Bernards Twp BOE Meeting Feb 28, 2022

001okay good evening everyone um welcome to the board of education meeting um we are just getting set up with our technology we have one board member zooming in tonight and a guest zooming in so we wanted to make sure that they were on the zoom call when we start um the board has already met and we saluted the flag so at this point we're gonna do the roll call mr mclaughlin mr salmon here miss shaffer here mrs cray here ms singh here mrs white here ms light here mr khanna john can he hear you can you hear me you're just asking for a call just doesn't like fire yes i can okay good couldn't get to the mute button fast enough i guess he's present sounds like it miss hiro here mr marcario here mr

002scythe here miss fox here mr speaker 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 berners 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 at the bulletin board at the board offices due to the pandemic we are still expecting that in-person attendees have completed and passed a self-assessment of personal health wear a face covering pursuant to the executive order which is still in effect for the last week sit in a socially distanced manner for members of different households and maintain social distancing of waiting

003in line to make public comment for those members of the public who are unable to attend our meeting in person there are two live stream links of the meeting posted on the district website burnersboe.com the two live stream links are both airing one is just a backup for the other in case of 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 on 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 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 made by

004a 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 the public to speak we reserve the right to set a different time limit if things are getting too long all statements shall be directed to the presiding officer no participant may address or question board members individually as the courtesy to those individuals unable to attend our meeting in person public comment may be made remotely through zoom the instructions are posted on our district webpage you select board of education followed by public comment to get the instructions and the link is also in the agenda here public comments made in person will be processed first and then the comments via zoom no public

005comments will be accepted before 7 or after the last item board forum on 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 may or may not respond to public comments 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 in public to comments about students and employees please also understand that

006the 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 after returning to public session that's like a long thing to read that's not my favorite part of the meeting okay now we're up to the student representative gordon thank you so much despite february being the shortest month of the year the rich student body has certainly not let this fact diminish the

007quality or quantity of our accomplishments the ridge cheerleading team recently finished their incredibly successful season with a spectacular set of competitions after winning their final local tournament both cheerleading teams competed at uca's national high school competition in orlando florida team ridge black placed sixth and team ridge green placed seventh in their divisions which is a truly remarkable feat considering there were well over a hundred schools competing ridge applauds the cheerleading teams coaches and parents as well as the support staff for their achievements throughout the season and of course we recognize the teamwork cooperation and effort that go into comprising such a team ridge forensics recently competed in two national level tournaments the pensbury falcon invitational and the 47th university of pennsylvania tournament both tournaments saw ridge students place very high in the final rankings including

008many first place winners ridge continues to demonstrate the highest levels of enthusiasm at these events and we wish the team continued excellence as they look ahead towards upcoming tournaments the ridge swim team ended its formal competitive season last week in the division semifinals the team members put up a stiff competition and did not give up ridge congratulates the team the captains and the coaches for their determination and spirit and thanks the parents and support staff for their encouragement and motivation additionally several members of the team will be competing in the new jersey meet of champions and ridge wishes them well in their continued success and future endeavors as spring peaks its head around the corner and hopefully the air starts to get a little bit warmer ridge looks forward to new beginnings while maintaining the

009core spirit of our school thank you thank you gordon um as usual it's very exciting to hear your updates does anyone have any questions for gordon i do have a question about the last session so gordon i just wanted to as always your enthusiasm is unparalleled i think it's fantastic these updates um i just wanted to ask you a question and get maybe get some feedback i know that the last meeting we had the opportunity to meet with members of the student government and i wanted to see if that if there was any feedback related to that if you felt it was useful and if there's anything else we as a board can do for the students whether it be timing of that doing it more often and what their their results and their thoughts

010were absolutely we actually had a meeting literally right after we uh you know we met with all of you right outside in the hallway right there and all of us remarked on you know how open everything was and how willing you know and how free the conversation was and that's something that we really do appreciate and something that we recognize that you know is very unique to our district and something that we do indeed hope to continue in the future uh the rich student government would love to meet with the board of education again at a later date if at all possible i would like to give you of course updates on the projects that we shared with all of you and hopefully see if you know we can keep getting your continued support for

011our projects and maybe see what you know what suggestions you have or um if you guys have any new developments that you would like to share with us we would of course be more than welcome to hear them and we'd be very honored to be able to uh have another meeting so definitely yes in the future if it's possible we are definitely open to that excellent thank you for sharing your feedback yeah i'm glad that we're we're past the point where we can't meet in person in the past it was a tradition to meet twice a year with the student government um so definitely we'll try to get another one in this year with you um another thing that i had a few discussions with people um it's interesting because we've had a student rep

012on our board for a million years at least as old as since i've been coming to meetings um i guess a lot of districts don't and so now it's becoming a um requirement in new jersey um for boards to have a student on them right i don't know when it goes into effect but we're already doing it but in some of the discussions i had with people about that we were talking about like other ideas for getting um student you know voice to the meetings like maybe um even the rich student government somehow connecting with the government at wham's and or the elementary school to bring some of their news or updates to the meetings you know it's not reasonable to expect elementary school kids to come here to a board meeting necessarily but it

013would be cool if if we could hear from them too so that was an idea i don't know if that would be interesting to you guys yeah i mean absolutely i mean i've been a part of student government since fourth grade so you know i've been at the elementary middle and high school level uh you know i and you know i think even at the elementary school level right like people join because they're interested and they want to participate they they want to see you know what's going on with you know the teachers and the administration you know even at even you know in fourth grade so i think um i i don't think it's far-fetched for us as a high school government to go down there or even for them to come to the

014board of education i mean i don't think that's really that far-fetched you know depending on who exactly you know uh comprises student government in a particular year and how enthusiastic they are you know i don't really think it's all that far-fetched especially at the middle school level okay so maybe that's something that we could talk about further that would be cool any other questions or comments okay thank you um okay we are um i have a couple comments i wanted to make um so i know that some of you um have written to us and called some of us about the go guardian announcement that went out from the district and i just wanted to say a couple of words about that the board has not had time to discuss it in any committees yet

015at this point so it was kind of a surprise to us that the browser was put on you know when it was nobody was using the program nobody was being monitored or anything like that it kind of came out of discussions at technology committees with staff trying to like come up with ways to deal with some issues of you know student safety and academic integrity and things like that so the board is excited to hear more about what the staff has been working on and ideas that they have we there no decisions have been made nothing's going forward at this point until we bring it through some committees so we will be discussing at the curriculum committee at the next meeting this friday and some other committees and so there will be reports back out

016about that in the meantime if you have specific questions or concerns please email us and we can add them to the list to take to the committee discussions because we have our own questions and concerns about how it works and whether it would be something we want to look at or something that we want to use some of the capacities of it or not the others so please send those to us it would be great if we could um compile those so that we can ask more questions about that okay so we're up to superintendent's report there's five items but the first three need to be voted on so can we have a motion for the first three mrs white um and mrs gray um so after mr americarian goes through all of this stuff

017we'll vote on those items so i'll turn it over to you okay well good evening everyone thank you for being here uh february 28th can't believe we're starting march tomorrow but really looking forward to spring and uh improving health conditions um so i just wanted to quickly run through these things uh every three years we have to do an english language learner three-year plan that is the first item on the agenda uh the board has to acknowledge receipt of that plan so that we can submit it uh to the state so that's the first item the second item is a new club for ridge some of the students want to get together for a cricket club that's the second item the third item is our usual monthly report for any hib cases that we've had

018and those are the three that uh as uh our board president mentioned were specific to uh formal vote uh so we will be voting on those three items shortly the other two items on the superintendent's report number four and number five so um first i wanted to address number four which is new jersey department of health guidance updates so uh as as you're probably aware there's been a little flurry of activity over the last couple weeks with uh guidance updates relative to changing health conditions uh around the state of new jersey unfortunately improving vastly improving health conditions in the state of new jersey and the guidance documents uh were issued last week on the 22nd of february and also on the 25th so on the 22nd we got guidance from the new jersey department of

019health and a few days later we got guidance uh from the cdc a a minor wrinkle if you will so we wanted to talk briefly about those and make some recommendations with regard to how to move forward as a school district with a primary goal in mind and the goal is that we want to be able to have a mechanism by which all students can come to school on a daily basis even if they're identified as a close contact right and the two types of closed contacts that we are challenged by are basic closed contacts and also household close contacts when somebody uh shares a household with someone that's tested positive and is also one of our students so we we put together a plan that kind of captures those two situations and how we'd

020like to address them going forward uh and um i've been working closely with uh rita zarabera our district nursing coordinator who's here tonight to to give us some uh information and also of course we've talked about our ideas with our district physician and and also our local health department so um just to give you a little uh flavor for how things have changed uh really since january 1st and why we uh feel good about making some recommendations for change i asked rita mr bear if she could come tonight and just share a little bit of our recent metrics really since january 1st so if rita if you wouldn't mind sharing a little bit of that for the benefit of the board and the public then we can go over these ideas that we'd like to

021do for our contact tracing thank you dallas is turning that on probably hang on just a second all right there you go can you hear me now yes okay good evening um so as mr marcarine mentioned i was going to give you some data a lot of numbers um just so that you're all informed with how things have gone this year how things are going right now and what we need to consider for going forward so the first thing i wanted to talk about was our vaccination rates for the district and as a whole for students our vaccination rates are 65 so 65 of the student body is considered fully vaccinated right now and if the breakdown for that by school i'll just give you because i think some parents are concerned have been asking

022ridge high school the vaccination rate is 87 percent william annan is 67 cedar hill is 36.7 percent liberty corner is 43.5 percent now prospect school is 52.6 and oak street school is 51.6 so that comes out to again 65 overall then regarding staff our vaccination rate for staff is 92 percent so then i i looked at um covid cases and where where we are for this school year so since september 8th when we came back to school we've had 916 student coveted cases and of those 916 cases 50 of those students were fully vaccinated at the time that they were diagnosed with covid our staff numbers are 208 so we've had 208 staff cases and 87 percent of those staff members were fully vaccinated when they were diagnosed with coven now what we've seen more

023recently is um has changed dramatically right so in january when we came back from uh new year's and the break we had a huge increase in cases as did the country and the region so january 3rd those first two weeks of january we were we were seeing sometimes 40 50 60 cases a day in the schools it's a tremendous number and so i want to just give you an idea of the number of cases from january 3rd through february 4th so basically about 4 weeks we had 442 cases in students and of those cases 69 of those students were vaccinated we had 94 staff members who tested positive for covid and 86 of them were vaccinated now this really correlated with the town numbers so in berners township as a whole they had 1146 cases

024just in the month of january so a tremendous number of coveted cases but we what we saw happen was the numbers started going down so after the middle of january they started to drop and we've continued to see that um in february now i did want to mention that if you look at our dashboard there was a jump in the school-based transmission numbers um and that really was directly related to those increases in the beginning of january um and really the omicron variant and the presence of of omicron in the community so we had a number of outbreaks in the schools that affected those numbers one of them was in a first grade class at oak street school where we had eight cases in one class we also had the william and boys basketball team

025with eight cases we had ridge high school we had a track and field team with a great number of cases and lastly we just had at liberty corner a second grade class that had eight cases of covet in one class so they were all considered in-school transmissions um and um two of them were were actually classified by the state as outbreaks so where are we now so i looked at the numbers from february 5th to last friday the 25th and what we've seen again is a dramatic decrease in cases so we've only had 34 student positive cases since february 5th 76 percent of those students are fully vaccinated we've only had three staff test positive for covet and 100 of those three are fully vaccinated our community risk level has dropped from a cali score

026of three which is orange to two which is yellow so we are in the yellow category right now and bernis township as a whole has only really had about 84 cases in the last three weeks and we're still considered in that moderate or yellow category so kind of to sum up what do we see now so we overall our cases are down the vaccination status of our students and staff during this omicron stage has not really been a factor in transmission we're really seeing that students and staff that are fully vaccinated can still catch covet they can still get covet we also are seeing that the highest risk is in household contacts so when you're living with someone with covid you have a very good chance of getting it yourself and that that's really kind

027of consistent with everything else we know right if you've got flu in your house or somebody has some kind of a stomach virus it's pretty likely that somebody else in the household is going to get the same same kind of thing so between january 17th and february 4th i went through every case that we had and looked at who had a sibling and what happened to them and our rates of household contacts that tested positive was 32 percent the cdc last friday actually came out with a report they do a weekly mmwr report and they did a study in four different states and it essentially concluded the same thing that household contacts are the greatest risk for for having coveted and then exposing others right so they found that 52.7 percent of household contacts would

028later test positive so why is that significant well the the information and the guidance we have from cdc and from the new jersey department of health says if you're fully vaccinated or up to date with your vaccination status and you have no symptoms even if you're living with someone with covid you can come into school or come into work and so we've done that we've allowed that but what happens unfortunately is a few days later you have someone who becomes symptomatic test positive themselves and now they've been around other people and exposed other people so it's it really is a significant uh issue so lastly i guess with the new guidance what i wanted to mention was that cdc is really moving from a mask requirement for all to guidance that will consider community risk

029and they suggest using masking and testing as tools when needed so when the levels are high cova levels are high in the community you would use masks or testing as tools to manage and mitigate disease they also strongly advise vaccination and they certainly encourage boosting which is a factor in all of the guidance that's been out so that's really where we're at right now we're in a good place and we're hoping to continue with the way it is now and hopefully it'll even go down even further and we don't have to deal with this shortly thank you rita so following up on on sort of a rita's history account there of how we've we've been doing obviously it's it's much much better uh we're really pleased by that and we're looking forward to uh being

030masked optional uh starting next week but some other things that we'd like to implement right away if possible with some support from the board is some changes for close contacts right now close contacts are still spending time outside of school and what we'd like to do as i've alluded to in the last couple of sos express messages is start allowing a test to stay program to be implemented meaning that rather than having students quarantine at home waiting out five days at home instead have the students test with home-based kids in the morning and have their parents submit a form that they've tested and the test is negative submit that to the school confidentially through the genesis software and the school nurse can then uh view that file and clear the student to come to school

031that morning uh in that manner uh we've we've made sure that the child is okay uh and we haven't uh had a need to keep the child home we can have the child come to school which is obviously our goal so a couple of different scenarios are basically what we're talking about one is for basic close contact so there's a closed contact but it's not occurring in the household what we would recommend in that situation is that the child be allowed to come to school they would need to wear a mask but as long as they test negative before coming to school they can come to school in that close contact situation looking at the department of health guidance on the subject of test to stay does not require that the student test every single

032day but rather take an every other day approach so we would recommend that at the time that the student was identified as a close contact they test that day and then every other day thereafter until it's been five days from their last exposure as long as they're testing negative they keep coming to school and that's what we're really all about to try to make sure there's a way that students can continue to come to school now if you were listening carefully to ms airberry you understood that she was making a pretty clear point about the fact that unfortunately when students are living in a household with someone that has coveted the chances that they're going to contract it themselves go way up so we are suggesting that in that situation the students still be allowed

033to come to school but they would test each morning uh not not every other morning but test every morning submit their result through genesis confidentially to the school nurse who can check it and clear the student to come to school that day now the question of vaccination comes up right because historically what we've been doing is if someone is fully vaccinated we have been allowing them to come to school even if they're identified as a close contact again listening to what we've experienced almost all of the a vast majority of folks that have tested positive are fully vaccinated so that doesn't seem to have been a great help uh i anticipate from what we've been told that that's helped people from getting really sick but it hasn't prevented people uh from from getting covetous apparently

034especially with this omicron variant so um the the vaccination is relevant but it's not the end-all be-all um especially in in the case of the household close contacts so in this context what we're saying is close contacts if you are fully vaccinated fully vaccinated and up to date because the doh has made a point of saying look we really want people to be up to date on their vaccinations so once they're eligible for boosters they get the boosters in that situation we would say keep coming to school you don't need to test to stay just wear a mask for a week seven days if you're not up to date on your vaccination you can also keep coming to school you'll need to wear a mask you'll test every other day test negative come to school

035for household close contacts uh regardless of vaccination status we would ask students to test every day to continue to come to school so those are the two situations uh it's it's a little bit burdensome as you can as you can hear just listening to it's a little bit much uh which is why we have to thank our school nurses because they do such a great job of working with individual families to help them along through this uh and i know they've been doing that for two years now so uh kudos to them and and and rita for their leadership and hard work trying to work with families and help families individually because really with with student health it's really about um individual situations and that's one of the things that i really like about this

036idea of test to stay it kind of brings us closer closer back to where we want to be which is that parents every day they decide whether or not a child is healthy enough to come to school right that's how it's always been you would check to see if your child had a fever if they didn't feel well you wouldn't send them to school sick with a fever you know now we're dealing with something a little bit different but we have another tool and that tool will allow us to keep kids coming to school because these home-based kits are much easier to get now we've talked about test to stay for a long time as a way of allowing kids to continue to come to school without needing the quarantine but the testing hasn't been

037available hasn't been easily accessible and now it really is so we we're hoping that the home base kits are the way that we can get kids coming to school every day even if they're identified as some type of close contact household or otherwise we recognize that some families may not have access to kits or maybe they don't have enough kits they've got a couple kits but they need to test three times and they only have two test kits we the district has purchased kits so that the nurse's office will have kits to help families that need them in this situation and they are available enough that we can get more if we need them so that's the goal uh that's the proposal we'd like to start doing this right away so that we don't have

038so that we have this option we can give this option to families and say look keep coming to school as long as you test negative we want you to come you have no symptoms you test negative please come to school that's what we would like to do i will say that we will continue with the option to get remote services for those folks that are identified as close contacts household or otherwise that would prefer not to test if you really don't want to do swabs and do a test every day or every other day to keep coming to school that's okay if you prefer to exercise the option to do what we've been doing which is uh keeping students um with some virtual services while they're quarantining certainly nurses offices will work with families in

039that regard if they prefer and then finally i i would like to add too that we talked a lot about students that have kovid and are coming back to school all right what we've been instituting recently is a five-day time period you have to be out of school for at least five days and when uh symptoms are improving uh coming back to school on on day six the one recommendation that we have seen persistently is that students test uh before coming back to school if they've had covet now we're not requiring that because we haven't been requiring it and we don't want to add another requirement however uh in a lot of the recommendations we're reading we're seeing that folks are continuing to test positive even on day six seven eight uh after they've had

040covert for up for a bit um so we're strongly recommending uh and suggesting that especially now with uh these test kits being so readily available that prior to returning to school from having covid whether it's on day six or day seven you're feeling better you think you're okay to go back to school it's it seems reasonable to just take a test before you come back and make sure that uh it's negative we won't require that because we we've been allowing uh return on day six but we do think that it's highly advisable to encourage folks to do that and we would continue to ask those students coming back from having kovit to wear a mask on days six to ten uh and again i mentioned that because we are uh looking as of monday we

041will be mask optional a week from today uh and we understand that we all look forward to that uh many folks may want to continue wear a mask that's fine totally great that's what you would prefer but many folks will also be like hey this is great i can't wait to get this thing off i can tell you at the next board meeting i won't be wearing this so um you know a lot of people feel that way as well so um i i just wanted to point that out because we realize that change is coming on monday we look forward to that change however we are recommending that in the case of students coming back from covent on day 6 to 10 and any students that are continuing to come to school even though

042they've been identified as a close contact that they are wearing their mask as well for for seven days from the last day of exposure and of course our nurses will help kids and families understand uh what we're looking to try to do here but we are uh definitely going to be a mass optional district come monday with a couple of these exceptions that i that i just outlined here because um you know from what we've been reading in our guidance these are appropriate adjustments to make but the good news is um with the testing we're really happy to have a way to get kids in school every day rather than have them staying at home waiting out a quarantine so that's a really important agenda item for me i'm not asking the board to vote

043on that um but i am looking for support on doing that because it'd be great to start doing that uh this week uh and with that we have one other item uh under superintendent's report um but if there's any questions about what i just went over we could talk about that before sean mr site uh shares his his item that i asked him to cover any questions on that i'm here read us here um yes ma'am um i just wanted to make sure the mask optional policy is going to be for buses too right right so that's a great point thanks for reminding me so in addition to the 22nd of uh february where we got the new guidance from the doh on friday afternoon uh we got an announcement from the cdc that they

044had amended the uh travel uh requirement for masks which still exists on things like airplanes uh they lifted that for school buses effective friday uh i will tell you that i think it's going to cause a lot of problems and a lot of confusion if we're trying to say you know we're not going to ask you to wear a mask on the bus but when you walk into school you have to wear it for the for this week we have four days of school this week and i would recommend that just leave it alone for four days come monday monday the 7th you don't need to wear a mask on the bus you don't need to wear a mask in school unless you'd like to and if you would like to that's fine and we

045certainly will be encouraging our staff um to make sure that kids feel supported either way whether you want to wear a mask or not so yes that would be the case on monday also but i really think that for four more days just keep it consistent between the buses and the schools thank you for reminding me of that one yeah i i'd like to know if you guys are good with that because we'd like to get it started uh if you're feeling comfortable with it i see a lot of nodding um and look you know it's like everything else we monitor and adjust we keep looking for new guidance we may see new guidance coming from the doh very soon they'll probably do something to capture the bus issue uh but you know we'll we'll

046stay on top of it and you know if we think we need to make a tweak or something doesn't go well with the mask to stay we'll come back to you and work on it some more but we'd like to give it a shot right away uh starting this week and and you know get kids uh a method for staying in school so we'll we'll start trying it right away if that's good all right that's great thanks for the support on that and uh we have one other item uh and then you'll need to vote on items one to three uh mr site was going to talk a little bit about the dei consultant great thank you mr marcarian and let's hope the technology cooperates i've got lots of pieces of equipment here so i'm

047hoping it's all cooperating so um thanks for a few minutes sean pull the mic closer to you please how ironic that i'm talking about the technology work can you hear me okay now yeah and i have uh folks on zoom here from different parts of the country so technology is really working well here uh so we've been talking to the board over the last few months here about engaging in some really important work around diversity equity and inclusion and really this conversation started prior to the pandemic and we put it on hold for obvious reasons dealing with the health and safety issues around the pandemic and so one of the things that if we have regular members of the public that attend meetings have heard we've reported out on some different consulting firms that we've

048interviewed and spoken with over the last oh boy six months now and so i'm really pleased that we are on the agenda tonight prepared to approve if you vote on it a diversity and equity group called us squared and i have their ceo with us tonight it's megan pucciarelli and i'll introduce her in a couple of minutes but one of the nice things about this the last time i talked about our goal was that the the point to start is to gain stakeholder input about the reality in the district around these issues it isn't to give a position or make a stance it's to take a temperature of where the community is on these issues and so that's what's really nice about bringing an outside group they're the ones taking the temperature developing surveys surveying

049the community anybody that's interested and then what we really liked is they're going to be setting up focus groups with different constituents in the school community staff administration community members they're going to be meeting with those focus groups not administration they're going to be conducting those and really the point is is to get an assessment of where the community stands on these different important issues and and the term they use i have to get this term correct is jedi not just d it's not just dei it's justice it's social justice equity diversity and inclusion and so one of the things that i really liked about mrs futurelli's background is that she's been in education for many many years she has an education background and she's worked with both corporations and school districts on this on

050this important issue and so she really brought to bear her experience as an educator she spoke with the board she spoke with administration about these issues and i have her here tonight unfortunately sound only hopefully it works to talk a little bit about what a diversity and equity audit is walk us through that a little bit and what it will look like and really our timeline is to hopefully have them present to the public sometime in the fall so that the community would be surveyed they'd be meeting with focus groups in the community in the late spring and then by the time the work is completed you would see it in the form of a presentation and i'm stealing some of miss futurely's thunder but at the end of the day there'll be a report

051presented with some findings and some recommendations that we may or may not follow but uh if you can hear me miss future really i'd like to give you the floor and hopefully this works hopefully everybody can hear it yes everyone hear me okay that's pretty good thank you awesome thank you so much for the introduction mr said i am excited to be with all of you today even if it's just through audio being able to speak to the room um as you shared my name is megan putrelli and i'm the chief empowerment officer or ceo for us squared our company is global we have consultants all around the globe and we work specifically with organizations who are looking to understand what is going on in their organization we do that through a lens of true

052openness and we really bring that third lens to the conversation our goal is not to judge or to make a school district or an organization look at all of their flaws rather we come in and we look at what is going well what are some things that could be going better and as you shared we do that by speaking to all of the stakeholders so we have conversations with students with parents with community members with teachers with non-instructional staff and we really take a strong look at everything that makes a school work ultimately for the success of the students as you shared we do come in and provide focus groups we interview some of your stakeholders we also provide a survey for all of your stakeholders who might not be able to come to a

053focus group conversation and then we will craft a report that report like you shared is really just looking at what we found and what some recommendations could be to say this is where you are your current reality this is where you want to be based on what you tell us we do not prescribe a plan for you it is not our job to tell you how to run the school district or how to have these conversations but we empower you as our client to do this work on your own and that's why my title is ceo is chief empowerment officer and not chief executive officer ultimately we want to empower everyone we work with that's what's so exciting about our business specifically because we are a 100 referral base and we actually came to bernard's

054township because of a referral so we are a hundred percent referral based we will come in and conduct this equity audit again from a third lens a third party focused specifically on issues of social justice equity diversity and inclusion so i was just asked to give a real brief overview of what that looks like but i am always here for questions and we're really excited to be able to start this journey with you and hope that we're able to start that journey with you soon do any board members have any questions yes i have a few apologies because i was jammed up with works that this is the first time so i didn't mean to surprise you with my questions today but i do have a few related to the contract so one of the

055items is that we we're looking at 5 000 surveys uh for this and it looks like we'd be allocated to consultants for that i believe there was a recent law case in cedar knolls that requires that this would be made optional for anybody so i wanted to confirm that this would be an optional exercise related to that and then in the contract it also mentioned that there would be classroom observations so that will that optionality apply to the classroom observations as well so that's one question the second question is is that the definitions on how the surveys are going to be developed are going to be made by up to 10 burnership township leadership members so i would like to also understand how those leadership burners township leadership members are going to be chosen for

056this project um and then finally you know because we're doing up to five thousand if i remember correctly i think it was back in october um the price for this was thirty thousand dollars so i'm assuming that jumped up because we jumped up the number of surveys to five thousand so it jumped up to forty thousand dollars as a cost um so i'd like to understand based on the optionality question that i actually just mentioned um will that cost go down if we have less surveys to administer or is the theory that is the same amount of effort because when i work out with the hours that they're looking to provide us for the forty thousand dollars their blended rate per hour is actually quite high and that's coming from a big four consultant so

057i am concerned about the the excessiveness of the cost and what we are getting for that because it does not look like um they're going to be providing too many strategies and measurements for success on any recommendations yeah yeah megan i could take some of those i don't know if you heard those questions i have a mic an external mic yeah i heard some of the questions but any of the questions you can take whatever you feel comfortable and any questions that you want to throw over to me i'm more than happy to answer if you could just repeat those so that i make sure i got them pretty clearly sure yeah so the one the first two questions were about surveys being optional now yes the surveys are optional folks don't have to complete

058the surveys completely optional uh classroom observations that's something that we would be discussing it may not be something that actually takes place it's an option and if they would be observations at this point they'd be remote they wouldn't be in-person observations but that's not something that is definite as part of this because it also one of the things that we're going to talk about once we flesh out the actual audit is what particular areas we would look at so for instance one of the areas since since i'm human resources is to actually look at personnel and staffing that particular issue so that might be something that we're looking at hiring practices attracting diverse candidates attracting folks with various certificates from different backgrounds and so that might be something that certainly doesn't require a classroom observation

059it might might require interviews with me for example but the um no so survey is optional and classroom observations unlikely i would say um what was your second question it was around the was it the oh the number of hours uh yeah right okay so i was right right class of observations unlikable yeah i was right on that one and then there was a question about hours right total number of hours it was the total number of hours you know based on how that boiled down to the the cost per hour but i think one of my second questions was that the these questionnaires are going to be worked on with these consultants um with looks like up to 10 bernards township leadership members and i want to get some insight into how those are

060going to be chosen for the community and who's going to be represented there right so maybe megan you can talk a little bit about how the survey gets developed yeah so we have surveys that we utilize and what we do is in that initial conversation we will talk about what your topic areas are so in the contract that was sent over the last two pages of the appendix is the equity audit overview of what we allow districts or what we encourage districts to take a look at to determine what will be covered we highlighted some of those within that contract that we sent over to you but that is not completely finalized until we have that first conversation but in that we highlighted some of the pieces that we are proposing because we did have

061to reallocate some of the hours because the number of surveys jumped so much so how we allocate that is we every 100 surveys it typically takes us about an hour of our team's time to be able to go through all of that because we include all of that in the report both the raw data as well as including that information in the written report so it ends up being about every 100 surveys takes our team about an hour so that's how we allocate that so i heard another question come in about the pricing and how that was looked at because the number of surveys increased so dramatically we had to reduce some of the focus group hours that we did but we're still able to hit all of the different areas we have in the

062contract allocated a set number of hours for the elementary schools as a group instead of doing each individual elementary school separately we're doing the elementary together and then middle school and then high school so we will be able to reallocate our hours to be able to absorb some of the excessive number of surveys that are put out there so will the cost be reduced um should the surveys not total the five thousand is that will there be a percentage of reduction and the cost no what we will do is if we do not get that number of surveys or if that ends up not coming through we will know immediately how the surveys are coming out what our numbers look like if we end up being very low then we will work with the district

063to just kind of put that out into the universe a little bit more to get more surveys and if we still don't have enough surveys then we will probably increase the number of focus groups and add an extra hour here or there to focus groups to gather as much information our goal is to gain as much information as possible for your report that will give you not only a good picture of what your current reality is but also a good picture of how you can move forward and what recommendations we would offer for you to be able to see that that vision of what you see for your district so when the contract says not to exceed basically we're going to substitute different methodologies to get to that forty thousand dollars rather than seeing any

064kind of cost reduction yes that is what we're looking at because we already gave a significant cost reduction this equity audit the way it is delivered right now is typically higher than this amount but we gave a significant reduction because we're familiar with new jersey's laws and we also want to make sure that we do everything we possibly can to support your district in this work so we wanted to make sure we came below that threshold i just wanted to jump in the amount hadn't changed since i reported that out in december there was an earlier consultant that i reported out on back in like september that was said it would be thirty thousand but it didn't have all of the things that this comes with so it was a completely different proposal it was

065a different proposal yeah okay okay so we're amending the cost or we're switching out services for the i got it i got it um okay so then that the the leadership members did i miss that are you having 215. the idea of how we choose the leadership team i would assume that was in consultation with central office but is there a methodology there um so when we first spoke typically who it is is whoever the or dei committee is it's the leadership team members so whether it's a board subcommittee or maybe a couple district office staff but it's the leadership team who is guiding this process who will be our conduit so that when we reach out as a squared we know exactly who to reach out to we are in consultation with those people

066from that group and typically it's usually a smaller group but your team asked that we have a few larger group because there were more board members and more people involved in the jedi or dpi work typically we only have about a small group of five to six people but we increased that to ten and there was no price differential by increasing it to 10 we just wanted to be as inclusive and open to voices as we could be so we're looking for some at select members the board maybe the personnel committee the wellness committee something of that nature along with some other administrative a small assignment for whoever those leadership team members are that is simply meeting with them in advance if this contract says yes we want to go into partnership with us squared

067and we would as soon as we received that contract set up that very first meeting just to clarify exactly what will be covered and what we're going to be focusing on so that when we start setting up those focus groups with your individual schools and stakeholder groups we know what questions we're going to be asking we know what processes we want to use and we can start working on that survey because we don't include everything in the survey we only include the pieces that we're trying to dive deeper into sean i guess are we looking at possibly um bringing in some of the pto leaders and maybe somebody from township committee to sit on this so they would absolutely be included in the survey right in the circuit and also leadership board no but also

068potentially in the focus groups as well but we would not be choosing those focus groups and that was by design too that was intentional right we really wanted an outside party to put together those focus groups okay thank you you're welcome does anyone else have any questions i do have a follow-up question on the leadership board so it's my understanding that the the leadership board is is on the last page of the contract these like highlighted areas is just kind of confirming that that's the areas that we want to go into for the surveys and not that that's and then the surveys are kind of like pre-baked essentially right yes okay there are questions developed obviously we'd have to approve those questions and for the public what ms futurely was referring to as possible topics

069things like classroom culture family community engagement instruction teacher leadership general policy policies and procedures discipline practices special education programming honors personnel those are just some examples of possible focus areas for the work right and if i could just jump in this myself as well typically we divide it into the buckets of culture so how people feel about what's going on within the district then we have representation which looks at both your personnel as well as your curriculum and your staffing and your programming so discipline disproportionality and then the third bucket that we typically look at is the foundational knowledge so how much is included what do people know about different people's perspectives how much is covered so those are the three different perspectives that we look at what we have discussed originally was to really

070focus on the culture and i truly appreciate and value what you're doing within your district because you do want to look at how people feel it's not just about what you're already doing it's about how people feel about what you're doing because as we all know people's perception becomes their reality so we would probably focus on the culture and climate component first with some discussion around some of the demographics and representation pieces as well but that was a very strong focus that was asked of our group when we came in to provide the proposal and to talk to you was to really focus on the culture and climate aspect sean i have a question too um sorry right here so i wanted to know if there's a plan in place to capture those opinions from

071the pub any population that's not as vocal perhaps um for example our special needs children and students um are parents going to be involved in answering those survey questions yeah oh yes the the surveys are sent out and that's why it was so important for us that we have such a high number of surveys so that as many folks in our community who wanted to be surveyed of course our parents would be able to do so representative of all groups general education special education yes they will be included there's one one um to one of the things that was shared with us in terms of the surveys also was even with young children as well that um they use a system of um not emojis but like smiley spaces type so that you know children

072who might not be able to read they might be able to to respond that way it's built in that they have uh worked with um you know a vast array and i don't have a question but i just wanted to say i'm so glad that we're moving forward i feel like it's been a long time coming that we started talking about this in the fall and i'm glad to finally get this off the ground okay i think that's it thank you very much for coming from far away on zoom thank you for having me i'm sorry i couldn't be there so what does it mean so oops we need to vote on the first three items um we already had a motion and a second so we just need a roll call mr mclaughlin mr

073salmon yes ms schaefer yes this is gray yes is sang yes mrs white yes ms light yes mr connor are you still with us yes mrs mccoon yes madam president thank you we're up to public comment on agenda items i wanted to point out before i open public comment um that item number eight on finance is um our bond refunding and so we um in order to do this we have to have a public hearing on it so we have sitting down in the front here very patiently through our board meeting we have um mr tony solomon from who's the bond council and we also have brian morris from phoenix advisors so they're here if board members or the public has questions that they could respond to so if you have any comments or questions

074on that that you want to bring up at public comment you may do that and then the board will have a chance um during the finance before we vote on it to ask any questions they have when we get to that point so i'm going to open up public comment if you come up could you please give your name and address and then you can sign in after you speak if you want to thank you sherry nelson 195 smoke rise road when this topic first came up back in september of taking all these proposals for the diversity and inclusion surveys i did ask at that time how you were going to capture some of the special needs students who can't fill out a survey so now hearing more about this tonight my question my main

075question is the leadership team if you have 10 people representing the leadership for this project do you have a disabled person who is representing the disability community or at least a parent or a loved one of someone who's disabled because if you don't you're doing a huge disservice to our community they need to be equally represented in the planning process because when you create the survey and what topics you put in the survey will determine whether you actually get the feedback you need from that community and i've been very vocal for 15 years about our experience having special needs children here and how much they've been excluded over the years i don't think there's any other group whose kids didn't get to go out for recess or didn't get to eat lunch in the cafeteria

076or didn't get to go out for field day or didn't get to use the gym they were put in the cafeteria for pe the list goes on and on all the way up until last year when my son was the only one who didn't get a graduation gown and the only one who didn't get put on the senior t-shirt when he graduated so the exclusion has been 15 full years for my son and now he's a post-grad we're almost done but i really would like to see things improve for the kids coming behind and i know i sound emotional because i really am and then i'll just a totally different topic say something positive when you guys were talking about the school nurses and the hard work they've been doing my husband and kids had

077covered over thanksgiving literally sunday after thanksgiving on the phone with rita and the week after figuring out who goes to the doctor when whose home test whose pcr they were fantastic and i know they've been doing a fantastic job through a horrible time so i do want to just express my appreciation for all that they have done for us for the last two years thank you uh eric cuda excuse me 151 that great drive uh i just want to kind of piggyback off of what sherry said so i think just as much as you guys can incorporate in this leadership commit committee if you're going to actually go forward with this dei thing i mean she's 100 right the voices of kids with special needs in this district are not being addressed and i know

078there's there's things going on behind the scenes with the board it's positive to see things moving forward but i think this is a really big step if we're going to really look to make things better across the board for employees students let's make sure that they're a part of that leadership committee they can help guide and shape what's important and what could be meaningful for the special needs community so i just wanted to say that please keep that in consideration because it's it's extremely important um and then the other thing is i love the the test to stay or test to go whatever it is thank you guys for you know thinking outside of the box being proactive i was up here a month ago begging you once he drops the mandate please keep it

079optional thank you for that too this is great i can't wait for next week i would just say i know it's going to be like the honor system the pcr tests are sometimes inaccurate the antigen tests which you're asking everyone to do at home are even more inaccurate so obviously we're all doing this on the honor code but just keep that in mind and then keep in mind kids that or teachers that test positive for covid they could still test positive weeks and weeks later because of the inaccuracies of these tests so just keep that in mind but thank you guys for thinking ahead and making this happen with the masks and and the testis i appreciate it is there anyone else for public comment on agenda items i think sherry's just signing the clipboard

080is there anyone on zoom for public comment for agenda items okay there's one person i'll let i'll admit them thank you it worked um and turn my sound on hi you are in the um call if you're ready to make a public comment okay yes hi um no i don't know why it says i'm logged in anyway debbie marcus 16 lafayette basketball obviously thank you um i'm just um commenting about the um proposed um or approved survey uh to follow up on the comments about the diversity of recipients of the survey i also want to make sure that the you explore the response rate from the different aspects of our community in addition to the special needs there's definitely different other ways that our community is different that we want to try to make sure

081the response rate represents and that will definitely be helped by the format of the leadership committee so please i do appreciate you putting a lot of thought into that secondly she spoke about making sure that we have a culture a good culture which is generally nice but i do want to point out that sometimes having uncomfortable discussions is what is helpful so um i don't want to just have a happy-go-lucky school district so make sure she's not just looking for that everything's great we really want to make sure we have a diversity of thought and perspectives in our district thirdly i also didn't hear and i assume you got beforehand any like specific examples that she had or her company had given other districts i would have liked to hear um very specific uh samples

082that couldn't be applied anywhere um i uh a couple decades ago worked for the pew foundation and did a similar uh kind of survey amongst the historically black institutions and it took um like years of effort to develop suggestions that were school specific as opposed to something that would be nice to have everywhere so before you totally sign that dotted line although you know i'm so i'm okay with the general approach um just make sure that they've given suggestions that are very specific to their districts and aren't things that many of us might be able to recommend on our own thank you thank you are there any other public comments on agenda items hi cindy huang carriageway i just had a quick question has the board or um the members that are reviewing the the

083proposal have they reached out to other districts to see if they've used this consulting company or other consulting companies and what you know what kind of feedback they've gotten from such you know these surveys and you know whether they found it effective and if they were able to actually implement uh plans uh within their districts thanks is there anyone else for public comment okay at this point i'll close public comment did you want to respond i think we have a couple of ones that are easy to respond to sure um so i i appreciate the comment uh about uh tests to stay and and the honor system and you know i i think that uh in in all cases really when we are right when we're we're working as uh parents right we're in the

084capacity of a parent trying to you know uh be fair to our our own children and and to the other occupants of our school building when it comes to uh sending a child to school or not right even pre-covered right uh we have to be thoughtful of that and and we understand that it's the honor system we understand that tests to stay uh using uh home-based kits is really the honor system right uh we we've probably all heard various stories about people that got creative with a test result to get on a plane or something to that effect uh over the last couple years i've heard all kinds of stories like that and and certainly we're not trying to encourage that that type of thing we we have a great community uh and and it's

085full of great people and i'm i'm confident that uh people will uh respect what we're trying to accomplish here and help kids uh get to school and that's what it's really about and at the same time um looking out for uh the rest of the the occupants of our building so it is the honor system there's no question about it uh however we are trying to uh encourage people to um you know file appropriately so we are going to ask that people upload a picture of the test result as part of the confidential upload to genesis when they vouch for uh a test result uh not that people couldn't manipulate that if they really wanted to uh but i i have faith that um we'll put a good system in place and and people will

086respect it but yes it is the honor system at the at the end of the day uh thank you for the comments about our nurses certainly they they have been working hard and they're going to help us try to implement something new uh starting this week so they'll be working at something else new they've they've certainly been bobbing and weaving uh with this pandemic trying to uh make adjustments as we've gone along to to keep as many kids in school as we can and i appreciate their hard work very much uh i know that mr site you wanted to jump in to try to clarify a little bit about uh this idea of um the leadership team i think you want to speak to that a little bit yeah i almost i almost think it's

087a bit of a misnomer so there's the leadership team actually when you look at the process that's going to take about seven to eight months has has a very small part in the whole process that leadership team really their main goal is to look at the survey questions but the survey questions are already for the most part developed and so they're already designed around multiple collecting multiple perspectives so once the survey is developed the leadership team has very little part in the process the goal is to have this third party actually run the audit right so they're running the focus groups which by the way the focus groups really will that's where you're going to see folks given the opportunity to express very freely and have some of those uncomfortable conversations i know that miss

088marcus talked about and do it in a risk-free environment and one of the things that she talked about is that there there be representation from not just the elementary middle and high school but that our special education popul population be proportionally represented at every level and that would be from parents and also when when they're interviewing students they worked in school districts and corporations but um to to address the other question too yes we have spoken to a school district that used them obviously was very positive but one of the things that i think separated this group from other groups that we looked at was the experience of the team working in school systems i think it's really critical they understand how school system operates and that this isn't just a one-size-fits-all consulting company that

089comes in and can do an audit anywhere yes i like that they worked in both corporate and schools but the background the leadership team there is actually uh has school experience so the the key for us will really be at the end what they're going to do is present a report and then they're simply making recommendations and that will be something that we'll then have to take and run with whether or not we adopt those recommendations well it will be then our next steps here as a as a personnel committee and potentially as a board as well that would be up to the board but what i like is that they're going to parse it out at every level elementary middle and high school and district level as well and it will lead to some

090really good conversations that we started to have uh with with some student groups actually prior to the pandemic and we never really got much because of the pandemic unfortunately so hopefully our plan here is to give updates regular updates to the board and to the public as we move through the process but i suspect that the public will hear lots about this because we'll be starting this work uh should the board vote on the contract we'll be starting this work sometime in the next few weeks thank you ms mark karen yeah i think you covered the rest of the questions um yeah i think one of the districts that used them was washington hills and i've spoken to staff and other people there that had a very positive experience um with us squared um i

091think that was all of the public comments um so we're up to approval of minutes we need a motion would someone like to make a motion this light and miss hira um could we have a roll call please mr mclaughlin mr salmon yes ms schaefer yes mrs gray yes ms singh yes mrs white yes ms light yes mr connor i know buddy i didn't okay okay miss hira yes this is mccune yes madam president thank you we're up to the finance committee wait i forgot to flip through how many items are there total 19 items would someone like to make a motion this is white and mr salmon do you have a committee report i do the finance committee met last thursday february 24th and the first item on the agenda was the boundary funding

092that was mentioned earlier the committee was joined by mr morris and mr solomine both of who whom are with us here this evening just as a note for the public if you didn't hear the report last month public school boundary funding can only occur when bonds become callable which is ten years after issuance and state statute mandates that school districts must refund when the net present value of savings is three percent or greater so the discussion centered around rates dropping and extreme market volatility which everybody is surely aware of so we won't exactly know the uh our rate until uh march 28th and um as long as it is above three percent we will proceed with the refunding but just as a little bit of recent historical information the um the rate was nine percent

093when we would realize nine percent when we first discussed this a month ago and in the last 30 days up until last thursday it was down to six percent so things are volatile and we just have to watch that and wait for march 28th um for this process the district will need to engage an underwriter to market the debt and to sell to investors phoenix advisors has requested underwriting quotes for the district they will make a recommendation costs and services being comparable they will recommend the lowest cost provider mr morris gave a recap of the status of the market in late december the fed had indicated two to three rate hikes would be likely in 2022 in mid to late january market rates started climbing by mid-february the fed suggested that they are they have

094an increased expectation for as many as five to seven rate hikes we are about a month away from our from pricing out our bonds our projected gross budgetary savings of about five hundred thousand dollars which is about seventy thousand dollars per year which equals the six percent we discussed on thursday this is down about a third from when we first revisited the refunding last month we introduced the refunding ordinance monday the 28th we will hold the requisite public hearing for the refunding and take action to approve the bond refunding ordinance this resolution will also authorize the board's agents to name the underwriter tony emphasized that we are sorry mr solomon emphasized that we are unfortunately at the mercy of the market and the fed that said the board could not have taken action any earlier

095to have realized a greater savings because of statutory limitations on when non-taxable bond reissuances may occur in a worst case scenario the minimum savings the districts can can realize is about thirty thousand dollars per year should rates continue to increase beyond that point we would not be able to refund these bonds do i'm going to pause there to go for questions i'm sure if why don't we do that if board members have questions for or two advisors down there um i'll do that now which i i gave you earlier um just a question i mean i know we don't know what the cost of the underwriting is the total cost of the bond refunding but is these estimated savings and that of those costs or is it before those costs not okay thank you anybody

096else have questions so if for some reason the rate drops so low that we can't refund them what does that mean what's the next step then i'm not even going to pretend to know the answer i'm not a finance person so in english please sure good evening everyone i'm tony solomony from lens goldman and spitzer so um you're not allowed to refinance your debt unless you can achieve at least that three percent at present value savings so worst case scenario you've taken both actions necessary to authorize the refunding you just don't do the transaction you've incurred no cost to date so no harm no foul there's no cost incurred you can't do the transaction you continue to make your bond payments as currently scheduled the only time you actually start to incur fees is once

097you get a rating and that rating has been issued by the rating agency then the rating agency wants to get paid but us as your professionals we work on a contingent basis and none of us get paid unless you guys actually save money so and we do our best job and brian as your fiduciary and your financial advisor will not request that rating until he's comfortable in a position where the transaction will move forward okay can i ask one follow-up on that sure so if we don't if we can't move forward do we have to wait another 10 years or can it be at any point when the rate goes gets better that's a good question so once you get in that window when you can refinance the debt then it becomes kind of a

098waiting wait and see approach so that's why it's good that you've taken in the requisite action so now you're in a position to capture the market as assuming when the rates work to make the refunding a viable financial option for the board so you don't have to wait another 10 years it's just when the market dynamics work for you but if a month from now we're at that place where we're going to save the net present value of three percent we must proceed um according to the accountability regulations it's a requisite of you as a board of education to receive any aid from the state one of those requirements is to refund any of your debt if you can achieve at least a three percent net present value savings and every year i'm sure mr

099mclaughlin his county business administrator will ask him whether or not he's explored any opportunities to refinance debt of the school district now you have an independent paid financial advisor potentially there could be a situation where you could be at three percent but your financial advisor might say let's wait a little while because i think the market's going to turn this way do i think the state would come in and withhold your state aid or take other kind of punitive actions i do not so there could be scenarios where maybe it's not your best interest to move forward but you're supposed to explore those opportunities once you get to three percent according to state statute so the legal term is kind of so but if we do if we do refund these options then we would

100have to wait another 10 years should we proceed forward and conditions get better before the end of the year so once you refund these bonds assuming uh what the term is on the refunding bonds that we issue there will be a call provision in those bonds and we'd have to wait till those bonds then become callable so it's kind of your one bite at the apple under those bonds that are currently outstanding thank you interject for one item brian morris phoenix advisors so the final term on these bonds is only seven and a half years from now so since that's shorter than that ten year frame they would be issued as non-callable so they would once you do this refinancing that rate would be locked in for the duration of those bonds thank you board

101members any other questions thank you gentlemen we appreciate you joining us so our next item on the finance agenda was um an update on the aramark work order status with our new director of facilities mr larkin um he gave an update on the active work orders um he has developed a new classification scheme to assist himself and aramark in monitoring all the projects in the system for ridge high school and he'll be doing the same he's in the process with i think cedar hill and he'll be doing the same with all the other buildings the process is not a real-time process and requires the download of data from the work order system so it's a little bit time and test intensive and he's doing that work with the aramark administrative assistant excuse me the process

102would need to be replicated for the additional schools um the committee did express a little bit of concern for the lack of progress on reducing the backlog given that the backlog appears to have doubled since the beginning of the calendar year mr larkin did explain and that was because of duplicates and that's part of what they're working through and with mr mclaughlin develop a series of steps in an action plan and we'll report back to the committee next month now the next two items were confidential items and that brings us to the girls volleyball i'm sorry volleyball the girls varsity softball field um mr shellow and mrs zarabero were kind enough to join the committee sorry don't know why i'm losing my worst all of a sudden and um discuss the health and safety of

103our fields uh mr shell gave a history of the field situation in the time that he's been in the district which is more than 20 years he has definitely definitely observed that there's been a decline over the years in the condition and care of our fields some time ago the township used to care for our fields but years ago there was a change or a decision made not to continue that work and they had dedicated staff to do that so that we're skilled in doing that type of work so currently we contract out for services like weed control and fertilization and then aramark is responsible for the cutting thatching raking and lining of fields as well as the swale maintenance on this field when significant field modifications are needed the district contracts with third parties

104at its own expense and there was a project in 2016 on this field in the amount of 124 000 um was that current that was prior right um and there's a pending project on the boys varsity baseball ball field for in infield work a non-aramark outside contractor being used was selected and a proposal and was selected for a proposal of seventeen thousand eight hundred dollars for that work in the case of the softball field the swells have not been properly maintained over time mr larkin is also um in the process of addressing this work he shared some site photos with the committee to show the condition of the field and he indicated the areas where the swell is in need of cleaning someone was going to be going out to do that work i guess

105imminently because we know the season is about to start the fact that the district has over the years added significant impervious ground coverage on the upper campus including lee field has created it's contributed to the issues with drainage flow to these lower fields and caused these issues at the varsity complex which is surrounded by wetlands areas these factors and the complexity the related environmental concerns and regulations have been a matter that the district has been challenged with for quite some time immediate work is being done like i said to address the swale and we will i guess continue to moderate going forward any questions from board members thank you could you have a role call please mr salmon yes ms schaefer yes mrs gray yes but i neglected to actually describe does anyone want me

106to go through the items i'm sorry that was just an oversight okay yes ms singh yes mrs white yes ms light yes mr connor i don't know what that is can you ask him if he would what's that okay there we go thank you ms hira yes mrs mchugh yes madam president thank you you're up to the personnel there's 20 items would someone like to make a motion with singh and miss shaffer um is there a personnel report um there was until all my questions got answered because they're all related to the dei consultant so not anymore stay tuned for next month any comments or questions before we vote okay can we have a roll call please mr salmon yes ms schaefer yes this is gray yes ms singh yes this is white yes ms

107light yes mr khanna yes yes for the waterfall thank you miss hero this yes mccoon yes madam president okay we're up to the policy committee there's one item would someone like to make a motion mr salmon would someone like the second mrs white um it's our committee report uh yes uh policy met on monday february 7th and the meeting starting started with a brief discussion again on our records retention policy specifically at the meeting prior to the february 7th meeting a question was raised that if we only maintained student records for seven years would this be an issue and if if an incident of sexual harassment occurred a student waited to pursue the matter at a later age and the period of seven years had expired this was looked into and the committee was advised

108that student records are maintained for a period of seven years after graduation thus this would not be an issue if a student waited to pursue any matter pertaining to a sexual harassment incident at a later age we also discussed changes to regulation 9130 on public complaints and grievances and the regulation was modified to reflect that a parent must submit a one-page written submission when a complaint and or grievance is filed and how this submission would be provided to the board prior to the board meeting with the parents students to address a complaint and or inquiry we also discussed changes to regulation 0155 on boe committees these are just minor edits to reflect what the board is already doing i won't really go into it but for example paragraph 7 of the regulation was edited to

109reflect what the chair of a committee that a chair of a committee is responsible for writing and emailing the minutes out previously the regulation didn't state that it now does the regulation was also edited to reflect that before that the chair sends the minutes to the entire board they have to share it with the committee members first with respect to whether or not parents need a doctor's clearance to resume pe athletics following colvid it was discussed that parents are going to be given an option in order for a student to resume pe a parent would need to complete a form for their child and that form gives the parent the option of either obtaining clearance from a physician that the child is fine to participate in pe or the parent can just acknowledge the risks

110associated with their child participating in pe after clove at 19 and they give permission for the child to participate without a physician's clearance note we had first readings on policy zero one five five board committees and the policy was again modified to reflect something that's already been in place such as the advocacy advocacy committee is no longer is no longer referred to as the wellness committee am i right and is now referred to as the wellness committee which has been the case for some time and that the wellness committee is responsible for recommending counseling department and curriculum guide provisions related to student and staff wellness [Music] we also had a first reading on reading on policy zero one six nine board member use of internet and email paragraph four of the policy was modified to

111reflect who will respond to emails sent to the full board of education additionally the policy was modified to define the term use of social network the ethical implications of board of ed members using a social network to post and that essentially board of ed members are held to a higher standard than the general public with regard to standards of conduct and ethics that's pretty much it any questions any questions or comments okay could we have a role call please mr salmon yes miss schaefer what are we roll calling first reads the first reading of the three policies okay yes it's gray yes ms singh yes this is white yes ms light yes mr connor yes thank you ms hira yes mrs mccoon yes madam president thank you sounds like some students are having more fun

112than we are out there okay we're up to the curriculum committee is there a report yes there is um the first thing we am i good to go okay um the first thing we talked about was that there are going to be some course title changes um sixth grade cycle tech ed one will be called controls and mechanisms seventh grade cycle tech fabrication is now going to be called applied engineering the eighth grade elective tech ed two will be engineering design and the eighth grade elective intro into programming robotics will now be intro to robotics and then we had a discussion as to what brought this all about mr miziac shared with the committee that what drove the need to make revisions for the coming year wham's tech ed courses was to create more opportunities

113for all students to participate the stem 8 elective only had about 40 students who could participate following an application process and that process has been eliminated to be clear though nothing is being taken away from students but rather opportunities are being added for all the best parts of the stem 8 elective have been redistributed and placed in 6th and 7th grade cycle classes and 8th grade electives and as a result all wham students beginning the 22-23 school year will get stem as part of their education the changes in course titles make it clear exactly what is to be covered in each course now instead of a small group of eighth grade students eligible to participate in stem there will be two different eighth grade electives open to all eighth grade students engineering design and intro

114to robotics then dr lazavek shared that he was ready to present to the community on february 8th obviously this happened the proposed changes for option two for the coming school year there's an opportunity for parents to ask questions the feedback form was due on the 25th he explained the present presentation for any who missed is shared in its entirety on the website and by mid-march dr lazavick will share the finalized program so that students are able to make any necessary changes to their course selections by april 8th and then talk to us about the march 2nd in service day this is an early dismissal day and all students will partake in a four program rotation with the last session being different for each grade level students will all get to preview matilda the drama club's

115musical as well as attend an assembly with the mentalist the ridge pto has graciously donated for the students this is the same mentalist that used to be at project graduation freshmen and sophomores will have a wellness rotation tea time and the junior seniors will have a class meeting and they will have one block gathering in the cafeteria for independent work and free time and in the afternoon the staff will continue with their in-service then mr colmer explained to us the changes that have been made to the math criteria for the fourth and fifth grade math programs for entrance into advanced math 4 a student must meet two out of the three following criteria achieve an average raw score in the top 20 percent by school of the quantitative battery and non-verbal battery on the most

116recent coget administration achieve a scaled score in the top 20 percent by school on the 2122 grade 3 mathematics spring new jersey student learning assessment and achieve a mathematics rich score in the top 20 percent by school on the 21 22 spring mathematics second through fifth grade map administration for entrance into advanced math five a student must meet two out of three of the following criteria achieve an average raw score in the top 20 percent by school of the quantitative battery and non-verbal battery on the most recent cogat achieve 20 achieve a scale score in the top 20 percent of school 21 22 grade 4 mathematics spring mathematics new jersey student learning assessment and achieve a mathematics rich score in the top 20 percent of students enrolled in math 5 on the 21 22 fall

117mathematics map administration in order to qualify for accelerated math five grade four students must earn eight or more points on an entrance criteria rubric the rubric assesses performance on both the spring map which stands for measures of academic progress for anybody who wasn't aware the ctp 5 assessment as well as the number of four students earned from trimester 1 trimester 2 and trimester 3 report cards students who take accelerated middle school math in sixth grade are beginning an extremely rigorous track in mathematics while currently there are no changes to the accelerated middle school six criteria fifth graders no longer receive grades now that the elementary schools have moved to standards-based report cards it's possible that the needed scores to qualify may be adjusted once the data is is in on how students performed on qualifying

118placement exams there will not be any changes to the criteria for the accelerated algebra 7 or or 8. a discussion unfolded about the differences in quest identification and math placement data collected may be looked at differently for each decisions for quest and math placement occur at different times of the year math placement occurs in the spring whereas quest takes place in the fall all math proposals for the coming year are complete except for changing the language to use the most recent codex store for the qualifying criteria at the elementary levels mr colmer also shared with us that a consent form will be going out to students in algebra 1 as a result of a teacher undertaking graduate work participation is voluntary and parents will be asked for permission in order for a child to participate

119in a five-week research study to identify practices and activities that can increase engagement and participation in the classroom mr terry reported that at least a half of the students have either partially or completely completed their needed service hours at ridge he's worked with mrs cahill to find tutoring opportunities for those students who are eligible and there are now about 12 more students participating in the tutoring service requirements for the u.s history community service are still being discussed for next year governor murphy has signed legislation ensuring that the contributions history and heritage of asian americans and pacific islanders are included in the new jersey st student learning standards for social studies for students in kindergarten through grade 12. s4021 will create an aapi curriculum requirement for schools and s 3764 will establish the commission for asian

120american heritage within the department of education this takes effect for the 22-23 school year the language in this mandate is similar to our other social studies mandates our teachers are already doing all of this for our current mandates and we will be able to report that back to the state as of yet the commission has not provided any resources as it has for the holocaust and amistad mandates but that should come through the new commission scheduling is underway guidance counselors have been holding their individual student meetings in order for students to confirm their course selections once students have submitted their selections they are able to make changes until april 8th and lastly we reviewed the dates for the remainder of the year's curriculum meetings and our next meeting will be march 4th this friday does

121anyone have any questions can you repeat that that part about the top 20 percent and that you're referring to i'm sorry i think i for math yeah yes please okay hold on okay all right for um entrance into advanced math four achieve an average raw score in the top of the quantitative battery and non-verbal battery on the most recent kogat administration is that what you're asking about yes so that's not based on on the peers within the class that's based on a different metric well it's the it's based on their scores for the co-get but i'll like this is the school it's true for the school of the school by building okay so i guess the question that is basically because of the the um limitations of of the class availability because i guess what

122i'm what i'm thinking is if if the students have that capability and they're in the top 20 in the state but they you know are only 10 in the school or top 50 in the school um why wouldn't we be able to challenge them further to get into the advanced math placement so our our school historically has tested based on the results has tested a very scheduling component right there's one section for each grade level that meets weekly with the teacher um that's one component but students sort of below that threshold would be able to be you know enriched and differentiated within the classroom so this is an opportunity for students sort of in the top of their class to have that specialized pull out program once a week okay and do the teachers give

123recommendations even if they don't fall under that 20 percent it was not based on recommendation okay thank you okay i just i i have a question too oh so i just um just to follow up on that so one of the reasons why there is a limitation is because there aren't enough classes to accommodate certain students is that right um so the students so this is advanced math four and advanced math five right so this is they are not it's not a replacement math class for their math they're still in math four with the regular teacher and math five but it is an enrichment opportunity for students once a week to be pulled out and have instruction from the math specialist so there are limitations on the math specialist schedule there's one for building so

124they teach the accelerated math class they teach both advanced math classes and they also offer instructional support for struggling math students so that would kind of make up their entire schedule it's one component of the reasoning okay and this is different from accelerated math and yes right this is not the accelerated math program okay okay we're up to the wellness committee do you have a report i do so the wellness committee met on february 17th and we had a really amazing presentation by two of the k-5 counseling staff there are four four counselors one per school two came and presented on behalf of all four of them um and they spoke about their work in the elementary school of aligning the elementary school counseling curriculum to castle standards so for past history from 20 2002

125to 2019 there were one two three four five six modules created um and they felt that over in 2019 it was about time to look at the the curriculum and they wanted to update it using the castle framework and align with the asca standards which is the american association of counseling um they looked at the current lessons and they gave it a big old facelift they created five units from the six and we had presentations about each of the five units i gave to the board an example from one of the grades so each unit and each grade has its own age and developmentally appropriate lessons every time the counselors go in push into a classroom to give one of the lessons a counselor connection newsletter goes home to the parents to explain the lesson

126the notes are very specific to each grade and include the book that is used in the class the whole elementary counseling team worked together to create the curriculum and lessons across all four schools for okay all k5 levels curriculum standardized across the four schools it standardized is great because the lessons cover so many students and help enhance the ability of the counselors to connect with all of the students there is of course individual group counseling continues so the five new units are self-management which is managing one's emotions thoughts and behaviors effectively in different situations and help you achieve goals and aspirations so i gave an example in first grade they talk about grit and the catchphrase was i have grit and i won't quit which i think i might need to put on my wall

127at work and the book they use is called the koala who could this is these books are adorable i'm going to tell you about them they this one wouldn't the koala won't get out of his tree or leave his home and he finally did try because he wanted to go play with his friends the second unit is social awareness that's a first grade book what similarities and differences do we all have so similarities bring us together differences help us celebrate diversity they talked about a kindergarten lesson called all or welcome the book and it incorporates a neat art lesson so there's a lot of interdisciplinary things the third is relationship skills the abilities to establish and maintain healthy and supportive relationships and to effectively navigate settings with diverse individuals and groups skills when communicating effectively

128developing positive relationships resolving conflicts constructively resisting negative social pressure and practicing teamwork and remember this is k5 so um the fourth grade lesson book that they use is called the secret olivia told me they talk about secrets get told get changed become gossip like a big old game of telephone and they use an analogy about toothpaste that you can't put back in the tube the fourth is responsible decision making what does it mean to be a res make a responsible decision the decisions we make lead us to how we behave expected unexpected outcomes the third grade lesson they talked about a book called what if everybody did that it's got a picture of a kid littering everywhere um and they talk about things like name one behavior that's expected in a museum or a behavior

129that's accepts expected in gym class and what does it mean and the final unit is self-awareness self-awareness the ability to recognize one's emotions thoughts and values to understand one's emotions thoughts and values and to understand one's strengths and opportunities for improvement and the book they mentioned was called the fifth grade book was called the dot um which celebrates strength since you can see strengths in others and this book is so darn cute i ordered it for my college student and had it delivered to her by amazon so i encourage you to look it up okay then the students are fully engaged in role playing social scenario discussions it's really great and they build connections with their counselors the future of this curriculum is that they're going to do annual reflections of curriculum and student needs

130they're going to continue to review the books the new set of books that they're using is really updated from the 90s books that were previously used the second thing we heard was an update about the ridge high school wellness program mrs white already gave you a little detail about the march 2nd wellness program and how this ties into curriculum is because we're taking a day of instruction it's a half day but taking a day that we feel is so important for our students to to focus on wellness at the high school so march 2nd plans we already heard about them the four sessions the pto is bringing in the speaker and there's two other units but then after the students are dismissed the staff in service will continue with this theme of connection so they're

131really looking at building connections within the building the idea of team building and working with our team within the the district within the high school is so important to change help improve the culture and climate of the building we're building up strong individuals both students and staff and we're focusing on resilience this wellness program the brew also happened on the 15th is a five-year plan and this is just the first year and the the plans have been so exciting so i do encourage you to go and check out all the information if you go to the bernard's boe website on the ridge high school site on the ridge high school information hub which is a plethora of information if you click on the t time icon it really gives you all of the information that's

132happening in that really exciting program we heard about the academic planning night review which was a zoom night for all 8th graders for planning for high school it went well the information is all on the counseling website again that same ridge high school counseling website it's called the community bundle if you're not familiar with it anyone can look at the curriculum for the high school it was published on the 13th of january for the high school planning there's also some eighth grade rising eighth grade bundle um for whams there's a link to that on the the high school counseling website links to the william annan one because the eighth graders get to choose their recommendation or their electives excuse me and finally we had a january um in-service review oh no not finally in-service re

133day review so this is the january day um that happened um i'm not sure the date the center for create greater good which is out of uc berkeley was the resource for is the resource for three quarters of our in-service days so it's really focusing on staff and student student wellness there are three modules that um by march 2nd this coming wednesday all staff have to complete the modules in the greater center for greater good it's research based it's got a searchable database of resources that are grade based faculty and staff can use the in-service days for using to finish these modules or they can do them on their own and there will be building based end-of-day debrief on the center for greater good greater good on march 2nd the meeting in march they're also

134going to meet by teams or grade level talking about where we go next um through debriefing we're going to have it's going to help guide what they do next year and then the final thing we mr shellow sent in an update about our coach's handbook he is going to be working on creating two required training modules for coaches which we'll be rolling out this summer it'll be about six hours long total every coach will have to do it um the focus is going to be on develo either both developing and fostering a positive culture on your sports team and eliminating sexual abuse in sports there's discussion about an annual refresher so you don't have to um coaches don't have to do the whole six hour module each year and the annually updated coaching handbook will

135include what is in the training and allow coaches to sign off on completing the training our next meeting is march 17th which is st patrick's day and in the you know honor of that for wellness maybe i'll bring irish soda bread for breakfast does anyone have any questions no okay um we are up to liaison reports does anybody have any no okay so now we're up to public comment on non-agenda items please remember to tell us your name and address when you come down and then you can sign in on the clipboard thank you sherry nelson 195 smoke rise road i just have a follow-up question mr sweit was answering about the leadership team for the diversity and equity and inclusion survey plans um the lady that was speaking from the company said they normally

136have five or six people for some reason we ask to have more we have ten i didn't get an answer if we had anyone with a disability on that or someone who was a family member i can tell you that thirteen percent of the students in our district have an iep so i think you should be able to find one person who's representing them even if they're not creating the survey i mean if they're the leadership team for diversity equity and inclusion you need to have somebody who's got a disability representing that population in your leadership or your committee is not diverse and you're failing already so that's um concerning to me a different topic at the beginning of the meeting ms mckeon said that she that you guys were surprised by the email about

137the software update and i guess that means you guys didn't know about it in advance um it seems like if we were going to pilot a program monitoring our kids online activity outside of the school building you guys would have to approve something like that so that's very concerning to me that you guys didn't know about it but if you do plan to implement any type of monitoring software i think the district i.t department should give a presentation at a board of ed meeting first and explain exactly what the software is capable of monitoring can it access the webcams and microphones can it track your location do the chrome browser extensions work on phones or just computers what would be done with the data collected on students goguardian has a parent app as part of

138their suite that you guys would be purchasing would you be planning on enabling that so we would have access to the same information about our child's online activity that the district has how would you handle monitoring information on a personal device that is shared with other members of a household if a student forgets to log out then theoretically you could be monitoring the online activity of everyone in the house including adults who might visit a website that's not appropriate for a student to be on and you'd have no way of knowing who actually did that and i don't know if you realize how common that is i'm working on the balloons in june committee for example i shared a google doc with the moms on the committee with me that night i got a request

139for access to this document and it was the same last name of someone so i emailed the lady and i said do you need me to give you access to this she goes oh my gosh i'm logged in as my daughter don't don't give it access like these kind of stories happen every day people do not realize they're in their kids school accounts if they share a computer before you consider launching any monitoring software that would load on personal devices you need to communicate in great detail exactly what the software is capable of monitoring and provide instructions on how parents can protect their personal information on their personal devices board of ed members and parents need to be full need to fully understand the capabilities of the software and the risks involved if this type

140of monitoring software were to become compromised the district network okay few more the district network was hacked less than a year ago so why would we expose students the possibility of being monitored and tracked by strangers the question is not what the district software what you're planning to do with it what's it capable of that could potentially compromise the safety of our children if it was hacked and if it's compromised then who has access to our kids information location and webcam i am opposed to any software that would monitor students activity outside the school building but we need for you to be honest and transparent about what you're planning and discuss all aspects in advance if you plan to move forward with this thanks hi my name is marius vilomites 29 compton court and i'm

141very thankful for that ma'am you basically raised the same questions what i was about to tell is a go guardian it's really nice that you said that you will still cons and will still reevaluate but i want to make my just a quick comment on the basically very similar topics so my before i do that i'm going to introduce myself i'm an id guy with a t background for a certain period of time i worked as a consultant implementing the surveillance and monitoring systems like this for the government agencies and some large companies and i have a little bit of an understanding what the software can do so my ask for you would be this exactly same just to be transparent as you can also keep in mind that the some of the computers are

142the personal computers at home it's not as schools comp computers so the i didn't find too much what the software can do but based on a high level description like this marketing description seems like a software is capable much more to do than just to monitor the kids right so especially if the personal computers any data can be accessed i have no doubts about the teacher intentions on monitoring the kids because teachers are i'm sure they're busy making sure that our kids uh getting the curriculum as us in a in a best manner and they probably rushing back home my concern who else has access who's controlling that software within the school and within the company on top of that keep in mind that the school have been breached or the hacked twice in the

143last couple years the worst part of that none of us from my parents got information what exactly happened i'm not sure how much of information you as a board of education have but at least i couldn't get that i tried reaching out to school nobody disclosed any details except the responses we do our best and we sure no but no harm was done so having all that combination in mind i would really like that you guys considered reviewing the software very carefully so and again in case any help is needed the parents community are really ready to help you guys in evaluation an assessment and a feedback when you do this assessment especially having in mind this area probably the majority of parents are with the at background in a high level probably the worth

144class specialist on this field so i would really like to ask you ask you for it for this and one more comment actually just uh recently during the meeting i heard i i just want to echo the what you have asked about the metrics on the mathematics the percentage on the class versus the state i think that's extremely good point and i finally found a person who speaks exactly the same language as i'm speaking at home because if we taking kids by the percentage of the class we assuming this class is doing exactly the same as the rest of the state and i think that's incorrect assumption because at the end of the day the goal is to teach those kids prepare for the college okay so my point is that would you reconsider the

145metrics uh the calculating this because again these kids already in my opinion have two disadvantages being in in this area at the schools one is one of the top schools in the state right so they're competing with the one of the best kids among the class versus the other maybe not as good schools in majority in the state and the second one where they get in the disadvantage is when they go into college because of a zip code they're getting minus points for the evaluation because the college is assuming that the kids have wealthy enough to get a tutoring at home so at that point they don't get any extra points but minus points so basically we pushing our gets twice so i would really ask you to reassess the ability to provide a wider

146audience of the kids to get to the math classes which are great in this school which are great in this district that's why most of the parents are moving here so yeah thank you eric q to 151 that great drive i guess this obviously is in a format of q a but i think in essence of being transparent and kind of informing the public on the way decisions are made behind the scenes with you all i guess i'm just curious about how you guys go about deciding you know the committees with the board and who is selected and how they're selected for committees um i think simply we we have a candidate that ran on her expertise as a cpa and a very established career and i i looked up the committees and i found

147that she's not even on the finance committee where i feel like she could lend probably uh most of her skill sets that she uses on a day-to-day basis so i guess i'm just curious how do you guys make that decision is it one person is it the president is it the you know the board together and why aren't we leveraging our people for their strengths that's all i have uh cody smith 36 royal oak drive um i'd like to start tonight by addressing a couple of the comments that were made in the board forum at the last meeting some characterize my comments regarding missing's qualifications to serve on this board as a personal attack it was not i was merely questioning how her qualifications exceeded those of 10 other candidates given the voters rejected her

148by a wide margin and as i stated that night miss singh has every right without restriction to seek a seat on the board through appointment and miss singh's commitment and willingness to volunteer her time to serve on this board should be commended however all candidates seeking appointment that evening indicated that they had the time to serve to support our children and would run for election in the fall regarding my reference to the incumbent cabal the members had a slate website here at mccune solomonsing.com wiley dispersed a slate yard sign throughout our town and distributed a 15-page jointly prepared handout at the candidates forum right here in this auditorium on october 7 2021. at a minimum the cabal members had a conflict of interest in appearance and should have recused themselves from any discussion regarding missing's

149appointment to this board instead mr salman nominated missing for the board and along with miss hira and miss mccoon voted to seat ms singh next new jersey is the worst state in the country when it comes to property taxes of the property taxes levied in this town 66 cents of every dollar is raised as a primary funding for this school district's 110 million dollar budget so obviously the physical responsibility of this board is critical to we taxpayers with respect to board committee assignments it's quite interesting that ms singh is a full-fledged member of the finance committee serving with two of her other cabal members well miss light is only an alternative member you may recall miss light ran last november on a physical responsibility platform and was elected by the voters moreover she is a

150certified public accountant working for one of the big four prestigious international accounting firms on the other hand ms singh is a self-described chef and wellness coach so i asked did miss singh just did miss light desire to be a regular member of the finance committee and given district district policy zero one five five seems to be severely restricted on an alternative member's participation in committee activities will ms light receive all the materials distributed by the finance committee prior to the finance committees meetings will ms light be able to attend the finance committee meetings and fully participate in all discussions of the committee and regardless of any differences please explain the board's thought process of having this light designated as an alternative member when miss singh who seems to have little if any financial background is

151a regular member and i will say after listening to discussion of the bond financing you absolutely do need some more help some of the questions um weren't really on point and they showed a lack of basic knowledge and finance luckily you had the advisors over here but it wasn't a very good showing by the board thank you brett hodges 177 lord sterling road i'm very thankful that this board of education is moving forward with the diversity inclusion uh approach whatever its final stage may be and however many years it's taken to get there in the light of going forward with diversity inclusion i hope that any discussion as to a monitoring software as to potentially future discussions that may be heard about what type of literature or shooter should not be held in our libraries

152are mirrored and consulted with the approach that you're trying to achieve with a diversity inclusion program those things do not necessarily go together whatsoever and i hope that you are consultative of yourselves and of anybody who you hire to make sure you're keeping consistent um with your approach in general towards your operations and goals the only other item i wanted to bring up and i could be very wrong on this item because this was admittedly a third party statement but i know that a bunch of students today at ridge high had to leave class at 11 so they could uh get prepared for matilda which we see around us from 11 to 5 30 and i asked somebody who was very involved i said why and they said well because they have to get ready

153for the board of education meeting tonight at 7. so i don't know how true that is or not but i just hope that if there is any of those type of conflicts in the future rather than pulling children out of a hundred and somehow children out of classes early so they can get whatever needed practice or rehearsal they have perhaps an alternative location maybe um if the communication lines are open and open an alternative location could be identified thank you hi stacy molinari 27 franklin drive i just want to say thank you for volunteering for your service on the board i can only imagine how difficult the last two years has been my family is here in town mainly because of the schools but also because of the community anytime that i ever heard people

154were sending their kids to private schools i always had some difficulty understanding why that might be due to the incredible public school system we have been so lucky to be a part of and of course the board of education has always been a huge part of that but unfortunately this opinion of mine is changing you seem no longer able to see that community members who might not just who might not agree with you are not insulting you why is it that any time you're challenged with an opposing view you take offense the behavior i observed from several of you at the last meeting was astounding you attacked a man who came in for public comment and insulted the community members here because you didn't like the facts he shared or the questions he asked this

155man who i do not know asked how those of you how those you appointed to the board had qualifications that exceeded other applicants for those who waited the one and a half hours of your deliberation that evening i don't think asking that question okay for those of us who waited the one and a half hours of your deliberation that evening i don't think asking for transparency in the decision process is unreasonable i heard the comments live that night but then i also went back to listen to the recording to be sure while i did hear questioning your decision making and just simply asking for transparency i did not hear personal insults i am aware that you do not have to answer what comes up in public comment like you state in the beginning of every

156meeting but instead of simply not commenting you instead chose board forum to call members of our community quote cowardly totally ridiculous inconsiderate and you spoke down to them hold on is there a different mic we can use what about the one from the middle there can we get that one we're gonna try to get a different microphone okay you spoke down to them in a condescending matter saying i quote now you listen to me and you said that parents who attend these meetings should be embarrassed and should be better role models to me this was a shocking display of unprofessionalism from members of this board especially when you felt it necessary to scold members of our community we expect more of our officials it's clear to me from your reaction that you don't like those

157who disagree or question you or ask for transparency so what i am asking you is please keep in mind that anyone who comes here whether they agree with you or not is here for one reason we love our kids we love the kids of the community we love our schools we love our teachers we want to see you making decisions that are the best for the school community that we love and at this point i too question this decisions you've been making because they have not been transparent thank you i do not have public comment is there anyone else here in person that would like to make a public comment after he puts the battery on thanks dallas thank you stella perna 105 tuxford terrace i've been coming to these meetings on and off for

158the last 15 years and i've also been involved as a pto president i saw a lot of things and you know in my mind we're the customers and our customer service is not where we feel it should be and i i hope that you understand that you know in the kind of industry i'm in customer service is everything when your customers are unhappy you want to hear from them so you can do better so i'm asking what would your customers want for me it's important that we have a strong school system that's everything that's what makes burns township great when we hear these comments about well we you know we don't like how you come up here and disagree with us or we don't feel uh that we're not as transparent as you claim to

159be i have a problem with that it's not transparent if it's transparent you wouldn't have parents complaining about it so please understand the website's hard to use i can never find anything i'm in the i.t space i can't ever find anything i would like to see the website be cleaner and easier to use i'd like to see things that we request be addressed and just overall think about it from our point of view just say to yourself what would a parent appreciate and like in this school district and most of all how does this help our children and that's all i have to say hi cindy huang carriageway i just wanted to come and say that i really support what miss molinari and mr smith said tonight regarding that you're there's what happened last week

160and um i think it was blown out of proportion and that was not mr smith's statement um it's all about the transparency among the parents you know we know you guys have a hard job and you know communication is hard but that is something like ms perna just said as well um you know that's what that's that's a real main focus from from from us from this perspective um and i also really wanted to highlight with respect to the software pilot program um the us senate sent a letter to a lot of these software companies with their concerns um it was led by elizabeth warren and i think two other senators i highly recommend going through them they highlighted a lot of really good questions directly to the ceos of software companies regarding data breaches

161privacy i think that's something you guys should consider while doing your diligence on using the app thanks is there anyone else here in person that would like to make a public comment do we have anyone on zoom miss marcus can you hear me you can unmute yourself and make your comment you're muted okay i can comment now sorry um my comment is about the curriculum um and then the math name and address i'm sorry oh sorry debbie marcus 16 lafayette lane um if we were trying to assess whether some kids were proficient in languages we would have them take a test and have a cut off score and the kids that passed it would be deemed proficient they wouldn't say compared to their peers they're proficient or not based on how their peers did and

162i find it very odd that we're doing that for the mathematics accelerated programs particularly since we live in a district where a large percentage of our kids are probably in the top 10 percent in math in in the country i think there should be designated a cut-off score that the teachers recommend as being proficient to get be qualified for the programming extra programming and i also think that we all know that there's some kids who have really clever minds logically mathematically but the standardized tests don't capture that and the accelerated program pull out stuff is more of that creative logical thinking and so i think it's a disservice to our teachers that they we don't also accept their recommendation for students into some of the elementary and middle school level programs i don't really understand

163the logic of trying to limit it so much we want our kids to excel and if we have a whole classroom of kids that qualify for the supplemental stuff based on a cut off score then we should try to accommodate that and not um work to limit it i think it was mrs light who pointed out that you know picking a number like 20 is somewhat arbitrary um if kids have the knowledge we should be able to match it particularly in our town where we have many communities that excel in that area thank you thank you someone else i've been waiting another one okay connecting oh gone vanished i know no one else said no okay so at this point i'll close public comment um i just wanted to respond to a couple actually i'll

164start at the end and go backwards kind of the last comment was about the math proficiency test question um i think it might be um a great idea to have another one of your not to put you on the spot kristen but another one of your parent you know information sessions about the gnt program and um quest and stuff like that i think um it's been confusing because we've changed the program several times over the past several years in terms of what's what whether it's accelerated math versus what we're calling advanced math um some of the programming is is really our way of meeting the gifted and talented mandate which is very specific about just servicing a percentage of children that are outside of the the average you know curve just like we help children

165that we have special needs on the other end in whatever subject who are struggling so some of it is based on that um so some of quest is like that some of the math program is based more on criteria of like what kids are ready for in what year so we have lots of different levels of math in our system of when you can start different things like algebra there's you can start it in like four or five different grades um so i think it's complicated i think this specific thing was about to pull out one day a week thing which i think is more like the quest program where it's it's it's um enrichment it's not acceleration so they would i think it would be great because there's a lot of newer parents and

166things have changed a couple of times for people to be able to have a chance and there's a lot of stuff on the website if you go on the um quest website to read about um so that might be great um okay so going backwards um the go guardian the people that came up with the very specific questions and comments about go guardian please you know send us an email with whatever you had typed up because i couldn't catch all of it but obviously we want to be asking those questions um in terms of us not knowing about it i mean the district had made no decision to purchase software or anything like that goguardian offers like a free pilot where you can try it out which of course is their marketing tool so you

167know they want you to try it in a couple of very small scale things and that was what was being contemplated um so we obviously have a lot more homework to do on that issue and we plan on doing it in a number of different board committees also reporting back out and also um in april which meeting is it april day plan in april yeah the april 11th board meeting we've had um scheduled for you know all year long that there's going to be a district technology plan update which would have some of that information in it too so please send us yeah please send us your questions and comments um so we can make sure we're hitting all of this stuff because i know there are a lot of people in our town that

168know a lot about technology and i have two kids that work in i.t so i got a big earful from them about a lot of this too um okay so that was go guardian in terms of the um the last board meeting and just the general you know um contentiousness um i can just speak personally that you know the last several years have been very difficult for everyone um people have been you know on edge obviously i mean we're all sick of wearing our masks people have been struggling um things have been really tense and difficult for everyone um so yes people are kind of you know not everyone's not at their best and we've had a lot of board meetings that didn't go so well we've had a lot of emails and things behind

169the scenes that weren't not particularly pleasant um lots of people in the community are also feeling frustrated and angry i think we really need to try to move forward in a positive way and listen to each other i think even the the diversity equity and inclusion um initiative there's been discussion out there you know wherever in town that isn't always 100 positive and productive about that whole issue and i think you know the whole reason we want to go forward with it is to be able to talk to each other um about different difficult topics and do it in a respectful way and teach our kids that so i mean this is just a personal plea for myself that that's what we want to try to do and i'm not going to speak for anyone

170else in terms of boards the board committee process um i think it might actually be helpful i know gwen thornton she's our school board rep who was here earlier for some training she did uh like a little presentation at another board's um public meeting because they were having some of the same you know concerns from their community that we've had and she kind of explained the role of the board and we've been trying to kind of talk about it with like the chain of command conversation about how we you know we can't we can only refer people through the chain of command on certain issues we don't have the authority as individual board members to do a lot of things we can only act as a whole when we're here to vote on things the

171committees don't have any authority they just review information and bring it to the full board for deliberation and consideration and like one of the things i think gwen would say i mean going to like a million of her school board trainings over the years is you know board members need to learn about all the aspects of the board and um we have a lot of training we have a training for each new board member in each area that we each you know each area of the district's functioning and um you know we want everyone to learn about finance we want everyone to learn about curriculum i mean some people come on and they have a lot of background in education so maybe they already know a lot of what goes on in the curriculum community

172other people know nothing so we do try to get people experience on different committees um and rotate them so we don't usually have someone that just stays on forever and a committee some some things are based on scheduling um and people's work schedules and stuff like that so there's some people that can't serve on certain committees so it's kind of like a jigsaw puzzle right karen trying to make it all work out and get people onto committees um so yeah that's all i have to say i don't know if i missed anything that you wanted to say about no i was going to talk about the fact that we want to do the presentation april on technology uh and certainly your suggestion to ask people to send their questions in is great so that we

173have them in writing the other question i think that came up related to technology was about the website and i know that we're in the process of redoing the website uh it's a construction that kind of happens behind the scenes before it goes live so we're working on it that's that's a long-term project it's going to take some time we recognize that we want to do better there in terms of the way the website presents the the board meeting here tonight so there's a long history of uh trying to have a uh a steady setup with respect to the board of education meetings and uh making them readily accessible to members of the public uh and now that we are also trying to uh broadcast our board meetings uh with live stream uh as well

174as record them and post recordings we've tried to set up in one place to make sure that we can do the best job that we can with that it presents a significant challenge trying to get the same quality of audio set up in other locations have a recording system that's set up and works works well and we've done i think a pretty good job of being able to capture our board meetings for the public in a way that are fairly audible uh with decent sound quality and the recording that works uh which is the reason why we've tried to be as consistent as we can in one location when you try to take that show on the road uh it seems like something always goes wrong uh when you're moving all that equipment around and

175trying to make it work so that's the reason why uh we're trying to keep things here in the pack i did work this out months ago with uh mr fakeman at the beginning of the year he's known our schedule here so certainly we could have a conversation about the pull-out approach relative to practicing because i can certainly understand that but that's the reason why we we are here tonight trying to make this work in a way that is accessible for for everyone because we know the value of being able to communicate and for all those folks that can't be here that might want to be watching since we started doing the live stream we've typically gotten more traction than we had when we would only have um the in person so it's nice to see

176that that still seems to be something at least some people are using and also posting the recording after the fact for for those that might want to watch it um you know on a friday night when they they're looking for something fun to do uh so that that's the reason why we did it that way um that's about it thank you okay we're up to board forum does anyone have anything mrs gray um i have two minor items um and i don't know if this is significant mr crew but um i spaced out during the policy language and there's some inaccuracy here i think there was probably some confusion at the time of the meeting the advocacy committee is not referred to as the wellness committee the safety committee became the wellness committee and the

177advocacy committee is the president's advisory if this is going to be in a policy we probably want the language to reflect that accurately okay all right i'll send you a note um and then um i wanted to also mention that the municipal alliance has shared that the twilight challenge run will be taking place on june 5th so you should there's sign ups in the library they'll be um also distributed probably at some point in a friday folder they're just kind of fresh off the presses and i just want to make one other comment to address a couple of the people who spoke this evening and say first that prior to be on the being on the board for eight years you may have heard me say that i attended board meetings for 15 years and

178most of them and i fully respect and appreciate that when parents come here or or members of the community that aren't parents are coming to express concern frustration maybe even anger but what i've observed and i know that mrs mcewen kind of addressed this a little bit the last two years have been incredibly stressful for everyone there's been a total loss of civility in doing so and i watched so many people fight mightily for so many causes to save full day kindergarten to add the appropriate g t programs to uh you know to fight for or against the the very space that we're sitting in which did not exist all the way back then and we stood in line for half an hour to make public comments some nights i remember being in liberty corners

179cafeteria with the referendum in front of us trying to work through what should and shouldn't be included in the 54 million dollar bond that we put so we could build this and and other facilities throughout the town at that time people were frustrated and they were upset and they were fighting for what they believed in but i don't ever remember anyone including myself and the people i sat with who felt like i did in the audience screaming at the board of education that we don't care about children that we are putting them at risk that we are exposing them to child abusers we've you name it we've heard it in the last year and a half so keeping all of that in mind i say please come to the board of education share with us

180what's on your mind but remember that we all sit here spending hours and hours of our personal time for exactly what you're for you're here for the children of this community because we care about them and we care about the excellence of this school district and what it means to all of the community all of us so i'm just making a plea for civility not even you don't have to respect us and we certainly don't expect everyone to agree with us and and we don't anticipate agreeing with everyone that's not that doesn't mean we're not listening and it certainly does not mean that we don't care and i think that's the hardest thing to listen to from the members of this community is that we don't care nobody's perfect nothing is perfect and as much

181as the speakers who come here every time we meet have something on their mind trust us when we say there's someone sitting at home watching or someone who you're going to talk to tomorrow who doesn't share that point of view either and it's okay if we don't all agree our responsibility is try to figure out how we make it work for the community at large not to support every individual viewpoint so i just ask for civility and and please come with your comments and share your thoughts and concerns but do it in a civil manner and without insults please it's light facing light or white hi it's just light i have i have three things um first of all i'd really like to thank the teachers and the administration um week after week you know

182when we're going and we're approving personnel committee i notice the teachers of this district taking on additional sections of classes and covering for the outstanding positions that we have open and i think that your dedication to our children and the excellence of this community is simply amazing and i appreciate the effort that you all are putting through so i wanted to take that opportunity and know that it hasn't gone lost on me i'd also like to thank the community for staying engaged speaking up for concerns that they are having i do very much enjoy hearing the comments i think as a new board member i learned quite a bit from you from varying different perspectives as well as my current board members with their vast history on the board i also appreciate that even though

183we might not have the volume of community members that people have shared with me that they may not be comfortable in a public speaking role so they typically will have somebody that um is not uncomfortable speaking come and speak for them so i understand that you might be speaking from multiple members of the community and i appreciate that and i do hear you and take everything that your heart to heart and think about everything that you're saying my last comment is concern for the lack of transparency and this is more for the board forum and this is about the the communication that went out and i understand um the situation that gave rise to that but i think that was most disturbing to me related to that was the kind of putting the lid on

184a friday before a holiday weekend and letting that out there for five days because i think that caused unnecessary stress for the community and i think that the communication could have been better about how to at least make sure you shut down in specific instructions related to how you can shut down i know me as a member of a public accounting firm has a lot of confidential information on my work computer which i will typically use to log into my boe account and that causes a lot of stress from my perspective not knowing what could have been viewed from my confidential private client information i have learned from that lesson and will never use my work commuter for board business ever again but that being said you know some of the the information that i've

185heard from parents and some of the concerns that i have you know is weighing you know balancing what are the goals of this software versus you know what is the control or the the violation of parents rights to control the values being taught to their own children the potential violation of privacy to family members and students because it does seem like this was going to be put out on personal devices and again without knowing the extent of that without knowing too much i think that we need to weigh those options and also with those options i think comes an increased risk in liability legal liability so you know i'll bring up probably the worst scenario that any one of us as parents or a community can possibly ever imagine would be something similar to the

186school shooting incident that just occurred and i believe it was in december and knowing that if we if that school district had this kind of monitoring software what would our legal liability have been as a school district and as a community versus what is the parents and the counselors and everybody else's legal liability and i think that that's a very serious consideration that we need to make when we're evaluating you know the pros and the cons of putting in this kind of software my last comment on that will just be about that i just again i didn't see any communication coming out to the board prior until about five minutes prior to it being broadcast out to the greater community on a holiday weekend where people might not have been paying attention and for for

187people that have been coming here begging for transparency i whether it was intentional or not which i do not believe it was the optics of the matter is that it seemed like it was for a lack of transparency and i think that we can do better and we need to actually think about that as a board and as an administration with our communications to make sure that we're as transparent as possible that we're as succinct as possible in our communications giving all the information because our board meetings are only every couple of weeks and i think that that's very important to the community because perception is 90 of the law and what people are going to perceive is going to increase anger in the community and decrease the trust so i think that we need

188to help build some of the trust in the community and with that i will shut up thank you does someone else have their hand up before yes um i just wanted to follow up with you are you thinking of asking when to come and speak at a a meeting to parents because i just i think there seems to be a lot of misconception about the committees and who's on committees and why you're on committees and i'm not even sure that the community really understands that the communities are made up of supervisors and administrators and teachers and our role is not to lead those committees so it in some regards it's it's irrelevant what my job is because i am not there in that capacity i'm there in the capacity of i'm a board rep member

189sitting on a committee hopefully rotating through committees to learn everything and i'm not sure that that's really known that you know when you're on the wellness committee the supervisor of guidance runs that when you're on the curriculum the supervisor of curriculum runs that you know that may not be known so maybe you're thinking that oh my gosh you must be a social worker or a school counselor or a therapist to sit on wellness and you must be an educator or a speech therapist or an occupational therapist to sit on curriculum and that's simply just not the case and i think people just don't necessarily know about how that you know all works out so if that's what you were thinking of having gwen come and really you know doesn't have to be lengthy but i

190i think that that let's just you know put this all to bed this this why is why are you on this and why aren't you on this and how do you get on this and what is your background and how do you how do you get like even just what goes into an appointment i don't think people really understand what is considered when you are appointing somebody and maybe if we could have that that conversation that dialogue put it to bed already so this doesn't keep coming up over and over again i mean i can talk to her i don't know exactly i can go and look for the um video of the board meeting where she gave the thing and see whether it seems like it would be helpful um is anyone good yeah

191um i just want to say i have absolutely zero problem with being transparent um to the public and to the board you know a couple of parents mentioned that why does the board not understand that parents and and public comments are here because they care about their kids well i just want to say the exact same thing we're all up here on the stage because we also just care about the kids it's very simple secondly when someone says it's not personal when you use negative words like a cabal which by definition means some secret political group it doesn't actually sound like a positive word so let's just clarify why the negativity the opinion of negativity was even stated in the first place there's a civilized way to do things similar to what karen said i

192was going to share the same sentiment i don't ever expect to have arguments like this with my kids where we're fighting back and forth so i definitely don't expect to have arguments like this with adults where we're fighting back and forth yelling at each other walking out you know just it's just a little ridiculous so doing things in a polite way from both ends is is i think appreciated and should be reciprocated i don't think there's one person who's at fault or multiple people who are at fault i think it's a community that we are in and the community needs to work together as much as possible i mean i agree with what you just said in in the sense of um when people came up tonight and asked you know very nicely how are

193committees you know made on the board like i don't think anyone has a problem being transparent about things like that some things we can't talk about when we do a board appointment we are not allowed to talk about what was discussed in executive session it's kind of private just like when we talk about personnel i don't think people would want you know it you know to hear exactly what was said about who that's just how it's always been done so we can certainly not say exactly what was said about who but we can certainly talk about the process which you know i think if the question had been asked differently maybe we would have been able to go into more detail about that because it's a legal you know requirement in new jersey when there's

194an appointment and we could go into the whole explanation of how that works and why the person is only appointed until the next election so that the voters can have you know their say at that point stuff so i agree um it you know going forwards i hope we can have productive you know conversations and be as transparent as we can possibly be and we can just ask for forgiveness when there's glitches like the it was unfortunate timing that it was the holiday weekend when the thing about goguardian came out because it was a holiday weekend and people couldn't you know do anything until after the holiday weekend so um it is what it is and you know it did cause stress it caused stress for us it caused stress for parents and students high

195school students were talking about it so yeah you know that's unfortunate but um you know we need to move forward and try to work positively anyone else have anything karen i i just have to say one thing and i say it with due respect to everyone who used the word here and everyone who used the word there transparent what do you mean do you mean should we communicate better should there be better messaging should there be more timely email announcements blasts because when i hear transparent all i hear is a suggestion that people the information is being hidden and information is not being hidden ask the questions to which you would like answers don't come in after the fact and accuse of having been had something hidden from you those are two different things and

196i'll be the first one and anyone who knows me a long time knows i've been complaining about communication for a long time because we can always do better and we always try to learn from something that happened prior to robin's point of a moment ago we could have handled it differently on last friday and the only thing we can do is do better the next time but offering up this word transparency inherently has a negative connotation which is that information is being hidden by this body or by the school district at large and that's not really what's happening so approach your your board members contact them write emails if you know someone on the board call them ask questions write an email to the collective board contact your school building you know representative at whatever

197level that is but don't come to the board and and effectively while saying this elegant word of transparency don't think you're not suggesting that we're d we're not we're doing something sinister or something with intent to conceal because that's just not really what's happening robert suzanne so one of the comments that i was debating about saying was is about the way that we function with committees the way we work is with committee work that take up a lot of our time during the week and during the day and that's where we do work people kind of wanted to know well who's on committees and what do you talk about well i just read you four pages of exactly what we talked about at the wellness meeting the notes from finance were exactly what they talked

198about at finance with the exception of a few confidential items that can't be disclosed because of the law so those that's how we function and then we come back here and we talk and that's that's there's no hidden agenda by having committees it's that you'd don't want to sit through and we couldn't sit through all of the work that we do in committees as a big group so that's it's it's simple is that there's not anything hidden about it i think it's important that we have different voices and different opinions and different expertise on each committee i think it's okay to have somebody who's not an expert in a field or an area on a committee um you know and that's that's why we're all here to help on help everyone understand it is okay

199that i don't have clear understanding of finance because i can have people explain it to me and there's a lot of people in our community who don't have a background in finance as well and they might appreciate that that information as well so committees that's how we work it's not untransparent we read out minutes that's what happens can i just clarify also um it's not that we we don't want to all meet on committees we are not allowed to all be on committees if we are if there are more of them for board of ed members on a committee it is a quorum and that would mean we are have to have a public open meeting and that is not how committees work so there are four board of ed members on each committee but

200we all have access to all of the information that is provided to a committee so for instance i may have read out the curriculum minutes but last week i shared the curriculum minutes with the entire board and that also had links to documents that they could look at for for more information they could reach out to me and ask me questions in advance if they wanted to that works the same way for all of our committees so there there is no keeping anything from one another we all have access to the exact same information and it is part of our job prior to monday night to read the minutes and to reach out to chair people if we have any questions if we don't understand anything but so that we are informed when we come

201here that's part of our job tim yeah i'll just add one other thing i think i think it's also important to understand that um and i didn't know this coming on the board but um when you do come on the board and we just got the training was that you are in a policy making role so typically new board members start off on the policy committee because that's where they get the most instruction on how the framework of the board is constructed how it operates within the the state public school system so it's really the best place to start and just because i'm a lawyer doesn't mean i had any special expertise in public school policy i really didn't i might have had some underlying vocabulary but if somebody has a medical background or a

202finance background or an educational background it really doesn't matter there are experts like jen said on the other side on the administration that really help us to understand that stuff and maybe you have a little bit of a vocabulary that helps you you know facilitate your understanding but really everybody's coming up to speed based on the minutes and the committee system um the last thing i'll just say is like uh i i think it's a little strange that uh maybe i'm misunderstanding um the person who keeps accusing me of being in the cabal that it's not a personal attack uh i i think i know what a cabal is and it's not like a compliment so um you know maybe if you want to re-watch if you didn't see any like personal attacks and you

203thought cabal was like a nice word you could go back and look at that but it's you know it's not it's not i'll just tell you it's not like a compliment and i wish the person that keeps accusing me of being a cabal would actually like write me an email or something and say hey i have an issue and i'd like to talk to you because i've never heard from this person so um anytime he's free and wants to chat i'm i'm available thanks i know i can't stop i'm sorry i just want to say one thing and i i'm hoping that i can pass the baton to you on this one because i know you can speak better to it but um there is such a thing in new jersey school boards guidelines that

204says that a board can act as a committee of the whole which means that every board member is on every committee and it happens right here like this and my understanding of boards that operate that way which are very very very few is you will get a dropper full of information compared to the information we share with you because we meet for two and three hours when our committing committees meet and you listen to two very lengthy reports tonight finance wasn't terribly long but both wellness and curriculum gave a wealth of information to share with the community it would be a couple of minutes because we'd be here for 14 hours if we compiled all the meetings that take place you know in between each of our public board meetings so in and i think

205mr crew can once again comment on this this board offers as much detail in committee minute at committee reports as any board that he observes so i'm going to stop talking there no that's okay um can i just add one thing to that the other benefit that we have with the committee meetings that you really couldn't do in a committee of the whole is all of the other outside consultants and groups that we bring in to speak you're just talking about the amount of time we take but we wouldn't be able to get them all here on one given night of the week so all of that expertise that we bring in on a regular basis and i'm speaking from the finance committee perspective into the finance committee you wouldn't necessarily be able to get

206if you wanted to have them all here as a committee of the whole and i just have to i can't help myself either i have to say one more thing and speaking of whether or not people's um jobs their personal professional jobs are relevant to their role as board members obviously some you know background information is helpful sometimes if you know things already it's you can jump right in on certain things but i mean like what people were saying you know that's not what our role is our role is policy making it's not to be the curriculum writing people or to be the counselors or to be the accountants or whatever like that in the district but i do have to say goodyear you're too you're too modest because you're so passionate about wellness that

207you talked about wellness so much but you're a successful business woman with like a million employees in a rapidly expanding business which is very impressive to me so i just had to put that out there because that hasn't really been brought up can i just say one last thing it really will be last i think we also need to just put whatever happened the election is over and this is the board of ed for the next you know year until there's another election so it really isn't helpful to come up and you know use the cabal expression or question somebody else we're the governing body that has to you know work together and hash things out and hopefully do what is best for all the students in in the district so um i'm certainly not

208saying don't come with the question and you know don't have a concern and you have to agree with everything but i'm saying this is us this is your board of ed until you know a new one is voted in at the next election so you know work with us not against us okay um i feel like i'm the only one that hasn't said anything and i've waited till like 10 o'clock now it's been like what we've been here since four four o'clock so six hours so i i'm just going to end on a positive note and say that honestly you know somebody came here and said you know put yourselves put yourself in our shoes and and we are in your shoes most of us many of us here are parents and we really really

209do do this we've been here i've been here for six hours solely because we do care about the kids in our district so again we welcome the comments it's it's great to get the feedback it's great to get the perspective if we don't get the perspective and we don't hear it we can't do what we need to do also so on that note i will just say good night because it is 10 o'clock and it's been a long day do you want to make the move the motion for adjournment okay richard and kirsten seconded it