001good evening and welcome to the beginning of our board of ed meeting tonight donna roll call mr hyman here mrs young mr chinchilly mr tequila mrs penna yeah riley mrs kirsch here mr weinstein here on january 7 this body of my resolution adopted the schedule for this meeting with the time date location of this meeting where accuracy set forth therein on january 8th service was provided to all schools all pto presidents to be hga president posted at the administration building on the same date a copy of that was emailed to the public library tapping into berkeley heights current news and filed with the municipal clerk to file and posted town hall this meeting will also be announced on the district sign at columbia kind of a motion to move into exact session we are now
002in exact session and we will return for a public session at 7 30. we'll see you shortly good evening everybody and welcome to our first meeting of february could i have a motion to return to our public session motion a second we are back in our public session can we please rise for the pledge of allegiance liberty and justice good evening everybody we have a couple of items on the agenda tonight under the superintendent's report we will be having a discussion uh about diversity and our task force we have a guest who's going to speak to us which melissa will talk about we will share the results of our annual audit that our business administrator conducts with our external auditor each year and then we will have a presentation regarding our remote learning the remote
003survey that we did late last year about the experiences our students have with uh with the remote learning both the hybrid model uh and in person let me start out we hope by now that many of you have had the opportunity to see the today show segment from this past weekend on teaching during a pandemic that highlighted three of our very own teachers kate corcoran 4th grade teacher at hughes patricia hetherington spanish teacher at columbia and christine talarico an english teacher at gl if you didn't know it prior to watching the video you got to see what several of our incredible teachers are doing to educate our students under our hybrid model and is nothing short of exceptional i saw a quote i'll credit to liz kane that teachers now play the role of actor
004scriptwriter camera person sound technician technical director secretary of operations advertising manager and finally wardrobe props catering hair and makeup and although that list of roles clearly stretches a point to make a point if you visit a classroom you will see many of them on display to that specific point over the past three weeks i've had the opportunity to visit all six of our schools and spend time in the classrooms with our students and staff i'd like to share a few of my observations based on my visits because this is a case of seeing is believing our teachers and staff are truly doing a great job under very difficult circumstances between reorganizing the classroom to ensure the safest learning environment teaching all day with a mask on and explaining lessons to both in-person and remote students
005concurrently there is no shortage of challenges that they have overcome i observed an elementary school teacher literally kneeling down on the floor in front of their students plex glass barrier to explain a math problem to a young student i saw several creative ways that teachers were engaging with their remote students whether it was one-on-one having them type comments or answers into the chat window or assign them to do a task on their own i noticed many examples of our students using their chromebooks and ipads to enhance their learning experience and along the way i learned more about alexander graham bell is an inventor as an inventor than i ever have before i got a chance to see our guidance staff at both gl and columbia interacting with students to develop their gl schedules for next
006year and in what might have been the most creative lesson i witnessed the students in mrs richards macbeth class create their own amusement park based on their understanding of the shakespeare story another highlight was my visit to mr moreska's wood shop he has reconfigured his wood shop bought new software to interface with the 3d printers and found a way for students to use technology to build projects remotely while they're at home using the 3d printers in his workshop in his wood shop it was truly amazing in fact i walked out with a gift which i have right here which is our brand our include inspire and empower brand as as a small gift for my visit i was impressed that our students were focused on learning even though they had to make adjustments as well
007to their education wearing masks all morning sitting behind plex glass barriers or walking down one-way hallways and staircases in talking with our principals i heard stories of how our teachers were taking professional development classes to overcome some of the technical challenges that they faced i saw our partnership with the ed foundation on full display as teachers were using microphones and the amplification speakers that they purchased at the beginning of the year i observed our district's entire learning environment adjust to something nobody could have ever conceived yet we did so with maintaining our focus on safety and the best educational outcomes for our students on behalf of the entire board i offer a heartfelt thank you to our teachers and support staff who are persevering under very challenging circumstances and who have modified their craft to
008deliver the best educational experiences possible we would also be remiss if we didn't take the opportunity to thank our parents guardians others who also worked tirelessly to support our children and their education not only have the students shown up which is more than half the battle they've demonstrated how extraordinary they are when they work together as a community towards a common goal of top-notch education and learning it's truly remarkable thank you and let's keep moving forward with that could i have a recommendation for approval of our minutes from our january 7th meeting second motion a second all in favor and those minutes are now we received several email correspondence one from mr miceli regarding his comments from the last meeting mrs frangelo sent a wonderful tribute about mrs byram there were four letters from teachers
009regarding kogit concerns we also received six oprah requests since our last meeting uh three have closed and three we are continuing to work on thank you donna i had an opportunity to exchange notes uh with mrs frangillo who wrote the letter about one of our teachers who passed away and with her permission with her permission i'm going to read that letter because i think it is a tribute uh to to her and to our school district and this is her letter our son gianluca had the good fortune of being a student of mrs byram from 2015 until she left the district in 2019 we are absolutely devastated to hear of her passing and we feel compelled to share just how much mrs byron meant to our family and what a champion she was for our
010son and all of her students in the entire berkeley heights school district mrs byram was a consummate dedicated professional she was always prepared kind and communicative we will always remember her smiling face at our monthly parent meetings carrying a binder almost as big as her to go over our son's progress we knew mrs byram is the is the self-contained classroom teacher at mkm she was entrusted with the youngest students in the district with varying disabilities and taught with patience perseverance and loving care mrs byron worked after her cancer diagnosis and she worked in the school in between treatments she personified resilience and instilled that into her young students she celebrated progress both big and small and in these youngest of students sometimes the smallest achievements mean the most and mrs byrum knew that after we
011received the news of her passing i went back to look at the tens if not hundreds of emails that mrs byram had sent about our son over the years her communication skills were fabulous and it meant the world to us to know that our son was learning and doing every day she she sent us many pictures as well the district speaks of inclusion as a goal and mrs byram was its biggest champion she took the children on monthly field trips to the diner a play at william patterson the zoo and the fire station just to name a few she brought her students into their community with their learning objectives to experience the joy of being a kid her bulletin boards were amazing and her classroom activities were so much fun i'm including a photo of
012her and my son making brownies that she sent to me mrs byram did not work alone the power professionals at mkm and those whom are now mountain park are phenomenal or a wonderful support to mrs byram and the children of the class before her diagnosis during her treatment in absence and beyond our heartfelt thanks to mrs dasty this is biscaderos this is apollonia mrs lameda and all the other related service providers and other staff our sincere condolences for the loss to their tremendous friend and colleague our son is only in second grade in years to come he may not remember mrs byram but for us she's someone we will never forget her impact on our family will be lifelong and for that we will forever be grateful to that end we'd implore the district to
013do something permanent and fitting to honor mrs byron's memory and exemplary service as a beloved teacher and colleague she was taken from us far too soon but please do something to make her memory everlasting you are some good health richard and maya frangillo so we thank them both for uh for that letter which was very touching uh our our sympathies and condolence uh to miss byron's family friends to those in our education staff that know her knew her and dr varley uh will be talking to mrs corley hand when she gets back and we'll figure out an appropriate way to acknowledge and remember mrs byram so again thank you for for writing that letter with that we're going to promote the our two student representatives and as soon as i see them come up uh
014all right thomas i found you first and then i'll just find emily thomas just wait one second i'm like rip emily also right now okay good evening thomas good evening emily emily i'll start with you welcome welcome thank you um all right okay so for sports um for starting out the new year sports are starting strong hockey already has a 4-0 record as well as a game tomorrow girls basketball has their first game upcoming this monday boys basketball has a record of 1-1 and have their third great game tomorrow unfortunately there are still no fans allowed but we are all excited to see what the teams can accomplish as for school we started the third uh semester third market period in the hybrid schedule as we had in the fall the cohorts have been back
015in school as of this week there's also been a new installment of a gender neutral bathroom that has been a great addition to the high school both for inclusiveness and a way to make all feel comfortable the student advisory had met to discuss the possible change of graduation gowns to make the colors not associated with any gender as well gl is becoming the best place it can be and there are many more positive changes to come soon thank you [Music] great thanks thomas sure is yours thomas good to see you all in person i'm hoping to join you in the future but so even though we are just one week into the month one would not be able to tell from all the activities that students have participated in clubs such as guitar club coding
016club and trend have all held their regular meetings the saga club recently met with the understanding asian cultures club and bh and filtered to get feedback on the presentations they had made for the support zone program lunch and learns the first launch and learn was held today and helps teachers become better resources for their students particularly their lgbtq students additionally the student in the student ambassador's most recent meeting they welcomed new members and discussed a potential program that would provide students a number of mediums where they could share their thoughts on a number of important issues today 30 students took part in the prestigious american mathematics competition based on students score they can advance the next competition the american invitational mathematics exam another prestigious exam that have been up that have been up that has
017been offered to students is the national spanish exam with over 20 students having signed up the exam will give students the chance to be recognized on a national level for their spanish another prestige tonight members of the newspaper club are participating in an op-ed boot camp led by veteran cnn and new york times journalist stephen a holmes as a part of the program students will be matched with a professional advisor to help them with their op-ed for student press freedom day lastly the diversity committee is holding a literary circle on february 24th where they will discuss comedian trevor noah's autobiography born a crime the autobiography sheds light into his experiences growing up as a ch black child in south africa great thomas great thomas thanks very much questions from the board to either thomas or
018emily chris and thomas what is student press freedom day all about can you just expand on that a little bit i'm not entirely sure but i know this is um part of the that a workshop that they're attending today is to help them on this piece and i think it's a part of you know them expressing you know their ability to to express their voice freely without limitations but i'm not entirely sure but i can definitely get back to you on that thank you any other questions from that mike yeah quick question for maybe emily or maybe uh mr mckinney can we see the games yet on live stream and if we can is it easily findable or how do we find them um i'm not sure entirely i know they had that plan but
019they never sent anything out to this students about it as of that i know of so i can look into that and uh talk to ann clifton about that as well but i don't know as of now i know it was said to be a plan but i'm not sure what's happening mike are you talking about watching the gl winter events yeah any of the games on live stream or anything like that is that coming soon or i can help you with that so if you go to the union county site that lists the berkeley the gl events there's a little icon a little camera icon that says live and if you click on that you'll go to the gl youtube station that does that so for example if you if you go at four
020o'clock on friday and there's a boys basketball game on that schedule you click on the icon it'll take you right in to watch the game so they're right there on that on it's the union county conference website it's available on the athletic website if you go to the gl athletic website and click on the union county conference schedule any game that is streamed will have that live icon and you can click on it thank you other questions for our student reps all right thomas emily thank you very much we'll now turn to the report of the superintendent dr varley good evening everyone i hope everyone enjoyed the snow day and have dug yourself out from under all the snow this will certainly be with us for a while and it looks like there may be
021another storm on the way next week a very sincere thank you to our maintenance crew for all their hard work clearing snow and getting our buildings ready for us to come back in our investigation regarding the 1221 board meeting we have not had anyone come forward with any substantive information we urge people to come forward if they have something they would like to share regarding the events that have made them feel uncomfortable i will make sure that we post the email address for our attorney for former students with all the snow it does seem appropriate to take this moment to congratulate our buildings and grounds director anthony amiano anthony has been awarded the national plant manager of the year award for the entire united states and saudi arabia congratulations on this well-deserved award and i'm
022sure snow removal in saudi arabia is much easier than it is in new jersey i know that there may be some confusion as to the use of snow days versus remote days as a rule of thumb it is my intention to use snow days when it is not possible to get into the building and remote days in place of a delayed opening or early dismissal day however i'm also trying to keep my eye on the bigger picture so that we don't have to pull days back from spring break i know that we are all hopeful that we may be able to travel by then i appreciate your support and flexibility as we try to minimize interruptions of the instructional calendar while trying to maintain the overall structure of breaks later in the school year it
023has been a few weeks since i gave an update on the district diversity equity and inclusion initiative in that time i've been working with mr hawkins to move these initiatives forward during that period we have identified and met with mark sterchan mr shashan brings a wealth of professional experience and knowledge to the table and we can we think that he can help guide our district diversity task force through the culture change that will make berkeley heights public schools inclusive of all races sexual orientation genders religions as well as mental and physical abilities all students should feel welcome safe accepted and included when they come to school mr strzon is here tonight to give a brief overview of his experience after this meeting we will be sending out invitations to form the vh diversity task force
024as a reminder the task force will essentially be creating a strategic plan for the district equity for the diversity equity and inclusion for the district as well as metrics to measure our progress it is now my pleasure to introduce mr mark strashon mike do you think you can promote him i i just did good evening i'm not sure if everybody can hear me we can hear you can't see you okay all right let me see if i can do something on my end to do that how's that is that a little better outstanding well first of all ladies and gentlemen thank you so much for allowing me to be a part of your board meeting this evening and i give my respects to the board members teachers administrative staff any parents students that are participating
025tonight um i know how long and how difficult these meetings can be there's a lot of business to cover and uh my section tonight is just one small part of an overall agenda that you have um to dr varley's point i am extremely excited about the challenges uh that i have an opportunity to help you face i have spent the last 40 years and i'll go back and say that 40 years as an african-american man in the halls of corporate america on both the advertising agency side and the client management side at companies like publicis nw air leo burnett bbdl uh diagio and and most recently chairing the ad color organization which is the national and uh not very probably not international portal for diversity equity and i did say equity not equality equity and
026inclusion uh for advertising media marketing tech and now music um this opportunity ladies and gentlemen is about you and and i am here to bring my level of experience of engaging change in organizations as it relates to culture and culture that is about to drive overall opportunities for inclusion and culture change is difficult culture change does not happen overnight you all understand that just as much as i do but the opposite the opportunity is there the reality is that it is time for america in general to start shifting and changing our cultures so that we can be more inclusive i look at it as a bag and it's wonderful it was a great analogy a bag of m ms and you think about it m m's you know it's just one great bag and they're
027all there they're all m m's but inclusion is that opportunity for them all to mix together um and truly be equitable as m m's not a green eminem not a red eminem that kind of is over there that's you know kind of shunned to the side and this is where the dynamics of culture becomes so critically important because these are issues that we didn't necessarily had to deal with 15 20 sometimes even five years ago many of us that carry extended degrees whether they be on the pedagogy side or in the corporate management side uh didn't get this kind of training in our corporate america days or mba days or phd days but this is the reality of today and so i am really excited about the opportunity to help guide the strategic plan that's
028an overarching strategic plan for all of your entire school buildings um and the 200 and 2 500 2 600 students and also the parents the community at large that is a part of that and the intersectionality that they all bring to the party the real dynamic here is that when we think about culture and i'll use the word cultural empathy it's really about the opportunity of recognizing that we all have differences differences of values differences of economic background etc i am an african-american man by the united states of america's czech in the census box but in true reality i am a man of bahamian descent my family came from the bahamas born and raised in the bahamas i was born here but i grew up in a bahamian household that happened to be in america
029and the wonderful examples and all of the cultural dynamics that came from that impacted my life secondarily the probably the next round of impact of my life was in school and so today we have teachers continuing to be the influencers that drive influence the influences that teach and train the influencers and some of the best influence on my life came from my teachers matter of fact if somebody asked me today i could tell you sister rosemarie dugan was the most outstanding teacher in my life brother anthony francis i did go to catholic grammar school at a catholic high school he was the most important influence in my life here i am north of 50 and these individuals are still critically important to who i am today so that intersectionality of teaching but understanding cultural empathy
030change tradition the actions and bringing forth the principles of diversity equity and i put equality in parentheses because we could have equity we have equality we had that before we had separate but equal now we're talking about equity where everybody can have skin in the game and then driving in a a real culture of inclusivity is a mindset it's a mindset that begins where your comfort zone ends ladies and gentlemen think about that it truly begins where your comfort zone ends i know you've gone through bias training when you get past the ability of your comfortability of your biases that's where the real work of the e and i begins and so i'm extremely excited about the opportunity to participate that in that and help get you through the contemporary challenges that exist put some
031of the traditional baggage aside not culture i'm sorry i'm not saying traditional heritage things that we do as a part of who we are as berkeley as a berkeley public school district as an individual school our colors our feel and so on so forth but to put the baggage aside so that we can drive forward and so that's really exciting for me it's exciting for me to be a part of it um and let me end by saying this plan beats no plan we can move along and expect these things to happen and hope they happen and end up in some places that are not necessarily comfortable i'm extremely pleased to hear three a few things tonight gender neutral bathrooms asian cultural sharing diversity in in this in a literary discussion about trevor noah's book
032luncheon learns uh these are wonderful tactics that i'm sure are permeating throughout but how do we make that universal and how do we develop a strategic plan that is sustainable that helps drive change and puts the pieces in place so long after everyone on this call is no longer in the building the opportunity is still driving forward and maintaining the forward motion of diversity equity and inclusion i'm extremely excited and i want to thank superintendent varley i want to thank mr hopkins and i want to thank uh ashley genesco people who really had the vision to kind of say could you help us move this along and with the approval of the board i'm ready to roll up my sleeves and help you get this done this is what i do for a living and
033if i can change it in corporate america if i can change it in the music in the record industry um i think i got a shot to help you get downtown um and put the pieces in place as you move forward in your world of education um i would be happy to take any questions uh hey mark mark thank you very much we we welcome you joining our team we look forward to your participation and your expertise are there any questions for board members for mark while we have him for a little bit tonight chris hi mark very nice to meet you sir same here good evening it's really more of a comment than a question but um i am aware that you know you are not new to berkeley heights we have worked with
034you before my understanding is you've done some anti-bias training for us i think that was last spring or early fall so i think i mean i think it's wonderful that you know us a little bit and now you're going to help us with you know craft this strategic plan and and uh you know sort of focus on some key initiatives that can get us where we want to be thank you so so you did you did a training of yes i did a i did a session for you in the fall right as school was starting on conscious and unconscious bias um and the pros and cons and the issues and then the action steps relative uh to those particular areas and it was called let's get conscious about bias and how did you feel
035that went i think that from the standpoint of the feedback that i got that it went very very well because what it did was it forces people to stop and think it forced people to kind of recognize some of the things that we don't recognize on a day-to-day basis as to what are our unconscious biases and again some of the things that we kind of bring along with us just naturally i think it also pointed out that many of us understand the area of the conscious and those are those are kind of didactic and they're taught to us and many of them have legal and other ramifications around us but the unconscious ones are the ones that sometimes really kind of get in the way and so we went through some wonderful discussion and training
036dynamics of how to recognize how to stop how to think um and i think again from the feedback um it was well received but it was again it was an opportunity to establish some benchmark it was an opportunity to lay some groundwork um and to get people thinking and acting and understanding how to move forward and it's both a combination of theory which is all great but you got to put practicality into the mix and i think we did that and i think people walked away very very satisfied thank you very thanks mark any other questions from board members i have a question doug go ahead mike well mark good evening thank you very much for doing this very exciting for what you're hearing can you give us a a 50 000 foot level of
037kind of next steps what are you going to see kind of the different program you're going to roll out just to understand everything i know we still have to go through a lot of interviewing and working but just kind of a high level you know kind of the next steps and what are we gonna see i'd say the next steps are a combination of a couple of things and you won't see anything rolled out immediately um the the real activity has to be once the task force is established is what do you already have and how is it working so there are three things that i like to do and i would be working with the task force and the administration to kind of pull us together the first thing and there's three a's one
038is truly audit um and audit what you have or we don't have where the gaps are how do you fill those gaps uh what are the challenges within the environment the culture legally and there's so many things that you know in the world of education uh that you just cannot do as easily as i might be able to do in corporate america all right so it's a dramatically different understanding um and jess's background i'm the vice chairman of the board of adelphi university so i get that there are challenges in the world of education that are dramatically different um the next thing is to awaken and in that awakening is again where are our gaps of training and understanding and what do we need to pull together again internally as well as amongst our external
039cohorts and those are the parents those are the the constituency outside of the school that lodges that impact the school that has an impact on our children and our young people and their thinking and their focus and our community at large and then the last piece is the act and the act is really that's when you start to see the outgrowth and the outcome of that uh the recommendation of plans the recommendation of tactics and recommendation of true rollout or next steps and then ultimately trying to get the approval in the downtown of the metrics accordingly of how we're going to benchmark against those things so that's kind of the thought process of how we would come at this but the first thing is to really audit thank you very informative thank you thanks any
040other questions from board members um mark maybe i'll ask the last question uh when you look at the work you're going to do if a year from now maybe 18 months from now we as a school district were to be wildly successful in improving our diversity what would that look like to you can you describe for the community what what true success would look like a year maybe 18 months from now realizing what you said that this is a journey changing culture is long term what would that look like to someone who is in our community or maybe even someone who moved into our community what would that look like after you work with us for again that 12 to 18 month window great um true true measure of success would be and i think
041it's important for us to frame it in the scope of diversity because too often diversity is plotted and anchored solely in race and ethnicity and not in true diversity of thought lifestyle and attitude but i think the true measure at that point would be that there has been unbelievable dialogue acceptance and a whole host of conversation around breaking down the silos that may or may not exist some that we currently know that exist and others that we didn't even know existed attitudes and shift and change and the ability to accept others just on the basis of who they are there's an ability there's a measurement of movement in acceptability not just tolerance but acceptability and respect there's a whole boatload of discussions going on and more importantly they're all linked to a strategic framework of
042where we intend to go five years from now where we tend to end up five years it's not just that we had some great discussions and we brought in some speakers and we did some nice things and it was all kumbaya and we walked away and said boy that was great now we're gonna get no and more importantly the this the work that we begin is becoming embedded in the culture of the organization and the best form of that is that there will be more people espousing and be able to having the conversations and lead some of this and you won't need necessarily to have a march for sean in a room every day all the time that would be unbelievable those would be the fact that we start to see the advocacies and the
043people moving forward and the people really embracing it and it starts to seed and embed in the culture mark thank uh thank you again thanks for joining us this evening again we look forward to hearing from the task force and their updates thank you everyone thank you for allowing me to be a part of your evening talk soon cheers thank you melissa back to the rest of your report so now i will turn it over to miss villazola so she can introduce the um auditor for our audit presentation um mike if you can promote bill swisher our school district auditor one of the requirement one of our state requirements is to have an annual fiscal audit uh bill and his team are in our schools during the summer conducting the audit they look at our
044purchasing procedures our accounting records they look at everything that we do detailed and they prepare an audit for us they prepare audit statements and financial statements okay um does not see bill swisher on our on the screen is there a cpa mike i don't see the name bill swisher or cpa anywhere in the list if you are our auditor would you raise your hand so we can locate you i don't have a message from him we'll come back to him why don't we move forward with the presentation part and when bill joins we can uh reverse the order so why don't we move to the remote survey so we're going to move on to mr mckinney and miss kopez they will be doing a presentation on our remote learning survey that we sent out in
045december so i'm going to turn it over to them ms copace would you start your video please good evening welcome thank you mr scara i need a little assistance on being able to the settings to share my screen okay mr mckinney you should be good now and sir it a shot bear with me one second here sorry about that good evening everyone back in december the district collected feedback from district parents about classroom instruction that took place in the hybrid model throughout the fall 417 families representing 703 students participated in the survey and provided us with meaningful data that the district administrators were able to use to make informed decisions and improve instruction for our students while we are sharing the results this evening our team has continued their work to be flexible and responsive
046to the challenges presented by the ebb and flow of the pandemic the column on the far left of this chart represents the district totals with each of the six building results listed to the right the orange and the green represent people who indicated satisfaction while the yellow and red represent dissatisfaction the frustration with the duration of the pandemic and its impact on schools was evident in the survey results however a majority of respondents expressed satisfaction with the instruction provided throughout the fall district-wide only 14 percent of the responses indicated a level of dissatisfaction you will notice a similar format on this slide this slide includes a not applicable category for those people who did not attend the same district school last spring or were not in our school district the same positive story holds true
047as people shared their perceptions compared to last spring while we were thrust into fully remote setting without time to prepare and plan our teachers did an outstanding job adapting and supporting our students through the end of the year and although we are we all long for a return to the normal school setting it is clear that most people agree that we learned and improved from last spring to make the best of a difficult situation in fact 68 of respondents district-wide indicated a level of improvement from the instruction provided last spring this this slide provides some additional context to the two subgroups of people who responded to the survey 580 of the students represented in the data were part of the hybrid instruction and 123 students were fully remote as we break down the overall satisfaction
048and comparison to last spring you will notice the results were relatively similar between the two groups this slide reflects parent feedback on the challenges they faced with instruction during the pandemic as is reflected in the chart the two biggest challenges that the parents faced were the amount of support they needed to provide their children within the remote setting as well as a concern about too much screen time for their students these were the overwhelming results and consistent when you look at the results between the k-5 elementary level and the secondary level the results remained consistent we definitely understand the frustrations of parents who are working tyler's tirelessly with their children to support them with their work at home it is important the teachers and parents keep the lines of communication open so that we work
049as partners to support our students when they are struggling with the material as the year progresses we continue to work to find the right balance between live live or direct instruction and modeling by the teacher using zoom with the work that can be done independently and without being in front of a camera and on the computer screen all day as teachers and students become more and more familiar with the expectations and routines of our classrooms it will be easier to provide time for more independent opportunities while still providing direct access to teachers for individualized and small group instruction as we move forward i will turn it over to miss kopaz for the next few slides good evening again everyone the first slide i'm going to present is on the question regarding students mental health in
050this current learning environment parents reported that the pandemic and its impact on our schools has caused a strain on the mental health of some of our students if you look at the bar graph 92 percent of parents believe that their children are doing okay that middle range from four to seven or are feeling healthy that's our green bar seventy-four percent of parents believe their children's mental health was a six or higher on a scale of one to ten one meaning extremely negative or concerning and ten meaning extremely positive and healthful and of course we have worked with the building principals and appropriate staff including our school counselors to provide support and services to students where mental health concerns were raised on the next slide you will see that parents have indicated that the mental health
051impact is being felt slightly more at the secondary level in k-5 parents reported that about 45 percent of the children or their children are feeling okay or negative and in grades six through 12 it's reported that 66 are feeling okay or negative so again those yellow or red sections of those bar graphs on this next slide with some major takeaways from our open-ended responses on the surveys on the left you'll see the most frequent positive comments parents appreciate the efforts of the teachers under the under these challenging circumstances there's a high level of communication from teachers and principals and we're getting reports that parents feel there's improved schedule structure level of engagement and instruction from the spring and parents appreciate that we are continuing to work on these areas on the right hand side you'll
052see the most frequent negative comments parents are concerned about that balance with screen time direct instruction and independent work and again screen time the amount of screen time keeps keeps being reiterated we have remote learning it parents feel that does not always work for their children whether it be organization engagement participation or again screen time inconsistency between teachers classes and that includes expectations communication workload and homework and we continue to work on this through articulation in grade level faculty department meetings and through professional development and we're continually trying to work towards consistency and common practices on the next slide we have our next steps and our district actions we have ongoing professional development to support delivery of instruction in this hybrid environment to date we've had 222 staff members who have attended approximately 30 pd
053opportunities some of the areas have included ed puzzle jamboard near pod class kick all to support hybrid instruction we have continued continued efforts to follow cdc and the department of health guidelines and protocols to safely move towards plan a in all our buildings and we certainly want more in-person instruction but to do it in a safe manner we have professional doc dialogue to work towards a better balance between direct instruction and independent student tasks that reduce student screen time while maintaining rigor and we coordinate with building principles and appropriate staff to provide support services and resources for students who are struggling with their mental health and as mr mckinney had mentioned this does look different at various grade levels so since we are hitting that halfway point in the school year practices and protocols and
054procedures are in place and students should be able to start to do more work independently so that we have a better balance and we can reduce screen time so i want to thank you i know mr mckinney also probably wants to thank you and we're open for questions now great questions from board members just a quick question um and looking at the overall satisfaction on the second slide i guess for the first slide of the presentation noticing that the uh and mountain park there seems to be less satisfaction were there any particular instance hold on my microphone went out were there any incident instances or things that may have happened at mountain park at the time of the survey which would lead to a score such as that compared to other elementary schools there was
055nothing that really stood out and i'm sure mr mckinney may want to add to this but there was nothing nothing that really stood out in the comments um again the overall comments we synthesized and and put on the later slide but we can't really pinpoint any specific any specific areas specific to the school okay thank you questions other questions from other board members just along that show along that same line uh with the actually perfect slide you have up you have it as percentages by any chance we have a breakdown of the responses you know how many of the 703 responses how many were high school middle school kp5 just to have an idea of is it more high school responded more middle school just the breakdown of the number do you have that scott
056i also have it oh yeah i actually jotted it down um the 33 of the respondents were elementary school um 29 were middle school and 23 of the respondents were high school um i don't have the the counts but that's the breakdown roughly you had a good sampling of all three cohorts yes i have a question were there any surprises um i would i would say not really i mean these the survey results reflect the the communication that we've done as an admin team and which principals have shared at all of our meetings um we were they were pretty consistent with what we were hearing um it was nice to hear some of the positive remarks you know the beginning of the year is is full of so much troubleshooting um and and resolving issues
057and and putting out fires so it was good to hear some of the positive there were many positive comments about our staff and and going above and beyond with communication with parents and and working in that true partnership so that that was a a pleasant part of this whole process thank you other questions chris i have a question um for children who um who parents feel that remote learning is not working for their child because of their organizational skills or or whatever are we uh do we have the resources to put remediation in plans in place to try to address some of these issues for these kids for these specific kids that are really struggling with you know this form of of learning what are we doing for those kids there's a lot of a
058lot of tools and we try to use the counselor and the different resources we have in each of the buildings but we also try to maximize the afternoon sessions in a lot of those cases where we can get some more of that one-on-one or small group instruction to you know dive in a little deeper to identify why the why behind the struggle so that we can help that student if it isn't organizational is it need do our assignments need to be broken into smaller pieces is it technology driven you know what is the why behind it and and the afternoon sessions give us those opportunities to meet with the students who are struggling and and develop plans based upon what we learned from from those discussions you know and this was an observation that i
059shared with with doug when i first saw this um this presentation which we got a couple of days ago and helen it's an answer to your question were there any surprises the thing that surprised me that seemed kind of counterintuitive was that on that first slide when you saw um you know you see that the the older grades the older kids seem to be less satisfied than the parents of the younger children and i actually thought it would be the opposite because you know younger kids need more supervision and i thought you know we kind of heard it would be more difficult for them with remote learning the older kids you know were more mature had better developed organizational skills but in terms of the satisfaction it was just the opposite so that was surprising
060to me um i have a quick question can you hear me um one of the comments were in the negative was that the inconsistency between teachers and in classes can you just clarify again um what you're doing just to to make sure that you sort of bridge that gap sure you know the key component to that is to utilize our existing meetings and professional organizational structures to have those conversations about expectations routines and to collaborate so at the high school that's that's faculty meetings department articulation meetings and and those settings at the middle school as we all know we have our teams and they have team planning time where they can work on that consistent delivery you know within a team and also across teams within the same grade level and finally at the elementary
061we have ongoing grade level meetings that you know are focused on the you know curriculum and instruction and making sure we're doing that i will say that consistency is one of those things and and you've been on pto curriculum liaison it's something we talked about before covid and pandemic and it's something you know it's something we always strive for but finding that balance between having lockstep classrooms and having the art of teaching take place is something that we always and we'll continue to work on uh moving forward got it is this a one-off survey or will we do this sort of at the end of the year for benchmarking i would imagine that we'll reflect on some of these questions and as our as our circumstances change and our environments change we may collect some
062additional information and some of it may fall off the survey but we definitely want to keep measuring you know how we're doing and what we can do better and this was this was great information for us as an administrative team to look and dive into both you know the individual buildings but the overall big picture as well kind of on this question are you planning on maybe doing again in march just to see if between now and march and then that way to if we have to recalibrate from march to june any thoughts on that that's probably it's probably about the right time period maybe right before we head off to spring break so that we have kind of similar right we did it before december so we had some time to digest and and
063process the information that we collect agreed all right thank you any other final questions from board members okay uh mary beth scott thank you very much we're going to go uh backwards now and uh i see bill is uh here and we promoted him bill good evening welcome welcome sorry for the technical difficulties no worries okay so tonight i'm here to present the fiscal year 2020 uh comprehensive annual financial report and also the orders management report uh once again we're we're delayed in receiving these reports uh for the third year in a row the state of new jersey was late in getting out uh the pension numbers that we need to complete our audit so he said we usually do this meeting in november uh but they were late once again so uh that's why
064we're that's why we're late uh in february again although you are under on time because they extend the deadline until february 5th so we're okay on that front uh first first i'd like to thank dr varley and donna and everybody in the in the business office uh it was not easy doing an audit during the pandemic and i'd like to say that berkeley house is probably one of our most accommodating districts uh when we needed documents they were emailed to us when we needed to come in and pick things up uh it was very easy for us so they really went above and beyond i just want to thank them for that uh there's there's good news all around once again tonight uh in the comprehensive annual finance report that's where we have our opinion
065on your financial statements uh donna gives us the financial statements and we uh do our order procedures and then we render an opinion on it uh the district has once again received the unmodified opinion uh so that's a credit to donna and the staff in the business office that's the best opinion you can get and then also in the comprehensive annual financial report is your financials and the district once again is on solid uh financial footing uh the district started the year with a surplus of five million eight hundred and one thousand and ended the year with a surplus of 6 million 130 000 so financially the district is in good shape uh and the smaller report the amr report that's the report the state of new jersey requires us to issue uh they give
066us nine specific uh areas to look at for the audit if we have any findings or recommendations they'd be listed down in there and i think for probably the third or fourth year in a row there are zero findings and zero recommendations uh so once again a credit to uh donna and the business office uh so it was a clean audit it wasn't easy uh but uh the the district was very helpful and uh although i think it's a good report and if anybody's any specific questions on it uh i'll answer them right now thank you very much and i thank you to you i know a challenging time for you to do an order remotely so uh thank you for for doing it any questions on the board or bill regarding the audit okay
067bill thank you very much we look forward to continue working with you thank you very much appreciate it good night does that conclude your superintendent's report great thank you uh we'll move to liaison reports does anybody have any liaison reports this evening yes i do [Music] on january 14th we held a meeting of the newly combined finance and facilities committee the purpose of the meeting was to have a high-level preliminary discussion about our key budget initiatives for the 21 22 school year and related strategies for accomplishing those initiatives we're going to meet again next week as a team to do a first pass in the preliminary numbers based on the guidance that was given and just as a reminder um from a scheduling perspective adoption of our preliminary budget for 2122 school year uh that
068will be presented at the march 18th board of ed meeting with our final adoption on april 29th so as far as the process goes we're in very good shape that's all great thank you chris liaison reports [Music] can you guys hear me um helen and i mrs kirsch and i have been attending the environmental commission meetings in town uh the part that perhaps involves the school district is there's uh going to be an led light light bulbs available as a giveaway as part of new jersey's clean energy initiative and we're going to be involved as much as they need our help so far it looks like storage of possible bulbs uh as well as any information we can give them that might aid them in distribution helen mrs karst do you have anything to add
069well uh yes there we were involved with the sapling distribution last year for arbor day and they do want to initiate that program again and we'll be reaching out to the school uh it just was a very successful program and distribute distribution went very smoothly so they would like to use the columbia middle school again and i just saw before the meeting that you know we've been talking about the uh sustainable new jersey certification and berkeley heights was just awarded silver um certification for i guess this is our third or fourth year and it just shows the dedication of the community to in environmental issues and that committee worked very hard uh to dot all their eyes and cross all their teeth so a big congratulations to them um union new jersey school boards uh
070continues to offer um pods and you know information to uh districts if they need it and um the workshops from the convention are available and there are some that may be of interest or help you know with some of the things that each of the school districts are struggling so if you want to take a look at them and you know join in those it's a great opportunity to jump on uh all at once uh the edge services they're still working hybrid and uh of course took snow days like we all did and they met together with several of the other environmental commissions throughout the state and there's a general feeling that the educational community at large really doesn't understand the function of the educational services commission so they are going to be working together
071and uh mike and eric from uh union county are going to try to take the league and the lead and work with the department of education to see if they can you know show the services that we do provide to the uh other districts i mean they handed out the masks they've you know they've done a lot of individual things that just being the kind of district that they are and union county school boards uh joy that i know joy attended the meeting and uh it was just kind of an introduction for uh new and a reminder for uh us more seasoned board members of what our responsibilities are and it was a pretty good program and i believe there's one coming up this month i'm not quite sure when do you have a joy
072or i don't have it right off hand okay but you know we all get notified and um it's much easier to attend a zoo meeting than it is to get out and you know get down to westfield or wherever they do have the meeting so yeah there was some really good in discussion general discussion among the different districts about going back to you know what's going to happen next year what's the planning looking like from there and what are districts thinking about as they move forward um so that was just an interesting sort of brainstorming session that they went through so and i just want to thank joy and robert for stepping up on these two committees and giving a helping hand no problem thank you for allowing them um i attended on the 25th
073the truth and racial failing and transformation committee for the township and one thing that came out of it was the youth group interested in starting a mentoring program at the high school so mr hopkins and i connected the student to dr barley so they're going to be working on that but it was really exciting to see how the students wanted to get involved and create a mentoring program great thanks joy and uh i would just share one that dr rowley and i attended uh the pto uh area council meeting uh this past week and this is the one where all the principals uh attend so they talked about a number of the creative gifts that were given uh the transitions to the different schools some of the kindness projects that were going on some of
074the community outreach that's happened at the schools a lot of work on inclusiveness some of the outside speakers that the pto has sponsored and some of the teachers college professional development work as well okay donna facilities report i wanted to give an update on our building filtration systems and to report that we are in compliance with all of the requirements of the doa all school buildings are required to satisfy the piosha indoor air quality guidelines and no additional ventilation or air quality requirements have been imposed on school buildings as a result of coven 19. the current new jersey mechanical code requires that each space within our buildings have a certain amount of outside ventilation air in order to maintain proper indoor air quality the district is meeting the state guidelines regarding air quality in schools
075and have taken several steps to increase air circulation within the buildings and classrooms the classroom universe bring outside air into the classrooms the guidelines necessitate that the district's hvac systems are operational in berkeley heights there are mechanical ventilation units in all classrooms all units have been evaluated and are functioning properly the units are regularly maintained and serviced the district has taken additional step and is providing a flush out of the occupied spaces the operation of the hvac units has been modified to provide two hours of occupied operation before and after being occupied this additional operation will provide more dilution of any possible contaminants there has been a lot of discussion regarding merv 13 filters our current univents are older and cannot accommodate merv 13 filters installing these filters would cause the fan motors to overload
076the recommended amp drawer and would actually reduce the airflow substantially for rooms without mechanical means to bring in outside air the code allows for windows that open to provide fresh air to meet the needed outside air component opening windows will provide additional ventilation as needed all classrooms within the district have windows which can be opened in addition to these measures the rooftop exhaust fans which are also part of his existing mechanical systems have been evaluated for proper operation bands which were not working properly were repaired or replaced for the opening of school in september additional rooftop fans were added to large group areas gyms and multi-purpose rooms increasing air exchanges throughout the building another step we have taken is allowing teachers to open to leave the classroom doors open this also increases the air circulation
077within the classroom i also wanted to thank the custodians and maintenance staff for all the work they did in getting our schools ready and dealing with the storm they spend hours here they plow all the parking lots clear all the walkways so they really did a great job we had so much snow and we were able to open schools without any issues so i appreciate what they do for us great thanks any questions for donald on the facilities report no questions but just want to echo the thanks to the team for the snow remover and also again to congratulate anthony on his very well deserved recognition great thanks mike um okay we are going to move to the uh citizens hearing uh portion of our meeting uh as a reminder to be recognized please ensure
078that your first and last name is listed on your device you can use your raise your hand functionality within zoom i will unmute you allow you to come off of mute address the board although not required we certainly would prefer that your camera be turned on so we can see you as well if you have more than one question please ask them all at the beginning the board recognizes students and staff members right of privacy and therefore encourages all members of the public to address their concerns regarding individual students and staff members by meeting privately with the appropriate administrative staff when addressing the board in a public forum members of the public should refrain from identifying any student or staff member by name and are solely responsible for their comments which could be considered defamatory
079or slanderous according to the laws of the state of new jersey each resident will have three minutes to speak and with that i see the first person who raised the hand is stacy stacy taporak hi how are you stacey how are you tonight i'm doing okay um i just had a quick um comment um chris riley had asked what the student press freedom day is so as the newspaper and yearbook advisor at governor livingston i just wanted to let you know so the student press freedom day is a national day sponsored by the student press law center um that celebrates the concert contribution of student journalists um and highlights the need for student journalists to be able to report in their school publications free of censorship or threat to their advisors in addition um we
080have quite a few students who have taken workshops with the student press law center and are trying to lobby to um get a law in a bill passed called new voices in new jersey that would give student journalists the ability to not have to go through admin review or fear of sense being censored by administrators not that we've had a problem in in recent times since i've i've been the advisor but it's just that the students are becoming more knowledgeable about their first amendment rights um and you know that and as they apply to student journalists so i just wanted to clear great stacey thank you very much for for joining and sharing that much appreciated the next person is kelly maury kelly good evening good evening can you hear me i can hear you
081loud and clear welcome excellent i am not able to turn my camera on it says that you guys are not allowing that function just so you know otherwise i would be there okay my question for you guys is are we working on a spring musical for the governor livingston high school students dr ryan yes we've received an email i don't know if i can't remember if it was last week that they are starting the process to work on this musical it will most likely be virtual okay thank you very much great thank you kelly the next person is elena hi um thank you for letting me speak my daughter's in mountain park um i heard that there's a surplus of of about a million dollars from last year i was wondering uh what percentage of
082that need from cares or if we're anticipating any additional funding from cares for the rest of this uh school year and since there is a surplus and second part of the question will any of that funding be used to supplement um the the teacher's aides in the classroom because i know i've asked for a teacher's aides and um budgeting was one of the reasons that we couldn't have it couldn't happen so uh is that something that we can consider or is that something that can happen possibly donna do you want to talk about where we stand with the carers uh aid and then what we're doing with some of our funding for this year um yes so we were fortunate that we have this surplus this year we it's budget management it's a series of
083things that have resulted in the surplus and the surplus their restrictions on when we can use it and how we can use it so this surplus that we generated from last year will be used in next year's budget and we um as mrs reilly stated we are working on next year's budget putting information together we get requests from the schools based on their analysis of their needs and we put this together see what our revenues are and revenues include surplus tax levy tuition income and we use that to develop the budget so right now we're looking at it globally and we're coming down to those more specific requests regarding personnel and things that teachers need in the classroom so we are reviewing all of this closely great thank you donna is there anybody else that
084would like to address the board i do not see right now any other hands raised i hear one more coming in michael labon michael good evening how are you tonight uh good evening again i can't i'm not able to turn my camera on but first i'd like to thank the district for uh pushing forward with plan a and the uh success that i've seen so far with it i'd like to thank both the admins and the teachers around the district who have had a very successful start with us so far i'm seeing much improved uh both academics and responses from my children who are attending uh their their schools now five days a week every week and it's a definite improvement in their instruction um reviewing the survey um three-quarters of the students of the
085district the families didn't respond according to your own data so i'm just concerned about the validity of that survey when three quarters of the parents didn't bother to engage at all i know i responded to both surveys of both of my children and i'm wondering why three quarters of the parents the district didn't bother to engage and i'm just concerned that if the data isn't complete there that you might be getting the full picture and i would encourage the district to do more extensive outreach from the follow-up survey to get more parental involvement because less than a quarter of the parents responding doesn't really give you a full picture to what's going on in the district great thanks michael you know we we do send out the survey we did send out a follow-up note
086obviously we got what we got back we will continue to reach out with other under other vehicles uh to see if we can get increased uh participation which we certainly uh would welcome so share your concern about having uh 700 plus at least we got 700 so we do have some data but obviously the more the better are there other members of the public one more tina good evening how are you tonight i'm well mr reinstein how are you i am outstanding welcome thank you um i just want to recognize the phenomenal job that our teachers administrators and staff are doing i know it's not easy most certainly during this hybrid and remote model when looking at your overall satisfaction i do agree with mr leblanc and echo that same sentiment i think that you
087definitely need to take a look at this again in the spring to see the trends and how you can best prepare for the following year so i look forward to answering another survey but i want to also commend the hughes school because i know that miss snorty does a tremendous job at her school not to say that the other principles do not but in the data it shows that she has the least amount of dissatisfied or not you know whatever the red was sorry um and so i just want to commend her and i want to um actually think around how we can infuse the same kind of joy and engagement that mrs nardi and her team at hughes get from students while they're on campus and perhaps also maybe alleviating some of those social
088emotional components that our students seem to be facing across the board knowingly yes a little bit more so in the upper grade levels and i wanted to see um if the board could do just a little bit more thinking around that with the individual principles and maybe tapping into whatever the hughes team is doing to get those scores my other and this is just a question for the curriculum i'm thrilled that you are working with mr straighten actually i have a lot of experience knowing the work that he's done in equity has been phenomenal i do know that this is a different push for him given the educational climate and i wanted to see uh if our school districts will be working with other school districts to figure out how to shape and form this
089uh diversity curriculum and what that might look like to maybe partner together as we all tackle this so i can answer that question today i met with the superintendents of union county and the department of education is coming up with a culturally culturally responsive metric that mr mckinney and mrs kopaz will be using to go through our curriculum to make sure that it is culturally responsive culturally responsive we also did a survey k-5 and miss kopez did mention this at the pto meeting well it wasn't the pto at one of the meetings we had that um one thing that came out was that our school classroom libraries a lot of the books don't represent the students that are in the classroom so that is something we are putting into our budget for next year to
090make sure that we get books that represent our students but we will be looking into our curriculum to make sure it is equitable for all of our students thank you great thank you dr wally thank you tina is there anybody else wishing to address the board this evening i will pause for a minute i don't see any other raised hands but i will pause for one more minute to make sure that oh i now see another one gail bradford gail good evening gail you can unmute [Music] thank you can you hear me doug sorry i can gail good evening welcome thank you very much i am glad to see the berkeley heights board of ed meeting in person reflecting the in-person instruction at the elementary schools i also encourage the board of ed to continue
091to move from an all remote meeting to a hybrid model which includes a portion of the public and um concerning i also see board of ed members at the in-person meeting taking off their mass to speak and again i don't know the distance is there but mass are an integral part of our safety protocols in our schools and i would expect the board of ed members to uh set a better example to the community and to our students at our meetings thank you for your comment i can assure you that those who are speaking without mass are socially distant and more than six feet apart is there anybody else that wants to address the board this evening seeing nobody i will close the citizens hearing portion of our meeting and we will move on to
092the rest of our agenda if i get a motion on administration items yes i will move uh item 14 a through d motion a second any discussion roll call mr hardin yes mr truly mr dequiela yes mrs penna yes miss reilly yes mrs kirsch yes mr weinstein yes moving forward item 15 personnel yes i move uh personal items a through h second motion is second any discussion roll call mr hyman yes this is young mr controlling yes mr d'aquila yes this is penna yes miss riley yes this is kirsch yes mr reinstein yes 16. i'll make a motion to approve business items a through h i guess we want to do it with two i and it's only for item so a through iodine still move it yes it's emotionally before we vote on that
093so i recommend that we vote on a through i removing item d i'm going to make that notion again the motion [Music] yes on a through h this is young mr tinchuli yes mr jaquilla yes mrs penna yes miss riley mrs kirsch yes mr reinstein yes item 17 finance yes i moved finance items a through d as i reviewed the bills this month and once again no issues thank you very much donna for all the answers to the questions oh second question a second discussion mr hyman uh yes mrs young mr chinchilly yes mr dupiola yes this is penna yes riley yes mrs yes mr reinstein yes uh other business other business to come before the board i have just two quick things robert thank you uh the first would be i didn't notice a
094teacher of the year liaison among the uh committee appointments and liaison appointments so i'm wondering if that is not taken i'd be interested in it dr christinino had done it for years and i have actually assisted him as well in past years so does anyone have an issue with that he wants to take dr personal interest on that hey everybody else okay with that all right robert it's yours thank you uh the second thing is uh when i was last here at the table in 2019 we were discussing uh school buses transportation issues um particularly ways that we could improve uh some traffic issues and and things like that that may affect our buses so where i left off was we were i think donna was gonna perhaps get together with mrs kirsch and talk
095about some possibilities that mrs kirsch may be aware of giving her given her background uh with respect to things we could do i'm i know we're speaking to the police very often and it's great we have such a relationship with them but they can't be everywhere all the time so i'm i do know you followed up but can you give us uh some details on the follow-up okay just to give you some background information for our home to school transportation we use a combination of district drivers and contracted vendors approximately 70 percent of our students are transported by our contract vendors our district drivers transport the remaining 30 percent of the students we recently surveyed both the district drivers and the contact contracted drivers about their concerns regarding cars passing them when they have their
096lights flashing neither group reported that the cars not stopping when their red lights are on is a problem there is a brief period of time several years ago when this was a concern over the past two years this has not been a concern and i do realize that traffic is down because of covid but they didn't feel like this was a concern at this time we also reached out to the contracted vendors that we use and we wanted to get information about cameras from them none of the contracted vendors had is planning to add cameras to their fleet they have looked into it and they do not feel that installing cameras would help with any traffic issues that they come across the one thing they suggested which they all have is gps on their buses
097and we based on their recommendation we have gps's on our buses it helps us to monitor where the buses are when they get there we looked into it further to get more information and the picture that a camera on a bus takes isn't sufficient evidence for the police to issue a ticket the bus drivers would have to make a report to the police make a formal complaint against the driver the bus driver would then have to go to traffic court to testify and follow up so the evidence that they give to the police would not result in a violation against a driver what everybody recommends and what we really follow is that when we have concerns about an area or a street where people might be passing the bus we do reach out to the
098police and the berkeley heights police are always very cooperative with us they take this as seriously as we do they send the vehicle out the vehicle surveys the area sometimes just having a police car in the area will stop someone or make them think about what they're doing they do they have and instances pulled people over and given them tickets and this has resolved any concerns that our bus drivers or the contracted bus drivers have um a lot something we do a lot is see what neighboring districts do a lot of most of the neighboring districts also use vendors the same vendors that we are using so they are not installing cameras on their buses kelly is part of a transportation group and she ran reached out to other transportation coordinators and the response that
099she got was basically no one has the cameras on their buses again they're not finding it an effective way of dealing with any traffic issues a safety measure that we use when designing our routes is that we don't have students cross major roads the route is designed so the bus stops on the side of the road where the students live so the students shouldn't be crossing any major roads the bus drivers are very vigilant they are always looking at the area surveying it making sure that there isn't oncoming traffic uh so based on this i wouldn't recommend rental fields necessary to add cameras to the buses thank you i appreciate all that hard work i guess i have just a couple of points um my daughter i won't let her take the bus because her
100stop is on emerson and she does actually have to cross emerson to get on the bus uh and off the bus presumably so that's just not an option for us in in my opinion um the other thing was in terms of not seeing or hearing reports of lately of uh cars passing uh school buses with their lights on their stop lights on i understand of course in 2020 mentioned during covet fewer people are driving fewer kids are going to the school building etc but i do remember in 2019 again on emerson i've seen a car pass right in front of a stop sign up from the the bus itself with red lights flashing and the sign was fully extended and so i don't know i from living here i can tell you i see a
101need i i appreciate your polling you know everyone um one thing i genuinely don't understand why would it not help with traffic issues or going after the people who do pass those signs if you have cameras you seem to indicate that maybe i misunderstood why wouldn't that be helpful with traffic issues particularly passing school buses that are stopped can can i jump in a little bit um roger uh robert did indicate that i do have cameras on my buses um but they they run but they don't trigger you have to have an impact in order to trigger the camera or the driver has to manually trigger it so they're not capturing a whole lot of things because by the time that car speeds fast the driver you know just can't trigger the camera and if
102there's no impact it's not getting triggered it's also very expensive the equipment is expensive the licensing is expensive and it has to be reviewed so you know i think working with the police department adjusting routes and you know moving uh bus stops so kids don't have to cross the street might be a good way to go um if it was a serious problem make maybe a second look but i fully support uh donna's recommendation not to move forward with the cameras at this time okay robert thank you for bringing that up donna thank you for uh i know you spent some time investigating that and looking into that on our district's behalf so thank you uh very much okay can i ask one other quick unrelated question i know in january we had um we
103had approved two new classes courses for next year uh gl i know courses opened up for registration for next year do we have any sense yet as to the interest in in those two classes it might be too early but just curious one was the roots in rhythm course and then um race in america in the 21st century if it's too early no worries yeah it's it's too early we should have um probably by the end of the month we'll have information for all of our courses thanks great thanks um there's one other item of new business uh to share uh and it's regarding full day kindergarten our original plan is i think most people know uh was to a pilot a full day kindergarten in september of 2020 in a rollout of universal full-day
104kindergarten in september of 2021. last year during the pandemic the board decided to postpone the referendum and therefore delay the implementation of universal full day kindergarten until september of 2022. tonight we're announcing that universal full-day kindergarten will be available to all township residents in september of 2021 which is our original plan our finance and facilities committees met as did our administrative leadership team and feel we can begin the universal full-day kindergarten in september of this year which is a change to what we've said in the past we do know that it is something that many of our residents desire in fact we had an oversubscription for the pilot for this year so we're excited to announce that we can bring it back to september of 2021. we will have more information forthcoming at future board
105meetings but we did feel it was important to share this update in february so parents who might have been wait listed for the september full-day kindergarten pilot and might have been investigating external options and now where that will be offered in the district and again more information to be shared at um at future meetings is there any other new business to come before the board this evening not seeing anything we'll move on could i get a motion to adjourn so moved second we are adjourned and we are back here for our next meeting on september excuse me on february 25th thanks and have a good rest of the night good night you