001um welcome to the board of education meeting the board has already met an executive session and we saluted the flag in there so at this point we're going to have a roll call mr mclaughlin mr salmon here mrs gray here ms singh here mrs white here his fight here miss hira here mr marcarion here mr saya here ms fox here mrs mckeon here madam president thank you i'm just going to read the statement of public notice this is a regular meeting of the board of education of bernard's township notice of the time and place of the meeting was provided and copies of that resolution were forwarded to the official newspapers as designated by the board of education and to the township clerk and a copy of the notice was posted on the bulletin board of
002the board of education offices for those members of the public who are unable to attend our meeting in person there are two live stream links of the meeting that are posted on the district website the two live the two live stream links are the same one's just a backup of the other in case there's technical difficulty 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 is listed on tonight's agenda towards the end of the meeting there is 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
003made by a participant shall be limited to three minutes duration no participant may speak more than once during a given public comment session in order to run efficient meetings and to allow maximum opportunity for members of the public to speak the board reserves the right to set a different time limit for individual comments or an overall time limit for the public comments section of the agenda all statements shall be directed to the presiding officer no participant may address or question board members individually as a courtesy to those individuals unable to attend our meetings in person public comment may be made remotely through zoom interested individuals shall navigate to the district webpage www.vernersboe.com and select board of education followed by public comment to review the specific instructions or click on the link that's listed here in
004the agenda public comments made in person will be processed first and then comments on zoom no public 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 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
005and privacy protections the board is not permitted to respond in public to 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 whether any action is anticipated to be taken upon returning to public session okay now we're up to the student representative gordon thank you so as ridge returns from what is really a truly wonderful 10-day spring break the student
006body is refreshed and ready to push through the last few weeks of the school year with ap tests and final projects just around the corner students of all grade levels are preparing to celebrate this year's learning and of course their creativity the ridge cancer support club and feminism club are running donation drives to support cancer patients and women in developing nations respectively in times like these it is incredibly heartwarming to hear that rich students are looking out not just for their immediate friends and family but also to anyone in need whom oftentimes they have never met before and probably never will meet ridge fully supports these efforts and the student body will continue to help in any way possible the ridge student government is happy to report that the outreach initiative on april 13th was
007extremely successful over the course okay in terms of board president comments i just had i have to get out my piece of paper i just wanted to make sure to invite everyone to the bernard's connect meetings the first one is going to be next monday which is what's the date on that i don't have my paper in front of me the second may 2nd in the ridge high school cafeteria it's going to be on communication and collaboration and the goal is to have conversations with different people we're hoping that students come we're hoping that staff members come and we're hoping that community members come and that we can have conversations about how we can collaborate and work together we have some i guess there were some action items that came out of this strategic plan
008in that area and some of them have actually gotten done even during covid and other ones still you know may need some work and we may come up with new ideas so we really encourage everyone to come and participate in that and then i guess two weeks after that is the second date um is going to be on technology and instruction and that one should also be super fascinating and anyone who was here last time and heard the teachers talking about technology in the classroom i'm sure you know is interested to hear and have more conversation about that um so at this point we're going to go down for the board presentation on the big sibling program so we're going to go sit down thanks hi i'm kristen thorpe i'm the big sibling program director
009and i'm here tonight with several of the club officers with smashawa jenna sang and cynthia koo and we just wanted to talk about what the big sibling program goals are what we've accomplished in a year and the impact it's had on some of the students so with the coronavirus pandemic impacting the social emotional and academic learning of so many of our students last year the big sibling program started in january of 2021 with the goal of ameliorating some of the struggles that the younger students were having with extended quarantines and virtual learning so working closely with the elementary schools and the middle school the program sought to match high school students who were referred to as biggs with elementary and middle school students who we refer to as littles based on common interests and so
010with those pairings they began meeting on a weekly basis and the club just kind of grew so we started with 43 littles in the program and we're currently up to 132 littles so matt's going to talk a little bit about i guess the goals and how it works hello everyone my name is matthew shawwa i am the secretary of the big sibling program and i'm just going to talk about what the program is so the big selling program strives to build relationship within the basking ridge community and while so many of us are caught up in the hustle and the bustle of daily life the big sibling program reminds the students of burner's township that is very important to their mental health to nurture their friendships and their relationships the ability to mentor a younger
011student and whether this is through doing homework with them giving them advice just being someone to talk to or playing games with them strengthens the high school students capacity for empathy and as for the littles the weekly interaction with biggs provides them with frequent and extended one-on-one attention that they need to mature socially and emotionally now the big sibling program can includes littles from kindergarten to eighth grade which allows the high school bigs to guide younger students through with the adjustment adjustments from elementary to middle school while the big ceiling program has been mainly virtual due to coronavirus concerns things little still arranged to meet about one to two times per week on zoom and these meetings will last about 30 minutes to even an hour and even longer 2021 when many elementary and middle
012school students were deprived of face-to-face interactions these one-on-one zoom meetings provided them with much needed opportunities for social interaction however starting with the 2021 and 2022 school year biggs went to schools elementary and middle schools two times a week to meet with the littles in person and they finally were able to help in person with homework they read they drew they played board games and they went outside to play games such as tag gravel gaga and basketball i'm now going to pass it over to janice sang he's going to talk a little bit about what we have done as a program hi i'm janice and i am the vice president of big sibling program so big sibling program have held two holiday parties in the first semester of school there is a costume party in
013october for halloween and a polar express party in december for halloween biggs and littles met in the new gym at ridge and they played games and made paper plate spiders they ran relay races danced around musical chairs and even went on a scavenger hunt this was a great opportunity for the littles to socialize and for the first time everyone in the program was able to come together for an in-person event to close off 2021 biggs and littles were invited to the ridge pack to watch the polar express they were in their pajamas and enjoyed their hot chocolate and cookies and the bigs were given their big sibling t-shirt and gifted their littles with matching little sibling t-shirts our first event this spring was the field day held on april 9th biggs and littles met saturday
014afternoon on lee field and surrounding walkways to play jenga play draw with sidewalk chalks they played the big connect fours and also cup stacking they also competed in relay races and potato sack races as well as tossing bean bags and water balloons they also played with kickball and there were snacks for them to enjoy and there was also music i was the dj and it was just an overall very fun time we also have an end of the year party planned for june 10th on a friday and that would be a great opportunity for the senior bigs to introduce their littles to their new bigs and i'll pass it on to dr thorpe for got it so we're looking for a way to really recognize the students for all their hard work because so many
015of the mentors have gone above and beyond what we expected of them and we came up with mentor of the month so these guys were selected partially by you know me witnessing how they interacted with their littles at some of the in-person events some emails i received from the littlest parents and in some cases they were nominated by their peers so janice is going to talk about the impact that the program has had on both the littles and the bigs i'm sorry cindy hello my name is cindy kuh and i'm the president of the big sibling club so we've heard from parents just how beneficial this program has been for the littles whether it's helping them overcome their shyness i don't know whose computer this is again okay thank you and the program also helps
016them gain the courage to try new things [Music] and it helps them improve academically because of new found confidence the littles have truly enjoyed working with their bigs the high school mentors have also talked about how they've grown through their participation in this program they've gained confidence in themselves through the relationships they've built with their littlest they've regained excitement for simple everyday activities that come with looking at things from a child's perspective on youtube and follow them and show each other the final product most recently i did where my little and i chose random objects to find within our surroundings and show them to each other and they've learned how important it is to take a break from the busy schedules and just enjoy being in the present and now janice is going to talk
017about how you can join this program so to sign your child up parents please fill out the first form and for mentors to volunteer please fill out the second form the link is up there and once you guys fill it out dr thorpe will match the littles with high school students with common interest and before they reach out mentors will be put through training and the officers and dr thorpe will help the biggs with questions if it comes up and we'll reach out to parents to make sure that meetings are running smoothly thank you are there any questions or [Applause] thanks so we have a hundred and thirty two littles and a hundred and thirty two points yep they're matched thanks guys okay now we're up to um superintendent's report there are two items would
018someone like to make a motion for the two items this is white and mrs gray um nick did you have anything before we vote no the uh first item is the standard hib report the second item is uh the bi-annual uh reporting of school safety data has to be accepted by the board uh every six months this is the fall reporting period which gives you the metrics on the hib data for the first half of the 21-22 school year okay does anyone have any questions before we vote could we have a role call mr mclaughlin mr salmon yes this is gray yes ms singh yes mrs white yes ms flight yes ms hira yes mrs mccoon yes madam president thank you thank you miss mccann i did want to mention one thing i i put
019out uh next to the agenda uh tonight uh on the on the edge of the stage there just some articles i know there was some uh recent newspaper articles uh talking about the health curriculum uh that's supposed to be implemented by the fall of 2020 uh and i just want to let people know that we don't have any changes happening for the current school year we are following uh the uh the news and and recognizing that there were some things put out there that raised some questions uh and some follow-up articles and information from the new jersey department of education that can help answer uh concerns and questions so i did put some hard copies out there and i know miss fox was going to share a little bit about our plans to work on
020curriculum over the summer thank you mr kerry um well in general our curriculum is revised on a five-year cycle so in the normal routine of things unless something happens like standards revision in this case and then we might um update some courses off cycle so the curriculum is written over the summer you know we spend some time the teachers the administrators work on it after you know in this case we'd be reviewing the standards reviewing available resources and developing the curriculum together so towards the end of the summer early fall the curriculum is shared with the board of education curriculum committee and they review it they ask questions and then they would report out on it once adopted once approved to the full board so that would all happen before anything was implemented in the
021classroom that's a normal curriculum writing process that we use all the time and certainly in this case there would be some i guess extra attention paid to the way we share the communication the the updates or the changes publicly so everybody is fully aware of anything we may have revised in our curriculum to meet these new standards in fact in the in the moment we're doing we're spending our time reviewing those new standards taking a look at them compared to our current curriculum and seeing where we may already be covering curriculum or where we may find gaps or holes and things that need to be added in changed or moved around so as as a part of the fall we would present publicly the information we would share it out with families through the schools
022through the sos express so that people can review it well before anything is implemented and then the last piece that's related to the health curriculum is certainly that parents have the opportunity to choose whether or not their child is going to participate in curriculum related to the family life programming thank you miss fox thank you at this point we're up to public comment on agenda items if anyone has a public comment on something that's on the agenda tonight please come up and state your name and address and then you can sign in on the clipboard after you speak yes would you like to come up this is on agenda item so this would be something that's either listed on the agenda or that was discussed so far so it could be either something that's already
023been discussed the presentation we just had or something that was just reported or something that's listed on the agenda for action tonight okay i'm sorry i have a mask it's hard to hear me too yeah this is for agenda items so it could be something that was discussed already or any item that's in the agenda but if it's if it's something that's not on the agenda or wasn't discussed already then there's a second comment period later where you could talk about that yes that's something that was already spoken about so you can come up now and do that if the microphone over here you can come to this microphone okay oh was this my mom no he gave it to you keep it thank you gracious ladies and gentlemen um i'm the father of six
024grandfather excuse me sir you just have to state your name first and your address yes francis hubert 228 arrowwood way in the cedars uh let me start again father of six grandfather of fourteen five of which have been in the school systems one has graduated from college another one is about to graduate from college from k through the end and another one just started at the university of new hampshire one other from another family of one of my other daughters moved out of the area and so there's been five that have been here one still is in the high school what i want to address tonight is you guys are all familiar with what has happened in westfield and all of the conflict that developed because it was a great uprising of parents against what
025they were undoubtedly blinded blinded to in regard to the curriculum and what was being shared with their kids without any of their foreknowledge i've got to hold on to my cane that's better and so the backlash has been considerable recently one of the statistics that have been stated in regard to public education new jersey which i think was part of the prompting of murphy to governor murphy to begin to sort of like water down what this curriculum originally stated and is attempting to modify his original statements based upon the public outcry and it's been phenomenal one stat says forty thousand parents not just because of this issue but because of the mass mandates in many of the school districts have left public education and it's increasingly so and the number of people that have left
026the state of new jersey because families because of education and what's going on within the curriculum have bailed out many going to florida i was just handed this before when i arrived and it's the new jersey ed department following murphy's directive i can speak pretty loud from here i found the same notes that i had taken through so many different websites and newspaper reports and board of education before in the state to find that it's here in this compact edition that was just uh brought to our attention tonight here and it includes and i'll be very brief but it's very important that you hear it and i have one question at the end of it after this great outcry with uh kenaron school district and westfield school district murphy began to modify and i've ever
027had the panic button was pushed because there was such an outpost throughout the city so last wednesday april 13th in reaction to public backlit governor murphy announced he was directing the department of education to review health and physical standards that were approved in june 2020 by the state board in order to provide further clarification on what age-appropriate guidelines was for our students i'm not going to read the whole thing i just highlighted a few things give you two more minutes the following day april 14th acting doe commissioner angela allen mcmillian issued the clarification directed by nurses alan mcmillian then listens after she makes this general introduction the three standards that seem to quote seem to have caused the most confusion and these are those this is only part of what's in the curriculum but very
028very important by the end of grade two students should be able to discuss the range of ways people express their gender and how gender role stereotypes may limit behavior how many of you as parents or grandparents would ever sit down at the end of grade 2 and begin to discuss this particular topic maybe some of you would i certainly wouldn't i don't think history this is such a new phenomenon in our culture by the end of grade five students should be able to quote explain common human sexual development and the role of pharma example romantic and sexual feelings masturbation [Applause] trying to get people to respond to this i'm surprised that this wall isn't so tonight because if your community really gets a hold of this stuff and knows it i know you was going
029to be an outdoor without a question and i dare to say and i'm daring to say that some of you right here presently would stand with me on this issue and i hope you will so my question to you is and this is only a simple summary of some of the most gross things that are happening how many of you are going to advocate that this curriculum does not become part of the infectious disease that seems to be attacking culture all over the place and school systems all over this nation and where there's an outcry really coming it's coming out when people gather before boards of education throughout the country so i ask you to examine your conscience where are you on this stand because murphy seems to be indicating that this is really not
030mandated that everybody's got to do it excuse me mr alper excuse me one second if you could please just i've let you go way over the time so if you could just please finish up when you get a chance thank think of what i you would you dare to teach these [Applause] you my name is angela jean byrne i live at 1810 woodland i'm against this type of curriculum i make no bones about it i have grandchildren i have 12. two in this school district i have a six-year-old grandchild in virginia she believes in leprechauns she believes in the bunny rabbit she does not need to know specifically her body parts she's having fun being a child for her to get this education at age six and seven is an abomination i am totally against
031this [Applause] i'm a mother of six and grandmother of excuse me ma'am could you please state your name and address first please okay kathy uber 228 error woodway i was a teacher years ago then i did subbing when our kids were in school in flemington and one day when i was subbing the teacher said to me i don't think your husband's going to like the book that we're going to give to the kids next so i said well do you have a copy and she gave me a copy i took it home and i read it and in the book there was a scene it was a haunted house and people came as a group to study ghosts study the haunted house and they were sitting in the living room and one woman thought she
032was looking at the back of the head of another woman and she said i wonder what it would be like to take a rock and smash her head with it and then there was a scene in the book where there was blood written on the wall where the spirits were beckoning them to come and one of the men got into his car and drove his car into a tree and killed himself so they were going to read this in seventh grade so i called the principal he did nothing we went to the board of education we shared our concern and i remember my husband saying you know maybe another kid could handle that but what about the children who come from stressed environments and they're already stressed and then this is being fed into their
033minds and i was in the supermarket i bumped into one of the teachers and she said you know that book is no longer on the shelf presently in our culture new neuroscience knows that there are neural pathways in our brain that contain the thoughts the pattern of thoughts that we think and the more we think those thoughts the more densely bundled together those neural pathways come if we're going to teach six-year-olds fifth graders and eighth graders what anal sexes and what oral sex is into their minds we are putting filth into the neural pathways of their mind it's very hard to change you have to work hard to change your thought process and it's tampering with their minds it's abusive and it's evil it is evil so i'm asking the same question where do you
034stand you have a moral responsibility to preserve the innocence of a child's minds and the right of the parent to teach morals to to bring them into a godly community that honors god where there's objective truth i don't feel like a girl one day and feel like a boy another day that's not absolute truth that's against the natural law we don't change our gender because of how we feel it's absurd it's irrational and more should be expected from a board of ed that's all i have to say [Applause] uh cody smith 36 world drive um i couldn't say it better but i appreciate in the friday folder when you brought up that you'll be going through the curriculum and you'll share that with us and you'll give us the chance to let our children opt
035out but one of the points that i made at the last meeting and i just want to reiterate it i wasn't going to define uh the three ways that you can have uh sexual intercourse the way others have done because it's just disgusting but if you look at the 66 page new jersey state guidelines that i specified it's very vague and nebulous some of the things like by the time you're through with eighth grade you can define the ways to have sexual intercourse is very explicit the definitions in the back about different things are very explicit but a lot of it is vague and nebulous and i think that's why westfield got in trouble because they went from how do you get to what the steps are for second fifth eighth and twelfth graders and
036then there's suggested lesson plans and the dynamite is in the lesson plans some of it is in the 66-page document but a lot of it is in the lesson plans and so when i said we have to see the lesson plans if we're going to elect to to send our kids to school that day we we have to see what is in the lesson plans and i don't know how you do that amongst the teachers if you have whatever it is uh four or five elementary schools fortunately we only have one uh middle school in one high school but then we have maybe different teachers that are teaching and i don't know how to standardize the lesson plans and then obviously you don't know what has actually said and if it goes off the lesson
037plan if your kid is in the classroom so i don't know how we're going to come to a medium and i don't know how you can elect not to teach certain things when it's actually written into the law that you have to teach it so that's going to be another thing that's we're going to have to work through and then miss fox i appreciate your comments when you say we're going to have to look at what's there and what's not there well i think when you come to us and you tell us what you think our kids have to be taught i don't think we don't want to just do the change where it says here's the new things that we're going to teach i think it has to be both what is being taught
038today and what is being proposed to be taught because of this new law so thank you i'm just a reminder when people are coming down to sign in on the sheet down there after you speak so if you didn't you could come back up and sign it so we have a record of who was here good afternoon or good evening my name is tammy lane and i'm a 38-year resident of basking ridge my three children went through and now i have three grandchildren i live at 335 lions road i am a retired educator school nurse and so i have i come with a lot of years of background of dealing with children and with their issues and i understand the dilemma that you all are in because kids do ask questions um and i believe
039that opting out is definitely the way to go to meet all the needs of the parents and our diverse community i will tell you i taught and then my office got so busy there was no time and we were supposed to teach menstruation and we did do that in in fifth grade but i will tell you that it is the parents job because i would do it with fourth graders and i had a young lady that i had to teach when she was in first grade because she was early and it was a medical condition so these menstruation things like that do need to be taught but you teach at home as well and whatever your curriculum is make sure that your school nurses are involved in it so that they can tell you the
040actual perhaps experiences that they have had to help these children and i would agree with some of the other grandparents here when they're five and six and even in second grade i talked to a second grade former colleague of mine teaching for over 20 years she said number one our day is so full and the state keeps just adding one more thing for us to do we don't have time for this we don't have time we haven't been educated in specifically teaching health education and you need to understand that your some of your teachers are not going to be able to be feel comfortable to be teaching this and some of your your younger uh you know faculty may because they've seen stuff their brains have been pre-wired by their past experiences so they may
041be a little bit more but you've got a wide range of of of staff my concern is theirs as well that you take that into consideration that they are going to need training to actually be able to deliver a curriculum that curriculum i agree with this gentleman in the back definitely needs to be on every homework page that you're going to have the teacher put that down because a parent needs to know that as a grandparent i want to know because i get to see my grandkids like once a week if they're ki if that's what's going to be in their school and it pops up and a question pops up i'm certainly going to give my opinion to my grandchild as i did to my children but there's a lot more to this than
042governor murphy just coming and saying hey guess what guys you're going to teach this because you know what the teachers have gotten this up to here up to here and they get their hands and their their they go home with book homework and stuff and you need to keep all of that into consideration when you are dealing with this subject and i would be more than welcome if you think so i would be more than happy to sit with the as a school nurse and and help you with the curriculum thank you sherry nelson 195 smoke rise road i think it was the last meeting that a mom got up and was asking about the health curriculum for her fifth grade child and that she was having trouble she asking the teacher and then the
043principal and i believe mr marcarian was going to help her get that information my parents might not my parents my kids are older but they're not that much older my youngest is in 10th grade so five short years ago when he was in fifth grade it was handled completely differently and i don't understand if there was an actual policy change or each building principle is doing something differently but at mount prospect in fifth grade they're going to have the big sex ed talk a month in advance ms hosni emailed all the fifth grade parents and gave us a pdf this is everything we're going to cover with your child and the purpose of that was two things it was really because you need you know you need to know if your child's emotionally ready for
044that maybe you have a talk with them in advance so they don't ask an embarrassing question and get bullied over it there's a lot of reasons to communicate with parents about this um but also um that email i look i found it i don't delete any emails it explicitly stated the right to opt out and how to opt out um so i don't really understand why this parents having this issue or what's changed in the last five years i don't think it was that long ago but it's really important to give the details because we're home with the kids they're going to ask us questions so sometimes you have that top level curriculum and maybe there's these standards but the actual lesson plans um for something for such a sensitive topic it's really important to
045give that to the parents and give it to them ahead of time because some may be perfectly happy to have that taught to their child whatever the discussion may be but then they have the information to kind of back that up at home or prepare their child um i asked mine now turning 16 on wednesday child about all of this and if he remembered fifth grade and i did have a talk with him ahead of time to get him ready we got a book you know and it was a much simpler sex ed talk back then i said you know how would you feel now he knows a lot of this stuff so how would you feel in second grade or fifth grade talking about these other topics and he said there's no way he
046would have been ready for that at that age he's 16 now he's in the world and there's not a lot you can do about it when they're that old but um i think that you know maybe some we're doing these focus groups and things maybe there should be conversations with some of the older students when it where appropriate of how you know they would feel at a certain age and the best way to talk about these things i mean it's very awkward for them um so anyway bottom line we need the lesson plans to the parents and i'm kind of thankful my kids are just older and i'm not going to have to deal with this myself but i'm really glad the grandparents are coming out and some former teachers giving some really insightful information
047thank you guys is there anyone else here for public comment on agenda items hi my name is jean rose 41 knollcroft in basking ridge i'm new in town new at a school board meeting i caught some of this kind of thing on the news i'm horrified at the prospect of these kinds of things being taught to the kids i have one daughter in town she's planning on sending them to the public schools right now i'm going to advise her not to and instead of and here's my one small thing i want to say instead of opting out i think you should opt in and see what happens is there anyone else for public comment here in person is there anybody waiting in zoom no okay at this point i'll close public comment on agenda items
048go ahead sure i'll just respond to a few things if i miss anything mr marcarin you can jump in um first thing i would say about the last i think was miss nelson asked about the last speaker and in fact the practice you referenced from your children is still in place and the principals and or the teachers do send home a letter for a current curriculum in advance of it being taught and parents can review it um the parent who spoke at the last meeting the teacher hasn't gotten to it yet um they're not teaching it for a couple of weeks and so that was in motion and that parent would certainly is certainly getting the information that they need so that has not changed that procedure is in place including information about the curriculum
049including the pdf you referenced and the information about opting out so that is still in place for the current curriculum so that hasn't changed what's really being discussed is what we're going to do with regard to the new the new standards and so a couple of things i would say um is that as that you know article you know that we shared with you tonight mentions the districts are the ones charged with developing the curriculum according to community standards and what what we as a district believe and so that's the process i was trying to describe to you that we'll embark upon this summer we won't be doing it until the summer even though we're reading the standards reviewing our curriculum and we will share it with you publicly but the district districts do have
050a large amount of discretion you also point out though that the language of the standards is pretty clear and so you're right we're charged with making some pretty important decisions and figuring out what's right for students what's right for our community and then coming to the board to get what we've put together approved and that's what we're going to do keeping all of that in mind i can tell you we have a district of teachers who are not interested in scaring children or teaching them things they're not ready for so the age-appropriateness is the big task here and looking at what the state is asking us to do and figuring out how to do that in a way that is age appropriate you know if we can so we certainly have some big decisions and
051that's what we will be doing with community input um somebody mentioned and asked for i think that the resources need to be made available to view and they absolutely will be sent home for the students currently now and anything we implement in the future i guess i would also add a few of you shared stories of family life curriculum is not new um there are new pieces of these new standards but some of what you shared and discussed is not new at all and teachers have been teaching it for a long time in very sensitive ways where this has not been a problem for us before so i don't expect it to be again although i will acknowledge we have some you know some tough work to to do and to take take on um
052so that we you know do what we're charged with doing but we do it in the right way that's best for kids um i i know several people asked you know what what do we think up here and i'm not going to speak for any of the other board members i mean i'm the mean mom that doesn't let my kids watch the r80 movies and if anyone goes home and tells my kids that i said that at the meeting and they give me grief tomorrow i'll be mad at whoever is watching home and told their kids because every time i mention my kids they come home from school the next day mom why did you say something about me at the board meeting um so you know i grew up in basking ridge and when
053i went to william and we had sex education at the middle school and i had friends whose parents opted them out and what we learned was pretty you know i guess similar to a lot of what people mentioned tonight and so people at the time i remember it was a big thing a lot of parents were upset a lot of people opted out i know um back when my older kids were in the district and they had the weller institute presentation and fifth grade parents would go and watch the presentation in the auditorium before deciding to let their kids go to it and people opted out then too so i mean there's always been the option to opt out and there's always been parents that didn't want their kids to learn what the state you
054know had in the standards at whatever given age my only other comment as far as the really little kids the second grade stuff when um someone mentioned gender um and and what it means um to me i guess because you know i've taught classes in college about gender you could interpret that a lot of different ways you could talk to kids about how girls are good at math and girls can be good at sports and things like that you know you could interpret that standard a lot of ways um so when i look at it um you know there is a lot of flexibility in how the district addresses some of the stuff in the standards and like kristin said some of it's a little tricky because it's more specific but um i think most
055of us up here you know would want to take a lot of caution and i think that's part of why we've been watching what's going on around the state and seeing what's happening with other districts who you know i don't know why they were promoting different you know lesson plans that were made out there or why they were talking about them but i don't think we ever had any intentions of taking any lesson plans that were created out there and just sticking them into our curriculum so i don't know if anyone else wants to say anything karen go ahead i'll just say that i think it's extremely important that we proceed with extreme caution um i do trust very much our staff to do that i we've having been in this district for 23 years
056i don't think we've ever rushed into something like this and yes it's true that we've had people opt out year over year but there's a lot of families whose children have gone through the curriculum and there's never been a giant uproar or anything like that and i i just think that with the time to be able to give the community what's being asked for i think the key phrase i heard from miss fox is with community values in mind and that's what this process is about so um well i agree with what was just said i also think that we just have to you know sit back and wait for the work to be done and then share it so that everyone understands what's really going to be included in it jen the other thing
057is one of the reasons i think no one is rushing into this also is because it seems like every other week or something new comes out from murphy and it's very possible what he's saying needs to be done now on april 25th could be different on may 25th could be different on june 25th so that actually gives everybody time because the plan is not to even sit down to actually write the curriculum until the summer to find out what has evolved since you know there's been pushback and i anticipate that there will be continued changes between now and the time that everybody sits down to work on the curriculum okay so now we're going to move along with the agenda we are now up to approval of minutes there's one item would someone like to
058make a motion ms light and mr salmon could we have a roll call please mr mclaughlin mr salmon yes mrs gray yes ms singh yes this is white yes it's light yes ms hero yes mrs mccoon yes madam president thank you we're up to the finance committee there are 13 items would someone like to make a motion for them um ms singh and mrs white was there a finance report there is the finance committee met on april 14th the first item on the agenda was the ever popular ridge high school restrooms mr mclaughlin shared with the committee that months ago he had been routinely spot checking the restrooms in the wake of the social media challenges that were the impetus of this problem things had quieted down the issue is on the increase again mr
059mclaughlin spoke with um mr larkin no thank you okay who explained that from week to week there have been repairs done but these issues continue they've discussed the vandalism the dr lazavic indicated that the the last fall this past fall they were using monitors outside the doors of the restrooms which helped resolve the issue temporarily um he will continue to work with um hank warner to implement a system with a hopefully more permanent solution to this vandalism issue the second item was the oak street school roof project update um mr purin had has been actively working with tony katana to review the plans for the reef project pravco is the contractor hired to do this work both men have been i've already met with pravco the first step was to identify anything that would be
060needed quickly so that they would be ready to begin the work as soon as school ends because timing is of the utmost importance here the first order of business was to select the shingle color upon recommendation of the architect um and the assistant director of facilities pewter was the color selected the existing aesthetic of the building will be maintained while still addressing the necessary repairs to the roofing gutters trim and fascia during the time of this project oak street school will not be open to the public or the staff so there will be no access to the playground areas behind the school either the third item is the wims oval update halcyon was contracted to do the work to repair the oval beginning last monday the straightaway on the far side of the loop from
061the building was the focus of the work two inches of the surface uh was to be milled away and repaved from the beginning of one curve to the beginning of the other curve mr marcarian told me this morning that this work was completed and inspected the next item was update on the work orders uh mr mclaughlin spoke with bill larkin yesterday to get an up oh this was last week sorry to get an update on the communication between mr cooney and himself his focus has been to get the ame projects done because that we are moving quickly into the cooling season when we'll need the air conditioning to provide some backup to continue the forward progress mr mclaughlin suggested that mr larkin ask mr perrin to meet with aramark on those weeks that mr larkin
062may have a scheduling conflict in the past two months the open work order count has dropped almost 30 percent as the outstanding orders are being processed this is a positive sign that efforts are being made to get the work done a manageable number of active work orders in this district would be somewhere around 150 to 200 work orders the next update was the uh girls varsity softball field the drainage swale stone requisition um has been received and this oh i'm sorry was ordered and the delivery was expected in the next couple of weeks for for the grading project at the field uh mr larkin has contacted a surveyor to provide grades cut and fill calculations and a regrading plan um he's also indicated that the surveyor will work with the township engineer to develop the
063necessary plans and obtain permits for this project the committee briefly discussed the possibility of looking at busing waivers and potentially expanding the program that we have right now uh the agenda items i have that right here sorry items one to three are standing items item four is professional development for staff item five is the approval of field trip destination item six is the disposal of equipment uh item seven is a student evaluation item eight is an out of district placement items nine through twelve are student services and item 13 is the contract with effective school solutions does anyone have any questions okay can we have a roll call please mr salmon yes this is gray yes is sing yes this is white yes ms light yes miss hiro yes this is mccoon yes madam president
064thank you we're up to personnel there are 30 items there's an addendum um because someone make a motion for those mrs white and this is saying um is there a personnel report no report we're meeting uh wednesday and then wednesday okay um could we have a roll call please mr mclaughlin mr salmon yes this is great yes ms singh yes this is white yes miss light yes ms hira yes this is mchugh yes madam president okay we're up to policy there are two items would someone like to make a motion for the two items this is gray and this hera um is there a policy committee report uh we have a very i have a very brief uh report the policy committee met on april 4th and for first reading we discussed one amendment to
065regulation 5-1-1-1 and in crux this regulation outlines who is eligible to attend school in our district and pursuant to this regulation non-resident pupils can attend school under certain circumstances including if they are facing a family or financial hardship and if that is the situation the committee discussed amending the regulation to require such people's parents to complete an affidavit which outlines with some specificity what the family or financial hardship is as part of the application process and then as far as second reading it was basically all the policies and regulations that i previously reported out at the second to last meeting no changes were made to these policies or regulations from the first reading if anybody has any questions i can go back but again no changes does anyone have any questions no okay could we
066have a role call please mr mclaughlin mr salmon yes this is gray yes yes this is white yes miss light yes nazira yes mccune yes madam president thank you brought to the curriculum committee okay curriculum met on april 1st and the first thing we talked about was that summer mini units are returning after not running for the past two years last year there were too many conflicts for teachers already involved with district summer remediation programs but this summer it will not be an issue camp jumpstart will be returning at wams ridge ready will take place august 24th and 25th and freshman orientation will take place on august 26th we also talked about the big sibling program which we saw tonight the program has been very successful since its inception last year in response to the
067isolation that students felt during the pandemic it's grown from 45 students to about 110 with the students paired up biggs and littles they meet weekly at a number of scheduled events throughout the year they talked about the field day that had just occurred and initially the program was solely virtual but it's now in the process of transitioning from zoom uh between bigs and littles to a combination of in-person and zooms big siblings are going to be going to talk to rising sophomores in their history classes about the program in coming weeks to share their experiences and encourage participation and dr thorpe is the director of the program and any questions about it can be emailed to her then we talked about summer extended instructional support for grades one through eight students entering grades two through
068nine are eligible are those who are receiving instructional support for reading and or math or esl students or are recommended by a principal these students will be invited to participate in the extended instructional support program this summer the program will run from june 27th through july 29th the primary goal of the program is to provide identified students with targeted instruction and practice to maintain or develop grade level mathematical and or reading skills in prior summers both the 95 percent program for grades k-1 students and cadence for grades two through five was utilized it was difficult to get students to participate last summer in hopes of greater participation curriculum and instructional changes have been made and in another intervention program be a bull has been recommended for this summer beth carr from beable presented details of
069this program to us students will work on an assigned personal digital platform and with the teacher for one hour a week for five weeks in groups of no more than three in addition students can choose to work on their digital platform independently as much as they want meetings will be scheduled in person but there will be flexibility for teachers to schedule some or all of the meetings via zoom if needed beable is an online literacy platform which engages students by first gathering information about each student's interests in order to best personalize instruction through the raisic survey which is a career inventory to help provide insight into who each student is and then lessons will be tied to that razik stands for realistic innovative artistic science entertaining and conventional there are intentional connections in order to
070explore career options students will make connections through reading to address what and why am i doing this an initial assessment will be given to each student to come up with a plan for the summer and will be used to help build engagement there is no fiction on this digital platform a goal is to help build joy at each student's reading level students will receive immediate feedback those students who are below reading level will be provided with much background material to help build fluency the technology platform is quite robust and empowers students the mission is while increasing literacy skills students will learn more about themselves this platform may be especially great for esl students for math support ixl is the digital practice platform that students will utilize at the moment interest and availability from the instructional
071support teachers is being determined then the interest of students will be determined to finalize the number of teachers needed a question was asked as to why the focus is on students entering grades two through nine and does not include students entering grade one the administration does not feel that last year's program for k1 the 95 phonics program is needed at this time this is in part due to the fact that the curriculum was implemented into grades k through 2 and it is anticipated that the spring data will show progress and we had an update on a new summer stem program called future genius this program will run at wams the scope is different from the ones that ran in the past at ridge and will still run this summer it also targets a different audience
072the camp is for rising 6th through 8th graders the sessions are beta masters game design team electra digital media for girls earth lab energy and environmental environment and launchpad business and administration the camp hits an entire spectrum and is not just about offering academics but rather engagement our teachers will be trained to teach at the camp the training will take place virtually and there is a lot of teacher interest the sessions will typically be kept to 15 to 20 students once registration takes place will have a better idea of how many sections of each will run a quick quest update was given previously there were two uh questions that still needed answers and they've been confirmed one for fifth grade students are able to retake the following tests in the fall the ctp 5 and
073the pca profiles and creativity students may use whichever is the higher score spring or fall and 2 for the map test after meeting a minimum score on both the reading and math assessment the highest of two scores will be used for the academic ability component of the quest rubric then we were given an update on the annual march madness that takes place at ridge during opportunity periods 17 students consistently came to explore books under consideration for summer reading many sophomores and juniors were involved in the decision process as of now it's been narrowed down to eight book titles four fiction and four non-fiction the fiction titles are six of crows by leigh bardugo lovely war by julie berry last night at the telegraph club by melinda lowe and the chemist by stephanie meyer the non-fiction
074are let them lead by john bacon you're not listening by kate murphy persepolis by mary jane satrapi and beautiful country by zian julie wang and the titles will soon be reduced to two fiction and two non-fiction and then lastly the district technology plan we were given an update a number of the staff and administration have been working on a technology plan for the past two years this has already happened a presentation is scheduled for april 11th to share those plans and review where we were in the past with technology and where they would like to see us move forward the vision for both teachers and parents was shared with us for teachers fluid access to technology and training in order to create authentic engaging and meaningful instruction and for parents developing an understanding of the
075educational benefits of technological platforms and enhancing their ability to provide academic support at home and the presentation is available on the board of ed website for those who are unable to attend and i believe our next meeting is may 6th thank you does anyone have any questions for mrs white okay um wellness i don't think we have a report tonight um when is when did wellness tomorrow tomorrow thursday thursday okay it's meeting on thursday okay what about liaison committee reports does anybody have any you do okay um so uh last week we met with the pec in the administration and we had um a really productive meeting and one of the things that came up there was a question about the lunch and learns and since there are two coming up i just wanted to
076clarify some of the lunch and learns will say registration and the reason that they are asking you to register for them is because they like to find out what the the age range of the parents students are so that they can plan accordingly for that and other topics are are broader and it you know it doesn't matter what grade level your children are in so the next lunch and learn is may 3rd and this one does require you to register and it's on reading comprehension strategies and lisa vitale will be presenting and it's from 12 to 1 and then may 11th there will be one on summer activities that um alison reed lisa vitale and stephanie orr are presenting it and for that one you don't have to register in advance thank you nobody else
077karen you have one i just want to quickly share the municipal alliance 32nd annual twilight challenge is coming up on june 5th there's the standard 5k and then there's a one mile health walk and then there's a lollipop loop activities start you can pre-register and come in advance i mean come at uh just before race time or you can come early and register on site um it's 20 if you uh register before april 30th it's 25 between um may 1st and june 3rd and then if you decide that you want to participate on-site that day it's 30 they're also looking for volunteers if anyone is interested in helping out there's a variety of opportunities thank you anyone else no okay we're up to public comment on non-agenda items if you have a comment please state
078your name and address and then you can sign in on the clipboard afterwards good evening first of all i want to start out to thank everybody that comes here the board the administration the people in the audience it's like three hours here sorry sorry i'm jim bologna i was getting there all right thanks for your queue i i didn't start the clock yet i was just waiting three minutes may not be enough yeah and what's what's your address joe my name is jim bologna oh i'm sorry i'm at 59 woodstone road i've been a resident for 36 years educated three children my youngest isabella is in 10th grade my wife fiorella teaches italian both in the high school and the junior high school and she's been a teacher for 14 years she's a great teacher
079really great teacher you have really great teachers in this district really great district i've seen the results my oldest went to a great college has a great job loves loves the job has a wonderful life part and parcel of what happened here in this district and the district should be proud of who we produce here so i'm going to digress a little bit from what i was going to say because i'd like to make a comment about what was made the comments were made about this thing before there was a line of people making comments about this not one of these people approved of this stuff so i think you should should take that and realize what the community is thinking that was one comment the next comment is this lady over here produced a
080financial report regarding silly the boys room getting trashed i've heard this for a really long time because my wife is a teacher i know this is going to sound really radical lock the door for porty johns in the in the parking lot i don't know how much it costs the district but a radical problem needs a radical solution the kids will monitor this themselves because they'll be in the parking lot i'm half kidding with that of course but i want to talk about teachers for a second and because we live within walking distance high school i have teachers in and out of my house all the time and i'm an observer and i listen to what they're saying the woman back there who's the grandmother who was a nurse she hit the she hit the
081nail right on the head you're overwhelming the teachers with a bunch of stuff from on high and you said it too you said this thing is probably going to be out the door in two weeks because is murphy's to change his mind that's number one number two you've lost so many teachers mid-year it's unbelievable does anybody here know why you've lost the teachers raise a hand if you know because i know i i'm not an educator but one of the things is you're overburdening your teachers with a revision of curriculum from on high that's number one number two is they're leaving for 30 percent more 30 percent more to go to another district you have teachers with four preps they're leaving to go to a school they're only required to have two preps so 30
082more have to work wow why are you losing teachers so my question to you is all of you what are you doing to retain our teachers they are the power in the district i don't get this you spend a fortune educating these teachers sending them for continuing education all the time they have master's degree programs that you pay for not one but two plus 30 credits i should say i pay for them because i live here what are we doing to retain these teachers look at when the contract was agreed to june 2021 every one of these teachers are living in the reality of 10 percent inflation depending on if you drive many teachers can't afford to live in the district so they drive an hour to get here it's costing them twice as much
083at least to drive excuse me mr bollinger just i'd let you go past your time so please wrap up when you get a chat so i'm asking you to tell me what are you doing to retain the teachers do you do you offer them a higher salary and the response is always well then we would have to do for everybody maybe you should think about that because in the end it's cheaper you train the teachers at a school they don't know how to teach my wife didn't know how to cheat she was a brilliant my wife's a brilliant person but she learned how to be a teacher in this district and then you leave and then she's gonna leave doesn't make any sense so with that i thank you again because this is a tough
084job you got to deal with this i wouldn't want that job thank you very much hi guys uh lara rashid 234 liberty corner road he kind of stole my thunder but i do want to follow up with him because this is the point that i wanted to make berners township teachers ranked 219th in the state at a salary of roughly 71 about a thousand dollars above the state median where as our administrative salaries which continue to diverge dramatically with our teachers pay continues so my question to you is and i like to use benchmarks in my business a place like milburn same amount of teachers same budget same tax levy less money from the state have a median salary twenty thousand dollars more than our teachers so i think one of you said at a
085past meeting our job is to protect the teachers i'd argue that the teachers union's job is to do that not yours but let's pretend that's true what are you doing to protect the teachers and retaining talent here's my question sherry nelson 195 smoke rise road the presentation on the classroom management software last week did not address the concerns i raised two months ago i asked you to consider the full capabilities of any software that could potentially compromise the safety of our children if it were hacked could their location be tracked or webcams be accessed none of this was covered in the presentation last week and still needs to be considered it's great if it's only going to work in the building when you're controlling it but if someone were to hack it and the kids
086got the chromebook at home and they're on it i just don't there's no answer to what that potential risk is there's been a lot of discussion at multiple meetings about who this board was elected to represent sometimes you all say that you represent the whole community other times you say that you don't have any constituents or you say that you were not elected to represent the parents but only the children i think that there is some confusion about the meaning of the word constituent every registered voter in berners township is your constituent the term has nothing to do with our political affiliation and you are elected to represent the whole community including parents and their interests and their concerns we are not just stakeholders the new jersey school boards association website states that the school
087board has a dual role both to represent the concerns of the citizens taxpayers and parents to the school administrators and to also represent the needs of the students and the school district to the citizens taxpayers and the parents of the community the national school boards association states that school board that the school board represents the community's voice in public education and that the school board is the community's education watchdog ensuring that taxpayers get the most for their dollars i understand that's a difficult balance you're you're supposed to be representing sometimes competing interests when you're making your decisions but it is all of us as a constituent i found the board discussion at the last meeting to be very troubling some of you said that miss light is not following board policy on email communications i've
088had a lot a lot of email communications with individual board members in the last 15 years and none of them have followed the protocol that you all described so i decided to look up district policy number 0169 and it clearly states that when a board member receives an individual email they may reply as an individual there is no protocol to get input from the full board unless it is an email that was originally sent to the full board and based on the email exchange you all described i cannot see how you would think she didn't follow protocol it was an awkward thing to watch we are not privy to that whole back email exchange so there may be more information but from what just someone listening in on it it it didn't make sense what
089the complaint was um and the other complaint was about miss light asking too many questions or not asking them the right way so i found district policy number 0142 that states that no elected board member shall be prohibited from making an inquiry for information on behalf of a constituent you always tell us that your role is not to administer the schools but to ensure that they are well run how can you ensure that schools are well run if board members are not allowed to ask questions of administrators or even sometimes their fellow board members in the middle of a meeting there was discussion about how it has to be like a screened question or something first time i've ever heard that and that was concerning um your constituents expect you to ask questions to ensure
090that you fully understand all information before voting on any agenda items from what i was hearing it sounds like miss light is doing her due diligence so she can fully understand all information prior to voting and that's honestly what we expect all of you to do if it's not being done right you guys aren't getting along i don't know what's going on but i think there would have been a better way to handle that it was just kind of ugly to watch honestly uh cody smith 36 where i look drive uh the philosophical differences between certain board members were on full display during the board governance discussion at the last meeting looking back to the october 26 2021 bernards township committee meeting miss mccune selected the public comment portion of that meeting as a forum
091to share her alleged personal views regarding the upcoming school board election that evening she criticized the two republicans running for the school board for aligning with an extremely divisive platform that has caused alarm in our community citing hillsdale college as an ultra-conservative organization with an extreme political agenda at many of the board meetings this year references were made to the difficulties of the last few years and how the covet pandemic has brought out the worst in the parents conduct towards this board i would suggest instead that parents around the country got a telescopic view into their children's education via virtual learning and many didn't like what they saw parents lost trust are not and are not accepting high-level feel-good answers and moving on at the last meeting miss gray you stated that the board members
092you board members don't represent constituencies but the board members represent the community and the children however parents have a different views and beliefs and believe that certain board members better align with their perspective than other board members that's why some candidates win elections and others lose but when you state that you represent the children it's misguided that is because you represent the parents of the children and the taxpayers in the community parents are not vested stakeholders as you describe parents have the ultimate responsibility for raising and educating their children and taxpayers deserve to have our schools district run as efficiently as possible miss white at the last meeting you scolded us that we must trust the teachers stating that we have to trust the people that our children are with during the day let me
093remind you that if we placed all of our trust in school administrators and teachers your job would be redundant fortunately we have an elected school board that is supposed to provide an oversight role to parents and taxpayers in the community it's a check and balance in the system each board member serves a vital role by being objective and asking probing questions of school administrators and its teachers in closing no one in their right mind believes the 10-minute board governance discussion was over a couple of trivial emails miss mccune took the time to prepare a handout that served to launch a coordinated attack on miss light this type of behavior is destructive and unbecoming of an elected board the public is entitled to a board that asks a lot of questions and is transparent in its
094making process switching topics i've just started my research on u2 consulting and it's a chief empowerment officer that will be the topic for another evening but for tonight i'd like to know what due diligence did the board do before engaging this consultant will the public be able to see the draft surveys to be sent to parents students teachers in the community before they are officially sent will there be an agenda item including public comment at a future board meeting to discuss the draft surveys and finally will us 2's full report if completed be made available to the public without redaction thank you [Applause] good evening jennifer doorward 22 cherry lane i wanted to address some of the things that were said here tonight but not as an agenda item but as pertaining to the item
095that i raised last time which was referenced what was described as far as the policy for parents to get details about the health curriculum that policy sounds great and i'm glad that it works in some cases but in this case it did not that's not anything like what i've experienced i made a request on march 30th because i looked at the curriculum website and noticed that some of the units that i was interested in according to the calendar were scheduled to be taught so i asked a question about the hiv and blood about hiv and blood unit it's been a month i've gotten a lot of conflicting information from the principal the teacher this folks on this board and only today did i get a pdf of nine pages describing what is going to be
096taught from the great body shop perspective from my perspective it's extremely high level it does not address the questions that i have what's on the curriculum website does not get into the level of detail that is referenced in the state curriculum and so i i'm very confused um the other thing that i've heard that i learned today is that um two of the units in question danger ahead the truth about drugs and about blood and hiv aren't going to be taught now when i heard from the teacher originally she said that she didn't think she'd get to it she didn't have she didn't think she'd have time to get to that unit then i heard from the principal that there was a meeting with all the fifth grade teachers on at least i was told
097about this on april 14th where they would decide for sure which units would be covered so today i hear they won't be covered and even it's in the curriculum i requested the information about these units and i'm told no because they're not going to be covered i'm not going to get it that seems inappropriate if it's not something that's going to be taught why is it in the curriculum parents might want to know for next year their 4th graders what their fifth graders might be taught in school that might be useful information the other thing is i heard tonight that this information is provided well within time for parents to respond this the teacher told me these units were going to be taught starting mid april it's the end of april now i'm hearing we'll
098get it before today i got an email we'll get this information about a week before i don't think a week is enough time especially because the pdf i was given today which now i understand i can't get the pdf because the great body shop publishing doesn't allow that so now i have to wait i didn't even get information on the on two of the four units i asked for information i got one now i understand i can't even get that pdf so from my perspective i don't think parents have an opportunity to understand what's in the curriculum we need to be able to know the details i was told that lesson plans can't be shared because it doesn't take into consideration unsupervised internet access that kids have had over the past two years during the
099pandemic and they might have learned things that might come up in the classroom that then the teacher has to address i who defines the curriculum who defines what's talked about in the classroom is it based on what kids learn on the internet because where does that end finally i have a few questions that i sort of assume probably can't be addressed tonight but i would be interested in the following how does this curriculum address the state standards because what's in this pdf that i got for growing up doesn't address anything like determined behaviors that place one at risk for hiv aids stds hpv or unintended pregnancy in fifth grade predict the possible physical social and emotional impacts of the adolescent discussions of decisions regarding sexual behavior pregnancy and parenting i don't see anything here that
100addresses that so where is that addressed it's ignored it's not done at all excuse me ma'am i know you said you're finishing up so we've let you go over the time so please do finish up when you get a chance yes i will so finally my final questions are because these are not on the curriculum website what learning activities will be used to promote these learning units what other resources including websites or books will be referenced in in teaching these units will all the students be taught all of the same information in class at the same time in addition to the end of unit quiz what other written assessments will the students complete i'm asking these questions because i looked at other areas of the curriculum and this level of detail is clearly presented it
101would be really helpful for parents to have this visibility in all the curriculum areas especially for those areas that could be controversial or considered somewhat subjective thank you [Applause] hi victoria costa 15 hill top road basking ridge first of all i'd like to say i wasn't here last week two weeks ago with the last meeting but i want to say that i watched it like i watched every meeting that i cannot attend in person and i was extremely embarrassed by the behavior of the board i will not repeat what sherry nelson said at the policy number 0142 that the board member qualification the board member could respond to an email but i'm going to also talk about policy 0144 where the board member orientation and training is a year-long event if it look if you
102look at that policy it says each newly elected or appointed board member shall complete during the first year of the members first term a training program to be prepared and offered by the new jersey school boards association with one year after being newly elected or appointed or being re-elected or reappointed the board of education a board member shall complete a training program on harassment within one year after each re-election a reappointment to the board of education the board membership completely advanced training program to be prepared and offered by the new jersey school board association and so on and so on it seems like the first year is a lot of training there is subsequent training in year two and year three i see miss light with three to four months in um already having a
103diversity of thought our favorite word diversity and being nothing but attacked and accosted i think that's the board's favorite word is acosta i heard that many previous uh meetings so i feel that she was accosted in the last meeting and i could tell you that almost three thousand people of this township voted for her constituents or not they were concerned enough to vote for her as a voice of diversity and difference to this board whether we like it or not i also like to applaud miss light i didn't know her her daughter's a senior my daughter's a senior they never ran in the same circles they were never friends they just knew they were classmates it was miss light who contacted me mother to mother and as the fencing board president to talk about the
104fencing debacle that not one of you addressed even after a 20-page presentation and i think i told you miss mccoon that this was the hill i was going to die on was the fencing thing that you guys never addressed i'm going to go on so i have a few more things to to discuss and a few more questions there's another policy court policy 0-134 the board of education may determine to conduct a self-evaluation on a regular or periodic basis in the event the board determines to conduct self-evaluation it will adopt an evaluation instrument that permits of individual board members to record their assessments of the conduct of the board and fulfilling its responsibilities in accordance with applicable statutes and administrative codes the assessments will be tabulated by the board president or designee and presented for
105discussion at the regular board meeting of the board in which the superintendent will be invited to participate the board will formulate as appropriate goals and priorities that will serve to guide the board's future conduct i'd like to know when the last time a survey like this was conducted and when it was what was the results and if it wasn't why don't we have that since it's part of the policy last but not least i have a question about the classroom management tool technology uh in spring i guess it was around april may of 2020 when we had a meeting off site at st mark's church with some of the board members i asked a question about why the teachers were not adept in zoom because my daughter being a sophomore or junior at the time
106said to me mom a lot of the teachers don't know zoom and the answer was that the zoom training was not mandatory because it was not in compliance to the njea if the training didn't come from the ngea it is optional i want to know how are you going to have the teachers take the classroom management software training if that is not mandatory as well so i'd like to answer thank you [Applause] hello eric cuda decorate drive uh kind of surprised to hear the median salary of our district compared to millburn things i really didn't know or even think about i got twin third graders in district we've been here since they were in kindergarten i have to say probably basically even on my own experience they've had probably the best teachers i've ever experienced
107so i've been extremely fortunate they've been extremely fortunate so it scares me to hear and see on the agenda items week after week people either retiring or leaving everybody has a reason for whatever they're doing but i guess great questions what are we doing to retain teachers because they're right no matter what business you're in it's so much more expensive to hire and train a new employee than it is just to retain an employee um and and personal opinion and i'll just put this out there things like this diversity equity and inclusion survey that 50 grand i'd rather see you split that up between all the teaching staff all the all the staff the go guardian and all this other technology stuff i get it it's a nice to have it's going to help the
108teachers but i'd rather see good teachers with less resources and get compensated for the work they do because these teachers that i've experienced i've seen even i could say all the administrators at cedar hill are amazing so please whatever you guys can do to help them with their salary and support them please please do is there anyone else here in person for public comment is there anyone waiting on zoom no okay at this point i'll close public comment mr mccarrion did you want to so we had a couple of people uh point out tonight uh the challenges of being a teacher in the uh modern era and i just wanted to thank the people that recognize the challenge that uh confronts our teachers on a daily basis because they are never ending and the edicts
109from on high are never ending so thank you for recognizing that a couple people did that and also some folks recognized what a great staff we have so thank you for that because i couldn't agree more there was a couple questions about classroom management software one was related to activating software outside of the school through some type of a hacking process i can talk to our director of i.t about that i know we're trying to at least attempt on a small scale uh some pilot work uh during the school day here at school but again uh anybody that gets involved in that we will be communicating directly with families about it before we do it another question came up about the classroom management software um and training for staff uh there are different mechanisms in
110the contract with the teachers by which we have opportunities to do training with the staff at large if we want everyone to get training in a certain area it's not reliant on the njea so i'm not sure exactly what the context was with that but certainly we can make the time to do that if we're if we are implementing a new software or we want to do corporate training uh with a large group of of individuals we can we can make that happen uh i understand from communicating with miss fox it sounds like you're gonna have an individual conversation uh with regards to the one parent that had a lot of questions about health okay i think that was it for me oh the dei just to be clear was forty thousand not fifty thousand
111but your point is understood thank you mr marcarian um i think we'll just move to board forum um at this point so um i'll open up board form if anyone has anything i just want to thank all the members of the community that came out tonight i think all the unique perspectives that you gave us with the curriculum and everything else was very very helpful and gave me a new perspective so thank you and keep coming back anyone else mr salmon i thought that the presentation on the big little program was fantastic i mean going from what they say they started with like 20 something and now they have 143 kids um that's that's totally amazing that happened in the year i'm like i can't that program is is like uh you know we're talking
112about like inclusion and things like that and trying social emotional learning and um there were comments about like quantitative versus qualitative metrics and how you measure things like that and i don't there's probably not a quantitative measure for you know the success of a program like that but i think you see the feedback and you get the qualitative you know feedback and you're like this this seems to be working the kids are enjoying it parents seem to be enjoying it um it's growing you know tremendously so those sorts of things i think um you know uh social emotional learning mental health are tough to gauge from a quantitative standpoint but you get good qualitative feedback like that so i'm glad they they made the presentation because it's a great program that the district's running so
113i really appreciate it the administration and kids that are doing it sorry anyone else no okay so we're up to adjournment would someone like to make a motion let's sing and this is gray oh all in favor okay thank you for coming out everyone