year four etcetera so um uh i have i haven't seen a lot of uh the the strategic plan is not a budget it's not a five year budget it is an aspirational long-term document that shows where we want to focus as a district great great thanks chris i don't see anybody else with their hand raised with that i will close the citizens hearing um for this evening and we will move on to administration i have a motion for the administration items can i ask a question before on an item you can so with the first reading of the policy about um uh board members

164resignation and removal and the three consecutive meetings um i my my recollection is this is a this is coming from the state but it doesn't say anything about zoom so are how do they define attendance um or do we have the discretion i i do we if you remember back last year when we all went all remote we had to approve a policy that allowed us to have zoom and remote meetings so you're covered by that okay thank you you're welcome all right can i get a motion for uh administrative items 14 angela uh i'll move items a through d second motion in a second any other discussion roll call mr hyman yes mrs young yes mr tinchuli yes mr de queila yes mrs penna yes miss miss riley yes yes mrs kirsch yes mr

165weinstein yes uh education item 15 mike yes i move education items a through d second motion uh yes on items a through c mrs young mr chinchuli yes mr de queila yes mrs pennis yes miss riley yes mrs kirsch yes mr weinstein yes uh item 16 personnel joy move 16 uh a through i'm sorry i was on mute uh yeah there you go joy don't worry about that personal item i could hear myself in the room a personal item of a through m and i will second any discussion before we uh vote on this i will add my comments i'm not sure i can say anything more about donna that hasn't already been uh said this evening by chris by mike by by dr varley other than uh i've been on the board as long

166as um donna has and what people probably don't know is that the superintendent is responsible for all of the academic activities that go on but anything that's not academic that is not related to the specific academics is done by the business office and that encompasses an enormous amount of other activities uh and donna you have our gratitude and our thanks for everything you've done and your commitment to our to our district as many have said and tom wong i've also known for quite a long time he he would fit my description as the backbone of personnel of this district uh and there is not a personnel um decision or activity that's done without tom providing some perspective background for that he has been an incredible resource to so many people both our staff and our

167leaders and um uh a lot of people uh choose to retire each year and we wish them all uh good luck as board members we tend to have a little bit more uh touch points with some of those people so i will add my congratulations to uh to donna uh and and to tom roll call mr hyman uh yes to items a through h mrs young yes mr chinchuli yes mr taquila yes mrs penna yes miss riley yes mrs kirsch yes mr reinstein yes uh item 17 business robert yes i move item 17 business a through r [Music] is the professional service fees like that that was just the best practice in terms of an item c in terms of what we've done in the past the professional services this is actually it's it's more

168um the state makes us require makes us establish a limit that we can use before we have to go for additional board approval so um some of these rates are very close to what they spend we don't go to our auditor often with questions it's just the audit where some of them um there might be some legal issues so some of these are more than what's in our budget but it allows us to um spend more without getting specific from the board or from the county yes angela can you go on mute uh mr jaquilla yes mrs penna yes miss riley yes mrs kirsch yes mr reinstein yes 18 finance uh i have reviewed the bills earlier this week they look great had a nice conversation with folks said hello for the first time inside

169the ad building and um everything is in order i move um agenda item is 18. finance a through d second second any discussion roll call mr hyman uh yes to item a mrs young yes mr chinchuli yes mr taquila yes mrs pena miss riley yes mrs kirsch yes mr weinstein yes is there any other business to come before the board tonight i have a question um in the update to the bylaws about remote public board meetings there is very descriptive about public comments submitted before the remote public meeting through electronic mail or by written leather shall be read aloud and addressed during the remote public meeting in a manner audible to all meeting participants in the public and i was wondering i know we typically just do a summary you know when we talk about

170communications and that's it this seems like it's doing more are we going to also update our by the bylaws for a regular meeting to be more expansive in terms of communication [Music] i think that this um when we have regular board meetings the anticipation is that people will be here and i guess that we have to talk about this as the board but we still have zoom meetings when we come back to a more normal setting but um we can allow people to have questions you know ask us questions based um before the meeting by the time you know say our questions by four o'clock something like that if they can't participate via zoom that is the way morris union jointer does it i'm in all of their board meetings and you cannot make a

171public comment if you do not send your questions and comments by four o'clock of the board meeting so um i don't know if that's just their practice but i know they've been doing it since we've been remote okay [Music] so i got any other business to come before the board i am not seeing anybody uh with that i will take uh evolution to adjourn for this evening so moved we will adjourn we will be back uh for our next meeting on april 8th and i don't feel i need to talk about what the topic of that meeting will be um i think everybody is well aware of that um so with that i will wish you a uh a good rest of the night a good weekend and we will see you again on april

1728th good night good night good night