Bernards Twp. BOE Meeting September 19, 2022

001good evening everyone welcome to the Board of Education meeting the board has already met an executive session and we saluted the flag while we were in there so at this point we're going to have a roll call Mr McLaughlin Mr Sabbath here Ms Schaefer here Mrs Gray here Ms Singh here Mrs White here is light here Mr Khanna here is Hira here Mr markarian here Mr Syed here Miss Fox here Mrs McCune here Madam president thank you I'm just going to draw your attention to the statement of public notice in the agenda this is a regular meeting of the Board of Education of Brunner's Township notice of the time and place of this meeting was provided according to the law for members of the public that are unable to attend our meeting in person a

002live stream link of the meeting is posted on the district website burnersvoe.com we very much welcome input from the public there are two times during regular meetings that the public is invited to speak one time is early in the meeting before the board votes when you may speak about any item that's listed on tonight's agenda towards the end of the meeting there's another public forum to address any matter of public concern related to the schools when you approach the microphone please state your name and address each statement made by a participant shall be limited to three minutes duration no participant may speak more than once during a given public comment session no particip in order to run efficient meetings and to allow maximum opportunity for members of the public to speak the board reserves the

003right to set a different time limit and or an overall time limit and what we were doing lately was 45 minutes total for the first public comment and 45 for the second which if there's a lot of people we could have ended up hitting that all statements shall be directed to the presiding officer no participant May address or question board members individually um as a courtesy to those individuals unable to attend our meetings in Person Public comment may also be made remotely through Zoom if you're interested in doing that you should go to The District web page burnersboe.com and select Board of Education followed by public comment to review The Specific Instructions or there's a link in this agenda that you can go through it that way also public comments made in person will be

004processed first then comments via Zoom no comments will be accepted before 7 PM or after the last item board Forum of the agenda begins please understand that public comment portions of our agendas are not structured as question and answer sessions but rather they are offered as opportunities to share your thoughts with the board the board and or Administration will respond to public comments to the extent possible any board responses to public comments will generally be addressed during board Forum or during committee reports however all comments are considered and will be investigated and addressed as appropriate please be courteous and mindful of the rights of others when speaking comments may not be abusive obscene threatening or irrelevant please understand that students and employees have specific legal and privacy protections the board is not permitted to respond

005to public comments about students and employees please also understand that the board will not be responsible for the content of comments made by members of the public members of the public are cautioned that they are speaking at their own risk and any personally directed statements they make May subject them to Legal liability to the affected individual if it is necessary for the board to go into executive session at the end of the meeting we will provide an estimated length of time for the session and let you know whether any action is anticipated to be taken Upon returning to public session okay thanks for bearing with me we're now up to our student representative Welcome to our new student representative for this year Petra Deffenbaugh hello everyone my name is Patrick Deffenbaugh and I will be

006your Bernards Township board of ed student representative for the coming school year I am the school president captain of the ski team and involved with a variety of Ridge clubs I'm super excited to help inform you of all the incredible accomplishments of Rich high school students and share some of the things that go into our day-to-day life we've had an exhilarating start to the school year on the first day of school the project Adventure peer leaders and student government Representatives collaborated on a field day giving students an opportunity to play games and get to know each other amidst a series of back to school meetings on September 12th Ridge had its picture day gearing up for our lanyards and other security protocol as well allridge clubs are beginning to fall back into their routines having

007their first meetings and planning events for the upcoming months Ridge drama club recently celebrated the start of their season with a back to theater party in which they introduced their new director Mr Lynch and the new director of tech crew Mr Berry as well they introduced the fall play the Curious incident of a dog at night time and spring musical Newsies student government is currently in the midst of our freshman student government election and has been working hard to plan events such as Spirit wink and the homecoming tailgate which will be open to all grade levels on Thursday Ridge tea time is hosting a blood drive available to students and a senior stretch through the college application season many schools are making their visits to talk to Ridge students later this week students will have

008start strong testing during the first section of the day leading to a change schedule on September 29th there will be a back to school night for freshmen and seniors as well as another back to school night for sophomores and juniors on October 6th ridges sports teams have also began the season with much bigger girls soccer has kicked off their season defeating Immaculata in their first game but the girls field hockey and boys soccer team have claimed victory in their past three games girls volleyball team beat Phillipsburg last week 2-0 our girls tennis team has had considerable success this season having won five out of six matches in the past week um The Ridge football team has also kicked off their season and um we're trying to work with spirited students to create a change in

009the behavior scene in our student section during our last game against Phillipsburg our gymnastics team is also swinging into their season and the cross country team has hit the streets hard in preparation for their upcoming races in just two weeks Ridge is back to buzzing as usual with first-year students adjusting to the halls and upperclassmen getting to see their friends we are bustling with student life and school spirit and many students aren't are in anticipation of the exciting things in the year to come it was wonderful speaking with you all and I look forward to connecting Ridge students with parents and the board for the year to come thank you thank you Patrick do any board members have any questions about all that information that was a lot of good stuff does anyone have any

010questions okay and as usual we always invite our um student representatives to stay for the meeting unless they can't because they have to do their homework or do other things we don't want to pressure anyone because we know our meetings can be really long but we welcome you to stay and we're glad that you're going to stay for a while tonight okay um okay I just have two kind of quick comments to make before we move down for the board presentation which I know a lot of people are here are interested in hearing um one thing I wanted to say um there's been a lot of information flying around out in the community and I've and other board members have received a number of questions and comments over the past several weeks um because there's

011been stuff in the media about the test scores in our district and our rankings and things dropping so I just wanted to say I don't want to take time now because we're having a presentation but I did print out some of the slides from the testing report and the post-secondary report that were presented at the Board of Education last school year there were two different evenings and I do want to talk about that at board Forum so I made copies and I'll have extra copies for anyone who sticks around and lasts that long but I did want to put the community at ease that that's not the case we were we did amazingly well during covid compared to what you see around the country where kids had an immense learning loss and I think if

012you were here for the presentation you would agree that our teachers and all of our staff members did an amazing job trying to support our children through covid I know Mrs White has reported out in a couple of curriculum committee reports about what we were doing for interventions for those students who really were struggling because there were some and a lot of them have gotten taught back up to where they need to be which was great news which you reported out on recently also so anyway we can talk about that more later the other only other thing I wanted to mention is we are planning on October 3rd to turn our regular meeting into another BT connect meeting because I think all of us enjoy that format getting to talk to each other a lot

013more than sitting up here um so we're going to have a BT connect meeting this one is going to be kind of a conversation that was going to happen at the end of 2019 but then covid hit we had done our strategic plan in 2018 and we're putting together BT connect and all the different strands going into the 2019-20 school year and one of the strands was going to be looking at long-range planning and we had a capital um we had a presentation in August of 2019 about all of our capital projects and our Capital plan and then we never had the follow-up conversation about where we how we got where we are and where we're going next so that's what the BT connect is going to be about we want community members to come

014here Karen and I are going to do like a little history lesson because we've been around so long I care about what's you know how our budget got to where it is our history that happened over the last 10 or 15 years with um you know whatever debt I've heard that some people think we took out more loans for the ridge cafeteria a few years ago which is not the case we haven't taken any loans out since 2005. so I think we need a little bit of historical background but then we want the community to break into groups and talk about what priorities they think are important for the school district so that'll be on October 3rd and now we're going to move down there for the presentation foreign dismiss my notification thank you Mr

015Sean you're ready okay you guys hear me hello okay great welcome everyone to the first board meeting of the 2022-23 school year um I look forward to a year of um you know great work with the students I'm happy to have you here and certainly with Community involvement so this is a great turnout you know it's a Hot Topic but it's really good to see you see you all here um Mr Shell and I are here to give you an update about the health curriculum revisions that have been taking place over the last several months um the goal is to really focus on the updates the new standards because those are the subject of the board resolution um that they are you know they have the opportunity to vote on later this evening so there's

016obviously a lot more to the health curriculum and the health program but the focus for tonight really is on the process the curriculum writing process the community input and the new standards because that's the subject of the vote I will also speak about the implementation plan and specifically the communication plan so for how after however the vote goes tonight the year will proceed and unfold from a parent perspective oh let me go back so this is a flyer right here there are some copies that we brought for the public it is also something that you can download from both this presentation which I'll post in the morning or in a few places on our district website so this was something that we shared at the BT connect meeting and it's really just a little bit

017of a FAQ or an information sheet about health instruction so I would encourage you to take a look at that at some point there was another handout that I think I see all the copies are gone but certainly I have one more somebody wants to take a look at it but it is a really a handout of all of the specific standards that are new in each grade in each grade so by grade level so I wanted to point those out to you and they'll be available for you to also look at well they are available and I'll show you where you can find them on our website in a minute so the first thing I'm going to talk about is the process and the actual curriculum updates that were made um obviously we can

018probably and we will probably disagree on some of the decisions that were made about the program but what I really hope you see by diving in and looking at it both here but even later when you look at some of the resources that are provided that we were endeavoring to create a curriculum that is age appropriate is Mindful and respectful of the community input that we've received but is also providing our students with an engaging curriculum promoting them to have an active healthy lifestyle so we're trying to bring all of that together and I hope that you see that through tonight's discussion so a little bit of a review um towards the end of June at the end of June we surveyed the community the families to allow for some input on this standards the

019revised 2020 standards in health and physical education as we were getting ready to embark on the curriculum revision process um certainly we were spending time reading them before that but we didn't do any of the writing until the summer so we collected feedback from people who wanted to share that with us so that was the first opportunity for Community input a team of 15 teachers and administrators spent 10 to 12 plus days over the summer looking at research the old standards the new standards the current curriculum the Community input and presented and created the draft revisions by August 24th which were sent out to the community and gave you a chance to take a look at where we were at at that point and so then we had the August 24th BT connect meeting right

020here and we met and we presented to you where we were at with the standards with the curriculum with the community input and um met in some small groups where teachers and administrators and families could talk about their thoughts their questions their concerns and so from August 24th to pretty much last week you know we've been continuing to refine and finalize the curriculum to present it you know as a finalized curriculum tonight for the board some people have asked me to talk about how we used Community input in this process Community input was never really going to be writing the stand the curriculum and it wasn't necessarily going to drive us to not teach mandated curriculum but I wanted to share with you some of the ways that we did take your input into consideration

021with the final product so first and foremost we limited the sensitive content which I'll talk about a little bit later to the end of the grade bands in most cases so where it says students must learn a certain standard by the end of grade two or by the end of grade five for the most part we put that at the end in the oldest grade level of that grade band and that was you know reflective of input from the community as well as our Educators working on the team about what they thought kids should learn at each individual grade the sensitive comment was also Limited in the scope the depth where it is presented and it was focused on including it in a way that meets the goal of the standard meets the core idea

022behind why that is included in that standard area the standards themselves when you really dive into them are divided into a lot of things the performance expectation is just one piece of the standards there are Core Concepts there are disciplinary Concepts and there are um vision statements throughout the standards that guide our thinking as well so where we endeavored was to meet the goal of the standard and not go beyond in in ways that could allow it to be an age-appropriate discussion so for example the spirit of some of the standards are focused around student safety or students developing an understanding of bound creating boundaries for themselves so when you're focused on that as the core concept you don't really need to go into great depth on some of the terminology that I know some

023people are concerned about the other way we took your input into consideration was removing some of the resources that community members had expressed some concern with last spring so I wanted to take just a minute and show you where you can find and spend a lot of time if you really want to going into the Weeds on the curriculum it's a very complex process it's when we spend you know we revise all the time it's not the standards that we get from the state is not a script or a checklist of what to teach it is a framework of what's important and it's the job of the teachers who've been teaching our children in some cases for decades to tear that apart look at our current curriculum and make changes where we feel they're good

024for kids and they meet the standards so to put that together and help the community understand that there are really two places that you might want to spend some time the bottom one is our public curriculum website I'm just going to open it up briefly and show you the public website is where all of our curriculum lives and you can search for keywords you can also narrow the subject by physical like any subject so you see I've narrowed it to physical education and you just see all of our courses and so if you open up any one of the courses which I'm sure some of you have spent some time doing this is the formal curriculum whenever it's revised it would be reflected here it is broken down into units you can see the length

025of the units and within each unit you see the Big Ideas the essential questions the enduring understandings the learning outcomes the standards that the unit supports and then the learning plan includes learning activities for teachers to use and follow as guidelines some of them are mandatory some of them are optional and then the resources that are mandatory are linked or at least referenced in that portion of the of the Rubicon Atlas website but because of the you know need to really understand this process I did also develop this health and physical education website to better help you navigate the complexities behind it so I just wanted to point out a couple of things I'm sure some of you have spent time here there's a lot of information about the standards and about the the process

026but within here in each grade band and I'm just going to open K2 for the purposes of showing you um the latest update there are when the when the BT connect meeting happened I had linked this chart showing you which units included what we would consider new content but it really just told you which unit you could find it in so now that we have finished the curriculum updates I have we have re-uploaded the units that were downloaded from Atlas what I just showed you just for easy reference if you wanted to go in and just click on one of these it would show you one of the PDF downloads from our public website But Here by grade band I've listed the new content and that is also what is printed out here as one

027of the handouts so for kindergarten for example you see on the left this is the list of standards that after our review and our analysis we consider to be new new content included in the standard so you for each grade band you can scroll down and you can see what those standards are sometimes they've just changed a word sometimes they've added a concept sometimes it's a completely new standard so we detailed for you know view what unit that standard can be found in what is taught and the resource that would be used so you do see in some cases we're saying there is no new content that doesn't necessarily mean that there's nothing at all related to that particular standard because some of those standards are reflected in standards that were not revised the 2014

028standards so it is complex and difficult to navigate through and determine what is and isn't new or hasn't been taught before and what we're doing but this means we didn't add any new content to that course as a result of this project so you can look at that for each grade and review that this is also some of the information that the teachers will be sharing with the families when they're getting ready to teach one of those lessons which I'll talk about in a few minutes all right so now to the revisions I'm just going to highlight some of the things that have come up in discussion um like I said it obviously takes quite a lot of time to read literally everything that has been revised I can't possibly cover 13 courses in every

029change that has been made in um I think Mr McCarron said it would take us two weeks earlier today so I'm going to highlight the things that have been the biggest subject of discussion the biggest source of change it doesn't necessarily mean I'd capture everything that people might be concerned with here today but I also wanted to point out a few things about health instruction while I'm at it so health is taught by the classroom teacher at the K5 level and it is typically taught during the science block of instruction so it's taught one typically one day a week for 50 minutes or teachers have the option to combine off so that's four 50-minute blocks of instruction in a month so sometimes they do it once a week for a month other times they might

030combine it all together and do four blocks of instruction in a row or close to in a row at the end of the month at the beginning of the month so I'm just trying to represent for you the length of time spent on Health at the elementary level um so specifically one of the areas of concern has been the standard that where they introduce the concept of medically correct terminology including genitals so genitals are not defined or named until grade two it's maybe confusing to understand that when you read the units the curriculum because lots of health units talk about body parts but only in grade two is are the terminal is the terms included as definitions um that would include any genitalia and those specifically are in the unit talking about talking with students

031about how to maintain body safety so the only genitals named in that unit are penis vagina buttocks and breasts next instruction on gender identity is limited to providing a definition of gender identity along with gender expression in the fifth grade previous to the fifth grade the discussions around gender are about gender Norms gender stereotypes and not about gender identity so it is um defined in fifth grade in the puberty unit in grade five students discuss many hormonal changes but they we do not teach or include anything about masturbation or sexual response slash feelings that is not included in fifth grade finally in the reproduction unit in grade five intercourse is defined clinically in the context of fertilization not very different from the old standards Mr shallow is going to stand up and talk to us

032about 6 8 and 912. okay thank you Mrs Fox you know I must say before going ahead that um this has certainly been for us a most challenging uh project you know we were we were given an edict to uh to implement these new standards uh the 220 2020 uh Comprehensive Health and physio education standards uh knowing that some of this was was uh in contrast to some of the religious and or moral beliefs of our community and I think our committee worked very hard to try and meet these objectives uh in a way that was is as receptive as possible or incongruent with with the uh the community at large uh we're very sensitive to this and have worked awfully hard in that vein so with that being said looking ahead to the uh

033sixth through eighth grade health uh new content areas first up uh in contrast to the elementary school where the classroom teachers teach the health courses uh in the middle school health is taught by the health and physical education teachers uh in each case grade six seven and eight it's a one marking period course uh uh done straight through over a period approximately 45 days uh each lesson consisting of about 41 or 42 minutes uh again very different than the format in the elementary school where it might be once a week or broken up into small segments over the course of a week uh types of intercourse are mentioned as they relate to how sexually transmitted infections STIs may be contracted and how pregnancy occurs uh there's no detail going into types of intercourse descriptions Graphics

034anything like that it is all related to the STIs that can be contracted through each of the veins and then lastly uh General gender identity is taught in seventh grade in the context of understanding and respecting differences between individuals to foster a safe inclusive communities for all our students uh statistics is very high on students that are bullied etc for having a minority gender identity and we want to make sure our students understand that they must respect uh all their their peers at the high school Level Health is again taught by the health and physical education teachers similar to the middle school it's a one marking period course with our rotating drop schedules they are typically 34 classes of approximately 55 minutes each new material in the high school is is not great in terms

035of how much it was implemented as you see the new standards here we are now required to address sex trafficking um the safe haven law uh as well as the sexual response cycle uh everything else is has been uh you know in line with the 2014 standards that we were previously uh governed by and this is uh slide here is just to give you a a depiction of how much of our health instruction uh [Music] is is addresses Family Life instruction or family life material within the entire Health curriculum in grades K to four the average for family life instruction is about three percent of the entire uh curriculum which is about one hour uh annually grade five and again this is the end of the the uh next grade band uh it's about 13

036percent of Health instruction or four hours annually uh so it's not not even a fifth you know not even a quarter anything like that all right in grades six to eight the average is the average is 52 percent of Health instruction uh pertains to family life material but if you'll notice the bulk of that is in grade eight again the next the next uh grade band uh grade six is only 22 percent grade 7 44 and grade 8 is 89 percent all right lastly when we get to the high school uh grades 9-12 the average across the four grades is 26 of Health instruction or about eight hours annually now looking at that don't forget grade 10 is driver education and uh a mental health unit so they're zero percent at that grade level grade

037nine is 29 grade 11 just 15 percent and grade 12 59 so the again the bulk of it is in grade 12 which is at the the very end end year of the grade band okay and now back to uh Miss Fox thank you Mr shello so the last couple of slides I'm just going to talk about how this year will unfold um regardless really of what happens tonight teachers will post their health topics weekly on their course pages in The genital Genesis that's pretty funny the Genesis Parent Portal um but teachers will email parents at least one week in advance when the topics are related to sex education and family life instruction included in that email communication would be a description of the lesson and any resources that will be used so in the

038case of resources that have to be accessed through the parents access to the great body shop or another one of our copyright protected resources that would be something that's shared through that email communication that communication will also include the link for parents to use if they would like to exercise their right to have their child excluded from that instruction so when the parent the teachers will let you know a week in advance what the topic is going to be when it is related to family life and sex education in order to submit that request you need to fill out that form and email your teacher at least two days before that instruction is to begin and on that form you're going to tell us what you object to so then administratively plans can be made

039for how that's going to be managed so that is the process for the rest of the year for the implementation of the updates but also just all of the health curriculum and that is it are there any board member questions this provides the opt-out procedure for the health specific lessons but as I was reviewing my son's curriculum I noticed some might have some concern um that I wanted more information on related to social studies and the definition of family and social studies as well as science so is there the number one is there the capability to opt out of those lessons in those topics as well and to what the second question I have is to what extent um has the curriculum um sought to remove gender-specific identity terminology such as he she him her

040okay so your first question is about I think whether there's an opt-out provision for other content areas so policy 5250 which is also the implementation of the regulation I'm sorry if you know the number you can tell me it might be on the opt-out form um anyway 35 4.7 um allows only for exclusion from topics related to health education family life sex education and dissection that's it there is no opt-out provision for other subject areas you certainly can look at the curriculum on Atlas the way I showed you and you can also ask your teacher for some questions and some clarify clarifying questions about goals and resources and those kinds of dialogues are are you know usually positive and good to have to bring you some better understanding so there is no opt-out exclusion for

041anything other than these two things and then your second question was I just forgot right there is no move to remove gender pronouns from our curriculum enforce Theta no we no there's certainly discussions about allowing it when students Express that as their preference but not changing it within our curriculum anybody else just wanted to thank everyone who worked on this project because I know it was a big project over the summer and thank you to all the teachers because I know they put in a lot more time than what a normal curriculum writing committee does over the summer so I wanted to thank everyone for their hard work and making it so accessible and um all the detail for those people that want to read it all thank you for the parents that are considering

042opting out when they get the the notice um are we going to make the like opt-out materials available as well just so they could see what their student would be looking at during that that instructional time okay anybody else oh um just out of curiosity are we considering praying at the end of the year a lit not a list but a number of people who have opted out I'd be interested in knowing what percentage of people actually chose that option and what grade bands and where it comes so certainly a benefit of collecting the information through the form will also allow us to be really specific about about that for you we can certainly come back and share that with you at the end of the year one thing typically typically very very low in

043the past this is not a new thing the ability to opt out has always been present so we have the data from past years and we can potentially collect we don't have data in a form right but we do know totally from over the years it's typically just one or two per year across the district maybe three I mean but that's not like collected anywhere it's just something that the teachers and the administrators would be managing anybody else will public comment will happen later this is these are just a q a for the board members so is that it okay thank you thank you okay we're now up to the superintendent's report there's one item would someone like to make a motion for that item the Singh and Mrs White um Mr mercarian did you

044have anything you want to say about the district goals no these are basically what I shared uh at the last board meeting we've got three essential agenda items listed here one is focused on our technology plan the second our strategic plan and thirdly on the capital projects plan that you actually just talked about a little bit for October 3rd okay does anyone have any questions for Mr mercarian before we vote okay could we have a roll call please Mr McLaughlin yes Miss Schaefer yes gray yes missing yes it's white yes there's light abstain Mr Carter yes Ms Hera yes McCune yes Madam president thank you okay we're up to public comment on agenda items so if you come up to give a public comment please state your name and address and then you can sign

045in on the clipboard afterwards if you'd like Lauren man Duke 46 Liberty Corner Road Burns Township so I'll start by saying I appreciate the amount of information that I received tonight and last month but I'll be honest when I every time I feel like we're taking a step forward as a board and as a community I feel like we're taking five steps back my question specifically with respect to the health curriculum just now the question was asked are he and she pronouns going to be encouraged to be replaced or in any way removed the answer was no but it's my understanding that either this board or this Administration is using a third party called high tops who met with our teachers on the first day of school and did a professional development it's also my

046understanding that during that professional development the teachers were encouraged to replace he and she with they and them whether or not the book that was being read to the kids was on the health curriculum that's my first question my second question slash concern is it's also my understanding that high tops recommended that our teachers read certain books including Auntie Uncle drag queen hero I have copies of the cover page it appears to me that this is clearly intended and directed at our younger kids not Willie mannon not Ridge High School so when I say for every step forward we take things like not disclosing high tops and I invite the board if my understanding is inaccurate please correct it but this information comes from within the district and it's my understanding that high tops whatever

047that is is being utilized perhaps in conjunction with us too and that these recommendations are being made to our teachers with respect to opting out it Still Remains unclear to me exactly what that looks like will my child be removed from the class and put in the principal's office I appreciate that the alternative assignment will be disclosed ahead of time but it doesn't answer bigger questions like for example if the health curriculum is integrated into other topic areas how will I opt out of that how will other concerned parents opt out of that if a teacher is inclined to accept the recommendation of high tops and decides to read Curious George to the class and and swaps out the Man in the Yellow Hat with them in the Yellow Hat how do I opt out

048of that so I appreciate again the efforts that the board and the administration have gone to give us information but when assurances are made of transparency and communication and information such as us too and high tops as surfaces and comes to light I remain concerned I hear my bell thank you very much [Applause] good evening my name is Lisa Munoz 188 Route 202 Basking Ridge this is a I've been to a handful of meetings since January because I had gotten heads up about the curriculum in the fall that was very disturbing to me especially the sexually oriented information that was going to be given to the young children I then um participated with some moms and dads to help support some kids who were totally bothered grieved by the the class that we're taking in

049the fall and that it would seemed to be very critical of their judeo-christian faith so we went to the school we went to a board meeting and we were met with an army from the Garden State equality group because they got heads up we were coming to ask that you please notify the parents when the children have a question about their sexuality and don't go behind the parents back that they would please reconsider the curriculum so they were at least three or four hundred people there that night dressed in their flags and all in unity and definitely there was an anti-parent feeling there that the school was their safe haven that the counselors were there uh their saviors and so the leaders in that just they we all got a chance to speak and it

050was very sad to see see the the teenagers longing for love and acceptance and falling into something as being into the LGBT community and welcomed in not that we don't love people but this is appalling we have a separation of church and state judeo-christian is kicked out of the public school system but you've now allowed humanism which is an anti-judeo-christian system it's also a religion and I'm totally opposed to it and I know for those who have a faith if you're lukewarm it's not a good position to be in we're hot or cold for the Lord or hot or cold for the anti-lord and this is not a good idea at all you do have a choice to say no it was not mandated and those of you who are on the fence whether or

051not you should support this I truly just please say I say to you please say no it's a gradual thing from the beginning to the end there's an agenda I've spoken to people that have worked in these fields that have come out of human trafficking that have taught for planned parenthoods and they see the damage on the children you can't sugarcoat any of this it's one big picture of an agenda to get from holy to something that's completely just not right thank you Kevin Ferguson 17 Colts Glen Lane two questions the the survey the community survey when it was distributed in June was that sent to All Families or two individuals or one parent in a family how many were distributed what was the response rate because it seems to have been the trigger to

052keep proceeding forward this was never voted on uh you know in The Ballot Box so it's a little bit unclear to me uh just what the enthusiasm is among all residents for these initiatives my second question is these are State curriculum mandates but I'd like to understand better what is what happens to the schools here if you do say no how much money is the state holding you know would the state hold back and how would it affect what you do on a day-to-day basis there's so many different things that the schools do it would seem on a over 100 million dollar budget this is a drop in the bucket relative to what the state could do to you or to the board or to our schools so could if you could explain that to

053me I greatly appreciate it thank you uh Cody Smith 36 Royal Oak Drive Far Hills uh the 2020 Comprehensive Health and physical education standards has put the district in this board in a very difficult position the new law has was handed down by the progressives who control Trenton and unfortunately we must deal with it it's clear to to me that many parents and taxpayers especially those who've taken the time to read the law and understand what's in it find it disturbing if not deeply troubling from my perspective this law is poisonous particularly for younger ages I've had five children graduate from LCS and I thank God they weren't subject to this absurdity maybe the only positive in the new law is that allows the school districts the flexibility to decide what is age appropriate for

054their students as a consequence districts have developed approaches to mitigate and even remove the harm that this law will cause for instance they've moved the offensive curriculum to later ages they have compartmentalized the curriculum so it's easier for parents to identify they have stalled and implemented to buy more time to monitor developments in Trenton which includes potentially removing penalties for non-compliance and even repealing the law and of course they have outright rejected adoption of the new standards stating Trenton's values are not those in their school districts from watching tonight's presentation and attending the BT connect meeting last month it appears this district has gone all in adopting the new standards age by age line by line word for word um in many cases is it really appropriate in my case is it really appropriate to

055destroy my eighth grade son's innocence by teaching him about anal sex and how to protect himself from the resulting STDs apparently so some like to say a parents have a problem just stop the kids out how convenient during the BT connect meeting I pointed out at that point that the three ways to have for eighth graders are taught to have sex would involve opting out of four of the six Health units why so many I was told it was scaling introduced the topic then Circle back and continue to build upon the foundation and reinforce learning while it sounds like a great way of teaching it begs the question of whether content parents find offensive can be surgically removed and then there's the stigma of not attending class what will the group chatter be outside of

056the classes interpreted and translated by middle school children and even if a parent reviews a lesson plan in advance and thinks it's safe he will never know what the teachers whose students view as a authoritative and trusted figures might actually say that day or how they will answer students questions New Jersey Law specifically allows a parent to opt his child out of quote any part of instruction and health Family Life Education or sex education it's in conflict with his conscience the word health is all-encompassing I have asked whether I can completely ought my child out of health class effectively make making it elective and thereby taking responsibility for my child's health education I'd like a formal response from the administration the board whether a full opt-out is possible finally the byline the supporters use for

057the new standard seems to be it's all about safety and respect safety means our minor children need to make responsible sexual decisions and protect themselves and respect means acceptance of others and in particular encouraging those who chase alternative Lifestyles there's a fine line between safety and respect and advocacy and indoctrination especially if you're supposedly trying to remain neutral under the current approach I question whether the district can even come close to achieving this outcome on a separate agenda item on the Personnel committee it's unclear to me but I would like to know whether board candidate Erica Blackman is either employed by or under contract with the district currently thank you [Applause] good evening I'm Frank Klaus 18 Owens Court I'd like to start with a comment I'd like to thank principal cmpola um last year

058I made a number of comments where I was worried about the health curriculum he took my daughter out of health class opting her out sent me all of the materials that she was going to be taught including any of the PowerPoint presentations as as well as the videos and that nature once I was comfortable with the fact that it was age-appropriate and good he then opted her back in to participate this is the kind of transparency and the type of a trust and parent engagement that I think is a an exemplary example and I think that's actually what you showed here that it was going to be expected going forward I think it's fantastic so I'd like to thank him and I'd like to take the the request that the finance committee take on the

059same kind of approach with uh transparency in its ways which gets me to the second Point only because you brought it up in your opening comments as to what is being talked about in the media Etc so I actually hadn't come with this comment but I'm then wondering is there an 11 million dollar reserve on the balance sheets or not um if there is why did we need to have a buffer in the current school year budget as well so why the duplication of extra extra funding and finally um I had also heard in discussions with two teachers the fact that on their first day of school they were coached to try and use gender neutral terminology and to actually rewrite the stories that they are reading um 99 of society is he's and she's

060um I think we should be fully respectful of those people who want to be gender neutral but I think it is not respectful of us and the rest of us if that this is being trying to change and we change the stories of about the authors and the fact that when asked this question directly you stated that no no no that's not happening it's really breaking the trust between the board and the parents when there's this kind of misinformation going around thank you 45 Dawn Drive um I want to state that I originally also had some concerns when I heard that there were the new sex ed State mandates so what I did was I talked to some people to learn more about it I read some more about it I attended the BT connect

061meeting to learn more I also met with the teachers who were working on the new curriculum and I looked at parts of the curriculum what I didn't do I did not pay attention to fear-mongering and I also did not listen to people who were trying to use these changes as a campaign tool so I really went to these meetings and talked to listen with an open mind at the meeting and what I learned what I learned in doing this first of all I realized that the changes even though people are making a huge deal about it are actually seemed somewhat minor and to me seemed very reasonable that the changes were really made to promote an inclusive non-discriminatory environment in our schools and most of all to keep our children safe which is really really

062important in this day and age also that the changes were made so that the kids would learn accurate information from trained Educators rather than from their friends or from the internet um and meeting the teachers I have to say I was blown away with their professionalism and how they expressed how they would convey the information when teaching it um in the meeting I also heard from some Ridge graduates as well as parents of graduates who had suffered from a rather discriminatory attitudes in the past in this district and I really came away from it with a feeling that you know we really it's incumbent on all of us to make sure that all children in this District feel accepted and that all kids are taught respect for children who may be different than themselves um

063then miss fox went through the surveys and I saw that you know what you're dealing with a very divided Community there are many many people many many people not often the ones coming to these meetings who really want the district to provide this information to students and that support these changes there are also parents who prefer that their kids not be exposed to these issues in the classroom as per the current guidelines I completely respect that and I understand that and I appreciated hearing from those parents as well but I learned that there's an option in in those sent in those situations to opt out so upon reviewing all of this I determined that I do much prefer having my kids learn about sensitive sex ed topics and learn about inclusive inclusivity from these teachers

064and from these professionals now I am probably one of the stricter parents in this District in terms of trying to limit my children on how much time they spend on screens I am a Christian and I'm active in my church but I also recognize that in this day and age we have to realize that kids are going to find out this information and they're going to find out inaccurate information if we don't teach it accurately and so I feel it's better to get in front of this rather than having them learn it from the Internet or the peers but again I respect parents who don't feel that way and really want to take this on themselves I don't want to take this on myself I would like the district to teach this to them and

065again I want to go back and say I think it's really important that we have to remember that we're including we're creating occlusive environment for all children early on so children feel good about themselves not just a segment of the population not just the conservative not just the progressives but for all children so I feel that given that the board and administration is responsible for all children um you did the right thing in giving the people the option to opt out but offering it to the parents who want that or feel that it's important that it's taught by the school and not by the internet or friends uh and I think it's the only uh responsible way to meet the needs of the entire community so I appreciate that and I also just want to

066express you have had the last couple years like almost an impossible position with some of the issues you've had to deal with between the covid mandates with the sixth sex ed and you cannot possibly make everybody happy and I have to say I'm I'm just I'm I have such a great respect for you and your professionalism and the way you've been able to handle this to try to meet the needs of all the community and I just really think it's important that you recognize that people coming here and speaking are not necessarily always representative of the entire community that we're um that you're representing thank you [Applause] good evening um to piggyback Erica I wanted to thank the Board of Ed the supervisor of health and PE assistant superintendent for of curriculum and many teachers

067and administrators who collaborated together with parent and student feedback to implement the new state standards into our already good health curriculum and therefore creating more inclusive curriculum for our students faculty and staff I also wanted to thank them all for acknowledging the wide range of acceptance of what should and shouldn't be included in the health curriculum and continuing to provide the opt-out option for any given day depending on each day's specific Health curriculum objectives sometimes the topic of mental health gets thrown around when it's convenient and other times there's a demand for our district to just focus on textbook education and get back to academics our district is better than that and so much more than its high scores and academics and more importantly so are our children and our students many screamed about mental

068health when wanting to get kids back in school or when there's a death of a student we cannot minimize what even one student is struggling with what we might not think is life-threatening to one student no matter how young may actually feel life-threatening to another the best way to connect with each other is through knowledge the more children know the better they can accept and connect with each other thank you for your time thank you for your votes good evening my name is Joan Bannon and I live at 191 Patriot Hill Drive I would like to commend the board of education for the transparent way in which you've prevented presented the changes and how you actively sought input from the community by use of a survey and meetings to gather information from parents and other

069stakeholders despite some people's objection and in my view of politically organized method to make this a political issue I viewed these changes and see them as minor and needed some say the curriculum mandate places too much emphasis on gender identity and expression and not enough on overall core tenants I disagree I read through the 2020 New Jersey Landing learning standards and see no undue emphasis some argue that teaching about these subjects violence violates parents rights and possibly the First Amendment and I would say that would be true if the law didn't permit a parent to opt out of a class and with this option I have personal experience when I was in high school way back in the mid to late 1970s 46 years ago my parents sued the two-month Board of Education because they

070would not allow my parents to have their children excused from sex ed classes that concerned what was known back then as homosexuality or abortion my parents were Catholics who believed the teaching of the subject interfered with their first amendment rights the Board of Education I was a high school student at the time took my deposition or sworn testimony in that case I was asked if I thought learning about these issues would harm me or might change my views I testified I didn't think so because both my parents and teachers taught me how to be an independent thinker I also added however I was proud of my parents for standing up for what they believed in and as my parents they had a right to have me excused I'm not a hundred percent certain because this

071was a long time ago but I'm pretty sure because my parents succeeded in their efforts the Board of Ed and then the legislature provided parents with the ability to opt out my parents were devout in their faith but also understood others might have different beliefs so they did not look to impress their values or beliefs on others so I and my four siblings were excused from that one maybe two days of health class it caused us no harm ironically not being taught about homosexuality did not prevent two of my siblings from being who they were which are members of the lgbtq community what caused them harm was not feeling accepted and being made to feel something was inherently wrong with them and what about my parents well divide devout in their faith they followed what

072they believed was the most important commandment love one another as I have loved you I support the curriculum and the parents right to opt out and I thank you for your efforts and transparity there is no undue emphasis just the desire to make all children feel safe and included thank you thank you foreign hi good evening Victoria Costa 15 Hilltop Road first I'd like to begin and let everybody know that my statements are not politically motivated whatsoever I had a daughter who was Captain of the fencing team in which her coach was arrested for assaulting individuals in the school so my first question is what has the training been and what will the training continue to be when the health curriculum changes there are subjects like IVF STDs where new STDs come out quite often

073please let me know how you're training them I hope it's better than you train them for being able to deal with how the administration dealt with the sexual assaults of children in the community that's number one number two my second question is 2.1.8 it says Identify Community Resources and or other sources of support such as trusted adults including family members care members and School staff I'm not sure you know but statistics show that most kids are sexually assaulted by somebody they know I.E a coach so please let me know how you identify those people and how you let kids know that when somebody they trust is a sexual assaulter what do they do then so that's my my second question um my my third question I'm going to ask um is in regards to the

074alignment of some of these I heard at the beginning of the session that some of these were not going to change um I don't see that alignment I see that masturbation in fifth grade it says EG masturbation but the slideshow said that masturbation was not being taught can you please tell me how the um the curriculum is in alignment to your um presentation thank you [Applause] Diana Allen 39 Kensington Road I'm standing here tonight to advocate for my children your children and all of the children in Bernard's Township Schools our children's mental health is vitally important to consider lgbtq adults are more than twice as likely as heterosexual adults to experience a mental health condition transgender individuals are nearly four times as likely as cisgender individuals to experience a mental health condition so what can

075we do to help well the National Alliance on Mental Illness states that positive changes in societal acceptance of lgbtq people act as a protective factor for mental health that's exactly how we can help we can trust our teachers to educate our children to help make our schools a safe and accepting place for all of our children a 2019 School climate survey showed that 86 of lgbtq Youth reported being harassed or assaulted in schools which can significantly impact their mental health high school students who are lesbian gay or bisexual are more than four times as likely to have attempted suicide compared to their heterosexual peers lgbtq youth who have access to spaces that affirmed their sexual orientation and gender identity reported lower rates of attempting suicide Bernard's Township Schools should be that space I don't want

076to just stand here and list out statistics and surveys and studies conducted on this topic that helped to justify the need for the updated Health curriculum what I want to do is bring this down to a human level we could be talking about your child we could be talking about your child's best friend we could be talking about the student who's sitting behind your child in the classroom what we need to do as parents and what our teachers need to do as Educators is to keep all of those children safe and education is the key the updates in the health curriculum are designed to help protect the mental health of all of our children it's simple really our schools need to be a place where all children feel protected and empowered it's our teacher's job

077to educate them let them do their job thank you good evening my name is Suleiman living at seven Rocky Lane I need to I need to know like why we need to teach the sexuality education token from starting from kindergarten to grade five because kids are innocent their brains are empty whatever we feed them right now they will learn that like my son is seven years old he watched like a physics science James Webb technical cartoons technical shows and he is very like he's learning too much that kind of stuff so instead of uh teaching sexual education in the school why we don't teach something good which is uh according to the 21st century so a person can be more effective in in this Society like these things the kids can learn with the passage

078of time everything should be age prop appropriate like I was look reading the curriculum it shows that the school will teach about HIV IVF sexual intercourse to maybe from the second grade but second grade like the age of a second grad student is nine years old like there is no need or point to teach that kind of stuff to kids like I mean if you buy a toy for seven years old he can make it but if you buy the same a toy for 10 years old and give it to a seven years old child he will get panic and he will throw it out so everything should be age appropriate so I think I would say that there should be some Basics you know like regarding those sexual activities or intercourse or other stuff

079it it shouldn't be part of the kindergarten or first grade or second grade students everything should be age appropriate it should start after Middle School like I would say like if if that is mandatory or or the state needs that so it should start from at least in the Middle School not in elementary school because again as I said like kids are innocent they should enjoy their life up to 10 years old after that they have plenty they have their whole life to learn about those things and they can do whatever they want to do but it's too early to teach that kind of stuff to kids thanks [Applause] hi Stacy Molinari 27 Franklin Drive thanks for your presentation tonight and also for taking those of you who have taken time to talk to me

080specifically about it after listening to this presentation participating in the BT connect meeting in August having met with Miss Fox having spoken with Mrs McCune and having done a lot of reading on my own I do want to express my opposition to the health curriculum um by the way for whoever brought it up Miss Fox did share with me during our meeting that high top was the Consultant Group that was professional development group for the teachers um but my reasons for opposition are simple you speak about this as its fact and for the safety of our kids but the research you use to support this curriculum comes from an article by Goldfarb and Lieberman which was supported and funded by an inherently biased group to promote an agenda but it appears you didn't consider other

081research that shows the opposite of these findings I sent to you one such article by Erickson and weed that re-examines the evidence for school-based sex education programs and concluded that it did not find support for comprehensive sex education so with publicly known opposition I question why you did not incorporate a more balanced research set of proof sources into the ones that you used my second reason for opposing is that I haven't seen any creative thinking to make sure that the Community Values were taken into consideration there's many other districts in the state of New Jersey who found ways to compromise on material whether that material was new or old known that material that was known as sensitive or controversial while they were still able to meet the standard but I haven't heard our district even

082try to do that Middletown District requires students to opt in East Hanover is incorporating the new standards in one single instruction on the last day homedel is requiring opt-in teaching in an assembly format and condensing it into one day Marlborough is not holding discussions of sex orientation and gender identity in elementary school Jackson is not using the Department of Education resources and all objectionable content will be taught at home upper Pittsgrove will require controversial expectations in the 2.1 standard to take place at home through home projects for elementary and middle school students and as you know other Stu other districts have outright voted down the curriculum so while I'm not asking you to find not to not find a way to incorporate the requirements I am asking you to be more balanced in the research

083you use and Innovative in your approach therefore I ask you to vote no and go back to the drawing board and finally I have to state that just being opposed to the curriculum does not mean opposition to any child or to any specific group thank you [Applause] good evening my name is Jean Rose 41 knollcroft Road and I do thank you all for being here I'd like to support the woman who just spoke I don't like the framing of inclusive versus what non-inclusive I think we can all agree here that we need to follow the Golden Rule and do unto others as you would have them done unto you I think we can agree on that the other thing is about not imposing values it's all about the content no matter what you do you're

084going to impose some values it's it's a very difficult job that you have I kind of feel sorry for you and I do appreciate your effort number three are you worried about losing students because I see it happening all around me people are choosing to homeschool to send to Catholic schools to send to private schools because they they they're inundated with with with things that they're not comfortable with and um that's it thank you Debbie Marcus 16 Lafayette Lane thank you for the presentation and what you've done to incorporate some of the feedback from parents my main question for you though is that I still feel like we are voting on a curriculum when all the details are not there or incomplete I want to buy into this I want to support and have our

085community support our schools together but I have asked for some information at multiple meetings and followed all recommendation of processes for who to contact when I was concerned about the age inappropriateness of some items relating to our children's bodies at the August BT connect meeting I inquired about the exact wording and detailed terminology regarding genitalia teachings and other items and also what visuals would be used I thought a very straightforward question at the time I was told and I've been finalized I was told by then a board member to contact the curriculum director who were both very responsive but referred me to the district websites when I looked at the sites I saw that still no definitions were given and some things actually contradicted what were said tonight for example we were told that for

086the anatomy from grade two that we was limited to buttocks penis vagina and breasts however I just looked on the website now and of the atlas and unless in a unit five of one I feel afraid in Lesson Four it says that they will discuss buttocks anus penis testicles vulva vagina nipples and breasts if we are supposed to be using that as our access point for voting on this it needs to be finalized I also asked what are the definitions that are going to be used of the terms are they just going to be pictures are they going to talk about the parts of the anatomy are they going to talk about the functions of the different parts of the anatomy I would like to if you know those answers I would it would be

087great if you could just tell me how you're defining them tonight I'm also concerned about just policies in general for choosing the worksheets and or books that are used in the schools I mean even if I would like some of the examples used in the school it would be good to have a policy so we can defend our choices I am also presently concerned with the training of the high tops Consulting Group not not I mean I don't know the details about it so I'm open to hearing more about it but it's odd to me that again as I mentioned we did a whole Dei survey and we haven't heard the result of it which would seemingly be useful in the implementation of a group that is implementing Dei programs regarding the use of the

088changing pronouns in the elementary age level books I would like to remind people that these are kids who are learning how to read and learning basic grammar and it seems odd to change the words in front of them once they know how to read they are welcome to choose books using any pronouns they would like So In Sum I would like again to recommend that we please set up some policies that we can review and also not vote or vote no on this curriculum unless until it is in a complete finalized term and you have told us shown us the worksheets and visuals and definitions of the terminology thank you Aaron coonahan eight Hancock Court so we've heard a lot over the last couple months about what our Community Values are and whether or not

089these guidelines align to them this is a public school system and we are implementing State guidelines and whether or not you agree with them the reality is we all are in a public school and the reason that this health curriculum exists exists is because we're trying to keep our kids safe in 2014 what type of cell phone were you guys using if you're going to vote no tonight unless you're using the same cell phone from 2014 we should not be using the same Health guidelines you were not listening to that woman who just spoke about her daughter who was sexually assaulted sexual assault starts in elementary school and those kids get sexually assaulted by their peers not adults by their peers and I learned that because I'm a ridge baseball coach and I had to

090take a class on sexual assault and how to identify when someone's being sexually assaulted and nothing was more horrifying than knowing that my kindergartner could be sexually assaulted by another student in her school and because she thinks you know she doesn't have a penis or a vagina she's not going to know how to talk about it appropriately that's not what we should be teaching our kids they have to know what the real terminology is so that they can advocate for themselves because no child should get to high school or middle school and not be able to Advocate when an adult takes advantage of them this curriculum is critical and whether or not you want to opt in or opt out that is everybody's choice and you have a choice but we cannot ignore the fact

091that in order to keep our kids safe it has to be the curriculum that teaches them the real terms it has to be the curriculum that gives them the understanding of who they are because when we try to stop our children from being who they are even as their parents all that ends up all we end up doing is damaging them so I hope that everybody here tonight can take my words and take that woman's words and what happened to her daughter and recognize how important it is to teach our children what is really going on and how to advocate for themselves thank you are you sure okay um first of all I have to say I'm a little nervous which is really unusual but I'm a middle school teacher oh my name is Eva

092daffenbaugh I live at 3633 Valley Road in Liberty Corner I have two children in the high school and I am a little nervous even though I'm a middle school teacher uh I wanted to address the question about lgbtq plus and gender identity and there seems to be some resistance to acknowledging that among certain people in the community I am a middle school teacher I teach lots of lots of students who are gender fluid or non-binary and I and I also as a parent have have seen the children that my children have grown up decide that they are gender identity is different from what they were when we were all in kindergarten or girl scouts for example together and I think that that perspective of looking at he and she or they and them for how

093you're referring to yourself is something that people in their 20s and 30s do and that is a standard part of kind of culture of people who will be the Future Leaders of our community and our country it just might be a New Concept to many people who have children or who are my age and something as a teacher I need to be aware of so I think that understanding gender identity at a very young age is a very pragmatic point of view to teach to children to understand that you can respect yourself no matter what you consider yourself to be assigned at Birth and the major disconnect is one of age that being the age of the people that are making the decisions or commenting upon versus the age of the people who will be

094the Future Leaders in our community so thank you very much sorry I was late because I had a school meeting are there other people for public comment here I thought so hi my name is Harvey Gearhart I live at 416 Mount Airy Road and it's a long time since I've been in Ridge High School my kids have graduated here a long time ago a lot of my neighbors and friends have asked me to stop by and see what I think about all this because I am interested I'm a taxpayer and this is my community and what happens is what happens in the high school affects the community to a really great extent I think the problem is that we have people of Goodwill on both sides of the aisle everybody has a point and I

095think the big problem is that there's been a lack of transparency I think that um but I think it's been a lack of transparency I went to your website to look at the curriculum I found it vague there are no details it was rather obfuscating um the devil is always in the details and all of you know that know that because they're Euro Educators um I initially I thought this is part of a woke conspiracy but I don't think so I think there's Goodwill on both sides it's a controversial thing and I think that you have to understand that there's been no communication with taxpayers no data is coming out didn't you know I'm not a massive reader of the Bernardsville news but you don't see much in the newspapers about it either there's been

096very little community community discussion and um I'd wonder if you've gone out looking for looking and speaking to community leaders be they clergy or pediatricians for God's sakes and um I you know all of a sudden I'm hearing about this high tops thing what is high tops why is this all shrouded in a cloud I think that um wherever we are very well educated Community I think we have a right to know what's going on and I think you'll find that people can can come together and agree on things there's more to agree on than to disagree on so I would urge you to vote no uh on this uh on this issue certainly to delay to delay the implementation of this project thank you [Applause] oops anyone else here in person for public comment

097good evening this is Miss past Suleiman I live at seven Rocky Lane Basking Ridge New Jersey um I Heard everybody um comment and um their uh reaction on this new decision I have only one quick question on uh all of this was there any research done in the Bernard Township that these issues have happened in kindergarten to fifth grade students I understand this is a state mandate but um the reason we moved to Basking Ridge is because uh we are paying a lot of texts and uh for this house is only because we heard that the school system is very good over here which also means that um kids are safe over here comparing to other areas so if we're gonna implement this change in kindergarten to fifth grade my only question is that we

098would like to know if a study was done that uh uh very um that you do you have seen a lot of cases coming out of kindergarten to five and there was really a need to make this change in this Bernard's Township for um all the sex and family education thank you bye I'm just for everyone's notice um we are up running up against our 45 minutes for the first public comment so we'll take another person and then we'll look on zoom and see if anybody's on there waiting to come in so I guess we can have one or two more people after you and then we have to cut it off because at least we have a lot more stuff it's Donna Shaw I live at 24 Constitution way I have a seven-year-old in

099Mount Prospect she's totally confused um with the media she knows who she is um I went to NYU my friends when I was in college were mostly you know gay lesbian whatever these were my people and she's totally I've explained to her what's up she knows what her genitals are called I think it's like it's my job as a parent to explain to my daughter what's up with her body and who she is okay it's too confusing she turns the television on and I sit there and she's like Mommy what is going on with this and she asked me questions and I answer her questions can boys marry boys yes they can they can marry boys absolutely I have friends that are gay that are married and have children it's not the normal thing it's

100not what everybody's doing but absolutely and we love those people we support those people that's my job as a parent okay that's my job and as far as all of the them they though pronoun stuff I've had friends I've I've known people that have gone through the change but they didn't do it until they were way older way older they went through puberty they understood they learned about everything they had you know good families and whatever and I guess what I'm saying is I think it's just a little too early at seven to do all this stuff it's too confusing I think I I think High School junior high and I think the important thing is as parents we need to explain to people there are different people people are different if you're different let

101me know I'm here to love you up and support you and you know you're safe here and that's my job as a parent let them know how loved they are let them know their friends that I'm a safe person whatever but it's my job as a parent and I just think it's a little too soon and and I didn't even know I'm learning a lot coming here tonight I didn't know all the vagueness and the lack of transparency I want to know what's going on and I'm really upset that that some teachers are changing pronouns in Curious George that really bothers me I don't know I don't does anybody else get bothered by that I think it's like it's weird because they are trying to learn grammar and with them they and it's too confusing

102when they're just trying to learn how to read so thank you [Applause] okay so the two people that I can see are going to be the last two for this 45 minutes but we have another public comment later so people can still come up for public comment hi Lori Salomon 66 Summit Drive um I wasn't planning to speak tonight but since I'm hearing opposition to the proposed curriculum about lgbtq and it's too early the only thing I want to know is what does that say to children who have two mommies or two daddies and when they come into school and their family is not acknowledged what do we say to them what do we say to people whose best friend has two mommies or two daddies if we think it's too early at age seven

103what does that say to children who are even younger thank you hi Kathleen Connolly 15 Riverside Drive um I'm an educator I've been teaching in Somerset County since 1998. I'm a graduate of teachers College Columbia University I grew up in New York and in the city at a young age myself where the village was the place where we went to meet people of different identities different sexualities and I have no problem with that I'm actually an Arts educator I was a professional dancer I worked in New York City for one of the top modern dance companies in the world I have a pretty extensive Arts education background however looking at this I think that as an educator I would never go into a second grade class and teach them about vaginas and buttocks and breasts

104I love bodies I teach bodies all the time I teach Anatomy as a matter of fact I have no objection to clinical studies but for second graders indoctrination I'm against and I'd like to further say that I don't even think that this is at as appropriate in Middle School those kids are still very impressionable they're still figuring themselves out they don't have an identity as far as their sexuality a lot of them don't thank you for your time and is there anyone in the zoom I don't want to move them out okay so at this point we'll close this public comment um whoops there are some questions that I think can be responded to and a lot of feedback that we we heard from all of you Mr McCarron do you want to take a

105stab at a few of the questions okay um so obviously we've got uh Kristen here uh we we could take a stab at some of this stuff I think maybe uh I don't know if I would you know maybe an FAQ would be a little bit uh more productive because we had so much tonight but um a few people brought up the question of high tops um no one's trying to be secretive about high tops we do a lot of PD in the district it's not uncommon that when we have new initiatives that we train our staff we try to provide them uh some some background some insight I'm a little bit familiar with the training and I know that it was basic in nature trying to give them some background on new standards that

106they're being asked to work on and I think it's you know just responsible to try to give them some some help with what they're being asked to do um a lot of people talked about uh this idea of love and acceptance uh I I think and some people said we have a lot of common ground there I think that's true uh and these topics are are difficult and uh frankly we're just not going to get a hundred percent agreement I think we heard that a lot tonight I think that that is uh respected by everyone here and respected by the government and having uh opportunities to opt out um there was a question about what does the state do if you don't follow the uh New Jersey student learning standards I'm really not so sure

107about withholding state aid I think that's probably unlikely but we do get evaluated uh and and that happens every three years we would lose some ranking if you will ranking in in terms of the way we are evaluated by the state of New Jersey we just had our cusac scores for the last review and and I think that's where it would really be effective um a lot of people uh represented the idea of age appropriateness uh and and I think that's what we're trying to achieve and and there's just some differences I think about what people think is age appropriate which is why uh I think you know we tried to highlight uh in brief in the presentation that we're moving uh topics to the latest age possible in the standard band and we are

108trying to keep definitions very clinical without getting into a lot of description per se to try to respect that um perspective that we've heard tonight um yeah let me let me get through and then you guys can jump in if you think I want if you think I missed something you want to respond to um yeah you want me to go through and then you guys follow me all right uh a lot of folks talking about the importance of feeling accepted and and how that relates to mental health and the risk factors associated with lgbtq plus Community as a risk factor for suicide and other mental health issues and the importance of acceptance and feeling accepted where they are in this case in a school building I think that's definitely comes through as an important

109aspect in what we're doing in the health curriculum and I I see it throughout a lot of policies that we look at in terms of things like HIV and and suicide prevention so I think that's definitely an important aspect to Student Health that is is clearly connected in the standards I really appreciate everybody's comments in general very um thoughtful obviously not all on the same page but very thoughtful I appreciate that um there's definitely aspects to the curriculum that are designed to focus on the protective aspects of Youth and um foreign sex uh crime if you will sexual assault I know you talked about in your presentation sex trafficking these are aspects of the curriculum that we're also trying to make sure we're doing a thorough job on with the students uh there was a

110question about masturbation and EG masturbation that was listed in one of the student learning standards I know that the student learning standard does have that in parenthesis as an example but that's not something that we are teaching uh it's not a standard itself it was an example that was listed within a standard but that aspect is not a required component in that standard a lot of people talked about home versus school um I I think one of the things that you know we're trying to achieve is a partnership obviously the raising of a child happens in in both places uh and and we need to work together as a team to do the best that we can for our kids at large and the way that that happens it's not going to get a hundred

111percent Universal expect acceptance on every item I think we understand that but it is a regardless of where you come from it is a team effort um you know we're we're a community we're we're a little bit of a home in and of itself every day right and we're working with the kids um six seven eight much longer hours uh every day depending on the activities that the kids are in so you know we're we're a home within their their a second home if you will um so we need to be partners in that and and and do the best that we can to work together um and the other thing uh just listening to you know understanding curriculum uh in and of itself is it is a a living uh breathing um type of

112thing you know in any curriculum from one year to the next reflecting on curriculum taking feedback from professionals and colleagues working on the same curriculum taking feedback from students and taking feedback from the community listening to what people have to say and sometimes making adjustments and so there's always room for that in any curriculum and I think that's an important thing to think about as we as we deal with this as we work with this issue to try to figure out the best things to do and the fine tunings that we can do it's not a set in a stone thing it constantly evolves standards they are what they are the curriculum we're able to uh massage a couple people referenced the Golden Rule I and and you know things that we can agree on

113and I think we are you know every the fact that everybody's here right you guys care and I really I really respect that and I'm really glad we had a good turnout tonight foreign a couple people shared some some personal experiences whether they were personal experiences um truly personal experiences some personal professional experiences I just wanted to thank those folks that really put themselves out there to share those things I think it's really useful to understand people's experiences in life and you know we age was brought up you know the the how your perspective on things changes with age or how perspective might be different based on your age I think all those all those things are true and I just wanted to thank people for sharing those those perspective I think I think the

114conversation helps us all uh that was uh somebody I think was asking about sex education for kindergarten students and I you probably wanted to speak to that a little bit it's it's I mean we the only thing we're talking about is uh naming body parts in the second grade um some of the things I think you raised were really uh happening in uh fifth sixth seventh eighth grade the confusion issue and the media uh yeah I've seen that a lot um turning on the TV caused a lot of confusion and that that's kind of all I picked up on Kristen if you want to jump in on anything else all right just have a couple of things um I'll try not to repeat anything you might have said um you know there was a couple

115of specific questions I think I can address but the first thing I would say is that you know the teachers who worked on this committee are dedicated professionals I'm extremely proud to have worked with them they care about your kids and they are doing the right thing by your kids having taught them for many years they are sensitive to these topics and the training that was provided was to help them navigate things like things that are in the curriculum like terminology Mr mercarian said an introduction to the vocabulary but also to navigating students in their classes who are gender fluid questioning lgbtq and they are in all of our grade bands okay five six eight and nine twelve these children are in classes and we teach them too and we want them to be included

116and respected so part of that training is helping teachers to navigate that very difficult situation for a child who is struggling that's what we want to support our teachers with um there was a question about them sharing some resources and yes they did share some resources with teachers asking for help in thinking about how to navigate some of these questions but with any resources that would ever be used in class we have procedures and policies that teachers follow before ever using them so they would be vetted first but it does help teachers learn about what's out there think about how to meet their kids where they're at but they would never be used without going through the proper channels someone asked a question about opting out and what will happen where will they go to

117the principal's office that will depend entirely on how many opt-outs there are if there is one child in a classroom that's been opted out they may go sit in the principal's office but if we have a larger number we may have to do something else where we would need some other Staffing for them space right and those considerations are going to depend on the numbers that we get which is another reason for the form um Mrs Marcus you did ask a question about the grade two curriculum and I want to tell you that it hadn't been updated the way I said it had in my presentation so it has been updated now so I sort of thank you for that but that change actually was a change that was made following the BT connect meeting

118so I just want you to know that um a lot of double checking has been happening and will keep happening but that change has already been made to reflect what I did show in the presentation and that change was made based on feedback from the parents who were at you know that meeting and who participated in the survey and who've talked to me personally in throughout this process so I do I do appreciate that um Mrs one parent talked about um creative things being used by other districts and I think in our meeting we talked about those as well some of those we are in fact using and we talked about those tonight there are Home Connection lessons associated with every content area including sex education and family life that will be used by teachers

119but it's a combination not strictly being sent home some of the other creative I mean I urge you to think carefully or read carefully when you when you say what some schools are doing because as you've said to us the devil is in the details and when you go on some of the sites what's being called an opt-in may not really be an opt-in so if you look at the way that that information is being collected I would challenge you to reconsider what that really is um you know as to whether we are changing pronouns and what did maybe occur in that training I was there they were not asking teachers to change pronouns but rather to respond to the students in their classes and respecting students who tell them what their identity may be

120and respecting them and that as their truth and giving teachers some tools to become comfortable with that in their classroom it wasn't about changing the curriculum it wasn't about changing what they can and cannot use in class as pronouns it was responding to the students in their classes and helping the classrooms to be more comfortable for all students in all of those groups I think that's it Mr mercarian there might be more we could maybe address later yeah and just as a follow-up before I had one or two things that I wanted to say but um anytime if you did ask a question and you didn't get a complete answer we have a lot of questions like you can see tonight and we have a lot more stuff to cover in the meeting so we

121can't necessarily get everyone all of the information they want if you follow up with an email we'll make sure that if you're looking for specific information we'll get it to the right people to get that information for you there was one question about budget stuff and the reserves and I would I guess plead with you because we have such a large agenda tonight to come to the meeting on October 3rd to hear about that because we will be talking about the capital reserves and the whole history of how we got to where we are now and where we're going forwards from that um and we will be getting um details about the date for our Dei you know report out to you pretty soon it'll be this fall we just don't have the exact date

122yet but it will be a community um Zoom like so that everyone can um hear what the report says and then they'll obviously be follow-up discussions after that um I think that was it for now um okay so now we're up to approval of minutes there's one item with someone make a motion for that item Mr salmon and someone else's hand up there was Mrs Gray okay could we have a roll call in those minutes please Mr McLaughlin yes Schaefer yes it's great yes Mr Singh excuse me missing yes it's white yes Ms Floyd yes Mr Khanna yes Ms hero yes Miss McCune yes Madam president thank you we're up to the finance committee there are 13 items number 13 is on the addendum it's a busing item but someone like to make a motion

123for those items Mrs White and Miss Schaefer I have a finance committee report which I guess I'll read out before we vote on those items finance committee met last Thursday uh the first item was an update on the Oak Street roof project the shingling of the roof is 99 finished the work that's being completed is on the edges and gutters so there's three different types of edges because it's a very old building and if you've looked at it there's a tower and then there's flat roof sections and then there's other roofs that have a different kind of edge so um they're doing the edging one of the types of edging still has not been ordered because it needs Custom Fabrication but they're making regular progress on it and providing weekly updates they have to work

124around school hours now that school has started so the pace of the project slowed down a bit but they're planning to complete the project by the end of October um the second item was we had an update on the fields the idea of looking at the drainage and potential turfing or resotting of varsity field we had a consultant from French and perella who came through he came to the August meeting and then he took a walk around the property to get a sense of the property the drainage situation and field conditions so they're going to be sending a proposal with various alternatives for drainage which would help all the fields down in that area as we know they needed help and also the possibility of whether we could install Turf and or resod Varsity Field

125to improve the condition of that so we'll be getting updates on that their proposal will address any environmental issues on the properties there's an update on the girls Varsity Softball field the contractor has done a considerable amount of grading already 100 tons of soil was being delivered I guess at the end of last week and Grading was is continuing this week the original schedule was pushed out a week but the siding will start next week which is good timing with the weather and the field will be ready for spring we had an update on HVAC rooftop unit assessment last month we approved CNM Engineers to do a survey of all rooftop units we want to be proactive in planning for the Future these units are very expensive there's close to 200 of them in the

126district so CNM is inventorying all the units the model the age the condition and the lifespan the units took a beating during covid because we were running the HVAC so much more than normal the costs of units have gone up considerably since kova due to supply chain issues and inflation and there's a long lead time for ordering units so we want to make sure we know what's coming down the pike and prepare for that so they're going to start the inventory project this month and it will take about a month at least a month um let's see we had an update about our getting another report from the demographer Dr Gripp that we used in 2019 um a lot of changes have happened since then and a lot of house turnover in our town and

127we want to get an idea of whether the estimates that he provided at that point are still accurate I mean so far we've been kind of going along pretty much as he predicted but we have seen a lot of houses turn over with small children and babies moving in so we want to make sure that we have accurate information going forward so we're going to have Dr Gripp come to the October finance committee meeting to discuss the options in The Proposal there's different add-ons that you can get like a housing turnover analysis which I think in our case would be very important to have um and then we just went over the agenda items which are on the agenda for tonight so items one through three are standing items item four is professional development item

128five is a generous donation from the Cedar Hill PTO for enhancements to the art room so thank you to the Cedar Hill PTO item number six is a donation from the WAMS PTO for enhancements for the school including picnic tables bean bag chairs technology and other items so thank you very much to the whams PTO item seven is to hold harmless agreement for lights and equipment that we're borrowing for free from the county for the ridge marching band competition items eight and nine are Services required by IEPs and items 10 to 12 or tuition for esy and regular school year does anyone have any questions no okay could we have a roll call please Mr McLaughlin Mr salmon Ms Schaefer yes that's great yes Miss Singh yes this is white yes is like yes Mr

129Connor yes hero yes Mrs McCune yes Madam president thank you um we're up to the Personnel committee there are 35 items would someone like to make a motion for the 35 items Mrs Gray and Ms Light seconded you have a report right yes we met on September 16th um and discussed personnel and Staffing items as part of publicly reporting unfortunately uh tonight when we vote in a few minutes we're going to accept the resignation of an assistant principal at whams as we've seen from recent enrollment Trends our student population is declining and based on the demographer's projections we expected the decline to continue accordingly the district will not be posting an open assistant principal position at WAMS however the administration will work with Mrs hudock to plan for appropriate supports to assist with duties of

130whams that will remain when the current AP leaves and that is the only uh item I can publicly report on okay thank you Mr salmon can we have a roll call please Mr McLaughlin Mr salmon yes Ms Schaefer yes this is gray yes Miss Singh yes Mrs White yes Ms Light yes Mr Khanna yes IRA yes Mr McCune yes Madam president thank you um we're off to the policy committee there are two items on tonight's agenda could someone make a motion for those Mrs White and Mr Khanna um you have a policy committee report yes policy met on September 12th a few policies were discussed and amended the first policy is zero one six nine board member use of electronic Communication email social media specifically the word text and text messaging were added to paragraph

131paragraphs two and three of the policy with respect to paragraph four the policy was modified to reflect that if an email from an individual is sent to the full Board of Education the superintendent or someone he delegates will be responsible for responding however everyone on the board will be able to see the response regardless of who is responding it was also modified to reflect in the event that an email is sent to an individual board member at their Boe email address that email should be forwarded to the superintendent and the Boe members are to advise the individual who email them that their email was forwarded to the superintendent if a Boe member receives a board related email to their personal email for example their Gmail account they may respond but they have to make it

132clear that they are responding as an individual and not in the capacity of a board member as to paragraph five a line was added to state that board members may not directly contact District staff Administration on matters related to board business unless authorized to do so by the superintendent policy 2361 acceptable use of computer networks computers and resources was modified to state for 6th through 8th graders basically students may not use devices during instructional period however at the discretion of the school administration devices may be used outside of instructional periods for 9th and 12th graders the policy was modified to state that except for classes courses designated by the school administration students may not use devices during instructional period however again at the discretion of the school administration devices may be used outside of instructional

133periods policy 2425 and regulation 2425 which is titled emergency virtual or remote instruction program the state provided a checklist with seven things that our plan should include our policy was merely modified to align with the new checklist no substantive changes were made made to the plan policy 8467 which deals with weapons was modified to reflect that weapons are prohibited on school grounds unless the weapon is authorized by the law approved by the superintendent and is appropriate in the performance of the possessor's duty policy 0155.1 board member participation at board meetings music using electronic devices the policy was modified to emphasize that in-person attendance is expected by board members however it is understood that members May sometimes need to miss a meeting and that is just okay the policy was further amended to reflect that remote

134participation for example Zoom is to be utilized only in emergency situations to achieve a quorum that's it does anyone have any questions no okay could we have a roll call Mr McLaughlin Mr salmon yes Ms Schaefer yes this is gray yes can you sing yes this is white yes Miss light yes Mr Connor yes Ms hero yes Mr Speaker yes Madam president thank you we're up to the curriculum committee there are three items that someone like to make a motion for those three items Mr salmon and Ms Hira um is there a curriculum committee report uh there were curricular revisions were performed during the summer of 2022 resulting in a discussion with members of the special education department to change the name to better reflect the art course at William Annan the course name will

135be changed from creative arts to integrated arts a goal has been to integrate students into the cbat program into general education courses and this will allow for the goal to be achieved one cycle will be spent pre-teaching content and skills to students and the following cycle students will then be integrated into the general education art cycle classroom we also have a few textbook adoptions Mr Terry shared the recommendations for the new textbook for the ninth grade CP global history 2 and honors global history too teachers at Ridge reviewed textbooks over the summer the CP course has used a textbook from 2012 and was in need of a current book The Textbook of choice is National Geographic's world history Voyages of exploration it is kid friendly readable language accessible and covers a breadth of content it's

136very visual in its presentation and includes photographs that Aid in the presentation of content there's an online edition that can have the reading level adjusted and there's also a Spanish version there's also an online platform mindtap that offers ways to regularly assess and check for student understanding of reading the textbook of choice for honors global history too is Worlds together Worlds Apart Third Edition it covers topics more deeply than the previous textbook it has great resources and primary sources and is written on par for our honors level students who are looking for a challenge it is much better online platform than any competing publisher it is culturally inclusive and very relevant for a course title global history it's inclusive with regard to gender and for example women are represented more in history just as an

137FYI this textbook has been adopted in the following school districts Putin Cinnaminson Delaware Valley Dover Hillsboro Hunterdon voories and West Essex and a number of private schools use the text as well including Delbarton Montclair Kimberlin Academy Morristown Beard St Peter's prep and Seton Hall Prep for grades six through eight the great great body shop will be adopted for use the benefit of this is that it is the resource that is used in K through five so it provides continuity of resources for our students the online component for parent access to review materials is a very helpful feature the materials are aligned to National and state standards but we have the ability to modify and use lessons and activities that align with our curriculum parents can be provided with access to a portal in order to

138review Body Shop magazines and information will be sent home to parents with detailed instructions as to how to access the portal we then also were given a number of curriculum summer curriculum updates uh starting with uh Ela k-3 underwent word study curriculum revisions and in particular time was spent on the 95 curriculum which K1 teachers are trained to use teachers in grades two through three will receive training on the 95 curriculum and will be utilizing this curriculum this year updates were made to K-5 reading assessments and the standard base report card rubric in grade 5. it was the first year these report cards were used in fifth grade and a few changes needed to be made at whims the first year of a program evaluation is underway an analysis of the progress of the program

139goals as set forth in the previous evaluation were reviewed and it was determined that these goals were successively met with the exception of inclusion of elective courses at Ridge having experienced one year of a rotate and drop schedule at the high school all ELA teachers were asked to reflect upon their implementation of their course curricula and determine if summer work was necessary to adjust the pacing of the courses a few courses did work this summer to adjust the pacing or sequence of lessons such as honors American literature English 11 AP Language and Composition and English 12 as well as a few electives communication speech and debate this year essential elements of English language arts will be running for the first time in a few years typically this course will be for freshmen through Juniors although

140this year is available to seniors lastly the graduation assessment Prep course did not run as in mid-july the requirement to pass a graduation exam changed and students are no longer required to pass any test to graduate in 2023 but the summer project developed a course outline for it to run in 23-24. we then had math updates the current K-5 go math textbook will no longer be supported or published after 2024. therefore a committee was formed to evaluate the landscape of current K-5 mathematics for future adoption seven textbooks were initially reviewed and narrowed down to three teachers developed common priorities in an evaluation rubric to access each series over the next year the final three textbook series will be evaluated through the content leader teams and coordinated among grade level articulation and we're hoping to for

141a final recommendation by the end of the year The Accelerated math 5 curriculum was revised based upon completing the first year of implementation some tweaks were made to the scope and sequence and Rubicon curriculum documents reflect updates the courses Algebra 1 geometry and Algebra 2 were revised following the first year implementation of the recently purchased Envision mathematics textbook Rubicon was updated based on the revised scope and sequence mapping of cross-curricular technology and 21st century standard inclusion the second year of the curriculum review is underway the introduction to computer programming is underway and will be running three sections for a full year at Ridge a course agenda with detailed lessons for each unit was created finally conversation has continued on analyzing and thinking critically about the 6-12 mathematics program these discussions about best practices and goals

142will be ongoing throughout the year and finalized upon completion of student and parent survey surveys last spring Lisa Vitale came to speak to us about the 95 percent data that for phonics grade 1 from the fall and the winter which demonstrated much growth in terms of students meeting benchmarks she returned to update us on the spring data which is now available it continues to demonstrate and support an increasing number of students who are now reaching benchmarks students who remain below Benchmark are primarily classified students and those in irns however a student who is below Benchmark and doesn't fall into either of those categories will be looked at carefully it was also reported that this year's method of in-person screening with Dibbles K1 passy and the PSI will resume for first graders the student-wide assessment team

143also referred to as the SWAT team will evaluate the students this will ensure that first graders who are identified through screening can be provided with help prior to second grade by offering support in targeted areas and lastly Miss Fox gave us an update on the health curriculum which she already reviewed during the presentation and that's it does anyone have any questions for Mrs White okay at this point can we have a roll call Mr McLaughlin Mr salmon yes Schaefer yes Mrs Gray yes Miss Singh yes it's white yes there's light no Mr Connor yes Miss hero yes Mrs McCune yes Madam president thank you Wellness committee I think you have a date set for wellness right we do September 29th Mr mercarian if you would update the uh the list for the wellness committee date

144thank you does anyone have any liaison committee reports okay so now we're up to public comment on non-agenda items at this point you can come up and talk about anything that you are interested in talking to us about the school district or School District business um please state your name and address when you come up and sign in on the clipboard afterwards Joan Bannon 191 Patriot Hill Drive again um I just wanted to say that four of my children all four of my children graduated through the school district from the class of 2008 to class of 2022. and I can tell you your college admissions people that I went and spoke to all recognized what a great School District this was so I really just wanted to thank the school district the former members of

145the Board of Education Mr mccarrian and all the teachers who have made the school district what it is um I'm going to give out a shout out to Mr shello my oldest son did his Iron Man and came in like 21st out of I don't know a couple hundred people his age my youngest son graduated um from Providence College at a successful lacrosse career my other daughter is with a large philanthropic organization and what I'm most proud of and what I hope that that you can be most proud of is that my daughter Samantha um because of the teacher she had in the school district is now a high school math teacher so thank you for years this school district has been the crown jewel of this town I came here because my oldest had

146learning disabilities I knew this was the best place for him it helped keep property values up as well um my my greatest concern is that um what has always been a non-partisan committee is changing and I really think that's not in the best interest of our kids of our school district or of our property values last but not least I wanted to thank Karen gray I'm sorry to hear that you're not running again you would have had my vote and many others um so so a heartfelt thanks and know that I'm not the only one who feels this way you have a lot of supporters thank you uh code E6 or sorry Cody Smith 36 Royal Oak Drive I just want to note you did not answer my question about on the Personnel committee about

147whether uh Erica Blackman a candidate for the board is employed or otherwise under contract by the school district the reason I'm asking uh in the May 23rd 2022 meetings there's somebody that was hired um it's Erica and then instead of a black man it's b-l-a-c-j-m-a-n I don't know if that's a typo and and she was hired and my question really gets around a conflict of interest and whether somebody can be employed by or under contract by the board or by the district excuse me and still run for the board and that's and if whether that's in accordance with your policy thank you on a forzane 45 Dawn Drive um I just wanted to Echo um Miss bannon's comments um really appreciative of the work done by this board and the administration and I'm also concerned

148about a lot of the commentary in some cases fake news that's going around to try to kind of rile people up and make this more political than it should be and I was um very intrigued by some of the comments um made in a recent letter um regarding our District's um strong financials in terms of the New Jersey quality single accountability Continuum scores burner Township scored 100 100 percent and 98 on um on various Financial reports and also that the district's independent Auditors report uh has been excellent for the last 10 years that we've had our current CFO and CEO that our AAA Bond rating that the district received from standard and Poor's is something that very few districts in the state have and many other points that were made about the strength of the

149administration and the finance and CEO leadership and so I just wanted to say how much I appreciate that and how much I also understand how well that reflects on our town and on our property values as was just mentioned and I think it's really important that we continue that so I really appreciate the hard work thank you hi uh Jennifer doorward 22 Cherry Lane um I didn't get a chance to make a comment before regarding the curriculum so my comment is related to that um there have been many comments made tonight that equate objection to the sex ed mandates um to politicism or intolerance you know I think the teaching and anatomical words for body parts is not inappropriate the question is what are you teaching about those body parts much of the state mandated

150curriculum is sexual in nature and normalizing conversations about sexual pleasure related to those anatomical body parts with adults who aren't kids parents is a slippery slope in my opinion I'm a parent of six kids some have special needs and I've always been a mom that uses anatomical body parts names you know much to the Chagrin frankly of other parents but I have kids with communication impairments and borderline IQs and it was always really important to me that my kids be well versed in using those correct names to empower them so I understand that point and that goes along with educational awareness about sexuality and alternative Lifestyles however that was in my home reflective of my values and what I don't have the knowledge to do and to do well are to teach academic topics like

151science and math and history and that's why we're in Bernard's Township for academic Excellence if there are parents that would prefer for teachers to have you know to teach sex have sex education topics taught by teachers um then why not offer an opt-in solution I mean this would be a way that those distinct voices could be heard and supported I I know that um students were offered or tonight we talked about students leaving the district and unfortunately some of my kids are those students my children we've for them we've chosen a school that is going to prioritize academic topics and this is not mutually exclusive to teaching correct anatomical terms sexuality or acceptance of others thanks are there other people for in-person public comment is there anyone waiting in the zoom no okay last call

152okay I'll close public comment at this point I'll I'll address the one question about conflict of interest we don't talk about specific staff members or Personnel at Board of Ed meetings but many of us were substitute teachers when we were running for the Board of Education and I mean Sherry Adams is one of our board attorneys she could could chime in there but there's no conflict of interest unless you're like on the board of education sitting board member may not receive compensation or have a contract with the board I mean with the district but it doesn't apply to people who in the capacity of a candidate so foreign if someone was getting sworn in and we've had people unfortunately with the um the some of the ethics commission um advisory opinions over the years our

153children have had to quit like Aftercare jobs and substitute teaching when we got it sworn into so it's it um I think they went a little far with that one when it's a part-time worker but anyway yes but it doesn't occur until after your when you get sworn in do you have anything else from those public comments yeah I I didn't really have too much more to add per se I just I wanted to I I know um I think it was Mrs Bannon just spoke a little bit about um being excited that uh one of her children is now a high school teacher um and I just wanted to recognize the teachers and appreciate all the public comment that that we've had in in recent months even uh tonight and at other meetings um

154about the professionalism of our teachers um and and I heard the word indoctrination used and and somebody spoke about um you know anytime you teach children anything you you could say that's indoctrination um you know and and I as far as the health curriculum goes I I wanted to say that you know this is a really difficult um job for our teachers and um I know there's a ton of support out there for our teachers and I I would just ask for that support to continue for our health and physical education teachers in particular um they they are going to be communicating with families about what they're teaching and when they're teaching it and posting information and and really trying hard I think with our support to provide information on their on their course pages

155in The Genesis Parent Portal and to communicate with parents and and facilitate opt out if that's what someone wants to do by giving them you know the proper information sharing resources and really trying to help parents feel informed about what's going on and I know we've gotten so much support for our teachers from from public comment in recent months and I I'm just kind of plugging for them because the the job is tough and the job is not getting any easier and and we see that now when we struggle to find teachers and I don't mean just us I say we as in those of us that are trying to staff schools in berners Township in New Jersey in the nation as we confront a a growing teacher shortage so supporting the teachers that we

156do have and trying to keep them feeling that you know we have their backs and and we want to work with them and we want to communicate with them and we appreciate them anything that we can do collectively to do that I just want to thank the public for that and and for all their recognition of how teachers are so valuable to us and they're such a critical resource and and so important in all that we do so just thanks for your support in that and as in particular that we remember that as as our teachers work on on new curricular standards uh and congratulations to Mrs Bannon for her daughter becoming a math teacher not that I'm biased I was a math teacher can't imagine why I didn't want to teach health okay um

157so now we are up to board Forum the first item I guess there is a voting item which is board goals so um the second item's not really a voting item so we'll take a motion for item one for the board goals so it's something like to make a motion Mrs White and Miss Schaefer um so these board goals we discussed at our last meeting yeah yeah we discussed these at our last meeting I think the first goal is to continue work on verner's connect meetings as part of strategic planning which I think we you know want to continue that work and we um are happy that we're finally able to have Runners connect meetings again with the um Community the second is to engage in professional development on the subject of communications with the

158public the chain of command and the role of the board because I think you know even just reading stuff from other towns there was a statement I just it was going around on Facebook that a board member in Randolph wrote after a particularly difficult board meeting and and I think there is you know there's a lot of um it's it's not easy being a board member I think all of us can can agree with that and it's challenging and I think with social media and with the pace of what information and the requests and the emails and stuff it's a lot different than it was when I first joined the board so I think that that is something that we want to have ongoing conversations with and with the community also so they understand like

159why maybe we can't answer certain emails or why we refer certain you know complaints or questions requests for information through the administration to make sure that it's accurate so we can have more discussions about that and then the last one is to advocate for the district for district interests at the state level and again now that things are back in person we'll have more opportunities to do that in person at meetings it wasn't super effective on Zoom so we'll be doing that at the school boards convention and other meetings coming up um I don't know do any other board members have anything to say about the board goals before we vote I just wanted to address the the second one because I think it's it's very fitting for tonight which has to do with the

160chain of command I somehow we've gotten into this this mode of um when of trying to have these gotcha moments of you know parents saving up their concerns their questions to to kind of be like see I caught you and I find it a little bit mind-boggling because look I have I have questions when things come up and I I follow the command and chant you know the chain of command and you know if you have a question if something's going on in your child's classroom don't wait to come to a board of ed meeting that maybe once a month or twice a month to to have that gotcha Moment Like aha I caught you in something follow the chain of command if it's something that upsets you go to the teacher and ask the

161question it doesn't mean you can't come here and say you know this came up and I did go to the teacher I just wanted to bring it to your attention because I'm I'm concerned about it but this this mindset of of saving up complaints and bringing it here I feel like we need to to really work on changing that and I think really that the chain of command is the best for for kindergarten preschool kindergarten all the way through 12th grade there has to be a better way than you know just saving things up when if you're really concerned handle it like send an email to us if you have to after you've gone through the change but don't wait on something that is worrisome to you or upsetting to you or makes you angry

162I mean that it's not helpful for your kids it's not helpful for other students in the class it's not helpful for your your parent friends and I don't know what that mentality is but that has changed over the years so I hope that with this this goal we can really get to kind of ending that cycle and making a much more productive when there are concerns that come up okay I just kind of want to piggyback a little bit on what Mrs White was saying and add on the subject of the proposed goal number two in terms of communications Communications always a two-way street and I would encourage the same reach out in the same way that Mrs White was talking about with regard to your student and what's going on in their classroom if

163you have questions about what's going on at a district level please do reach out to the Board of Education members reach out to the board as a whole or or if you know someone contact them and then help them direct you to someone who might be able to best answer your question but don't believe everything you hear at the bus stop or the shop right or wherever you happen to be or on social media because we saw tonight how quickly someone one of the speakers said if someone starts saying they are them in the Curious George book and by the end of the public comment some was saying how can you be teaching this in the Curious George book it's like a living breathing example of how quickly misinformation or information morphs into misinformation so

164please come forward directly to people who can help you find the information you're looking for and and not rely on scuttlebutt and rumor and innuendo because it doesn't end well for any of us so I hope both sides can can improve communication together because as much as this board and the administration and the staff want to communicate want to improve communication it has to work on both sides okay anyone else okay so I guess I'll take a vote on item one Mr McLaughlin which is the board goals yes Miss Schaefer yes Mrs Gray yes can you sing yes Mrs White yes Miss light yes Mr Connor yes Miss hero yes Miss McCune yes Madam president thank you okay the second item on board forum is the board self-evaluation so um board members filled out this

165evaluation in the summer and we have our summary report from school boards Association that our field service representative Gwen Thornton compiled for the board so um I know there were some copies are there there were copies down there I don't know if people all took them before okay so um so the entire board participated in this process we basically rated ourselves on different areas of what the board does policy instructional program board operations board superintendent relationships board staff relations and finance so um the recommendations or challenges and solutions or whatever that came out of the um the report I thought kind of coincided with our board goals pretty well because one of them talked about um communication right expanding your opportunities for Community engagement and expanding your Outreach to the community that was a theme

166that came out in the self-evaluation and so that is kind of like our one of our board goals um building a more unified team around your shared vision for all students in the district so I think again that's the communications kind of issue with the community and try to include all the stakeholders and we would love to have student participation hopefully we can get lots of students to come to the BT connect meetings too because I think that's really valuable some of the challenges that the board identified in the self-evaluation one of them was continuing to maintain the vast array of academic and co-curricular opportunities for all students while being good stewards of taxpayer monies inflation Transportation costs and unfunded mandates will continue to present on additional challenges in the coming year so that's part

167of our big Finance discussion I guess that we'll be having there was a continuing to enhance Safety and Security measures for students and staff ensuring that all students are supported in their learning needs past covid and then suggested areas for the board board goals are supposed to be something that the board can work on so these were like the challenges and solutions that I just named that the board members identified that our district has you know that the district and that we see as board members the district trying to struggle with but then the recommendations for areas for additional board focus and professional development was developing a shared understanding of the role and function of the board including the importance of chain of command which just happened to be one of the board goals that

168we had already written assisting the community and understanding the nature and role of a nonpartisan Board of Education that is responsible to the whole Community through its work in policy development and oversight rather than administering the day-to-day operations of the district and clarifying roles and expectations processes and procedures as well as development of the entire board team should assist in improving the board's effectiveness so I feel that like I don't know for people that came on kind of during covid or right before covid I feel like a little bit of our our role you know got a little muddied during Cove because there were so many decisions being made so quickly some of the procedures about like Health everything has to get sent through a committee you know what I mean and things like that

169kind of fell by the wayside because we were in like survival mode so I think it'll be good for the board to like kind of get back to like the way Edward is supposed to work and other people chime in I'm done talking I can wholeheartedly agree with the survival mode of the coveted you know pandemic shutdown and um and it was challenging just to conduct the business necessary to make the decisions to keep you know students coming to school or you know with the remote learning what was in you know involved there uh much less all the other work that we wished we could have been doing and I definitely look forward to seeing the board you know behind Beyond My December uh roll-off um looking at the Capital Improvements and expenditures and some

170of the other things that have always been intended to be worked on and just it wasn't feasible given all the challenges I wanted to add on the flip side I think as a parent I started paying more attention to Board of Ed meetings because of covid because you know before that we were kind of in our own Rat Race you know working and just a little bit more singular in thought and then when covet hit and everything turned upside down I think and I I speak for other parents that I know did the same thing during covid everyone started paying a lot more attention to what's happening at school and and how the Board of Ed is operating so it was um you know the silver lining for me I guess let's just say one

171thing for me really was exemplified today was we had our first um superintendent's advisory meeting and it was the first time I I think I can't even remember when we were able to all of I mean there had to have been at least 30 of us in that room um and we weren't all you know there weren't 10 million people on Zoom we weren't all spread it was just a nor it was like a flashback to how it used to be when we had meetings and it just was so refreshing to be able to start the school year out that way so I I just I I'm really hopeful that that's how we get to continue you know for our committee meetings for our Board of Ed meetings for our BT connects meetings it's just

172it's a very positive start for the year okay so um I had one other item that I guess alluded to at the very beginning of the meeting about the district's rankings and test scores and I had made a little handout I'm gonna I guess take over Mr Burns job like whatever you'd always plot the SATs and ACT scores for all of us um and you've been tracking them for years and years and years so our district does track those and they were presented at our post-secondary report last year but I pulled a couple of the slides that were historical data just because there has been talk about somehow is the has a district fallen off in our test scores or rankings and is there a big problem going on and so you know from what

173I remembered of those two presentations I I remember sitting there thinking oh my God I'm so happy that the kids didn't fall further behind during covid this is amazing right like our teachers did an amazing job and this is like really amazing but I went back and looked at the numbers to see you know was I just expecting it to be far far worse you know and that that's why I'm thinking that way so when I pulled up the SATs and the act mean scores over the last five years um we've actually gone up um well so has the state but our act's average scores went up a little bit more than the state went up but it's gone up over the last five years and our SATs didn't even have a drop off during

174covid the one you know the two years of kids who may have been impacted and last year they were they were higher so I don't see it there and then I went and looked at the um number of AP students passing the AP tests and that also looked really good even during covid um teeny bit lower in 2021 um like from 96 passing to 94 passing so that's pretty amazing um considering the conditions that the kids were trying to you know study for these tests and learn and there was a few less people that got fives in those two years 20 20 and 2021 but it was really like not very much and I mean that's amazing to me right that the students did so well then I looked at the map scores and they're

175pretty steady over time too there's a slight dip in math which across the country like they said that happened even at that age Middle School a lot worse and the little kids in other districts lost a lot more in reading so I looked at our little kids and they looked like they held really steady for language arts and math so I then I decided to look at the rankings because people are saying oh we fell in the rankings so I went the only one I found that's reputable that didn't have a gap where it didn't do it was U.S news and World Report because New Jersey monthly kind of seemed to stop in 2018. so U.S news and World Report I looked and in 2018 we were ranked number 12 in public schools some of

176those are Charter School not Charter Schools magnet schools that have admissions policies and stuff like that um or like the counties that have a you know a technical school that's really hard to get into so if you take out those type of schools there's only a few regular public you know high schools above us so we did drop down from 12 in 2018 to since then we've been between 19 21 25 and 23 so we've been fairly consistent so I looked at U.S news and World Reports website and it said that they redid their whole ranking system in 2000 their whole methodology in 2019 and it says rankings from earlier editions are not comparable to those from 2019 and forward so I don't think it's fair to look at the 2018 or book before numbers

177there if they completely change their methodology it says U.S news will not provide rankings of schools predating the 2018 Edition because of that I found the 2018 one in a newspaper article but um but they're not even putting it on their website being you know before that anymore um the other thing I noticed that was interesting in their methodology is that state assessments contribute the most to the rankings um and we had large numbers of students opt out of state testing in this town and you know we understood why parents were doing it um and we knew that it could affect our rankings if you know in other districts were you know pressuring parents to take the tests that was one of the reasons they said oh my God our rankings are going to fall

178it's going to affect our property values and you know there was some talk of that here but um we don't know exactly how it may or may not have affected our rankings but that's something to keep in to um in your mind because we did have one of the most one of the highest opt-out rates you know of high schools especially on like the Science assessment and different ones so who knows how that affected rankings so the the other thing I wanted to mention is some of the schools that um some schools and you see this with the college rankings and Suzanne could jump in here anytime because we could talk for hours about this but there's ways to manipulate your rankings and some of the things that schools can do to make their rankings

179look good is to make more kids get fives on AP tests so that you could have a pre-test to get into a class or you know go ahead Suzanne well just restriction of the number of students who are allowed to take APS so we don't tell students if they take an AP course that they can't take the AP test just because we don't think that they're going to pass so some schools will do that but the ranking manipulations I mean U.S news and World Report is trying to sell magazines so they manipulate the data every single year so that things change otherwise it would be very boring and they wouldn't sell any magazines so so basically what I'm saying is like we don't get too hung up on the rankings because we don't want to

180make decisions about whether or not our students can try to challenge themselves in an AP class or whether we're going to force them to take an AP exam even if their college isn't going to take the credit and they don't want to go take the AP test because why should they if they already got into college and they can't use the credits so we don't try to like manipulate kids into you know choosing courses or not choosing courses or taking tests or not taking tests based on rankings we're trying to do what's best for the students and so you know we feel that it's okay to let a kid try a class you know even if they might not get a really high grade if they want to be in there and they can get

181by you know what I mean we're not going to tell them no you can't try that class so anyway that's just stuff I had to say because it was bothering me um anyone else um I just went so you had mentioned earlier I had reported out last spring about the K1 for for summer remediation and last spring um Lisa Vitale had come and presented to us that they had done all of their assessments of the students to determine who would be invited to participate in the summer intervention and the numbers were much smaller than they had been the previous year and that's because they had been able the teachers had done such a brilliant job of getting the students all where they needed to be and catching them all up because obviously kids did fall

182behind during remote you know learning during the the worst of the pandemic but last year they were able to get them where they wanted so that for the summer the students primarily who were participating were the ones that were already identified and classified either through having IEPs or by irns and again that's what I had reported earlier this fall again when we talked about that uh they're back to doing the in person working with the kids but that they know that the the it's important to know the little kids are doing well just as well as the big kids and one other thing to just add to what piggyback what you said and Robin said is I think one of the things that makes our district so special is that we recognize that it's okay

183for kids to try courses that they might not get an A in but they want to challenge themselves and they're okay with that not every District does that and we've had a lot of conversations in the past five years about lowering what the you know required grade to get into some of these challenging courses there's a whole philosophical View and we really feel like if students are willing to put the time and the effort in and they're okay that you know it doesn't have to be an a a b is fine a c is fine too like it's just that whole philosophy of are you getting some something out of taking this course and challenging yourself and I think it's something I'm really proud that we allow our students to do follow that that were

184on the subject of giving that opportunity to try a course that we're not sure we're going to get an A and I'm going to put you on the spot Kristen it used to be just a several years ago that Milburn which is you know the the school district that lots of folks are comparing us to as we always have required a certain grade or to test into an AP course and they limited the number of students do you know if that's still going on at Milburn yeah no I I don't know what their policy is okay I couldn't find out I was just curious because that isn't that's a real reason it changes it's sort of hard to keep up with no I understand and I know I was putting on you you on this

185yeah I'm sorry but I think Mrs McKeon brought up a really important point it's it's really great to make comparisons because we're comparing to other wonderful districts but everything isn't identical in all of those places you know um school districts like Montgomery another very comparable School District or School District they don't do everything exactly the way that we do and students don't necessarily in another school district that we might look at some analysis like this say oh well they're doing better than we are but this the student sample size may be Earth's sample group might be composed of different students only a students or only students who passed an admission test so I appreciate that that came up here anyone else okay I think we're up to adjournment would someone like to make emotions I'm

186sorry I didn't know we can I just I have something um and this is just sort of something that that really has come up I guess tonight with and I appreciate all the positivity and I'm glad we're ending on a really good note but sort of this whole idea that you know the passion from the audience today about the New Jersey Health standards from all sides was really notable and you know we've already noted that parents have concerns about units they can easily opt their students out for those lessons and they have that choice and we support that wholeheartedly but what concerns me are two things first that a group of community members who don't want their children learning certain areas about health and sexuality and who will be able to opt their children out

187of the curriculum want the district to ignore New Jersey standards and not teach this to any children they're actually promoting a lack of choice for parents and giving no one the opportunity you know the idea of giving no one the opportunity to get this aspect of health health education in public education and I worry about where that stops the same ideas behind censorship and pulling of books in the library censoring textbooks censoring teachers and mentioned this evening by Ms Light where new questions and suspicions about appropriateness and opting out of History and science curriculum this is a big concern second some of the concern about the health curriculum not all of it but some is focused on the inclusion of lgbtq in the health and other curricular areas our district philosophy specifically States education provides

188a foundation for lifelong learning critical and analytical thinking problem solving decision making and respect for the individual we want our students to understand appreciate and support the diverse experiences of all citizens of our town nation and World inclusivity creates a stronger society and excluding others based on any characteristic has no place in an advanced educated and successful Nation I believe we should continue to stand against any attempt to remove or ignore representation in our curriculum and schools our students deserve better anybody else I have a comment that I want to follow up um similar to Suzanne's concerns you know I think hearing from all the parents and the community members tonight was really um helpful because I think that it made me realize that there's actually a lot of divisiveness in our town and I've

189known that for a while but this is such a Hot Topic button right now that I think there's a lot of passion and Care behind all of these parents who are coming so I'm grateful for all of the variable the varying sorry opinions that we heard tonight but I do also I guess my question I'm really proposing a question like how do we figure out how to get to the middle right I mean you have people on one side of the argument you have people on the other side of the argument so how do we figure out like a common ground because this is going to directly impact all of our children so whether parents opt out or they opt in um you know other kids will their friends will be doing something maybe they're

190not doing or they'll be learning terminology that maybe these kids are not going to learn um or that some kids will not learn so I feel like we have to figure out a way to get the community all somewhere on the same page and I'm not sure exactly how to do that yet but I feel like having conversations eliminating the whole process of telephone where you hear one thing and it turns into something completely different you know that that's the transparency that we need to have we need to make sure that everybody who's involved in this curriculum knows exactly what their kids are learning and I think there's a lot of confusion out there you know just from having conversations with members in the community lately I feel like there's a lot of misconceptions and

191it doesn't stop here I mean it's about so much stuff so I guess just kind of demystifying a lot of that and I I do leave with the question like it's a confusing thing you know where do we figure out how to meet they're always going to have different opinions but you know you have to figure out how to get along because somebody had said earlier we care more than we don't care and I think that's a unifying feeling that I definitely got from tonight so okay um I I think that the way I kind of look at this is um you know somebody in the audience said something like there's there's good arguments on both sides of this issue and I really think that um it's it's like a one side it's just one

192issue right like what do you think is best for your kid right the there's that component of it and then there's what New Jersey tells us we have to implement as a board of education under the New Jersey state learning standards that those standards are wrapped up in the administrative code and we have to do that there's no there's no choice there the only choice is the curriculum of how we do that right so like if you have an issue with the standards themselves that is a Trenton issue that is not our issue I I don't see personally I don't see that way um if you have an issue with the curriculum then the state has already you know if you have an issue with the curriculum for your student the state has already built

193in and and codified a mechanism for you to opt your student out now somebody said well what if you know my son's friends mentioned what was happened in class there's no way to please that so you opt your student out because that's the the best for your student that's what you want for your student if you want your student to have that education that curriculum that's what the state says should be taught then you you remain in the class you don't opt out so I think like everybody's saying I what I want is the best thing that I think for my student and and it's just how are you getting there are you having them you know be part of the curriculum or are you opting them out of that particular curriculum but it's it's

194not you know we had such a great turnout at the BT connect and like it's it feels like it's a two-sided issue like whether you want this or you're not and then it kind of devolves into like the extremes like if you're not for this then you're you know anti-lgbtq and if you are for this then you're you know um sexualizing curriculum and it goes to this this these extremes but I think the the middle ground is you know are you just you're just making the best decision for your for your kid and your family um so I I thought that was like um you know that's the meat in the middle place in my mind is is you make the best decision for your students um the one thing I also wanted to point

195out was just Karen what Karen was saying and like you said about misinformation and stuff like we did see that here tonight it was amazing I mean it was unbelievable and and a lot of it is based on well if they're doing this then I think this and like that's what we heard like if you are changing you know first grade books into different words then I think that's not something you should be doing and then three speakers later it was you guys are like teaching the kids the wrong grammar and they're learning grammar and they can't understand the words because you're manipulating the words as you're teaching it and and it was it was unbelievable to see because it just it went from if you're doing this I don't know if it is but

196if you are then I wanna like and then it devolved so quickly into like you are doing this tell us why you're doing this how come you didn't tell us why you weren't doing like you were you were doing this and then it was like a transparency issue all in the matter of 10 minutes so um I I hope that no one's here who asked that question or anything but I hope they understand that the Salient point was well if you are doing this the answer was no we're not doing that if you think a teacher is doing that talk to the teacher right if you heard from a teacher or somebody that was part of the training or something the district is enacting in this initiative without telling you then let us know maybe

197that person was confused about the training or something and we can help or or the administration could help I should say but you know the way that it spread and started is is I see that's what I got from some of the BT connect on on health curriculum like what if a teacher just starts going off the page and doing this and I I said like you know that can happen that's that what-if scenario like what if anything happens is impossible to protect and unforeseeable so we're trying I think Miss Fox Mr shello the teachers that were at the BT connect were telling you exactly what we're doing exactly the process that's laid out how it's laid out in the standards versus the curriculum and the law of opt out and and that's what we

198are doing so if you think that there's something else going on just ask the teacher or ask Miss Fox but I also wanted to just end by saying thank you very much to miss Fox Mr shello all the teachers that worked on the curriculum because I'm sure nobody wanted to do this um I'm sure nobody wanted to deal with this like coming out of kovid but here we are so um I just really wanted to say thank you because it's not just your normal summer curriculum writing topic and to do the pre-survey BT connect and all of the work that's gone in to synthesize and boil down what's new how it's going to be implemented is something that I haven't seen in any other subject matter since I've been on the board which is I

199guess you know because it's Reading Writing arithmetic or something like that but like to go through that whole process and to get it down to where you've gotten it in terms of what's new per standard per grade level on that level of granularity I just wanted to say thank you because I think that is going above and beyond the the you know uh where the state left you so uh I I really appreciate that yeah and I agree with what what um Mr salmon just said and you know also thank you guys for doing that but I mean it is it is frustrating when people talk about transparency I mean there's so much detail in there like uh you know like how many people really are going to read it all this a lot right

200in all the different grade levels I know but yeah I know but um you know I do want to make the same plea for you know please ask you know if you have questions if we heard something on the street you know please email I know it's a lot of work for the administration to answer lots of questions but they'd rather get the correct information out there so they will you know what I mean they might not answer in like 12 hours but we will send it to the right person and they will they will answer you so whether it's about the budget or about the health curriculum or about anything else like you know that you're hearing out there you know please please email and um we'll try to get accurate information out there

201can I just say because since I'm the chair of curriculum that um you know there was a lot of chatter out there that you know this rewriting was done during the summer to you know sneak everything in and people weren't paying attention and I just want to say because I reported out the the attention that was given to this curriculum writing for health was the exact same way method procedure that is done for all curriculum writing curriculum writing takes place during the summer and I just I really want to make sure that everybody understands that that there was nothing different or nefarious like this is our procedure curriculum is written during the summer teachers work during the summer they come in that's when they're all free that they can do this and we end up

202with this all these wonderful updates that I get to write about and read about okay anyone else okay can we have a motion for adjournment uh Mrs Gray and Ms Light all in favor