001good evening everybody welcome to our board of ed meeting i know we have a couple of hundred people on this uh call or meeting tonight so good evening i will call the meeting to order i'm done a roll call mrs penna mr d'aquila here mr joya here miss riley here mr casano here dr christenino here mrs kirsch mr reinstein and follow the musical clerk i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all donna correspondents uh there was two pieces of correspondence for tonight's meeting we have an email from mr dan mcgovern regarding uh staff quarantine quarantining prior to winter break and an email from mr leblanc's regarding the kova dashboard
002thank you dr brawley superintendents report this evening good evening everyone while the purpose of tonight's board meeting is the timetable for the return to in-person learning in january i would be remiss not to address the recent instagram post and subsequent posts and the change.org petition that it generated which has received over 1500 signatures i like many of you was deeply saddened to read the instagram posts from students past and present that detailed a culture of hatred and bias in berkeley heights public school that targeted students for abuse because of their race religion ethnicity sexual orientation or gender this is against everything i believe in not only as an educator but as a person from the post that we can determine who the individual is who posted them the building principles and i have launched investigations
003into the claims to determine how we can hold those involved accountable and provide sort support to those students i encourage anyone who has a formal complaint to file it officially or through the anonymous reporting system so that we can investigate it accordingly however i do disagree with one statement in the petition that states that the district and i quote has shown no sign of doing anything regarding the discrimination student face while i cannot speak while i cannot speak to what was done in the past i think that is very important to set this record straight as to the actions the district has taken during my tenure over the past year and a half i was appointed the superintendents of berkeley heights public schools in july of 2019 and over the course of the summer and
004first semester began evaluating the district as part of that process and after meeting with parents who expressed concerns regarding the treatment of students of color at gl in january of 2020 i tasked a group of administrators and teachers to start holding round table discussions with students hoping to begin an open conversation regarding bias targeting climate and culture at gl there were two follow-up roundtables in the spring with students at gl and at cms in the spring of 2020 i re-branded the district mission as include inspire and empower with the first and most important of these being to include to make sure that all students felt safe and included when they came to school these are not simple words they strike at the heart of everything that the district does and i have committed significant resources
005in a multifaceted approach to make this a reality i have also made it one of my personal merit goals for the district as has the administrative team over the summer of 2020 a survey was provided to students and staff regarding diversity and social and emotional awareness and needs based on the quantitative and qualitative results of both surveys the school district initiated a world-renowned expert in multicultural awareness and the founder of ad caller mark shashan who presented to the entire district staff and provided a follow-up training for administration this specific training and survey results guided the building and district level diversity and inclusion committees additionally over the summer of 2020 as the district created an educational program for the 2021 school year in the face of the pandemic we also created diversity committees at each grade
006band as well as one at the district level each committee is comprised composed of teachers parents board of education members and students where applicable these committees have honest and open conversations about diversity equity and inclusion issues in the buildings coordinate activities discuss curriculum and instruction and celebrate our diversity underneath these committees are individual action teams that are taking on special activity activities related to diversity and inclusion all of these people have committed a great deal of time and energy to making our schools a more inclusive place curricularly we are adding a course on race at governor livingston high school our elementary schools are currently working on an lg tbq plus curriculum that starts at fifth grade and we are evaluating all curriculum as to make diversity an integral part of our instructional areas and finally
007we are working to make our special education students feel more included in the regular school day the district has also committed to diversity equity and inclusion training for the staff at the start of the school year the teaching staff received implicit bias training and elementary principals have attended additional bias training at gl mr nixon is partnering with a teacher to devote february to anti-bias workshops for our staff and he has met with the student advisory council to work on a handbook for biased incidents that will also affect those members of the staff who exhibit biased behaviors the board of education has a policy number three two one one which explicitly denounces bias interactions as a part of our teaching staff and any incidents are thoroughly investigated as we understand that students may be reticent and
008coming forward mr nixon has also repeatedly distributed the anonymous reporting link to the student population so that they may report any incidents when the building within the building without fear of repercussion and finally because we know that the schools do not exist in a vacuum we have partnered with the berkeley heights township diversity council and participated in several listening session sessions we look forward to continue working with them to make the town a better place we are also working with them in their community martin luther king jr day event all of the above would normally take multiple years to get off the ground and in place that it was done in the past year which with much of the time while navigating the global pandemic is an incredible accomplishment and isn't it as a testament
009to the dedication and professionalism of our administrative team and teachers and the support and hard work of the board of education the community and our students while i'm proud of what has been accomplished by no means am i satisfied there is still much for us to do to create change within a school district it takes four things one change of hiring practices we have partnered with teachers college of columbia as well as central jersey pride to diversify our teaching staff two professional development three strict accountability and four time as frustrating as it might be it takes time to change a culture that has been fostered for years but we are committed to it and with your help we hope to make berkeley heights public schools a place that truly includes inspires and empowers all of
010its students i am now going to turn this over to mr nixon so that he may talk about the work he has been doing with the student advisory council thank you dr barley members of the board of education good evening everyone i'm robert nixon and i'm the principal of governor livingston high school and i'm joined tonight by senior matthew chin matthew has been a member of the student advisory committee during his time at the high school he'll help me share more about a specific project that we've been working on just a little bit thank you for being with us tonight matthew i'd like to start by sharing that i'm grateful for this opportunity to speak this evening this has been a challenging school year at best certainly more so for some it is upsetting for
011me as a principal who cares deeply about our students and staff to hear about the negative experiences of students both past and present this is not at all how students at glhs should feel or be treated our belief has been that all students should feel happy safe and welcomed at school those ideals are why we make it a priority to greet students as they enter the building each morning and also why we've created a wellness center complete with programming for our students i'm a father of a sixth and fifth grade student and every day before i even think about their academics i hope for them to be both happy and safe at school i want the same for all of your students here with that in mind we recognize the need to do more and
012our work is ongoing as i shared with our staff and students on friday we need to work together as a school community and share in the responsibility of ending hate i have had a lot of meaningful conversations with students parents and colleagues over the past year all with the same goal to make things better i've engaged the administrative team in this process we are working diligently to be supportive leaders and active partners in the process of change as we work to find solutions our goal is simple while a challenge is great we must listen reflect improve and be relentless in the process of providing our students with the safest possible environment while at school i believe we have made important strides both recently as well as over the past few years while being well aware
013that change doesn't happen overnight one of the challenges about many of these initiatives is that they're not always visible to the public and to that end i'm looking forward to sharing some of those specific items with you tonight the governor livingston diversity committee which is led by ms laurie scott and mr stephen hopkins is working hard to foster inclusiveness and acceptance through celebration communication and education we meet monthly with representative students staff and community members to develop and work on action items related to those topics student organizations such as saga gl unfiltered formerly the student activism club and the understanding asian cultures club to name a few have been created and supported over the past few years they are all extremely active with their diversity initiatives one such example is the sexuality and gender acceptance
014club's safe zone training program student representatives presented at a faculty meeting last year regarding a training program that they wanted to offer in order to educate staff members in addition club members provided lunch and learn workshops to staff members to learn more about inclusive language and activities while providing that safe zone training we have approved two new courses like dr barley mentioned that will be added to the curriculum next year and the social studies department a course titled race and america in the 21st century was designed to help students understand and critically evaluate the impacts of the social construction of race through the lens of events of the 21st century in english an elective course titled roots in rhythm will offer the opportunity for students to learn about the history of ancient african civilizations and
015pan-african cultures through the study of rap and hip-hop music the school safety team meets on a monthly basis with a specific focus on diversity and we're also developing plans to provide both staff and student training sessions on diversity that we're targeting to roll out in february although all of what i'm sharing right now is visible public actions uh that are now being taken it is important to note that the staff and administration at gl has always addressed known incidents prior to the inception of the aforementioned items due to student privacy what has been done to address and educate specific students that have demonstrated or been involved in the activities of hate cannot be shared publicly or even with other parties involved however we can note that specific training modules on different aspects of diversity or
016hate have been used in order to educate students that have been found to be involved in negative activities if ignorance racism and discrimination as a learned behavior then it's up to our educational institutions to work together to educate and teach our students and the entire community to be inclusive and accepting of differences while all this is just a start and much work still needs to be done i believe we are moving in the right direction as a school community at this time i'd like to invite matthew into the conversation regarding a project we initiated in november matthew and the other members of the student advisory committee have accepted the challenge of engaging in a revision to our student handbook that he will share more with you about matthew uh thanks mr nixon uh hi everyone
017my name is matthew chen and i'm currently a senior at gl on the student council executive board president and captain of the soccer lacrosse teams i've also been a member of the gl student advisory board for four years now now the role of the student advisory board is to represent the student body to the administration and during our monthly meetings we often discuss important issues within the school and work to create solutions for example when gl won all remote last spring we contributed ideas as to how our schedule should be structured and discuss how our classes were being adapted to our new learning environment our most recent project began in november when mr nixon in the administration asked us to help them draft an update to our student handbook in order to address the instances
018of racism and bias within gl that gain further attention because of a recent instagram post last month we were given the opportunity to suggest how the administration should go about constructing the update and just this friday we were able to read the first draft and give feedback we ensured that the update contained provisions specifically addressing incidents that occur online and on social media where so many believe they can hide behind their screens and say whatever they want with impunity we plan to share the update with the gl diversity committee in january and officially add the changes to the student handbook at the beginning of the second semester and now that you know what the administration and the student advisory board have been doing to combat instances of bias in school i'd like to share my
019personal thoughts on the issue as a student in my four years of jail i've seen that some students simply aren't tolerant towards the beliefs of others and are unempathetic towards their classmates having said that i personally know that most students truly are caring people and probably weren't even aware that intolerance is such a large issue at the school they attend every day therefore i think the administration is taking an important step in acknowledging that bias racism homophobia and sexism are far more prevalent than any of us would like to believe and by outlining a clear procedure for dealing with those incidents i think that the administration is moving in a positive direction however i'd certainly be lying if i said that a handbook update or simple policy changes were going to put an end to
020that type of behavior the fact of the matter is that some students who enter gl have preconceived notions about things like race and gender identity they're extremely difficult to change and in fact are only further reinforced by a general culture of intolerance that exists in our school and in our town instead of just defining expectations for students who are an understanding of others i'd like to think that as a school district and as a community we can work towards making sure all of our students are empathetic and caring individuals who don't need to be reminded to behave by an update to the student handbook whether that comes from beginning to educate students about things like implicit bias and gender identity in elementary or middle school or maybe from a broader shift towards a more tolerant
021culture in our schools and in our community i'm not sure and maybe i'm coming across as an overly idealistic 17 year old who's about to go to college and still naively hopes he could change the world for the better but i think that instead of only focusing on policy updates we need to additionally ensure that our students learn to respect others without being told thank you thank you very much matt so in closing i'd like to share a reminder that i included as part of my email to our students on friday i want to remind our students that gl's staff and administration are here to support you please let us know how we can help reach out to a trusted teacher counselor or administrator if you don't feel comfortable reporting something to us please feel
022free to report it using the hipster anonymous reporting system that was linked in the email by working together and being kind to each other we can all do our part to make gl a more inclusive place for all thank you and stay safe thank you mr nixon and matthew i truly appreciate your time tonight i'm coming to speak to our public as well as myself and the board of education i'm going to move really quickly to the original purpose of this meeting which is our return to learning in january and i'm going to share my screen for a very short and quick presentation let's see we've got it one second so if you um look at our percentage of remote students for some reason i cannot make it present okay i'm just gonna do it
023this way um there we go okay if you look at our percentage of remote students which has sorry our percentage of remote students which has um gone down in most of our buildings except for um if you look at mary kay mcmillan it stayed the same mountain park it has gone down hughes woodruff also decreased and then in cms our number of remote students has increased by five percent and then if you look at the numbers of students who have increased at gl we're up now to 53 percent of our student population who are remote so um i think on friday we had 169 children in gl at one time in multiple conversations with the board of education and with the administrative team we came to i i came to a decision right now we
024have approximately 12 teachers who are currently out due to child care issues health issues etc across the district we have six teachers at gl who are teaching remotely due to the fact that we cannot find someone to replace them and then on top of that with the amount of teachers who come in contact with someone with coven 19 and the amount of teachers who are traveling over the holiday break we are stretched thin with our teaching population on friday we had 21 classes that were not covered by substitutes so if we look at what we had on friday when we did have the majority of our teachers in the building who have not traveled we know that starting in january we will have an issue the state the cdc has changed the guidelines to 10
025days quarantining from traveling as opposed to 14 days so that helps us only have one week of remote learning for pre-k to 8th grade if you look at the recommendations for january january 4th through the 8th would be remote for the entire district and then moving january 11th through the 15th we would have the current schedule for pre-k in kindergarten due to the fact that pre-k and kindergarten overlap in hours we cannot do a plan a for pre-k in kindergarten other than the full-day kindergarten and first through fifth grade would move to plan a in january on january 11th and grades six through eight would move to the hybrid plan b on january 11th and then grades nine through 12 would stay remote until january 5th and our reasoning behind the high school being remote
026until january 25th the majority of students who have opted for remote have stated that they will return to in-person learning at the second semester after all these social gatherings and traveling has ended so i'm going to i'll leave that up there for like a few more seconds and i will take it down do any of the members of the board have questions about the presentation i will say mrs gardner is looking into being able to offer in-person learning for our specialized programs at gl starting on january 11th hi dr varlets michael can you uh just explain if there's any difference between plan a and hybrid plan b what what the the difference is yes so um plan a is all students k well first through five and i do get that confused i do get
027that mixed up all the time first through five plan a all students who are in person this we are still allowing people to choose remote so i don't want people to get confused we are not mandating that all students come in all students who want to be in person will come in on january 11th grades first through five does that help yes and then hybrid plan b is half the population so on january 11th group a will start cohort a will start at cms so plan a is every kid every week and plan b is um two cohorts uh every other week and um and both of them have an option to be remote if you want to be absolutely dr barley this is doug's christine now um so you mentioned you surveyed or or
028most high school students said they would return on january 25th so you did survey them and did you survey the other grade levels um and the i didn't personally serve this is the conversations i had with gl administration that all the the majority of students who did opt for remote said they wanted to come back after the holiday break and the large family gatherings okay um dissipated okay thank you you're welcome dr varley can you just explain the rationale behind hybrid plan b for grade six through eight so and what one thing we have one problem we have with grade six through and i'll say six through twelve is that the students change classes and the classes are larger so right now we there are many times that we have not had to go remote
029because we have had the group a and the group b and so the students do not come in contact with one another that many that many other students thus not closing us down i will say that my goal is to bring cms back to plan a but i do not know exactly when that will happen it's on the horizon where we bring all students back for a half day thank you um i just want to ask another question you mentioned that you had 21 classes um that did not have coverage so do you want to speak briefly about the challenges to getting subs and coverages for those classes so it is extremely excuse me it is extremely difficult to find coverage for that amount of classes that are open i think we had that day
030i'm not sure i think it's like 42 teachers who are out so we covered half of them during that during friday what that means when we don't have coverage is that other teachers give up their prep or their um or different periods or we lose specials so that those teachers can fill in and provide coverage so some of the students will have a different teacher in their room every period so there's no consistency of instruction and it's it's basically for a better word it's it's generally babysitting so because we couldn't find coverage for those employees thank you so in the high school going to january 25th we saw uh we solved for the staffing problem because our teachers will be teaching remote and we also saw the challenges of the hybrid plan because i've heard
031from many people in the community that they're high school students going to class and there's maybe two three four kids in the class one a lot of our classes have one to two students in them so you know we haven't been really out of balance absolutely so dr valley i'm sorry i'm having problems with my connection tonight um i just wanted to clarify with plan a uh is it going to be the same schedule as the hybrid model is now for first through f for first through fifth the only difference will be instead of it being every other week they'll just come in every day or is there a slight change to the actual schedule there won't be a change to the schedule the schedule will remain the same okay so there's no lunch there's
032no lunch no as as of right now we cannot solve for lunch okay and maybe just to clarify if a family member family has decided to go all remote and they want to switch back from all remote to in person specifically first through eighth grade when can they make that decision or when can they opt to go back in we would like it sooner rather than later we have in our on our guidelines 10 days prior we would be we would definitely be flexible like um i have the admin team and i talked today that january is the month of flexibility so in other words if they want to make a decision they can come in in time for january 11th to be in person on plan a just for first through fifth yes and
033if they then decided they wanted to go back remote they can then just contact the school to say they changed their mind absolutely we do allow remote to happen immediately [Music] okay are any other comments from the board scene then dr dr volley does that conclude your superintendent's report this evening that concludes my superintendent report thank you very much all right thank you um thank you dr varley uh we will now open up the citizens hearing for tonight's uh discussion and let me put a a couple of guidelines and ground rules so first we're going to open up the citizens hearing for anybody who wants to address the board on the topic that we just discussed and that is the return to school hybrid model that we have in january if you have a question
034about that we will start with those questions well we have that portion of that and everybody who wants to ask a question about return to school and open it up to anybody else who wants to ask any other question about something within the district anybody who wants to be heard tonight will get a chance to be heard once to be recognized uh please make sure your first name and your last name is listed on your device and use the raise your hand function of zoom i will unmute you you'll have a chance to come off mute we prefer that you also turn your camera on so we can interact with you and if you have more than one question please ask the questions all the questions at once each person will be given uh three
035minutes uh to speak so with that i will first open up the citizens hearing if you can raise your hand for it and these are questions only now if you have a question about the return to school model that we have and we'll go from there i see a couple of questions so let me start tina scrozo tina good evening how are you how are you tonight i'm well thank you how are you mr einstein i am outstanding did we lose you tina we lost tina but we'll come back and we'll find tina when she comes back joanna o'connor i see you next hi sorry it's it's actually dennis um yes i'm trying to unmute or start my video here so just out of curiosity um is the return to school metrics based or date
036based um and if so what are the metrics that we're using for that return to school option or the the plan a option i guess i should say so what we are finding i will say the plan a we were planning on doing plan a january 19th which is a week and a day later than january 11th however what we're finding and what surrounding districts around us who are using plan a who have been plan a sit september did we lose him is he still here um is that they are not they're not having any in-school transmission and therefore it makes the most sense to get our youngest learners in the building as much as we possibly can the january 11th date is based on 10 days past when we would assume people would be
037getting together for a large family gathering great thank you thank you dry [Music] dan mcgovern i see you next dan good evening good evening doug how you doing i am well welcome thanks uh everybody good evening i'm dan mcgovern teacher of physics of governor livingston and bha president i would like to applaud the decision to move to virtual instruction after winter break in anticipation of a surge in cases i would like to request though that the district remain on virtual instruction for at least two weeks after winter break ends for an in-person return no earlier than january 19th this two-week window would follow established guidance on isolation since the start of this crisis i would also request the delay in moving first to fifth grade to plan a until the data shows that the situation
038is getting better not worse the ng nj cali reports still have us firmly in the orange zone and that schools should plan for all virtual instruction when in the orange not to welcome even more students physically back to school we are all eager for this crisis to end but if we botch our operational plan now we will only inevitably delay the return to normalcy instead of expediting it thank you thank you ben nikko o'sullivan i see you next nick good evening good evening mr weinstein thank you for having me welcome thank you uh first off if i may just want to thank the board for their continued effort this is a non-stop 24 hour a day thing with constant switching and and adjusting and i want to thank the outgoing board members for the service
039and welcome the 2021 ones as well i'm here tonight to read a statement that was asked of me to read it's from a group of teachers at the elementary school so this would be great two to five here is the statement we would like to understand the reasoning for going to plan a in the elementary schools on january 11th currently we are in the midst of a second surge of covert 19 cases in new jersey with about 5 000 cases reported per day in the state hospital icus are approaching capacity the entire state is in the department of health's orange zone which is deemed of course high risk as we all know when that happens the doh recommends considering implementing fully remote instruction it also says we should restrict activities that involve interaction with multiple
040cores going to plan a of course means mixing two large cohorts together we have seen time and time again this past fall the value of the hybrid schedule we have avoided so many quarantines because students developed symptoms and tested positive while their cohort was learning remotely when this has happened students and staff did not have the quarantine despite that we still have quarantines at the mkms school and the elementary schools plan a will mean even more we know there have been coverage surges and effects on our district after the recent holidays we should wait to move to plan a especially considering that burpee heights has been experiencing more covenant 19 cases per capita than our neighboring communities of chatham new providence and summit to move back too soon invites an even greater educational disruption to
041our students through the higher possibility of more quarantines and more shutdowns before making a decision to go to plan a these teachers are asking the board to plea visit the elementary school classrooms and look at the conditions the plastic desk shields are not an adequate replacement for proper social distancing where the students can lean back from them peek around them or stand up in order to see the board since it can be hard to see the board from the back half of the room and they urge the board to not move to plan a on january 11th thank you great nick thank you very much for your comments uh tina somehow we somehow we lost you before but we now have you back i apologize if that was our fault but welcome back oh well
042thank you very much so sorry um thank you uh everyone and i just had one very quick question regarding the rationale for starting with cohort a after already being on vacation or break and then having the remote week if it started i believe that we're supposed to start with cms back with cohort a when on the original hybrid schedule it was supposed to be cohort b i know that this is uh not necessarily intentional but for some people who have work schedules who have already worked around the hybrid cohort a and b switches it's very difficult for parents to adjust the schedule based on the incoming class of cohort a after the break and that's a very good question in my discussions we came up with this week is cohort b and one thing we
043know from our conversations with parents is that a lot of our students enter i guess a type of depression after being out of school for so long so our thought was cohort b would be out and then it would if we brought them right back in they would have two weeks of in-person instruction and cohort a would not so that was the reasoning behind cohort a coming in first on january 11th great thank you i'm dr horley um psy bogarby good evening good evening give me one second you hear me uh yeah hello and see you now yeah um so i have a uh thanks for uh clarifying on when the plan a starts for k to five um i had written previously and i wanted to know if is there any plan to address
044if after once we go um in to plan a in january 11th if let's say the state or the region switches to red um and if we are going to go remote has uh for the special services or for the students with special needs has the school district start thought of opening up like maybe the gyms or something just for the kids with ieps if we were forced to go remote well we haven't had that discussion and no matter what if we have to go if it if it comes red the recommendation will be to go fully remote and that would mean for all students because it would be as safe and help as health and safety issue and so we do have to look out for our all of our students and go fully
045remote as we did in the spring no i mean have you thought of other options like um maybe opening the gyms keeping them 10 feet apart it the if you read the statement by the department of health we would need to go remote we wouldn't have an option in that in that sense okay thank you you're welcome the next person i see is michael leblanc michael good evening good evening i would like to thank the board and the district for releasing that dashboard information it shows a lot of important data that the district should definitely consider when reopening berkeley heights schools have proven me exceptionally safe probably safer than most of our our workplaces right where else we've only had one week where we were over point zero one percent of positivity and that was
046after the halloween incidents that happened off of campus so our school system has proven me exceptionally safe and i'd like to commend the staff of our school district in their success in maintaining the health and welfare of our students because they have been truly successful but i will say we should definitely move forward with plan a as soon as possible our students are not receiving the best possible education they could be uh blended and remote instruction is not nearly as efficient or quality as in-person instruction and we should move with plan a as soon as possible and the red guidelines of the county do not represent our community our community is not seeing a huge search especially among children so we should definitely proceed with plan a and not just close schools because the entire
047county which other parts are having severe outbreaks when we are not in our town great michael thank you very much i will pause i don't see anybody else's hand raised on the subject of return to school and our hybrid model is there anybody else who wants to address the board on the hybrid return to school model for january if you do raise your hand now okay not seeing any we will now continue with the assistance hearing and anybody who would like to address the board on any other educational topics that they like to speak go through the same process raise your hand and we will uh get to each of you this evening brianna kagan brianna good evening how are you tonight i'm good how are you mr einstein thank you all right so this
048is a little scary though they're like a lot of people here um um okay so hi everyone my name is brianna kagan i'm a senior at governor livingston in light of the recent story so bravely published by david erbank i would like to bring my story to this platform previously i've been afraid to share this with so many people but after all the stories that have been published i've been given the courage to bring my specific situation to light i've spoken at board of ed meetings before about student advocacy and have been known to not be afraid to speak my mind however i haven't always been like that going back as early as i can remember i was bullied i was called dramatic in fat in elementary school which then translated into fat and ugly
049in fact i was once asked if i was pregnant in the cafeteria lunch line aged 12. well all of these are things that i might be able to giggle about now back then it was completely and totally traumatizing in front of what felt like the entire school my biggest insecurities were put directly under a microscope and then it onto a big screen i have since learned that the experiences that i faced are not even a fraction of the experiences others have had which deeply saddens me to think that the worst years of my life were so much worse for many others i did not come here today to bash the school district any administrators or the administrative action taken in these circumstances however i would like to point out some of the things that i
050have experienced in my middle school years and the consequences to my knowledge which i also understand may be incomplete due to student privacy laws that my bullies faced first in the sixth grade i was harassed daily by more than one person jointly for the way my body looked how i dressed and the soccer team i played on when i reported it the boys had to apologize to me in front of the principal but the attacks never ceased i spent the rest of the school year miserable and afraid to eat lunch in the cafeteria next in the seventh grade i developed a new sense of style my favorite outfit was criticized in front of the entire lunch line and i was asked are you pregnant because you sure look like it in front of at least
05125 people i was so embarrassed that i ran out of the cafeteria and cried in the hallway to my knowledge this person never faced any serious consequences other than having to apologize to me and their insults continued for the rest of the year later by this same individual i was called the pillsbury doughboy in order to make fun of my appearance the eighth grade was the worst year of my adolescence by a long shot i was continuously called fat still but now added on to that i was being harassed and asked out on dates as a joke because who could ever like the fat girl right i had food thrown at me and water bottles knocked out of my hands so it spilled down my shirt the stuff that only happens in movies except this
052time i was afraid to report it the fear of what had happened in prior circumstance where what was supposed to stop my bullies fueled them stopped me in my tracks completely and instead i went to my guidance counselor to talk about it because i was upset but refused to name names to avoid an hiv report i have since not brought any indiscretion with my peers to a guidance counselor or anyone in a similar position complacency in these situations is not an option we must work together to ensure that students feel protected and in a safe environment which these stories have made clear that students do not complacency can be deadly in circumstances like these i want to say clearly that i do not blame anyone for what happened to me except the offenders and i
053have definitely had my views changed most importantly it has taught me that empathy is always an option and to never choose hate towards others i do believe our school district is moving in the right direction to make major change i've seen it happen at gl through groups like the student advisory board which i am proud to be a part of and the rewrite of the student handbook gl unfiltered saga and so many other student-led groups but student-led groups cannot be where this train stops parents please i beg you to encourage your children to choose kindness and everyone who works at bhp snj schools encourage your students to choose kindness at well hate is not birthed it's learned but kindness can be learned as well let's all work on choosing kindness and make berkeley heights schools
054a safe place for students of all shapes sizes gender identities races sexual orientations and anything else that makes them special not different but special thank you nicole emma you're up next okay yeah as brianna said there's a lot of people here and i'm a little nervous so i'm sorry if i misspeak at all but um hi my name is nicole i'm a senior and i'm the president of saga at gl um in light of recent events on social media the club came together today and on friday to consider some ideas to present to the board we thought about three different main ideas to talk to you about tonight um to give our input as students on how the school can work to be more supportive so i'm going to address two of these ideas and
055then if you could allow elizabeth connolly to speak next to address the other point we wanted to talk about tonight that would be great so the first thing we think the school can do to be more supportive is to actually connect with the saga club um i've been the president of saga all year and i've never heard from any administrators about the club they've never checked in to see how what we're working on and what we want to do um but more importantly when we present things to the administration it feels like a lot of them get ignored we've been asking for gender neutral bathrooms and asking for the school to work on allowing kids to feel comfortable in the locker room they use for gym classes um for a year and a half now
056and nothing has ever really came from that the school said they were looking into it and maybe behind the scenes they have been working on that but as far as we know nothing as far as the club knows you know nothing has been made with that and it's just unfair that students come to school and avoid using the bathroom all day just because of how uncomfortable it makes them feel that they have to use the bathroom of a gender they don't identify with um and another thing is we did create the support zone last year which was mentioned tonight and the administration allowed us to present to all the teachers about it and that was fantastic um miss oliveira came to one of our meetings before the creation of the sportszone and miss bartlett was
057at a round table with us um and then a lot of administrators were at the lunch and learns hosted by the former president's jason rachel but to my knowledge no one ever followed up or reached out to us afterward and it sometimes feels like the school is using a club that i'm so passionate about to prove that they're supportive of lgbtq students and then not supporting that club and i know that's not the intention but just sometimes it feels like that um and tonight some of the action plans the school is working on were addressed and some of the students who are directly impacted by that behavior the students in saga have never even been consulted about that um furthermore the second thing we wanted to address is why it seems like no one reports
058a lot of the behavior and i think brianna talked about this a bit um gl a lot of students don't really trust the school to properly handle these situations and i think that if the administration were to really work to build trust with students and i know that they're trying to and again this takes years and i was talking to saga today and i said i really hope in the future like the freshmen who are in the club i said i hope when you guys are seniors things really do change um we discussed the idea of potential sensitivity training for students and staff which i heard tonight that that's um they're working on that and that's great i'm really glad that we're on the same page but another thing we talked about is when this
059type of homophobic racist sexist xenophobic and you know whatever other type of behavior like this occurs instead of just reprimanding students like for example if they were to get a detention um this needs to be a teaching moment if students were to call someone a homophobic slur for example and then they get a detention because of it the only thing that's going to change is the students going to be more careful about getting caught they won't understand the implications of their actions which is a huge part of preventing them from repeating that behavior students are sometimes a product of where they're raised and if they're not being taught about being supportive of other students at home then they're going to engage in behavior that reflects that at school and when they do that the school
060needs to work to really educate them on why that's wrong and i think that's going to go a long way in changing things and also building trust with students um so that's all i had from the saga club but if you wouldn't mind allowing elizabeth connolly to speak next i believe elizabeth has their hand raised that would be great thank you so much hi i'm also a member of saga i'm a sophomore this year and i went over the weekend and reviewed a bunch of policies sent out by the district and we you guys have a specific policy about transgender students and in the policy you state directly transgender students who are uncomfortable using sex segregated bathroom bathrooms should be provided with a safe and adequate alternative saga has reached out in the past regarding
061these gender neutral bathrooms but so far no response has been made saga is still willing to partner with the district and the administration to see what can be done about this issue it's also clear through another policy sent out by the district the 2260 a formative action program for schools and classroom practices this policy is written in a very heteronormative sense stating that there are two genders and openly discriminates against genders existing out of the binary i know this was most likely not the intention sent out by the district when writing this policy but it is very detrimental to non-binary youths like aggiel nicole and eliza thank you very much for your comments uh the next person i see is sri hi good evening good evening thank you so much for having a forum for
062this um i also would like to speak on the same topic uh i am a former gl student i'm alumni i graduated in 2015 and i want to thank you for addressing the issue at the beginning but i still think there is a lot more work to be done it's clearly i want to also thank david urbanky for bringing this issue to light and the number of students who have shared their stories i know i could also add to the stories but i feel like there's been a lot of stories put out there and i'm i'm more interested in seeing what we can do to address these issues i want to speak on that um so i think it's important that you've detailed some first steps i i appreciate the dei initiatives that you've spoken
063about um but i think also part of it is accepting responsibility and accountability i feel like often i know it seems like maybe things are being done behind the scenes but we don't really know if things are addressed if there's no transparency and i understand certain things want to be need to be kept confidential but i think especially if someone else is a party to something or was a victim of bullying or some incident they deserve a little bit of more answer so they know that their problem was actually addressed otherwise often the bullying just continues and so i didn't really appreciate the comment about it being always addressed in the past because i definitely know past incidents that were not properly addressed and i think it's hard to always say always because we're all
064learning and growing and i want to echo matthew's comments at the end i really appreciate that he said it's a larger culture shift that needs to start at a young age and i think that's definitely true but i also think it is something that we can work on even at gl at the high school because high school is a formative time and so i think a lot of things are um even being talked about now um in terms of how we're teaching sex ed to younger students and how we're teaching um anti-racist ideology and things like that um can start at a younger age but i think it also needs to continue at the high school um and so i think we need to be committed to talking about long-term solutions as you said this
065will take time and i think that's important to recognize but i also don't think we should use that just as a blanket statement because often that can lead to slower progress so i think it'd be great to have a more of a community work group to have more input on different um solutions and have a form it'd be great if we could have an open communication with not just the superintendent but also board of ed members it'd be great if we could talk about this in the longer term rather than just being a one-time in a board meeting i appreciate the diversity committee and the students groups that have been working on it but i do agree that this is not just should not be put on just student groups a diversity committee works on
066a lot of different things and i think that's one way of addressing it but will not address all of the bullying and discrimination that has been brought to light so i really appreciated nicole's comment about how this can be a teaching moment and i think we should really think about how we want to address things as long-term problems rather than just a one-off uh issue that occurs because as she said just that or i believe someone said that just addressing in the principal's office one time and getting an apology often doesn't lead to a change in behavior so i think we could have more of a longer term discussion about this to think about real solutions i really appreciate that thank you so much hi so my name is marie um i was a jail
067alumnus in 2018 and um basically after at the end of senior year like third semester we have sex ed and i realize they don't really talk about gay people that much in sex ed and that just didn't really make any sense to me if you know it's a class about sex ed you should talk about sexuality so september 2018 i started doing some facebook posts trying to start talking to people um town council board of ed everyone that i could think of and i'm gonna try to keep this as quick because it is has been like a two-year process um and then winter of 2018 i finally spoke to the board of ed in a meeting and i just basically explained why i thought this was important and the teachers were protesting so all the
068teachers were there and i remember that after i finished my speech my health teacher came up to me and she said like you did such a good job like i completely agree which shows me that she was supportive and open to you know learning more and i never thought like she specifically left things out on purpose it was just more you know she probably didn't think of it and i was also in sagas so like i it's more on my mind and then i had a meeting with the health supervisor that same winter of 2018 and what i was told is you know the curriculum goes to this five year cycle we can't change the curriculum right now but we can change the lesson plans and it will be formally changed later great that's fine
069and um it was a little bit difficult like continuing to communicate with her like technically this is not my job to do but you know it is her job to answer her emails about these things but and then in december 2019 there was a new curriculum great wonderful it was sent to me [Music] unit 5 was called is called advanced sexuality gender understanding and lgbtq communities i don't know why the b is missing but let's move on we're making some progress um so in that unit it shows that there's supposed to be eight days not including the test day of basically that unit so but i don't complete like i didn't completely trust the school that they would teach it because i was told the year before that the lesson plans would just be changed
070so the students would still be learning that material and i got answers varying from none to like a little bit so then i asked again summer of um 2020 what did you learn and i got basically the same response some to very little and it just really isn't fair and um to try to prevent that i met with the health supervisor again in the winter of 2019 going into 2020 and i asked her you know can i have a meeting with all the teachers i strongly feel that i can convince them why this is important to teach and one teacher was brought in along with the health supervisor and i was just told that other teachers can't make it and then once the teacher left um the health supervisor was honestly very unprofessional um just
071talking to me kind of aggressively telling me like i can't post about this on facebook um basically saying that i you know that they've been doing everything that i wanted like why am i like continuing to do this and i like asked you know maybe could do a survey to make sure that students are learning this and she was just saying like we can't do that no absolutely not it's not fair and so basically i got the same exact results like for the seniors of 2020 i tried to ask like varying people people who i don't know at all and it's just little to none and it's just extremely unfair and um it's just not really fair because why would someone in the lgbt plus community have to hope you know i'm gonna get this
072specific teacher for me to feel mentioned it just doesn't really make any sense and you know this is the time you know like i felt like when i was seeing all this happen i was like you guys should could have pointed to this and to be like oh i'm working with this with this previous student and you know we've been trying to like help students learn more about the lgbt plus community that could have been like a great response and you guys just can't have that which is just honestly sad because like i don't want to you know be annoying and be nagging and you know can this please get done can this please get done i want it to get done i want it to be proud of my town i want to say
073look like this is like awful stuff that has happened but look how far we've come and i just i honestly feel like i've been met with a lot of resistance and excuses like this has been like two and a half years since i brought this up and everyone who's in charge of this is um an adult board of ed members teachers um the health supervisor you guys are all adults these this is your job you guys are all adults someone needs to take responsibility and it was pretty exhausting just hearing people say oh well you know this is for the teachers this is for the health supervisor this is like someone needs to take responsibility all of you are part of the education system and um yeah but honestly like i don't want to be
074like you know this is homophobic this is transphobic i don't want to be like that i want to see improvement i want to see growth and i strongly believe that it is possible and yeah that's all i have to say um thank you thank you very much for your comments time hi i've been dying to talk over here first of all i want to commend everyone that came forward i think those stories are unbelievable so i grew up in berkeley heights i went through the entire school system of berkeley heights mountain park governor livingston i have future nieces and nephews that are going to go to governor livingston as well my parents have lived in berkeley heights for 35 plus years so in the 90s when i went to gl home of dealing with homophobia
075back then it was different back then i was very strong-minded we didn't have social media we didn't have the anxiety that the kids have these days so i dealt with it i dealt with the fact that i ate lunch monday through friday in the bathroom stall alone because i was being called a when i tried to sit at a lunch table so i dealt with that that's not what i'm hearing about this is what my situation what my experience at gl that's not what i'm here to talk about what i'm here to talk about is the future of my nieces and my nephews going to this school that's so blatantly racist homophobic having a bunch of clubs and courses on diversity that are not mandatory does zero zilch nothing guess what every school in the
076world does it you're you do not get a pat on your back for having a club for lgbtq which in fact you just left the tea out of lgbtq which is actually another disturbing thing so i actually tried speaking to dr varley three times i've emailed everybody i got in touch with the mayor this morning i talked to angie divani and i have a statement from the mayor to you i invited her here tonight but she actually had she had something else to go to some other town hall that she had to go to so this is the statement that the mayor wants me to tell you let me begin by saying there is no space in the township of berkeley heights for racism sexism anti-semitism homophobia transphobia xenophobia and certainly not bullying let me
077repeat that sentence again slowly i'm not going to repeat it again but if any of you don't understand what those terms mean please raise your hand and i'll tell you thank you in june the township created the truth racial healing and transformation committee in 2021 we will move to make a permanent standing committee dedicated to diversity inclusion integration of all residents and future residents in our community our as this community belongs to all of us this trht committee comprised of many stakeholders including the police department board of education the diverse group of resident volunteers or different ethnicities and backgrounds of representative lgbtq community the ymca the faith community student youth community the township council me and the mayor this group is meant to work collaboratively collaboratively under one tent as well as address system systemic
078racism as well as bullying in the lgbt community in our individual organization not only are we rolling up our sleeves and we have just begun to do the work or changing this culture we want the trac committee to also be safe and a safe space to listen to you so my question is the mayor got back to my email dr varley never returned any of my emails nobody actually did i've called i've called the superintendent a few times so the fact that like i've gotten in touch with the mayor and she has she's actually admitting that there's a problem is a little bit of an issue to me because having clubs and courses doesn't help when i was at gl what did i do as a teenager when i was being bullied physically and mentally
079abused i went to leadership and i went to faculty what did they tell me they told me to toughen up they told me to get over it that's what your faculty did to me and thank you for david or banky for bringing light to this and everybody is actually hundreds there's been almost a thousand stories come forward and david our bank's stories on his instagram of people's horrific experiences that they've had at gl and there's over 2 000 let me just correct you dr varley it's not 1500 it's actually 2 000 and probably like i think 15 right now of signatures on change.org so having clubs and courses is not going to help so like my question to you is what are you doing to train the faculty and to educate the faculty because the
080fish rot from the head so like it's not the students are the problem it's the faculty that's the problem and it's the superintendent that's the problem we we are taxpayers and we demand answers and i will not send my niece and my nephew to a racist homophobic school so i need to know what your action plan is and i need to know what it is like how are we receiving this information because we had to like scrounge and find and like i wasn't even invited to this meeting so this needs to be more of a public transparent forum because you guys are like a little sneaky about it so i had to like find out from instagram about this meeting tonight so i need to know what is your action plan besides your courses and
081your classes on diversity and this i'm asking you dr varley so um i will tell you that i've never received a message from you or an email to my personal account so nothing has ever come from you i do respond within 24 hours of anyone who has emailed me so moving forward if you listen to that in my intro speech one of the there we are doing many things we have trained our teachers in the beginning of the year by mark strashan in anti-bias training we have our elementary principals went to teachers college of columbia to learn anti-racism and anti-bias training we have another training coming up in february for all of our staff members we're doing diversity equity and inclusion training for all of our staff members starting in january so those are as
082far as training goes those are the things we have begun to do and we will continue working on this to make our schools much more inclusive um i actually have i can send you screenshots of all emails i sent you if you would please email me your email address because clearly it's the wrong one it's tim.patichi gmail.com okay because it's the fact that i can get in touch with the mayor and nobody and nobody at the superintendent like you're forgetting you work for us we pay your salary don't forget that and i'm not sending my niece and nephews to a racist homophobic school that's for sure i can't hear you you need internet jared weissfeld you're next hi thank you very much um dr barley i actually have a question for you um when is
083the plan to actually hopefully go back to full-time school every day normal hours in person as soon as we can solve for lunch that is right now our our issue we um you know having multiple children and talking hundreds of children in a cafeteria without masks on is is definitely an issue as well as the teachers supervising students while they don't have masks on so that's something we're trying to work through and you know we're hoping the vaccine will be here sooner rather than later so that we can get our students back in school well the just two more questions well first of all i want to commend you on uh you're you're really doing a great job actually keeping these kids in school it's very impressive um so the the second question i have
084for you is so on the vaccine front are teachers going to be required to get the vaccine oh my gosh um at this time no to um i'm not sure it's something that we can require i can definitely talk to the board of education's attorney i know we couldn't require teachers to get tested at the beginning of the school year i did send out an email to the teaching staff today about how they are in tier 1b and so they are i think the thought is that by february we will have vaccines for teaching staff awesome and and the last question is is what is the actual issue with lunch the kids can't eat at their at their desks well that would be a small classroom right so if we're moving to plan a and
085we have 20 students in a classroom with their mask off it brings you know we know that it comes from um saliva and droplets and that all the students would have their mass off as well as the teaching staff and who's going to supervise them at that time fair enough all right well hopefully they could all get back into school full-time this year and and thank you very much for uh for all you've done thank you very much i appreciate it gary thank you very much tracy casey hi can you hear me yes we can okay great thank you for the opportunity to speak i wanted to thank david urbanky and all the former and current students that have um told their stories i am one of the advisors of the sexuality and gender acceptance
086club at gl also known as saga and i did want to first acknowledge i wasn't going to do this but i did want to acknowledge that gl administration has been very supportive of our club um very supportive of of me and i have met with mr edington several times uh we haven't had an opportunity really this year but i know he always makes himself available um and has been very supportive of our any event or program that we've been involved in so i just wanted to touch on three things that come up a lot have come up a lot over the years with our students and one um that is a little tricky is that apparently uh we've had like this year we don't have as many uh members as we did last year and
087i think the remote learning is kind of a part of that because kids are in their homes on zoom and maybe they don't feel as comfortable as they would um in a classroom at at school you know the kids come at lunch time and they eat lunch and you know it's a you know it's a nice atmosphere um but i have um heard from the kids that some kids are afraid to join the club because they're afraid just by joining the club that they'll be targeted so that's just something i want to put out there you know that kind of uh you know speaks to the culture um that they're facing and then the three things i just wanted to mention were the three things that come up a lot with the kids um one
088is the gender neutral bathrooms um we have students that will not go to the bathroom in school because they're uncomfortable and mr nixon and i had talked about that last year and he had updated us and i know you know with covid things are um you know a little off but i would like to know if there's a plan for all the schools to offer gender-neutral bathrooms and locker rooms are also a concern for our students and um the health curriculum comes up every year senior health is concerning to the kids and also they really would like to reach out to the middle schools to columbia and deerfield and perhaps start a saga chapter at each of those schools so that's something that we'll be um you know kind of wanting to pursue and that's
089all thank you for listening tracy thank you very much stephanie stephanie good evening hi can you hear me okay yes we can hi thank you for calling on me dear dr varley and members of the board of ed my name is stephanie spano and i teach at mary kay mcmillan mountain park thomas p hughes and william woodruff schools i'm speaking now to voice my concerns regarding the district's potential decision to move the one to schools one to five schools to plan a on january 11th according to new jersey department of health communicable disease service weekly reports 46-50 our district's region has been at the orange also known as high-risk covid19 activity level index or cali score since november 14th cases have increased significantly throughout our state community and yes even our schools our region has
090not been at the green or low risk cali score since the week ending september 12th page three of the recommendations from the department of health clearly states that districts with an orange or high-risk cali score should quote restrict activities that involve interactions with multiple cohorts and consider implementing fully remote learning end quote this is the complete opposite of the district's intention for the one to five buildings we are in our current situation because of all the measures the district has implemented since september teachers support staff custodians nurses and principals have worked relentlessly to make sure that students are socially distanced and follow good hygiene practices while receiving effective instruction it is reckless and disrespectful to all of these stakeholders to assume that if we move to plan a we will be able to maintain the
091same level of safety and prevent future outbreaks many of the cases at the early childhood and elementary schools have been reported during the students cohorts remote weeks preventing the need for large-scale quarantines or building closures if we move to plan a anytime there is a positive case there will always be a group that needs to quarantine in closing please consider postponing the move to plan a until it is truly safe to do so thank you stephanie thank you very much alyssa hi everyone um my name is alyssa gianone um i am a gl alum of the class of 2012 and i went to deerfield middle school in mountainside um i just first want to thank david urbanky um for speaking about this and allowing other students to talk about their experiences um my main concern
092um at the moment is it's so wonderful that there are so many um you know clubs and committees that exist in the first place that if i'm being honest is um wonderful in itself based on the towns that go to gl um and i think uh my biggest thing is how can we make sure that you are holding up your end of these promises my question is will there be you know emails that are sent out to the school about um what specifically is happening um and also what are you going to do about um staff that does not want to comply with these rules that will bring gl into the 21st century and that's a question for any of the staff that are here today so we um did a board report and i
093think it was november on all the diversity committees and our action teams and what's been going on so far we will have a follow-up report in the spring after you know we have spent more time together the the committees are new we started in the summer and in the fall they really got rolling with students and teachers and so we will continue to report out at our public meetings on what's happening with our diversity and equity and inclusion committees as far as staff members we we i i personally i will say this i believe and i will say the board of education and the administrative team are fully supportive of this as well we believe in inclusion and it is it is the one of the things that i send out on a regular basis
094is you can't be inspired or empowered if you're not included and so our staff members will be held accountable if they show any kind of biased incidents towards our student population um and following that um what based on you know previous discussions of kids going to staff or being afraid to go to staff because of these you know specifically staff members not being able to help them or students being scared to go to staff members because they won't be helped what is going to happen to those staff members i guess i'm just looking for how can we know that you are holding up an accountability because thus far you know i have experience going to a vice principal of my time and nothing being done about a cyber bullying situation and being told this is
095just how boys get over breakups and i think that something needs to be done to make sure that students know that there is an accountability on your end how will you do that so if to address if the students are upset or do not want to go to specific adults in the building we do have the anonymous link that students can report things so their names are not associated with it and then granted if we cannot attribute anything or any proof it's just like in in the regular world if some if there's no proof no actionable items there's not a whole lot we can do if we don't know if it happened and we don't know who it happened to or who did it we really can't do anything about it however if we have
096factual specific information we do follow through i spend a lot of time with my administrative team when things happen and we go through events that have occurred within within the district i mean and i would say it happens anywhere from first grade to 12th grade where we have very tough conversations if so if we have specific information that we can address okay um and if i can i'm sorry can can i just say something dr barley if if if a student feels as though they're not being listened to through the regular channels do you do you want to hear about that directly from that student absolutely okay and and and this right and and and mr mckinney do you want to hear about it directly from that student he may be muted but but i
097know he does and i know that dr gennasco wants to hear about it as well so so let's just say that if if if you don't feel like you're being heard then go to one of these very senior administrators they will they will listen to you absolutely i will listen to you i i've had multiple students send me emails and i have addressed the issues that that they have sent to me and and one more follow-up question um the you mentioned um you mentioned the term formal complaint and i would say that you know a student going directly to you or mr mckinney would be considered a formal complaint if there is no formal complaint if there is the case that has come up multiple times in david's stories that he's shared um that a
098staff member has been in the room and nothing has been done about a specific incident that's happening in the room and they're watching it or it's the staff member who is specifically targeting the kids um that can send a message of of these these staff members don't care about me how are you going to foster a sense of culture that the staff member is finally going to care about these kids i i would say that the majority and i can't speak for every single staff member right like i would i would say that most educators go into education because they love children and they love teaching do i is there the option the chance that there are some outliers in that absolutely i would like to know about it i have not heard recently i
099have not heard of any of these incidents happening and if i don't know about them i cannot do anything about them um i guess to close now you've heard about them they're all public on david's instagram stories so you can read them over and over um and i hope i really do hope for the sake of the future of the kids of this school um it was a tough time for me i can't imagine um those who have come forward with even worse experiences so i really truly hope that there's something about the culture that's done it's not about the face value of a committee it's not about the face value of these clubs i really do hope that the culture is spoken about is talked about behind closed doors because that is the real
100monster that is berkeley heights and mountainside it's a culture of parents and adults who are spreading this rot of all of these homophobia sexism transphobia xenophobia racism it's all of it so i really do hope that behind closed doors the culture is spoken about with adults absolutely i will say mr nixon and i went through every single post so and also has dr genosko has as well great alyssa thank you thank you very much for your comments uh sean proccastini you're up next sean good evening hi i'm sean prakucini i am a very very proud gl alum from the class of 2014 this is my um my uh gl hilltop players t-shirt that i have on uh alyssa i think that what you said was very very well told and i think you really um
101got to the core of the issue that we are trying to emphasize um there are some things that i want to thank the administration for so far um uh first of all thank you for having the flexibility to open up this board of ed meeting uh for uh to have you know more than more uh subjects than word planned originally and i do think that some of the ideas that uh dr varley and mr nixon highlighted at the beginning of the meeting are very wise namely uh to diversify the staff i think that's very wise um i think that you probably can take things a few steps further by putting more marginalized people in prominent positions and allowing them to steer the direction of change uh seeing you know a lot of uh cis straight
102white faces in uh prominent positions of power in uh the school district and in the town in general uh is very you know it can be very frustrating to a lot of people who are pushing for change because uh people who enjoy this certain level of privilege that white folks like like us do uh are not always able to independently recognize the issues that are being faced by the marginalized and uh that is why i think that you should consider more seriously putting marginalized people in more uh prominent positions of power in the district and consulting them on important decisions uh moving forward i also think that adding new social justice and diversity centered classes is very wise but again a step that you can take further in that direction is to change the curriculum
103of current classes in all departments i believe that it should be impossible to graduate from gl without an extensive social justice centered education i don't think that it's only left up to the humanities like history and english uh to teach social justice issues i think there is also room for it in math and science classes and well as well uh in stem and i am very happy to be able to provide resources to that regard if the district is interested um i think that uh the district would do well to stop mentioning student-led organizations when it's talking about what it's achieved in terms of diversity and inclusion trying to change the culture of the school doesn't really have anything to do with student organizations the district is unable to take credit for them and i
104think that um emphasizing the role of those clubs when we've heard a few times tonight that they very rarely hear from the administration unprompted i think it's a bit disingenuous and so i would suggest uh toning that down a little bit um i think that one one of the really big asks which has not been discussed so far is uh to keep law enforcement out of governor livingston i don't believe that police officers belong in schools i don't believe that any marginalized student will ever be safe in a school where there is a police officer i think that it will cause more harm than good and it will not solve any of the issues you anticipated solving and so my strong strong suggestion tonight if uh there is only one takeaway from what i say
105is to keep cops out of berkeley heights public schools uh clearly something that's been uh something has been expressed prior to my comments is that our biggest concern is the follow-up uh we need to make sure that these are not one-time commitments that they are long-time commitments and uh if if students and their families and other members of the community were able to receive regular updates on the school's progress with changing its culture of bigotry then i think that that would be the best way to be transparent in making it clear that you're actually committed to the long-term work of creating a new culture at berkeley heights public schools i think that uh trans we need transparency and you need to show us what you do as we move along in the process uh and
106i i hope that you understand why people are so hesitant to send stories to the official district email address or to submit them anonymously there is a certain level of trust that has been broken between gl in particular and its students it is the administration's responsibility to rebuild that trust uh making appeals and uh requests for people to come forward with their stories when in the past they've been shown that coming forward with their stories will really lead to no change whatsoever is very demoralizing and i think that we need to de-emphasize the role of the victims of these situations and we need to instead emphasize the role that the administration and the district can play in creating a new level of respect and trust with its marginalized students in particular uh you know you
107have truly lost the trust of a lot of your students and it is your responsibility to rebuild it and uh for what it's worth i want to echo uh what a lot of other educators have been saying here tonight including uh mr o'sullivan and miss spano which is that i think that the school should delay opening uh in interest of the physical safety of the students and the teachers um you know it it seems like you know i can't speak for all of the staff but all of the the staff that we've heard from tonight uh are asking you to delay the opening and i think that you should listen to them please great sean thank you very much for your comments uh zach cohn zach good evening welcome thank you can you hear me
108all right we can hear your fine good evening great good evening um my name is zach cohen i graduated in 2009 um from governor livingston um i went on um to to take on a career as an educator as a teacher um in baltimore city um and recently have moved to managing a large team of 125 people at a technology company um i uh my first thought when reading david's stories and i appreciate him him opening the forum that was obviously so needed was that uh was to reflect on what this would mean if it were my team or my classroom um and if a fraction of what was shared was shared with me my first thought um and i think all of your first thoughts should be what culture have i allowed to to
109spread in my institution and my team in my classroom this culture of impunity that students believe and faculty staff think that they can do these things and that there will be no repercussions for them and so i i would be sort of wrought with guilt over whatever culture i'd had allowed to develop or take root um with the people that i'm tasked with teaching educating leading um and would would really want to reflect on that if it were my organization um so i would love to hear and i and i appreciate that many of you have shared that you're new dr varley you've shared that you've only been enrolled for about two years i get all that and i appreciate sort of the the focus on the future right like what are we doing now
110to address this i would i would say that i have noticed a a serious lack of reflection on this on what has led here and and sort of an explanation that you all understand what has happened up till now to cause this sort of explosion of stories from people sharing some pretty horrific experiences at governor livingston um so i'd like to share that i also like to to add on that dr varley you shared and i think rightfully so i can speak from my own experience that people go into education because they love students they love teaching love educating they love being with students um but i find it sort of hard for you to hold the duality in your in your mind um or at least express it that teachers both love students and
111and want to be with them and want to educate them but also we shouldn't listen to the teachers that are telling you that we shouldn't go into into plan a um if if you believe what you say which i hope that you do um students want to be or teachers want to be with their students they want to be present they want to be physically with their students and teaching and going back to normal because that's what they signed up for and if they're foregoing that sort of face-to-face um work that really fills their tank and sort of makes them happy fulfills them to say that this isn't safe then you should probably listen to those people um because they they want to be back in the classroom just as much as anyone um so
112i'll finish by by uh returning back to my original point and asking um any of the administrators that are on the call to share any reflections that they have about the culture that's precipitated at governor livingston that has caused has led to these stories and sort of your role in that and how you plan to change your behavior and your tactics um moving forward so i guess i will i'll you know i have only been here for a year and a half but um if you listen to my opening statement when um we had some issues that came in early i would say january 2020 where i realized that we had an issue with some of our students being treated differently than other students and we started then with our roundtables on bias and um
113targeting and bullying etc so we have been working on it for for some since i've been here trying to make sure that we change this culture but culture does not change overnight i um you know it's one of those things that you listen to and you're devastated for people and you know we have to do better and it is my mission and vision to make sure that we are the best we possibly can be in the most inclusive environment great thank you um dr volley uh jace ederman jace good evening uh hi can you guys hear me okay we can hear you fine good evening welcome uh thank you um so i apologize for glancing down i wrote down what i was gonna say um my name is jace ederman and i was a graduate
114of the class of 2020 so i just graduated last spring um and i would like to continue talking on some of the points of some of the previous students um just for some context i was the previous president or one of the previous presidents of the saga club um and me and my co-president last year initiated the support zone which was a project to teach teachers how to support their lgbtq plus students for starters i'd like to say that i was a transgender student i was a jewish student and i never felt safe at school just didn't i don't feel that i should even say what i went through specifically because there's really no point because i've said it all before and it's been ignored by the time that i got to gl i honestly
115just learned to shut up about it because nobody cared and even when i did have those moments where i really needed somebody and i went to the guidance department let's say it was ignored and i was told to well man up go for it whatever some of the slurs i've been called in the hallways both homophobic slurs and anti-semitic slurs are not it's something i should never repeat and nobody should ever say i was called things in sixth grade that i didn't even know what they meant yet it was horrible i know the schools are striving to be better and i really really really appreciate that but i'd like to know what the board can do for the students that they have already wronged nothing will change the past but i'm asking for a sincere
116apology for all of the people that were wronged by the school i was wronged so many other kids were wronged and we deserve an apology dr varley is this something that you think you can do if i'm speaking honestly i don't know if i can believe that anything will change for future generations if we don't actually get an apology for what's already occurred thanks so i do believe in in my emails i have apologized for and i'm saddened by what has happened to to people previously in the district if you remember i met with your support group last year at the um for the safe zones i met with you guys at the end of last year and i cannot imagine what the student population has gone through and i sincerely apologize i can tell
117you that we are going to do better we are working hard to do better for all for all students um dr barley as i see that both sean and tim are saying can you please like right here right now please apologize to us we are so hurt by the actions of the school district and i know you haven't been here for that long i'm well aware that you've only been superintendent for a year and i grew up with miss ratner and i i know that this is such a hard thing for you to come into and i understand that but can you please hear right now for all of the students that are on this call right now who've been wronged by the school district can you please give us a very nice heartfelt i'm
118sorry i would really help i am completely sorry for any any hard feelings things that have hurt you in the past anything that has happened due to the culture of berkeley heights public schools i completely apologize to you as a student body to our parents to the entire community thank you dr barley and jace i i feel the same way i'm i'm devastated listening to these stories i see you i hear you and i am absolutely committed to doing everything i possibly can to make things better in this community i'm very sorry that you had such a horrific high school experience i'm very very sorry for your experience i truly am i just hope that nobody ever has to deal with what i had to deal with in middle school i hope so too never
119again and i know i speak for every single one of my colleagues on the board there's just a lot of voices that need to get heard which is one of the reasons why we're doing the listening tonight and learning thank you so much for letting me speak jace thank you very much uh michael leblanc um just to kind of go back earlier from comments on dr farley um in my interactions with her she's been quite professional in reaching out uh when i got in contact about school closures and and the system she got back to me well within 24 hours as did mr reinstein who reached out to me on the weekends about my concerns with the school district so again my experience with the school district has been very positive regarding outreach to individuals
120so again that was my experiences um to the students who have been uh occult about term victims in the past it's difficult to understand that if you were not a victim of those things i'm not originally from this area i'm from new york city so my past experience with the district here is the last six years when my kids have been in school since they since first grade so i don't have a lot of background so i'm good i'm learning about these things as we go forward but unfortunately there's something that must be kind of seen with the school districts and government as a whole bureaucracy is slow to change and so to adapt and it will take time to get these things to change and i'm not defending what happened in the past i
121don't know a lot about it personally or in the bit in that in that regard but i do appreciate that the district is working hard to resolve these issues that they're working with diligence and efficiency to resolve these problems because they're not going to go away by themselves and they do need to be drawn with appropriate attention i do have one other idea for the lunch situation perhaps in warmer weather you could do outdoor dining as a solution for your cafeteria situation michael thank you very much anjali good evening welcome thank you doug um so um for those of you who don't know me i feel like gl is my family um i as a former parent as a gl pto president i have worked with most of the administration and the board members i
122really did not plan to speak here tonight but in hearing all these young students i have to say i have to commend them i really applaud them for their bravery and coming forward it's not easy it's very difficult to talk about these things very uncomfortable but in listening to some of them one of the things that occurred to me um i think i heard somebody talk about this and i actually work in this space right now so i think i felt the need to speak up in terms of sex education they're talking about senior class sex education and honestly like who in this space does not believe that senior class is too late to be talking to these issues right i mean these are issues that we should be tackled way before then um so
123i work in this space right now we work with the department of education um hoping to change you know our curriculums and i work with a lot of national experts and there were two things that occurred to me so one was how do we change our actual sex ed education curriculum to make it more inclusive truly because really some of the topics that we're talking about whether it's gender identity um even like really um truly sex ed should be done much earlier than it is in schools like gl and then the other thing is that in uh in the sex ed space and also um i work with universities in the sexual harassment and assault space we talk about you know consent based curriculums and consent based curriculums being taught as early as kindergarten and
124i think maybe what we also need here is a respect based curriculum so we actually started to center the idea of respect you know respect for differences respect for all kinds of people throughout our curriculum starting from kindergarten i think that would counter a lot of these things i acknowledge as i've heard some of the other people do before that we don't exist in a vacuum so obviously there are outside influences that the school district cannot control but i think in the school if they're getting a true respect based curriculum it would counter some of that so just my two cents to offer um i really think we need to think about those two things thank you anjali thank you very much for your comments ali silverman ali good evening um well thank you everyone
125for listening um i honestly did not intend on speaking but i just wanted to share my thoughts i actually had diversity and inclusion at a large financial institution so i have a lot of experience in this place um all i really wanted to say and honest first and foremost thank you all for listening to this i mean i it is a good first step that you guys are listening and willing to hear these stories the thing that i urge you guys to acknowledge is that this is life and death like this is changing people's lives for the rest of their lives what if they make it through this scenario these are young kids who are very very easily influenced and we have seen scenarios where kids are not making it out of this situation and
126you know you guys gave scenarios of student-led clubs as that is a bottom-up approach like this needs to be top-down approach like this is this should be treated with the severity of the corona virus because people are this is this is just life-altering and i appreciate that you guys are willing to listen to scenarios of what is happening but a lot of students have seen things from faculty and i mean like there are just so many scenarios of things not going well and i think you guys need to really come up with a very very severe plan to acknowledge that because i think you're not going to see the people coming forward that you expect to because they're afraid to and i think just when you look at all the stories of people that have
127come forward you know this is not a we're doing things behind the scenes that are going to take time this is a we need to do a complete overhaul and rethink everything that we have been hearing and you know dr varlin i know you just came into the role about a year and a half i came to the role for dni at my company about a couple months ago and i think i've made significantly more changes than this administration has and that is not even just to speak on you that is just speak on the amount that you need to put towards something like this and i don't think people have acknowledged how important this is and you know there are some really awesome teachers at governor livingston and the schools below it but i
128think right now for some students that is overshadowed by how severe this is um so yeah that's all i have to say thank you for listening but just wanted to encourage that ali thank you very much thank you very much for your comments uh icha mahotra you're up next isha good evening oh thanks i wasn't i was muted uh i was told that there was feedback before when i admitted earlier so no no no worries good evening welcome thank you for having me and for holding this forum my name is isha mirosha and i am a past gl alum from the class of 2015. um i think at this point all of us are aware of the hundreds of stories that past and present students have come forward with over the past week or so
129this clearly demonstrates a pattern of toxic behavior in silent condonement ngl and the entire school system by extension it's clear that we need accountability these issues have obviously not been solved in the past through purely administrative active action and the solution to this is full transparency and accountability i would like to see the district set clear objectives and deadlines for making headway into improving the environment at our schools it's clear that the actions taken in the past have not worked or are not enough citing student groups working on dei initiatives is not enough it's not on the students to take initiative to repair the behaviors of other students and staff members it is the duty of the school district to take ownership of this the trainings are a great starting point but it cannot end
130there it's very easy to ignore a couple of trainings but we need a continued focus on this issue in addition we need a two-way communication channel to provide feedback and input into the process to ensure that our voices are heard the first step is to hold a more formal agreement session to hear specific stories rather than actions to take from current students and alums a one-way anonymous form is not enough to guarantee accountability this cannot solely be managed internally so i would like to echo the earlier ask that the district form a dedicated working group with communication or sorry community representation to ensure all issues are investigated and addressed but also that the appropriate future steps are taken to remedy toxic culture prevalent throughout the district thank you isha thank you very much for your
131comments this evening amy sherman amy good evening hi um i'm amy sherman i graduated last year from gl um i just wanted to make a suggestion and uh just talk about mental health resources i am personally someone who struggles with mental health i have depression anxiety that sort of thing and um you know that was apparent in middle and high school so one thing that my college offers and i'm pretty sure a lot of colleges offer it are free counseling services and i know that that obviously is not something that can like come about right away but i think that offering you know more than just the guidance counselors having an actual counselor that people can talk to about mental health issues is a really important thing as well as maybe even in like health
132classes just more mental health awareness because i feel like a lot of people um don't feel heard with their mental health issues and i think it is something that is really important so that was all thank you so much amy thank you very much for your suggestion uh andrea safely andrea good evening welcome hi good evening i'm a junior current junior at uh governor livingston and i actually didn't plan to ask any questions during this meeting but i really feel inclined to after listening to the other questions and responses to ask this very straightforward question that i feel everyone else would probably like to know um what i would like to know and be assured by the board is exactly how does the board plan to confront the issues that have been brought to light
133today in the future given the significance that was just so well described as life or death by ali silverman like things like gender neutral bathrooms cases of bullying being ignored staff displaying discriminatory or obscene behavior things like that i would like to know exactly what a future plan is or a future action plan that can be put in place or even ideas like spitballing ideas like i would just like to know what the future is instead of focusing on past things that have been done i know that those are significant i know that those are very very well done and well created and they're gonna create a lot of improvement and i know that you guys have been working very hard but what everyone is looking for i feel is the future instead of focusing
134on the past so um i don't know if doug you want to answer that since it's a board question or do you want me to answer it uh you can start and then i'll add to your comments so um i will tell you that intolerance is is not tolerated in under under me i i believe we are all we are an inclusive environment of all students it has been part of our goals as part of our new mission statement that we adopted at the end of last year and moving forward i can assure you that we will not allow these behaviors to to continue we are an inclusive district and we will partnering with our community and partnering with the board as well as the staff making sure that you all feel safe yes um
135i would add a couple of things so as a board in our oversight role we are absolutely committed uh to make sure that our administration has every resource every tool they need to address whatever these items that come up you also mentioned something that's a little bit more tactile like a gender-neutral bathroom so i've heard that come up several times this evening and that's something obviously we will need to take under immediate uh undertaking obviously a bathroom can't get built overnight but several people have mentioned that as a as a as an obstacle to they feel the safety in their school uh so i would say that you know we have to look at the different ones you know fixing the culture as dr varley said is something that happens uh over time but i
136can tell you that from the board standpoint that anything that is brought to our attention whether that's brought to a teacher uh a parent any uh a confident an administrator directly to the superintendent to a board member every single one of them will be acted upon and acted upon with urgency we have had a couple that have come our way uh even this year and i can assure you that dr varley and team have acted on those urgently what it appears is that there are a lot that have not been over time so that's an area for us to obviously improve uh the other thing is a couple of people mentioned that this was a good listening session to me this is only the beginning there is a lot more that we have to do
137listening is is part one or maybe part one a we need to make sure that what we do is action and has results and as a way that we can even measure this would be even better uh next up is uh i'm sorry andrea i'll hold on a second andrea i'll give you a chance to respond go ahead andrea okay i have a couple more things to say um is there anything first of all like specific that like i that's like a very broad statement like is there anything specific that will be discussed or like actually talked about in terms of a real concrete plan to stop this first of all and second of all i have another question from briana kagan who said does anyone like that is a staff member know what it
138is like to be afraid to go to school um i don't know that dr vary or i could answer a question on behalf of a staff member so i don't know that we could answer um that question in terms of the first part of your question in terms of an of an action plan you know part of the action plan is we will take action on anything that comes our way so we will uh i think mr nixon has said that whether it comes to us directly or comes to anonymously we will take something we'll take action on every single thing that comes our way uh i believe uh next up was nishka nishka good evening hi i just want to say thank you for allowing me to speak and i was also just want
139to say thank you to everyone who has spoken currently so growing up i graduated from gl class of and i'm asian and specifically indian so growing up i have in some ways felt a little bit of an outsider and i do want to know what the plan is to start implementing programs at like a younger age even as they're always like first graders because i think that i can't really isolate that to just gl specifically that's definitely something that's like built up over time with confidence related issues and also when you're younger like you can't articulate things the way you do now so i think that something needs to be done constructively for like the younger grades so that way it doesn't like progress and develop over time i'll let dr barley add to this
140but we have certainly started a number of our programs at the elementary school when we talked about improving our diversity and inclusiveness curriculum we didn't talk about just doing it for the history program at gl we've talked about putting it in across all the levels and all the grades with different programs both curricular type programs as well as programs within the schools and it will take time but i can tell you that we agree with you it's not something we can uh just begin to introduce when someone gets to gl and you're 14 or 15 years old we firmly believe back and and to the question about have we taken any action so we have hired a new director of uh k-5 instruction and intervention many of you have been on previous meetings before i've
141met uh marianne i'm mary beth kopez and she her sole mission is to look at and address the curriculum and intervention that we have in our k-5 program so we have taken an action it has just begun she's a first-year employee but that is one of the main focuses of her job is to address that absolutely and um she is currently working on the lgtbq plus curriculum um for starting in fifth grade great next up is uh imad is it i'm mad or imad i'm sorry if i got your name incorrect yeah no no worries it's ahmad haddad thank you mr einstein and thank you for the opportunity to address the board by way of introduction again my name is ahmad haddad i'm a the father of a second grader at mountain park but also
142a healthcare professional with a doctor in clinical pharmacy early in my career trained with some of the top epidemiologists and and managed several illness outbreaks uh including the the the training around sars if you're in back in 2002 and the bioterrorism preparedness and surveillance programs for the state of new jersey and although i've diverted from from that field i um keep close contact with a lot of my colleagues and i do want to commend the the board for the decision to delay in-person instruction um in the beginning of january but i do also want to express my concern with the timing of resorting to plan a especially for our first to fifth graders when you look at where we are in the this second wave where we have not hit peak yet um although there
143have been reports today that you know are not has come down less than one the first time in two months so that's great news but if history um is any indicator of what the future will hold um we saw a spike after halloween we saw the spike after thanksgiving we can rest assured and i think uh expect to see a spike after um the christmas in new year's so to echo a lot of the concerns that have been raised in the past but also to put the the the medical and scientific and surveillance perspective on this um it will be a while till we see an uptick in cases and although i could not agree more with the importance and and of in-person learning and how we all want to achieve that state as soon
144as possible um if i'm given the opportunity of half the time within person i think that is a better option than having to resort back and retract and regress into a all remote option that will be imposed on us as a whole and just to also bring up a publication that came out today on nj.com reporting in the state of new jersey 428 cases of documented in-school transmission these are not students that have been that have contracted the disease but those that have been documented in school transmissions and i'm here for uh the community and and really want what's best for our kids and just again based on the timing based on what we anticipate i'm very anxious to go to all in person but based on past experience based on what we've seen in
145the data um and and the trends that we anticipate in the next several weeks again i just want to express my concern and would ask that the board would consider delaying moving to plan a thank you very much great thank you for your comments this evening um caitlyn scott caitlin good evening hi um i'm caitlin escott and i graduated from jail last year class of 2020 and i've struggled with mental health throughout my entire life but some of the worst of it actually occurred in middle school so when i was in middle school there were basically no resources for um me when i was struggling that i was really made aware of during my time there and really the only resource i had was my guidance counselor which was definitely not enough um i basically
146just went to her when i was like having a panic attack um and i really didn't um have many resources throughout high school either i kind of just went to the nurse's office laid down for a little bit but i really wasn't um i didn't really talk to many people about it and i just wanted to address the fact that not only high schoolers struggle with mental health and that resources are necessary um for all ages and it should be made a priority just with um recent stories that are arising with the lgbtq community and racism and all of that caitlin thank you very much isabel demet isabel isabelle white hi isabel good evening welcome um okay so i actually have this um what i want to say written on my ipad so would it
147be okay if i turn my camera off it's absolutely fine to do that thank you um my name is izzy white i'm a freshman at gl and firstly thank you for allowing people this chance for their voice to be heard and for allowing my voice to be heard um i would like to get into the topic of the homophobia at our berkeley heights schools regarding the topic um of what alyssa said about staff not reporting incidents regarding homophobia i myself have been ridiculed for being gay and there were teachers around however the incident was never reported an instigator was never reprimanded for their actions members of the board i hope you condemn teachers teachers actions of homophobia against many lgbtq plus students past and present many students who face incident incidents like this do not
148come to staff about it because they fear it might just be swept under the rug um and um something my friend wanted to share with me was that they'd like to mention how they are afraid to say anything about their pronouns because they've seen kids be relentlessly bullied for it um i think this in itself goes to show that the staff has not been doing enough to protect the lgbt um q plus students of this school um and i agree with what ali said about this situation being life or death and that the decision decisions decisions you the board make um influence many many students lives and i understand that you all are doing your best to make things right and make change um good changes to this school but um how are we to
149know that this won't just be a one-time thing and that our stories will not go unheard um also another friend of mine who wants who wants to remain anonymous would like me to say this um also i feel like often middle school and high school kids opinions are solidified and made people's behaviors are amplified by other students bigotry as other students have probably noted similar people often uh often group together leading there to be all the lgbtq plus kids being around each other and those who hold bigoted opinions also hang out with each other i've seen over and over by standing individuals who are indirectly responsible for supporting racist homophobic transphobic and xenophobic behavior that was what my friend would like me to say and again i would like to reiterate the question that um
150how do we as um a community know that like this situation will not be swept under the rug and that there will be changes so i i will answer that um we are this is something that we have committed to and making sure that our district is inclusive and so we will be doing regular updates at um public board meetings as well as we will have some we have started distributing our minutes of all of our equity and our action team meetings and we will continue to do that to continue to put those out there publicly as well um thank you dr riley for all of this thank you i mean dr barley the only thing i would would add and i don't know how the other board members feel about this but when you
151say regular updates i think this is so important that we should have a standing item on our agenda for every single board meeting and we should be tracking the progress we're making interesting absolutely i think it should be a standing a standing discussion um metrics are going to be hard in the beginning right like you know we know we do have a diversity survey that we are we were going to send out but we have postponed for a little while that we are working on to send to our parents to our students and to our staff members we also have a survey that our cada our elementary s principals are working on that's good for the younger kids so they can answer questions so those will be coming out in january so that's something that
152we'll also report out on as well great thank you and i know i know you spoke about this in the beginning but i do want to highlight the fact that i think it you know in terms of our hiring practices and anybody who's been on these uh board of ed meetings they you know that i have brought this up several times at previous board meetings i'm a big tone from the top person i think getting role models into our schools and into our classrooms is very important so focusing on diverse candidates uh to fill open teaching position and administration positions is very critical because when our students are exposed to these kinds of different people it it it helps change the culture it helps move the culture forward faster when we have the right people
153in the classrooms um dealing with our kids interacting with our kids so i just think our hiring practices are very very important and um so if you have been on prior board meetings you know that i have brought this up several times so for those of you asking about specifics i think that is something very tangible that we can do um you know it will take us some time because um you know teachers have tenure and and and you know workforces you know change over um and it takes time but i think it has to be a key focus for this board and and the district great thank you chris thank you dr barley uh yili wu and i apologize if i got that name correct was did i get close um yes it's yiliwu
154so hi everyone i am a former gl student i graduated in the class of 2014 and i am asian american and i could go on and on about the racist remarks that i've heard in my time since moving to berkeley heights in eighth grade and the first thing i want to say is that this level of racism homophobia transphobia is not even it is it is below average for the nearby area and it is significantly worse than neighboring towns i first i i grew up in a very non-diverse place in for the majority of my life in ohio and i never experienced that as much racism as i have in berkeley heights before moving to berkeley heights i went to middle school in milburn only 20 minutes away i never experienced anything like this before
155in my life we're hearing a lot about the school the district is committed to inclusion we're committed to diversity we're going to think about what are the next action steps one thing that comes to mind is when i was at governor livingston i was part of the student newspaper the school administration at gl was constantly censoring our articles and wouldn't let us discuss multiple topics that were just beyond happy-go-lucky sports teams results anything that we wanted to discuss i i like clearly remember we wrote an article about how the barilla ceo was homophobic and we put it in the opinion section and the vice principal at the time said you cannot post this article she made so many edits to it and the fact that the topic of homophobia alone that had no connection with
156the school whatsoever it's some random ceo no connection with the town whatsoever was such a taboo issue for us to even write about if you're censoring your own students how are your students going to be able to voice different opinions have these discussions with their classmates if the top line management the principal and vice principal who when i was a student they're still around they're the ones shutting things down you know the block blocking of the free press is like the first line of fascism and again and again we hear so much about we are so committed to inclusion i know that dr varley is new to this district and wasn't around when i was a student what are some of the concrete actions that we can have well here's one idea create a zero
157tolerance policy for racism not just for students but also teachers that can violate their tenure even if teachers have been around for decades that doesn't mean that they can just like what in what worlds can teachers just continue teaching if they're saying racist and homophobic remarks to their own students and like others have said people become educators because they love kids if you hate your own students why are you teaching and why should you be protected as an educator so that is just one concrete two concrete steps that i hope that the current administration at gl who have been around since i was a student can seriously think about as well as dr varley to think about putting in place for situations that are reported for not just students making these remarks but also teachers
158thank you haley thank you very much zoya toa zoya good evening hello hi first of all i would like to thank dr varley and the board for hearing us and giving your apology and also listening to all these incidents you know that label for you and reading our stories i know it is probably been very uncomfortable and very heartbreaking to hear all these stories but you know your efforts and your you know words are welcome and your actions are welcome even more you know as we continue to work on this ongoing epidemic um i also want to reiterate something that's been said before this point has been made but i really want to make it clear that you know student efforts and initiatives cannot be used by the board to take credit for actions done
159by students that the board hasn't even clearly thrown their full support behind you know in the future since you have clearly upheld this club as an example of diversity initiatives i think you will be remiss not to throw more resources into this student-led club and to begin more dialogues beginning with student-led initiatives but also more from a systematic standpoint i also want to bring up the point that berkeley heights is an incredibly homogeneous town and it is often not very fondly referred to as berkeley whites berkeley heights is 89 white 80 asian four percent hispanic and one percent black and it probably that kind of racial demographic plays a huge role in how and why much of this discrimination is racially based the school board obviously doesn't control the racial breakdown of the town and
160is obviously not responsible for attitudes of kids that come in to the school with these kind of attitudes however they are responsible for educating young people that are in charge they are in charge of and making them better more compassionate members of society and if the school board is witnesses and is told incidents that relate to homophobia racism transphobia they must do everything in their power to pursue and make sure that the student in question is punished for displaying these attitudes and that the entire body is taught why these kind of attitudes cannot be acceptable in our society you know student curriculum cannot end on discussion of slavery and the holocaust it cannot end discussing racism as eradicated or just limited to the south it is not just kkk rallies or cross burning because its
161form is even more malicious and damaging and when the person doesn't even know that believe themselves to be racist i believe that you do have mentioned that you are conducting implicit bias you know training for your staff and i applaud you for that and i think that that kind of training would also be beneficial for the members of the student body i think it's also important to address the fact that you know because the demographic these costumes are primarily white and almost entirely white and that berkeley heights is a racial and economic bubble i think this fact is very uncomfortable for a lot of people but i think leaning into this kind of uncomfortable rhetoric and discussion will allow people to be able to express their uncomfortable feelings in a more productive way in forms
162of discussion instead of you know racially based jokes and stereotypes i think a lot of the i can seek from experience that a lot of education that i received i a lot of times i didn't even read about people who look like me unless it was their relation to white americans and this kind of tunnel vision education is what creates the kind of learning environment that you know encourages minorities to remain silent you know some action items as you've mentioned is you know hiring more qualified educators of color and initiating more dialogue with other schools that do have a more diverse demographic background and a last point i would like to make is that like amy has said i think it is more important also to encourage mental health mental health resources including things like
163on-site therapy and resources that allow a student to you know take time off for themselves as silly as that may seem students are really overworked i say this as a student who has graduated in 2015 and it it i i i know that it has not gotten better because they are given six hours of work during school day five hours work after school in addition to any kind of extracurricular hours that there are they must complete in order to be seen as academically competitive teenagers are not physically logically meant to be up at 6 7 a.m and they're forced to go to sleep often at late hours to just finish work for the day and this kind of environment sometimes isn't helped by a lot of teachers who have not made learning from a who
164have not made failing students feel welcome for failing to meet expectations and this does not extend to all the teachers i have met many of the wonderful teachers that i have been touched to be to have met are also on this call but there are you know a lot of other educators who often treats failing students with resentment and whether or not this is because of pressure put on teachers by the school but i think this kind of toxic environment from the top down is it should not be welcome from a student's standpoint i think a lot of people in this call don't think that you care and you know i think this is your opportunity to prove them wrong that you can really make a change thank you zoya thank you very much for
165your comment uh phoebe phoebe cook you're next phoebe are you there phoebe i'm trying to unmute you so you can speak okay we will come back to you david urbanky david good evening welcome thank you thanks for having me um in all honesty i was not planning on speaking tonight um i wasn't even planning on sharing that post but here we are um i didn't prepare a statement i didn't prepare anything that i wanted to say formally because in all honesty i wanted to come and i wanted to hear everyone um i wanted to hear everyone out and see what you'd have to say i didn't want to prepare in advance um but now that i've heard um from board members students i'd love to chime in with some input um first of all thank
166you for listening to all of us having us all here um my experience was ten years ago um i started in gl i believe it was in 2009 i hope i remember correctly i have a much better memory of when i left um and that was in 2011. um i don't want to put anyone on the spot but i would like to speak to um mr scott mckinney if he is comfortable um he was principal um when i was student at the school and he has since become vice um superintendent if i believe is it assistant superintendent um so if you're comfortable speaking with me i'd uh i'd love to have a conversation um i remember i i also um i hope you've read the stories um there were some specifically mentioning you um yelling
167at students in the halls referring to them as again there were so many stories i hope i'm doing my best i may have words incorrect i believe you called a student useless i don't know if you remember this incident particularly i for one remember you breaking my own mother to tears or coming home after speaking with you um seeing your face in this meeting today brought me to chills i've been shaking um we've discussed a lot what stems from the top and what you allowed to go on while i was a student at governor livingston from these stories is still going on today you have since been promoted to assistant superintendent that terrifies me i have received so many stories about suicide attempts many of these stories have discussed faculty intervention which made things worse
168we are talking about lives in a real sense life or death i i can't stress this enough um i was shocked to hear from six current faculty members who wish to be not remain anonymous um their stories were horrifying um to say the least i applaud them for staying with it and staying at the school and trying to make a change um i hope we can see progress um i you know of course i want to give mr mckinney a chance to respond i just it just concerns me that you were pres you know [Music] your principal when i was there um you allowed so many of these things to go on and you are now in a higher position of power um so what do you have to say and thank you again everyone
169for hearing me out um i would just offer uh david uh you know a thank you for sharing your story and and bringing a lot of these things to light this is certainly something that is you know concerning you know as as educators we're always looking for ways to to be better and to do things better and clearly that has not been the case and and you know i welcome the opportunity to speak to you uh on a one-on-one basis um and you know would welcome that opportunity so that i could continue to learn i think that's the you know schools are are supposed to educate you know you know changing people or saying that we need to change people is not our business we need to educate people so that they can make the
170best decisions moving forward and be good people and that that has to be our goal and you know you know unfortunately i can't go back as i said i would welcome the opportunity to speak with you one on one and and have this conversation but you know just like everybody else says we need to do better i need to do better as an individual and i need to be a better educator and i think that's you know and and looking forward i think that's the that's the key piece to this uh won't happen overnight but i will take accountability for my actions and i will get better and i will you know hopefully positively lead people in this district and and help them become better and help students moving forward um so uh again i
171appreciate your comments and and uh if you'd like to connect we can certainly do so thank you um and i i also want to um address dr melissa varley um i know you're new there you were not there during my time and um i uh i look forward to seeing what actions and changes you make in the district because um it is certainly very overdue it is very needed and as i have stressed um lives depend on it one other thing i would like to say is um i've received a lot of messages from a lot of people in the community asking me to say this or that um call people out by name specifically that is not my place um i just encourage everyone um to be a better person and treat everyone with
172more dignity and respect and think about what you would want done to yourself or your own children or your own family members i'm no longer living in the community and i hope that people who are current community members can really learn from this and listen to these stories so um thank you again for having me david thank you very much it's really great to see you this evening obviously the courage that you had to make your comments public the wealth and the quantity of the stories that have come from this is truly alarming to people in the community to people in the school system the depth of change that we need to make as a school district is significant and the suggestions that you have and that some of the current students have had give
173us reason to take some of the actions that people are requesting what you did is not easy what you did obviously struck an enormous cord a very painful cord in our school ecosystem and i'm hopeful that uh the with your comments your initial post and the passion that we have that is brought out in people that we can do better we have to do better this is an unacceptable level of performance in our community and you asked one of the previous persons asked dr varley to apologize i will tell you in my in my role uh as leading this board of education i do truly apologize i am i am horrified uh by and i took the opportunity to read all the stories that were posted in the last several days as well as the
174hundreds and hundreds of comments that were on there as well as on other social media i've actually received eight since this meeting began that i have not read yet so i do encourage you all to continue reading them because they are still coming and people are still building up the courage to speak and um i want to offer the platform to anyone who wants to share those stories so um if you have the time please continue to check uh and i can tell you that i i along with others i'm not the only person who has done this dr varley talked about you know herself and and mr nixon that have done that uh and more probably more importantly is what are the actions we are taking a number of the speakers tonight have passed
175about what actions we are taking and i've heard some that we can take somewhere a little bit more tactical like can we fix a bathroom can we implement training uh can we continue to do training those are a little bit easier to be done that we can do in a more short order but we have a long term problem to fix it's culture based it's within our faculty it's within our student population it's within our parent population there were many comments about that if this is allowed at home it's no surprise that it's allowed in the schools so we have a pervasive problem that we need to address again some things can be done more short term and some can be done more long term so again on behalf of the board that i think
176i'm speaking for um there are probably there were probably as much as 480 people on this meeting uh before um you have our heartfelt thanks for bringing this to our attention so thank you and um my last comment is um i do want to um express concerns about how the majority of the messages are stories specifically about faculty members that is something that really should be taken into account great thank you again david again thank you um phoebe cook are you still on i'm trying to on me you so you can speak are you there phoebe not seeing that i will move on uh lucy dawson lucy good evening [Music] hi everyone um my name is lucy i graduated in 2011 from gl i was in berkeley head schools from second grade to 12th grade
177um i like david no longer live in the school but as someone who grew up black in a majority white town i thought i would give my two cents i first want to thank david again for sharing his story and giving us all the space to share ours as well um it's heartening to hear that you have dni initiatives ongoing in the in the schools but i'd like to know when you talk about um implicit bias training and like changes to the curriculum are you talking about one-off presentations or classes that people can opt-in to or are you talking about addressing the entire curriculum for all um classes so we will address the entire curriculum it does take time to do so it but we have made a commitment the diversity equity and inclusion committees
178have been meeting to discuss curriculum how we're making changes and ensuring that we are getting the voices of all of our community involved in making these changes while still following the mandated correct the standards we still we still have to follow the um the training will be ongoing the dei training is not something we will ever let go it is something that is going to be consistent throughout my from here to from here till forever because it is something that is extremely important to me it's important to the board it's important to our administrative team to ensure that we have a faculty we have students and staff members who are inclusive of all of everyone yeah that's great to hear because when i think back on what i learned growing up and of course i
179can't remember specific classes or lessons but um i know when you think about american history and i'm only speaking about black history because that's what i know best i feel like we were taught that slavery was bad and civil rights was good and then everything was fine and i think that's leaving it there is a big problem and i think addressing that with kids starting at a very young age will help hopefully help the culture change a little bit um yeah i can say i had to unlearn a lot of things and relearn a lot of things after leaving berkeley heights and moving to philly and i think you know that you can do better for future generations so thank you for your time we're committed to doing better lucy thank you very much uh
180chrissy hens chrissy good evening hi um so i think i i offer a little bit of a different perspective i am a parent and a member of the community and also part of the pto over american macmillan because where my children go um so first of all i'd like to begin by thanking dr barley and the board um for all the plans that you're putting in place and for your well intentions in this matter and for listening um i'd also like to commend the bravery of the young adults former and current students who have spoken out at this meeting you truly are the change that berkeley heights needs and i'm truly sorry that you went through with that when it could have been avoided with just a little bit of awareness um so being said
181i have young children um and i wanted to take the moment to speak out about the bigotry and hatred that i read recently in regards to this town i know some of these things have been said but i believe that this is coming from a different perspective and i just think it should be reiterated i've lived here for four years we moved here i grew up in morris county um also in a small town with not a lot of diversity in the 90s and i didn't see anything to this level at my own high school and we moved here because i heard the schools were great and that it was a nice town um so you can see that how truly shocked and appalled i was about reading these experiences on instagram i'll admit i
182didn't even read them all because it was difficult to get through um and i have to be honest and say that in the moment i was filled with regret and i think many other mothers with of young children who also grew up in other towns who moved here i've said the same thing to me in recent days you know did i pick the wrong town to raise my children in does this town uphold the standards that i teach my children about love and tolerance will my own children be afraid to go to school um you know these are just a few of the thoughts that ran through my head when i was reading david's post and and i just i really believe that no child should be afraid to go to school and the school
183should be a safe place where children learn and grow as individuals in whatever direction it takes them this is truly appalling it's and it's despicable i mean what are we doing to our children i believe that change needs to happen in a wide scale not just in the schools after all bigotry intolerance does start at home however the school is the best place to start because educational institutions after all should be held to a higher standard the schools need to have a concrete plan to address this issue and staff needs to be explicitly trained on how to handle situations of intolerance i do believe that you've spoken a lot about these changes tonight and i i do hope that this could we can look back in the future and this can just be a period
184of growth and i hope that you're genuine because my kids are little and about eight nine years from now they'll be at governor livingston too um and i want to be a safe place for them and i just want to know that since you're committed to this change i want you to know that we're going to be watching i think we're going to have our eyes on this the next coming years um and i know i'm just a new member of the community but i wanted to make sure that my voice was heard and i hope that the healing begins tonight it does sound very promising um and finally just to make one more point about um the reopening in kovid dr varley i appreciate all your hard work and what you're doing to keep
185everybody safe during this pandemic i'm actually a teacher in another district and i don't i won't comment but they're not doing nearly as much um however i do believe that we should consider delaying the reopening of schools to keep the staff and students safe and then maybe moving to plan a would not be best at this time um perhaps we can reevaluate in a few weeks once we know what the numbers are and i think and the epidemiologists who spoke on here actually even convinced me further that it's not the best idea um so i mean that that's about it but i you know i really i applaud david for having the strength to speak out and for everybody else who did too and i just hope that it gets better for all the the
186kids in this town and i want to be proud to say that my kids are live here in berkeley heights and i want them to feel that way too thank you for your time chrissy thank you very much for speaking tonight uh peyton buckley peyton good evening hold on oh hold on let me just let me just hold on a second peyton okay now you're good thank you uh can you can you hear me we can hear you welcome good evening all right thank you um thank you dr barley and the board i really appreciate having this opportunity to speak my name is peyton buckley and i am a current um freshman at gl i would just like to mention that these changes start with the parents and community as a whole not just the
187administration the extent of this problem has been reiterated by both current and former students and to see progress we as a community need to be taking proactive measures and not just have these discussions in response to individual situations and events things are only going to get better if education happens early and in mainstream classes and in the community i am for you to teach your children to be an ally and to prevent these issues in the future as these before me have stated even if a child is disciplined for hateful actions within the school these actions will still persist without the support of parents within the community so thank you so much for hearing me uh students at gl are very eager to help foster change with this in the school we just need the
188support of administration and parents to see it through peyton thank you very much uh i'll go to uh i don't know if it's toyo or damian facey who is speaking hi we don't know which one to speak either um because we weren't planning to speak um it's both of you it's both of us we're together good evening good evening um i guess where i'll start first is um i first want to say i'm sorry to the students who shared their stories um both present and former gl alum um who indicated um their experience at governor livingston um i was in an earlier conversation just kind of talking about it and and my reaction to that is as parents as adults how did we let that happen they looked to us to be the protector and
189we failed them as a community and i sincerely apologize to you guys that we were just unaware um i think what i've heard from some of the stories i mean i think damian and i can both attest to we have our own experiences starting with bias at mary kay macmillan um our son has gone through incidents as well um at the middle school um in which he decided at the age of 13 that he was not going to gl um but we thought that our experience was just our experience by itself so to hear how pervasive this is is frightening for us as parents the one thing that i would like to applaud the board of education and also dr varley i know that you're new to this and you kind of inherited where we
190are today and it truly is a culture that we have to change but i am very happy to see kind of the meaningful progress that's been taken in the schools around the diversity education and inclusion commit committees um i think that's a great step um i know i had sent you an email and just said i think that one of the other steps is you know how do we measure progress right um it's one thing to have these committees in place but you know how do we make sure that that what we're doing is the right thing so i encourage us to ensure that we have some measurable goals on each of those committees and we're holding ourselves accountable i think for the board of education um we elect you guys every three years i
191think um and i'm also holding you guys accountable as well because i do think that you guys really need to understand what the culture is in the school that is part of your mandate and i know that we're doing a survey but my encouragement is for us to ensure that the survey is done on an annual basis and we're seeing the progress made year to year um you guys own this too um it's just not on the hands and on the heads of the administration you're elected um to represent us as parents and so i'm also holding each of you guys accountable to ensure that you know what is happening in our schools and you know what the what the environment in the atmosphere is like for students and real questions on that survey questions
192where um we're really trying to get the the feedback from the students the other thing is i know that there's been a lot a lot of recommendations in terms of things that we can do and and what i would encourage us is not for us to be knee-jerk in terms of the solutions that we put forth i think it's very important that if we want to enact change and we want to change a culture that it is something that's sustainable and that we're not redundant that we understand what has been in place where the gaps are and what we implement is something that is sustainable and i encourage us to to make sure we don't want any knee-jerk reactions because those fall apart very quickly um and then the last thing and i think a
193lot of people have kind of commented on this as well is um the school is one aspect of it there's a community issue as well and doug i think you mentioned this as well um it starts with our community and it's not a change just in the school it's a change in the community so i encourage everyone who's on the call um this also belongs to us it belongs to me as a parent it belongs to my neighbor um we have to change the culture in the community the school is just one piece of it um it's not the entire issue so um i encourage us to try to make a change as a community as well and you know i just want to extend the deepest appreciation as well to um just everyone for
194for letting their voices be be heard in an authentic way uh the only thing that i'll add on is that um it's it's a full court press you know and and it's very important that um we don't get hung up on on prescription and this is the right way to do something uh there is a system but there's also just general hope and trust in each other and really engaging and and and and and giving to one another in a real neighborly way and so uh this starts uh and and ends at home but it it extends into our communities in school so uh don't wait make try to make something happen just across the board for everyone because giving is where it starts great toyah damian both thank you as some people know we
195as a district are partnering with the berkeley heights diversity council latoya and damien are a part of that's been going on for several years since they've started that and we are actively working to you know as just one element one leg of this multi-part stool that we need to work on is to work with the diversity committee we had a listening session that they sponsored for us in november some good things came out of that and as we've heard tonight there's many many changes that we have so one listening session clearly uh is not going to fix things but again we are committed to do that today i'll make one comment that that you said you have to hold people accountable we couldn't agree with you more and there has to be accountability up and
196down the spectrum from the top which starts with the board to administration to uh to the teachers in the classroom to the supervisors to holding our students accountable to holding the bystanders accountable to people who witness what's happened so it's not just the victim of the incident it's the bystanders who stand by and don't say anything about that to as you mentioned the parents and the entire communities there's no one easy fix to this it's not something we'll affect solely within within the school system it is a community-wide challenge that we have and i know that there's a lot of people on this call yourselves included in fact anybody who's staying with us uh with 350 people still staying with us at 10 25 at night i suspect are committed to working with us so
197i am encouraged that there's a lot of people who want to fix this uh it is up to us to define design and implement the changes that need to occur but we need support the whole community so thank you to both of you for your comments and for your partnership and all that you've done to uh help improve diversity i'll go next to emily emily you can speak emily just before you speak i just need your last name uh my last name is smith can you hear me uh it is emily smith great emily good evening hi um i want to thank everyone for staying on for this long [Music] emily is why don't you go off video maybe it's the video slowing down and start again because we really couldn't hear you so start
198again okay can you hear me now now we can hear you perfectly great okay perfect um so i want to just thank everyone for being on the call for this long i know it's really late um i'd like to say that i'm a graduating like i graduated from gl in 2014 but i didn't make it through all of governor livingston i transferred out my junior year when i couldn't deal with being in the school system anymore you can ask my mom she's on this call i spent my entire junior year summer begging her to not let me not make me go back and i don't think she really understood the gravity of the situation until i literally wouldn't leave our house and like i'm not doing it and so we kind of panicked and found
199a boarding school for me to go away to my june my senior year because i couldn't be there anymore um i just think back to the many times that incidents happened at gl and at columbia and the way that the administration reacted to it so very suicides that happened i think three or four suicides happened between the time that i entered and left gl and that's just high school that was just three years and every single time we got the same email from the administration we're really devastated to hear about this if you need help please talk to the counselors and then it was just everything moved on as if nothing happened as if we didn't lose a life we didn't lose i mean that should have been a the first time that happened that
200should have been a show-stopping moment like we need to reevaluate how we're acting as a school in a community if someone at this young of an age wants to take their own life because of what's going on in their day-to-day life like there's a huge issue there and i think not addressing it gave a message to the rest of us like your mental health does not matter to us we just need to pass you through here until we can get until just we have to keep the kids going through to get them out of here and so as someone who suffers from anxiety and depression and never learned about it in school because it's not part of our curriculum i'm thinking there's something wrong with me and that i can't share my own story because
201kids kill themselves and it's not a big deal of the administration and i think about how i grew up i'm jewish but when i grew up through the school system i would tell people that i was half jewish because i i didn't want to face the anti-semitism there were kids in my grade telling me to stay away from ovens because i was jewish throwing quarters at my friends because they're cheap jews things that i didn't even know was were an issue because that's not something that i would ever think to have to deal with in the years that i was growing up and going to the the public schools in berkeley heights and so i think back to even when we were younger when i was in woodruff school for elementary school we had a
202um a holiday assembly and every grade talked about a different holiday and christmas was two of those grades so it's just like showing how we we try to preach that we're diverse and we're and we're showing how we're accepting all these people we only accept certain people we don't really go the way the full way to show that we're inclusive of everybody we just we don't go outside of our bubble and i think i think we've talked about this a lot on this call tonight but i do think it's really important to think about how right now berkeley heights is a very reactive community we have to stop being so reactive you have to start being proactive start putting in curriculum changes in second grade talking about lgbtq then i don't want to learn about
203it when i'm in ninth grade when it's too late and i'm too afraid to share who i am as a person it has to be from the youngest age so kids grow up and all this is normal to them and it's part of their lives you wouldn't have a fire drill while the building is on fire you have to teach people about it before it happens otherwise again ally said this before it's life or death and you don't want to have to teach it to people after they've already taken their own lives and i want i'm i feel like i'm just speaking with so much emotion because i'm i'm just so angry at how little has been done i left gl in 2013 and the fact that kids right now seven years later are saying
204that nothing has changed how has it been this long that nothing has changed i'm done with hearing the administration say we're going to think about doing this we're going to consider this stop considering make a plan now and share the plan now share it with the community ask for advice ask for feedback say does this work for everybody and and you need you need concrete plans changes in curriculum changes in staff whatever the the changes you have to make you need to to get them done now i don't want to hear about we'll next year we'll try this or or we're going to think about it like i need someone to tell me that you're going to change something now um and that's all thank you for letting me speak emily thank you very much
205for speaking um olga bresnikova um yes hi thank you um i hope it's okay that my camera's off i just wrote out what i wanted to say on my ipad that's okay welcome good evening okay thank you for letting us speak on this issue this is a very serious problem i went to deerfield middle school and i'm now a freshman at gl many of my friends have been bullied to the point where they did very harmful things to themselves such as attempting suicide as to the kids that did the bullying they did not get more than a slap on the wrist what i want to see in our district is a change in the way the students and teachers are educated all the students and teachers should be taught the effects and wrongs of saying
206slurs and bullying this could be as simple as having self-development days at school to teach everyone about how to be more respectful and including to all people or by having assemblies and educating everyone about the effects of bullying on students this is not happening right now and i really hope to see this change soon as it was said this is a situation of life and death and shouldn't be quickly dismissed changes should be made now not thought about thank you olga thank you very much um phoebe cook i want to try one more time if you're there i see you have your hand raised and see if you're available to speak if not i will lower your hand maybe you put it up before phoebe cook are you there you are not i will keep
207going arden zao good evening arden good evening welcome um so my name is arden i'm a part of the lgbtq community and i'm asian i'm in 8th grade and i want to speak out on behalf of the students in the middle school and the middle school diversity committee like many others i didn't plan to talk today i even asked a friend of mine to talk for me earlier so thank you izzy um i wanted to add on to the topic of teachers roles in this over the past few days many of my teachers have assured us that we are safe in the classroom and i do believe that we are however i wanted to mention a statement that stood out to me during class a teacher mentioned to me about we are that they are
208willing and reported bigoted behavior and wanted us to know that well they will take individual action many of them or have reported and and they said they say that the reports end at them i personally have never had homophobic or transphobic language directed towards me from a teacher and or a student but i have had many friends who had not been so lucky i had a friend who would like to stay anonymous who had been called the f slur multiple times and was told to hang themselves i have multiple friends who have depression anxiety and even are suicidal i've had friends who whose very names have been used as inside jokes and i have myself has had my personal space violated again and again with students i'm not comfortable with putting their hands on me
209without my consent and even after i've told them to stop this was addressed before but both teacher and student voices must be heard by higher ups i also want to talk about my own experiences from elementary school middle school i'm not out and most likely will not be out for a long time in the future so i cannot speak for lgbtq plus targeted bigotry in the school from a personal perspective as an asian american i've had many instances of racism directed at directed at me all the way from around fourth to fifth grade our school district is very white so there's always that disconnect from other students when it comes to culture and just fitting in what i wanted to focus on was that this is happening from such a young age kids learn to
210respect others by being shown respect themselves and they learn their behaviors young whether it be from an environment they're around or from family i wanted to bring up the children should be taught and learn an environment that is strictly inclusive to combat bigoted behavior so i wanted to like talk about how a bunch of this should be talked to and it shouldn't be just directed to the high school and even the middle school i feel like a lot of kids by the time they reach middle school their opinions already solidified and they're ready starting your bigoted behavior so i wanted to like tackle this while they're still young in elementary school thank you for your time thank you very much arden for sharing your thoughts uh this evening uh john miguez john good evening hi
211everyone thanks for having me or letting me speak um i wasn't able to get what everybody uh or caught what everybody had to say and i um i was able to catch pieces of it here and there um and i was pretty impressed with uh you know a lot of the students coming up and and kind of sharing their stories one idea that i'm going to share and there's a lot to process there's a lot of ideas some i really agree with two things you know for me i think the first thing is to not react and not act with immediacy i do think the community has to think through very carefully what it's going to do get buy-in um i think we've had i think communities and districts have made some big mistakes in
212reacting quickly without evidence and i think it's important to vet whatever solution we have to make sure it connects to the problem and it's worked but the one idea i'd like to throw out there is a 360. you know i i i'm a big advocate of students and parents being able to inform performance evaluations of teachers staff administrators um and i know that that's a complicated thing but i think that's one really quick pathway to to ensuring change you know so if we if we're talking about culture and making sure culture is open accountable and accepting um having you know students and parents being able to provide feedback directly in ways that are meaningful and impactful will go a long way not only in my opinion not only initiating change but making sure it's sustained
213beyond a program or beyond a set of programs or initiatives that's the only thing i'd like to share tonight great john thank you very much uh there's a person who's logged in as iphone who has their hand raised uh so i will unmute you i just need you to share your name is that is that me right i put my name in i'm sorry doug it's aaron biddle sayer how are you no no problem aaron thank you for uh doing that erin good evening thanks for for joining um good evening guys i um could say so much it's just obviously so upsetting um what i really want to give is a different perspective from a parent i'm a parent that's been here for um you know my daughter's 14 i have an 11 year old
214and my five-year-old you guys know i'm very involved i'm in the i'm on the diverse i'm on the new diversity committee um at cms i'm very happy that you have parents in it one thing i want to mention about it though is is i think you're going to have to give the teachers or the principals some guidelines of what they can i think they're worried about what they can send out because i was um i it was transgender week and they asked for some um you know ideas i wrote up a whole thing of ideas one of the things that i really wanted to do was speak to um parent information going out a link maybe even just a link going out because we do have you know several transgender kids in the sixth seventh
215and eighth grade um and i know one of them personally um and i just really feel like we need the information to go home um because it does start with the community and a lot of these kids are having a severe trouble with their parents now after i sent everything it was decided that nothing would be sent out because really they were too nervous to start with transgender and i understand that we are starting something here and we don't want to um you know go we don't want to scare parents i guess but i mean what then you're going to have to if you're making a diversity committee um and then we're not going to start with transgender because we're scared of what the parents are going to say so while i know that they
216want to try they were scared so nothing was ever sent out for transgender week they did disability whatever week or whatever not that that's not important my child has um you know an anxiety disorder i understand everything that's important but transgender week was completely missed um and there's and i know there's a lot of problems in the community but i would love to be able to bridge that now with that said you guys know sandy hook promise that's what what i'm what i volunteer for here um i started working for them i'm furloughed now um because of coven but that's another thing i just want to talk about follow through um you know ratner was really into our programs i know that barley i think she really liked our programs when john leo and i
217did them this year we did them at all the elementary schools um the ali elementary schools were on board the middle school's on board too we did it at the middle school but the middle school has to follow through with the save promise club students against violence everywhere has been around for 30 years if you i can't come in for a one-off presentation and expect you know maybe i'll maybe maybe i'll change one person's life that day maybe one person will hear something but if you don't if you don't have this going through the school and the kids it's supposed to be student-led and they sign in and cms signed up to do the same promise club they've never done it they had to do it to get the person in from sandy hook that
218was before i was the before i was the um presenter so they have to do it and they still haven't done it that you can say it's worked into something it's not worked into anything um yeah and i sent an email to mr mckinney and dr varley uh you i'm at your disposal you have a sandy hook promise um i'm the northeast contract trainer here you know like i will do all this for free i will do whatever you want but you have to you have to work with me the high school also would not work with me they only let me do 20 kids and do the link team mr nixon did not want me to do take 45 minutes out of his day they had already done two he told me they already
219done two um presentations last year so they did not have time for our say something or start with hello you know i'm not saying that sandy hook promises programs are going to change everything here but you do have you do have a group of people here parents who are trying to help and trying to change in their small ways and if you don't use us then i don't know what good any of this is for just like i said about the diversity committee then it's just oh you made a diversity committee but it's not doing anything so that's where i'm that's what i'm upset about today um and and i want to know what you're going to do with our programs i want to know today because i always just i seem like we just
220go off and i don't hear anything what's happening with sandy hook promises programs so um hi erin hi so you know when i got here sandy hook was already involved in the elementary schools so it's been something and i know we paused everything once we started once covet hit right we can't put large groups of children like we did at hughes we put a large group i was there when you did you and mr leo did your presentation and we put a large group of kids in a room we can't do that anymore so i'm not sure if it has been paused due to that it's one of those things that you're and i did read your email i just haven't gotten around to getting back to you but it's one of those things that
221we can discuss on how we're moving forward with the sandy hook i i will say that we have put most of our assemblies on pause right now due to cobit and not being able to have children in rooms yes i completely understand that and just so you know sandy hook promise has done unfortunately it's definitely not as good as someone being able to speak to people especially in the high school and get those really great conversations going but um we do have virtual programs that i can show i can send to you that um can be used all the way from um first grade through 12. and the start with hello program the inclusion program you know there's a great lesson of that for the high school too that we that i wasn't i just
222for whatever reason they just um i only did for the link team say the say something program which is very which is all about finding a trusted adult you know and speaking to them um finding someone that um you know if anybody is having a problem from whether it be drug abuse or from you know an lgbtq problem to um any like a uh an eating disorder you know when we talk about all that and i just and just with everything going on i just feel like we weren't utilized to the best of our capability and i'm just i'm just concerned because we're here and we're we're ready to help so that's all i want that's all i really want to get get through great thank you and you know we have partnered with you
223and you've obviously been a great volunteer uh in our in our community so we'll take that again i think this is a multi-pronged approach to to fix it san diego promise was part of it and i'm sure we'll come back and revisit it so thank you for uh for sharing your thoughts no problem jimmy patingalo hi everyone can you hear me jimmy good evening welcome good to have you back yeah good to see you all um thank you all for staying on and you know for the 300 and some odd people still on uh appreciate you guys staying on so late um i just wanted to address one thing um dr varley had mentioned you know i think one thing we have to focus on um the future we're focusing on change uh and one
224thing that dr mentioned was um if you if we don't know about it as a district what can we do and i think the the only issue with saying that is that we have to remember that in the context of marginalized individuals um the playing field is uneven from the day we're born there's you know marginalized individuals are told that we don't have a voice and it's really important that we kind of know that um that you know a lot of times it's hard for them to it's hard for us to come up and say like oh i have an issue to speak with authority figures so i think that um when we say oh of all the reported cases we're dealing with them you know if your metrics aren't if you're if we're not
225showing up these instances on your metrics then we need to have a better plan uh for getting these metrics if we're saying oh we're dealing with all the cases of bullying obviously that's not the issues um we're not addressing all the issues that are going on in the school so it's really important just to remember that um marginalized individuals are art it's not on us to be to bring these issues up it's on um the school board to foster a culture and to investigate and to you know kind of find homophobia and racism and xenophobia and attack it rather than um saying you know if we don't if we don't hear about it there's nothing we can do because i think that we it's unfair to you know marginalize people to say um if you
226don't tell us there's nothing we can do because we want to show that we're going to do everything for you um even if you don't have a voice because you know historically all these people all these groups we don't have a voice and i think that's just really something important to remember jimmy thank you very much for for those thoughts uh you've invested a lot as a participant on on the school board and invested a lot in the gl uh community so thank you for uh for joining this evening i'm going to pause a second right now uh is there anybody else that wishes to be to address the board i see wants to speak for a second time i'm going to pause sean uh and make sure that nobody else wants to speak we've
227had a lot of people speak tonight and i know it is getting late but not seeing anybody sean i will um i will unmute you and have you uh give us some final thoughts that you'd like to share right i'm so sorry this is just because i got a note from a member of my graduating class of something that uh she wanted to make clear and uh something i forgot to say during my moment so i'm i'm gonna be very quick i'm sorry that's okay that's we're here to listen tonight so go ahead yes so um i i wanna make it clear that um you know truly when we approach these subjects having um having a singular point of view uh in positions of power uh really is problematic in in creating like legitimate lasting
228change and what i mean by that is you know true change looks like reparations and power sharing and uh the like what i highlighted with uh my first comment the first step towards that is sort of to hand over the keys of the kingdom and there need to be more marginalized people in positions of power in the school district and at the schools themselves running these things and making sure that they are working the way that they are supposed to be we need to you know we need to share our power as white people with more marginalized groups of people um i want to say that um that uh it may not be the the 2000 people who uh signed the petition and it may not even be as many as the 400 people who
229are on this call tonight but a lot of people are going to be paying very close attention to what the district does next and what its next steps are we will be responsive and will be paying very very close attention and so uh you know if if legitimate change is not made we are going to notice and it won't there won't be a long period of time before this becomes a discussion again um and uh the note that i got from a member of my graduating class is that um a lot of us you know a lot of us in the community a lot of us activists have been doing a lot of work these past couple of days i've focused on this issue as much as i focused on my own teaching job in
230hoboken and it's been very draining and it's been a lot and i know that um a lot of other activists in the community have been going through the same thing so we would like to ask for a thank you from uh the board and the administration uh please thank us the community for the labor that that we've been doing over the past few days great thanks sean i think i was clear before about thanking all the people who have come forward uh to speak uh tonight i have a couple of concluding remarks when we're done but um yes you have a lot of thanks from people this evening uh liz guzman liz good evening good evening thank you i just want to say that tonight has been a tremendous evening and first and foremost just
231in the overall pandemic environment i think that it's real the teachers have been doing an amazing job but even more so these students i want to say firsthand that i witness students working enormously under enormously difficult conditions doing so much more taking tests with less time and sometimes without paper not being able to print with shorter amount of time longer tests and doing amazing jobs and so really the stress that not only the teachers are going through but the students especially the high school students who have you know to worry about college and their grades there's a lot of pressure so just want all the students to know that we recognize you and whether you're an a student a c student d student f student you are important and valuable your grades do not define
232you i just want to put that out there first as far as an action plan i've heard some great ideas and i do want to reiterate that the first action on the agenda should be a clear unequivocal message from the top of the school superintendent and principal especially in their high school a strong statement needs to be stated that any form of bullying harassment threats assaults bias intimidation etc will be fully investigated and will have serious consequences that will remain with the student i think a lot of students again in the high school in particular will not want to have any type of record that could jeopardize their college admissions and it should be zero tolerance i think additionally further notification or i would say reminder to the faculty and all service providers or school
233employees need to be reminded that they do have a legal duty under the law in new jersey to report any incident of harassment intimidation or bullying it has to be reported if they witness it and it has to be reported to the school principal and i would also tell that to the students and the students parents out there that under the law any any of those incidents are witnessed by school faculty or teachers it must be reported and finally finally i will say there was a great program that i heard about that uh mr it was a detective david demiko that did go speak to students in the students activism club and the current world issues i know there was a newspaper article that came out and then the saga club and i think he
234you know he was one of the first openly gay detectives he's currently i think in the middle sex prosecutor's office if i'm not mistaken but having something like that someone like him come forward to the full school this full school body i think obviously programs alone and meetings alone is not enough but i think sometimes the kids who the message is being given to the kids who are ready no you know the people who are active in these types of clubs or environments like the diversity committee or the or the student activism clubs but it needs to be open to the full student bodies and it can be definitely the fact that we're all virtual now this is a whole new world but meetings are still happening cles are still happening and they can all
235be done via zoom as you can see sometimes the attendance is even higher via zoom like you're not going to get 300 people at a school board meeting on a monday night but you'll get them on zoom so the same goes for the school especially if it's required for the students to attend and then just finally i just want to say i do work in a law enforcement agency and if there's any student out there that feels that they are threatened or there has been any form something that is criminal harassment assault they should contact the police if they feel they cannot go to someone at the school and report it thank you liz thank you very much nancy imbalzano nancy good evening hi hey doug um and thank you guys for having tonight and
236for this opportunity um like everyone else i wasn't planning on speaking and i just want to first acknowledge and thank again david and the other kids that spoke i say kids and i want to say i'm sorry i want to say i'm sorry as a parent for knowing that some of these things were happening in the school system yeah i wrote letters to the board of ed and i wrote letters to judy ratner but obviously we didn't do enough and i'm really really sorry that we didn't do more and that we're still dealing with this in this school system and i apologize to you for that i also want to say um dr varley i recognize you're new and that you're inheriting a lot of this but what you heard tonight is you're inheriting an
237administration and obviously and the board of education and as a teacher and faculty that is not new some of who were complicit in this some of whom weren't some of them were aware some of them like me didn't do enough might have thought they did enough didn't do enough and it's still happening so what i would suggest too with everything else that everyone's talking about is there are methods for reconciliation i don't think it's enough to just move forward i think we need healing in this community and in the school system and i think because you still have the same people there and where people have that history and have those feelings and those those emotions i think we have to get over that so i would suggest that we look at a type of
238a reconciliation that happens through apology happens through acknowledgement so that people can move forward i don't think it's as simple as just saying let's go forward and i know you're new and you're inheriting it but i think that's going to be necessary to truly heal this community and this school system and uh thank you again for everybody and the bravery that you guys have shared tonight i am i'm overwhelmed i know a lot of you and i'm overwhelmed by it so thank you thank you nancy i believe this will be the last speaker of this evening as last hand i see michael leblanc michael good evening again thank you for letting me this one last it'll be very brief i would just strongly urge that if the district is going to consider a zero tolerance
239policy that they strongly investigated many districts have moved away from zero tolerance policies for regarding any kind of discipline because they've had very negative effects on certain groups uh new york city for example where i happen to work in school districts they've moved toward restorative justice versus zero tolerance and they've seen some improvement with discipline issues in new york city with restorative justice over zero tolerance great michael thank you as i said there was nowhere else to speak i was stand corrected uh no uh i don't see and take that back sander good evening yeah hi sorry um i just want to make one quick remark and i didn't want to make it why everybody was talking about the other issue very important issue one important thing dr varney made a remark regarding the vaccine
240and the the hope that it would allow us to have our children return to school i do want to point out that none of these vaccines have been tested in any children over the age of 12 none of them have been approved for any children under the age of 17. so this is false hope that the vaccine will be soon approved for children so the vaccine will not make the difference we should really be very very careful what we do and i just wanted to express that great sandra thank you very much i do not see anybody else wishing to address the board tonight i'll pause for a couple of seconds to make sure that everybody who has wanted to be heard this evening has been heard with that i will pause are there any
241board members um let me just um let me just make one final statement then i'll uh if there are any board members who want to make any concluding comments i do know it's late but this is important before before we uh close this evening so i i counted i counted 44 people who spoke tonight uh to address the board 44 very courageous people some very young adults i think we had one middle school student student several high school students many young adults who have graduated recently anywhere from a year ago to 8 or 10 or more years ago and the courage to speak in a public session like that is significant i am as i mentioned in my comments to david i am alarmed and in some ways horrified at some of the things i've
242read over the last 96 hours and some of the things that i've heard tonight i am encouraged because i've heard a number of suggestions on ways to improve uh everything from curriculum change to mental health to hiring practices to training to culture and again as i shared some short term some long term i am confident in dr varley's leadership and what she believes in what's in her heart what's in her soul and what she wants to do to improve this district uh a number of people obviously have commented that she's only been here for a year and a half she doesn't look at it that way she looks at it as that she is in charge she is the ceo of this district and she is accountable to improve everything that happens operationally in our
243schools and this is a very important priority a1 of that it's something that the board feels strongly about something that the board will feel accountable to i like i think it was chris's suggestion to keep this top of mind to be talking about it at every meeting we'll figure out a way to do that a couple of people have suggested that we don't overreact and we think about how we want to do some of these programs i think there's some value in that as well i believe that the comments and the feedback and the listening we heard tonight was was excellent but we have to we have to do more actions speak louder than words words are good words are a good starting point but actions are where we need to go so with that
244i will pause if any board members want to make any brief comments before we close um yeah i would actually like to make some comments um after listening to everybody tonight uh i'm not only a board member or a new board member i'm a parent but i was also pto president for many many years and i didn't realize that a lot of this was going on at the schools um i was horrified and upset about a lot of the posts that i read and as a result i had a lot of discussion with my children um about a lot of this over the weekend um we have we've listened to a lot of really good feedback tonight and i think we need to take that into consideration uh and although the district has put a
245lot of good programs into place we have a lot of training in place i think we have a lot to do moving forward um so i just want to say as a board member i am committed to doing whatever needs to be done so that we can make a difference and i'd also like to reiterate what doug and chris said that i think we need to make this a priority to the board and we do need to keep update with it and make their transparency and definitely make a commitment to it so that's all i really need to say thanks angela any other comments it's jerry hey jerry good evening hi um so as i exit the board i have to say um confident with dr varley the administration and our faculty and the board
246that now that this has really come to our awareness that will be addressed it's unfortunate that um it had not come before because i know the dedication of these people and we would have definitely addressed it earlier because our goal is to provide our students an exceptional experience here and prepare them for life i do want to say as we talk about um you know that this person that person this happened we really need to start looking at ourselves because i don't believe that of the 500 people that were on tonight including myself there hasn't been a time that any of us have not engaged in behavior that would be hurtful to somebody insulting um engaged in remarks that we thought were harmless but hurt somebody else so if this community really wants to make
247a change it has to start with the individual person diversity committees are great doing things at school are great but if we don't own this each of us we're not going to change and it's just going to be rhetoric that we're going to talk about forever so i would just encourage not only myself but everyone um that participated tonight look at yourself and see what you own on this um because it certainly is something that we all collectively have shared in so that's right great great thanks jerry any other board members want to make a comment before we close yeah doug it's michael like real quick just want to say thank you to everyone that came out this was i also as a new board member uh i have younger kids in the school so
248uh this was yeah it's difficult to say this is very eye-opening and um again as a new board member you know you have my commitment that we need to do something we need to talk about this we need to address this we need to keep this conversation going like toya said you know we do need to make plans we don't you know we shouldn't be making knee jerk reactions and have truly smart measurable tangible goals of saying what are we doing how are we changing but again also looking at ourselves in the mirror and making sure we're doing the right things at home so so i think you know especially our youngest students that spoke up i used to work at a university and i swear i was listening to students there where june's as
249seniors get ready to enter the work life that are actually high school students it's again was very inspiring listening to all them and we have a lot of work to do that's all i got to say great thanks mike so i'll just be quick i also have three teenager teenage children it is uh my last night on the border last week on the board you know when i read the original post i was pretty shocked and horrified um tonight i'm even more horrified i think the fact that it's not just students that are perpetrating some of these behaviors is is a really tough thing to hear i do think the board has a lot of work ahead of it i also am confident that they'll focus on it i think from my perspective over the
250years i thought we were safe from these behaviors with the harassment and bullying work we did obviously that wasn't enough so uh so i apologize for for missing it i i never noticed it it's it's not behavior that's tolerated in our family uh so i wish everyone the best luck moving this forward and i'm and i'm confident uh melissa will push that agenda forward i'm confident in the board as well but i apologize for those who were negatively impacted before we caught this great thanks dante okay uh i'll go i'll go as well um yeah this is obviously my my uh probably my last night on the word unless we do another one of these in a couple of days but um but the uh you know looking through those comments there are patterns and
251i have no doubt that dr volleys has spotted all these patterns and and are looking at the patterns but um you know but the the the themes of the you know that that that much of this came from adults the themes that um there was a distrust of the system in terms of um of uh of reporting it um the the the themes of feeling futile um that you couldn't uh you know that there was a futility to um to acting on it um you know those themes all you know need to be addressed need to be investigated and um and you know and really the you know look bullying is is disquieting on any level but the fact that so much of the discomfort comes from the behavior of the staff and the adults
252at this at the school is um is is really the most concerning part of all of this great thanks bill anybody i i would like to say something i have been a long time board member and have to own some of this of what has been going on in our schools and we do as a board as an administration have to move forward each child is important to us and it is our responsibility to do our very best for each child in this school so yes i think you have the commitment tonight from every board member and every administrator on this call that we will move forward to make it better for all of our students all the time thank you i applaud you for coming out it took a lot of courage for many
253of you and we did listen so we will move forward in a positive way thank you chris chris if you wanted to speak your own mute okay i just want to reiterate what i said earlier to jace to everyone who spoke up tonight um i i i saw you i i hear you and your pain is my pain and um we clearly have a lot of work to do and um but right now i think i'm just gonna have myself a good cry when this uh this uh meeting is over and then we need to get to work thank you great thanks um i will um i'll make one final comment um it was brought up before that this is uncomfortable for the board to hear there is no level of discomfort that is even
254one one millionth of discomfort compared to the comments that were made tonight so if anybody thinks that this is uncomfortable it should be uncomfortable it has to be uncomfortable the people who experienced what was written about you know that is a level of discomfort that is just not acceptable so we should be uncomfortable listening to this tonight every board member every administrator every teacher who's heard this should be uncomfortable uh with that i'm going to end uh this meeting for the uh this evening we are obviously uh on the on the brink of starting a holiday season probably like none ever before given the year that we have so i will take this opportunity to wish everyone a safe a happy a healthy a small scale holiday in whatever way you are celebrating it with
255your families and a new year we can only hope that next year brings lots of change in many many different dimensions so i will join this evening thank everybody for coming and we will see everybody at our next meeting in january thank you and good night happy holidays happy holidays everyone thank you good night good night happy holidays be safe