001good evening everyone and welcome to the board of education meeting oh sorry the board has already met an executive session and we did a salute the flag at this time at that time so if we could have a roll call mr mclaughlin please mr salmon here ms shaffer here mrs white here mrs mccoon here ms singh here this is corn here miss hira okay she said mr marcarian here mr saya here miss fox here mrs gray here madam president thank you again welcome everyone this is a regular meeting of the board of education at bernard's township notice of the time and place of the meeting was provided and copies of that resolution were forwarded to the official newspapers as designated by the board of education in the and to the township clerk and a copy
002of the notice was posted on the bulletin board of the board of education offices due to the pandemic the board expects that in-person attendees to this meeting have completed and passed a self-assessment of personal health or wearing a face covering sit in socially distanced manner from members of different households and maintain socially distant social distancing if waiting in line to make a public comment for members of the public who are unable to attend our meeting in person there are two live stream links of the meeting posted through the district website www.bernardsboe.com the two links are both airing our meeting each simply backs up the other to be prepared for possible 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
003time is early in the meeting before the board votes when you may speak about any item that is listed on the agenda toward 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 a participant shall be limited to three minutes duration no participant may speak more than once during a given public comment session in order to run an efficient meeting and to allow for maximum opportunity for members of the public to speak the board will limit total public comment for agenda and non-agenda items to 45 minutes each all statements shall be directed to the presiding officer no participant may address or question board members individually for members of the
004public who are not attending our meeting in person public comments may be submitted via email please follow these instructions starting at 7 pm email your comment to btconnect bernardsboe.com use public comment as the email subject or start of your oh we're not doing text message sorry indicate your first and last name and address this is required for your comment to be included public comments made in person will be processed first then comments submitted by email no public comments sent via email will be accepted before 7 pm or after item 19 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
005public comments and 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 the board will not be responsible for the content of comments made by members of the public members of the public are cautioned that they are speaking at their own risk and any personally directed statements they make may subject them to legal liability to the affected individual should the board have to go into
006executive session at the end of the meeting we will provide an estimated length of time and whether any action will be taken upon return to the public session with that we are up to our student represent representative gordon welcome thank you so much for having me and good evening everybody with christmas and the new year fast approaching ridge has truly embraced the holiday spirit as students tie up loose ends for their well-deserved holiday break the hallways of ridge buzz with excitement and anticipation with the energy of the holidays ridge students have once again showed the diversity of our talents the ridge forensics team attended several national tournaments over the past few weeks placing champions in many speech and debate events including congressional debate declamation and lincoln douglas the team also showed its hospitality by simultaneously
007hosting the rich debates which included 200 competitors from around the united states additionally many other clubs such as academic league and the ridge business club have started to run their own competitions contests and fundraisers engaging the student body in an excellent manner a huge congratulations to the coaches students and parents of all of these teams for their continued success both in and out of competition not to be outdone the ridge sports teams have accumulated an equally impressive list of honors thus far the ridge swim team competed in several highly competitive meets with many ridge swimmers achieving personal bests meet first places and meet mvps the ridge cheerleading team has officially claimed the title of regional champion and will seek to maintain their streak at the high school nationals tournament additionally many other sports are just
008beginning to compete in their season we congratulate all of our teams on such a strong start and wish them the best of luck as they continue to train and compete over the next few months the student government has also been busy with their holiday preparations in addition to hosting a productive meeting with members of the administration the student government is hosting a friendly volleyball tournament this thursday to boost school spirit and encourage friendly competition as 2022 years the ridge student body wishes everyone a happy holiday and a healthy successful new year regardless of how you celebrate these next few days we hope that you enjoy the holiday cheer and return ready to make 2022 the best year yet thank you everybody thank you gordon as always we appreciate your energy and enthusiasm and the completeness
009of what you share with us does anyone have any questions any board members have any questions for gordon then we hope you have a wonderful and relaxing break and as always you're not required to stay but you're most welcome to thank you so much and to everyone again merry christmas and happy holidays thank you okay so um we have a board presentation but just before that i want to say we have such a nice full house and i just want to say welcome to everyone it's nice to see so many folks in the audience we appreciate you coming out here at a busy time of year and a slightly crazy time of year um and in our country uh so with that let's um welcome mr hank warner our uh director of school safety and
010security and i think the board's gonna go down into the audience sorry didn't mean to move away from the mic and you folks you're okay with the yeah all right good evening uh like i was introduced my name is hank werner director of school safety and security welcome for some of you this will be a refresher for some of you this might be the first time you've heard some of the safety measures we've talked about i am a retired police officer from burns township police i did 24 years there and i did four years at other departments i taught dare here in the district for 18 years i was a school resource officer at william anna middle school and became a school specialist safety specialist upon retirement some of the security plans we'll talk about
011we're not going to give out or i'm not going to give out a lot of information it's intentional because a lot of the stuff we do in the schools we like to keep close to our ourselves we don't want to get uh safety measures out there if at the end you have any questions we're not going to have a question and answer session so if at the end there's any questions or anything you want to come up with my email's there i'm easy to get in contact with and feel free to email me for the teachers in the room uh your safety is uh uh utmost importance to me and so is your students uh my brother's a school teacher in california fourth grade and uh so it's i take it home with me it's
012personal so if any of you have an issue in your classroom reach out to me any questions comments i'll come to your classroom uh if you ask nicely i'll bring a cup of coffee or something and we can chat about safety security in your classroom specifically uh at the high school detective chris albanese is assigned here as the school resource officer um which the school resource officer program started in 1999 september and the first one was uh at the time detective mike voorhees we created a vestibule area in the main entrance of ridge high sitting behind the bank teller window is officer dave molina dave is a retired police officer from raritan borough he's very valuable here he's a uniformed police officer and they wear a special patch dave molina assists us in the morning
013in the afternoon with traffic he checks the vestibule area when people come in to get checked in to get through the door uh he'll walk the building occasionally during the day when he gets a break from one of the monitors they're working and uh he's just all out and about the building all day he's at the front door a lot and um he's a special three with the bernstein police department we have a campus monitor that's been with us for the four years that i've been here sean kiernan's his name he knows the building probably better than most of us he puts about six miles on a day walking the building and he monitors the camera system so he can see what's going on he can figure out what's going on what took place you
014know yesterday or the day before he can go back and figure it out we the camera system is valuable very valuable to us on top of sean we have eight hall monitors that we hired this year and they walk the building too and they have assigned areas that they'll be responsible for uh they make sure that the doors are secure the exterior doors that's a main priority obviously is to secure all the main uh all the exterior doors they do many things for us too they'll assist at lunchtime they will assist with traffic in the morning or in the afternoon and they'll give dave that break i talked about from the vestibule so they'll check people in and operate the uh the check-in system officer phil jacina who is here today phil's in the back
015go ahead you can applaud for him he's the william and middle school sro um police officer in burns township and uh phil's just a great guy phil thanks for coming out tonight supporting uh we also have another officer running around somewhere tonight sly i think it is yeah um both phil and chris will support the elementary schools so one has the william and one has ridge high but they both will assist in the elementary schools as needed they're just a phone call away they will handle any cases that are going on there with any special needs or whatnot the secured vestibule area that i talked about you have to get buzzed in all six schools have it you have to be buzzed in the first door and then there that many of the schools will
016be a bin or something that you could drop uh your your child's needs at if you forgot the lunch or their music or their athletic supplies you can drop them in that secured vestibule area if you want to enter the building you have to go this is at the high school you have to go check in with uh officer molina and he'll check you in through the lobby guard system and that's the only the only one you're checked in at by off law enforcement officer once you get checked in at whatever school you're at you get a pink lanyard it's a bright pink lanyard for a reason the purpose is is that as a visitor when you're walking the building you stand out it's pretty obvious that you're a visitor and if a staff member
017sees them walking around they just kind of look lost they can ask them you know what are you doing do you need help are you lost can i help you find whatever classroom you're going to if there's somebody in the building that is a stranger they're not wearing a pink lanyard and they don't recognize them well that heightens you security and now you have to ask a few more questions maybe and figure out why they're in there or maybe they're a substitute or a staff member you're not familiar with now you have a new friend so the pink lanyard is huge it's bright you can't miss it uh all schools are equipped with the camera systems which i talked about a little bit already all six of them have a very nice camera system and
018we use them daily one thing i wanted to touch on about that system that you check in at ridge high specifically guard we start we put that together in 1819 but 19 september 1st 2019 to march 13th when the pandemic hit we had 3 500 visitors in ridge high that's an awful lot of visitors it's something that we we're always trying to minimize uh trying to make sure that the appointments are necessary make sure that the visitors are necessary from september 1st 2020 to june 30th 2021 we had 150 visitors so that was the height of you know last year uh we had half days here at ridge high and so on so there was 150 visitors this year to date from september 1st to today 465. so we're back to kind of normal business
019but we're way lower than we were pre pandemic uh it's okay to keep it that way we're okay to limit the visitors if you have an appointment or a specific reason you're welcome we're not we don't have a wall up at ridge high we'd like to have visitors but we try to minimize as much as possible did i miss the slide so as far as the doors go at the schools we have exterior doors they're locked the entire school day some of them have a keyless entry that the staff members have the code to that they can use an app on their phone or something to get in and those are extoria doors where leave them locked all day interior doors which is the classroom doors and doors to here they're secured basically three different
020ways for the most part some have a a push bar strap so the door is here you have a push bar when you exit so there's a red strap on it the door is in the lock position the red straps on it if you need to secure that door pull the red strap the bar opens doors secured classrooms have magnets doors secured you put a magnet to hold the mechanism from going in and then if there's a reason you need to lock your door you pull the magnet doors closed door is locked very easy to do no keys are necessary and then there's a lock set it's just a push button to lock the door very simple so we try to keep it simple and easy uh less hand movements when you're trying to lock
021a door in a quick quick reason the law requires that we have fire drills every month and their students are in the building and then also that we have one safety drill per month which is uh there's there's a few of them that we do and we alternate them and we try to keep everybody on their toes with the drills announcing the drills has been a very big discussion and the new jersey department of education's advice is not to announce them uh post pandemic uh moving out of the pandemic they want us to go back to business as usual where we're not announcing the drills kind of right you know the way you practice for a football game or soccer game or baseball game uh you played away your practice so not announcing the drills
022is the way we like to do it moving forward certainly we're not announcing it in pre-drills to anybody in the public we try to limit the teacher's knowledge of it and no news is good news so afterwards we can announce it we can talk to the kids about it talk to the parents we always have a debriefing after the drills and we talk about how the drill went what can we do to improve what went wrong where do we need to educate so on and so forth so the drills are very valuable very important as far as emergency communication goes uh external communications are through the school messaging system we rely a lot on the parents the parents have to keep the information up to date in genesis they have to constantly update the phones
023change addresses change what not emails change they can update the student's information i highly recommend putting the students cell phones in there because one day we might need to get a hold of them we're not tracking them we're not interested in where they're going we're not interested in that we're interested in getting a hold of them if we need to and so their phone numbers will be very valuable internally we have the pa system in the schools we have walkie-talkies throughout the buildings some teachers have them some crisis management team members have them and some phys ed teachers have them when they go outside the building they have them so that they can communicate if they're outside the building hear what's going on classrooms all have the ability to call 9-1-1 uh thank you to
024our i.t director alex appreciate that and um they all have the ability to call the main office so as far as 9-1-1 goes they can always contact 9-1-1 the every school by law has to have district crisis management teams so we have a team it's myself vice principals from every school building nurses the facilities people some guidance counselors i can't name them all but we um we're all meet once a month and we hold these meetings to talk about the drills and the plans of the future and what we're doing what needs to be improved upon what i've done since i started was got things standardized i thought it was important that all six schools have the same mission go the same direction and if anybody's in one school or another school they can go
025ahead and do things in that school because it's done the same way in their school so it's very important that the schools are standardized and we move in the same direction annual updates are maintained in the school crisis manuals that are stored in every school and at the board of ed office what families can do to help to plan for emergencies with your children simple things like what to do an early dismissal for bad weather uh what how to get home emergency situations uh i know that my kids were young during 9 11 and we after that we did some family plans at home where they could only go with certain families so if there was any emergency we didn't have to look multiple places for them we knew where they were and vice versa
026for the other families so family plans are important uh if there's any kind of smoke detector activation for a fire or whatnot where do you meet the children outside of your home uh we picked a telephone pole out front uh down down the road a little bit we thought it'd be a good idea just this telephone pole this is where we're going to meet and that way the kids know it if they're disoriented it's dark or late they're half asleep they know where to go so you can find them very easily as far as weapons go if you have weapons in your house obviously uh keep them secured keep them away from your children uh keep the ammunition maybe separate from your weapons so that uh weapons don't get in the hands of the wrong
027person i know as an officer checking some houses over the years you go into the master bedroom and there's a gun sitting right on the nightstand that gun gets put in a drawer and my card gets left and a phone call to follow up on gun safety so these things do happen we want to make sure that they don't we can minimize them keep your contact information up to date on genesis what i spoke about um if you can read all the emails that we send home to you there's a lot of valuable information on there that comes from the board office or myself and as far as safety security goes follow the school rules we ask that you do follow school rules we ask that when you come to ridge high specifically because you're
028going to enter you have to show your driver's license to enter ridge high it goes through the system um so if you come to rich high please bring your driver's license or if you don't they're going to ask you your name date of birth and run it manually through the system that way but it's much quicker if you have your license handy the other schools especially the lower schools elementary schools they they generally know who the parents are uh they generally recognize them or on first name basis with them so uh just follow the protocols we'd appreciate it if you see something say something it's very important to report things strange bags strange cars i know as a law enforcement officer over the years you get a phone call about a suspicious vehicle at the
029park and next thing you know you're solving a burglary or they're about to do a burglary or if they weren't there did you stop a burglary just like making that phone call so if you see something say something it goes a long way to helping law enforcement fight crime and injustice i put in some resources here that i thought were valuable the we tip is the anti-bullying program that we've instituted here a few years ago the cards were dis distributed in schools i'm not sure if it's been all six but we started last week so by thursday all six schools should have distributed them uh the kids can make an 800 number if the student the child or you give your name they will hang up with you they will say i'm sorry i can't
030continue this conversation uh you need to call back and then they have to call back and sorry and not give their name um there it's that anonymous they don't want it to know who you are it's they don't want to know so they will hang up with you if you do leave your name a home family resources are some safety school safety tips district websites is always a good place to get things uh for violent prevention on our website and then be smart was about um handguns and weapons and stuff like that the house if you if you have weapons and you're not sure what to do you can certainly contact one of the school resource officers myself or you know on the website it's a great valuable tool so those are some things that
031you wanted again hank werner my email address is h werner bernardsboe.com if you have any questions comments or concerns please send me an email and we can pick it up later uh that time thank you for your attention please stay safe and enjoy the holidays [Applause] you're welcome sir uh i'm good to go thank you very much hank we appreciate your being here tonight um our next agenda item is the superintendent's report mr marcarion thank you madam president uh just a few things on the agenda tonight under superintendent's report uh first is our new jersey cusack report for the state we have to submit our self-assessment this is the state's system of review that happens with school districts every three years on an annual basis they they have us review ourselves and submit a statement
032of assurance and on the third year we do a self-assessment of our programs and then they come and do a site visit to review the self-assessment and look at evidence for why we scored ourselves the way that we did so we have completed the initial self assessment reviewed uh all of our self-assessments with the various board of ed committees and also met with our new jersey cue sac committee in-house so that document uh needs to be submitted to the state so that's what the first item is a second item is a new club at ridge and the third item is our hib report for the month and finally we also have to submit to the board our annual code of conduct data and school safety data report for the 2020-21 school year that's the fourth
033item thank you mr markkarian uh mr mclaughlin can we have a roll call please oh i'm sorry yes could we have a motion please mr salmon and mrs singh mr seven yes ms schaefer yes mrs white yes ms singh yes this is corn yes mrs mchugh yes this is gray yes madam president thank you mr marcarian there was something else you wanted yes thank you i just wanted to also welcome everyone tonight i see we have a large audience uh i know that uh i already sent out my my email to the staff wishing everybody happy holidays with the uh good luck for the free for free personal day in the in the holiday card uh so i i wanted to mention that and also that i had sent out uh sort of good wishes
034to everyone in the last sos express from friday but in particular tonight i see so many staff members out here i'm just inspired by your tenants at the meeting tonight obviously december 20th uh is a really busy time and actually miss fox was saying to me i heard we're gonna have a lot of teachers tonight i said really it's december 20th i'm sure everyone's got a lot going on she said no you're gonna have a lot of teachers tonight so uh just thanks for for everybody being here both uh from the public and also from the staff uh i just had uh thought that i'd take the opportunity with so many people here in person to again wish you all well uh thank you for all of the work that you've been doing i look
035out at your faces and i think about how much hard work has gone on not only for parents in our in their households but also for all of our staff members working so hard to last almost two years now as we've uh kind of continued through the challenge of covet so uh just wanted to take opportunity to thank you in person for everything that you've been doing uh and also to wish you well over the the holiday uh break our next item is public comment on agenda items so we invite anyone out here in the audience if you'd like to come up and make a public comment at the microphone please come up state your name and your address and we ask you to please also record it on the sign in sheet anyone okay
036seeing no one in the in-person audience uh miss is it miss fox or mr syat tonight who's looking at the emails do we have any email public comment on agenda so we have one email with uh questions about the presentation so i had sort of sent it to mr crew to ask if that should be read or just sent to mr werner that's okay i know i just sent it to you yeah so just just by way of explanation um the reason that mr werner uh had indicated that we would not take questions tonight on the security presentations just because um with respect to some details uh that we might want that we might not want to have on um the the record for uh the public in a very public way just to protect
037uh our safety and security plans from any bad actors that might be tuning in that was the reason why mr werner had explained that we would not be uh taking questions or comments on the safety and security presentation tonight but he did provide his email address i know that he'd be more than happy to handle questions uh individual individually offline uh he'll be happy to respond to any questions so it's probably most appropriate for the the item that we were were sent tonight if it could just be forwarded to mr werner uh we'll have him respond in that fashion yeah i didn't actually see the item but what i understood from the email that i saw was that it were questions regarding the presentation so if it's not if it's not public comment but just
038questions about the presentation then i think it's appropriate to send it to mr werner for the reasons mr markarian stated thanks again uh to mr werner and also to our uh police officers that are here tonight i've seen a couple of them uh and i can tell you that um it's just a great team i know that i'm lucky every day uh when i when i have the the privilege of working not only with hank but also with the local burns township police department um they answer the bell every time uh phone calls come to me over the weekend text messages over the weekend emergencies come our way through some of our monitoring systems and regardless of the day the night the day of the week holidays guys are making house calls uh in town
039and just trying to keep everybody safe so really appreciate hank's work and the dedication of the bernstein pd so thanks guys and thanks for the presentation hank okay our next item is uh the approval of minutes if we could have a motion please and this is white and mr salmon and a roll call mr mclaughlin please mr salmon yes miss schaefer yes mrs white yes miss singh yes mrs corn yes mrs mccoon yes mrs gray yes thank you madam president thank you mr mclaughlin um we our next item is the finance committee report we have items 1 through 16 uh for approval if we could have a motion please ms schaefer and mrs white and then mr sam do you have a report yes thank you uh finance met on thursday december 16th the first
040item for discussion was an update uh about uh aramark uh food service and custodial staffing from bill garcher who's the president of advocate which is the district's consultant uh consulting company on food service and facilities the first sub item was the quarterly assessment of food services so mr grichter put up put forth some information and some data about current sales to date of um meals in the district and not not surprisingly it's substantially down from our pre-clovid levels which is attributable obviously to the the limited offerings and the limited facilitation of group lunches in the schools for the beginning of the school year but those um sales numbers are trending upwards uh there was also an issue related to the cost of preparation of the meals um mr grichter and his staff reviewed aramark's preparation
041and ordering services and put in place some quality controls to bring those costs down and they are trending down as well however overall we are likely to have an operating loss this year in the food service component in terms of custodial staffing we are down about two to four custodial positions uh from our contracted number on a consistent basis this is happening in all 28 districts that mr gritter works with mr grifter believes the shortage is due to higher wages in other positions uh other hourly positions for example amazon um clearance and background checks taking three three weeks uh for which um workers candidates do not wanna wait and workers leaving the workforce despite the shortage our mark staff is maintaining our cleaning protocols um whenever there's a custodian out the uh custodians on duty
042fill in and clean that section of the building and the sections rotate so there's never a section of the building that's not being cleaned the second item for discussion was the annual audit update from scott clelland who's a partner at wisson company the district's auditor a law was signed that extended the deadline from december 5th to february 5th 2022 for completing the district's 2021 uh school year audit mr mcclellan reviewed the draft audit with the committee mr kleinland explained that the opinion would be an unmindful clean opinion with one finding necessitating a corrective action plan mr clelland and mr mclaughlin explained that the finding related to three invoices from june 2021 that were not marked as received until july 2021 when they were paid because the invoices were not marked as received in june 2021
043they did not appear as paid from the 2021 school budget and the corrective action plan is to put controls in place for reviewing year end opening encumbrances by retaining appropriate staff to facilitate the review mr clelland's date of the district is in sound financial position our reserves are prudent the maintenance reserve is not at the four percent um limit the capital reserve is appropriate given the uncompleted projects listed on the district's long-range facility plan and the emergency reserve is appropriate for a district our size that is self-insured the audit will be finalized by the february 5th deadline the next item for discussion was oak street roof replacement and repair project the bid the rebid opening is scheduled for january 6 2022 a pre-bid meeting for interested contractors was held on december 16th several contractors picked
044up big packets including two contractors that had previously withdrawn bids due to miscalculations in their bids the last item was a discussion of uh just an introduction of new staff mr bill larkin has started as the new director of facilities for the district mr mclaughlin met with mr larkin and john perrin the assistant directors of facilities for the district to review the work order system mr larkin will be coming to the next finance committee meeting to review the work order system and outstanding work orders the district has retained a part-time assistant business administrator while a full-time candidate is being sought as far as the items on the agenda one through three are standing items number four is a professional development expense number five is disposable of chromebooks number six is a donation of sixteen thousand
045dollars from the liberty corner pto for upgrades to the faculty lounge thank you very much to liberty corner pto number seven is a thousand dollar grant from parents as champions for healthy schools which is going to create stress buster stations located throughout ridge high school number eight approves the corrective action plan for 2021-22 number nine exception out of the district student number 10 and 11 are student services 12 approves training for oak street teachers for dealing with uh for classroom behavior strategies 13 accepts the draft audit from whis and company 14 appoints um council bond council for refinancing refundings that the district is doing to service debt number 15 is a settlement and number 16 is tuition for an out-of-district student does anyone have any questions for mr simmons okay seeing none mr mclaughlin can
046we have a roll call please mr salmon yes miss schaefer yes this is white yes miss singh yes this is corn yes mrs mccoon yes this is great yes madam president thank you our next item is the personnel committee report we have items 1 through 27 for approval if we could have a motion please mrs mckeon and mr salmon mrs mckeon do you have a report i do i actually have two because um we had such a long gap between our last meeting and this meeting so as usual there's not a whole lot i can report out from my personnel minutes because it's personnel things but on the first meeting that we had on november 19th um there were two things that would be of interest to people here um we reviewed the active clubs
047at the high school i know that the btei leadership has been meeting with mr sy to get ready to talk about negotiations and stipends so we had a review at the committee of the process for new clubs being approved and um so um we saw that there all the clubs are in a google doc the advisors are entering the information about the number of students the attendance at meetings the monthly activities the fundraising and all of the expenditures associated with the club and we discussed the process for new clubs when they are forming to explain why they should be a club and what they offer that's new and different from existing clubs and um whether they have long-term potential at the high school so we basically had this conversation because we um there's a lot
048of clubs at ridge and it seems like often we have new ones you know getting approved um and people ask well we just keep adding clubs and they don't all stick around forever as the people out here who are advisors the clubs know they have to be in existence for three years first before they're funded so there's a whole process for that and um we know that some clubs were not as active during covid because they weren't able to be in person so we were curious to know what was going on with clubs now and um this year when they're able to start doing their normal activities again so that was an interesting and fun conversation um we also had a conversation at personnel about world language honor societies most high schools are not most
049but a lot of high schools at least in this area have honor societies for each world language and the teachers and students at ridge are very interested in establishing those for each of the languages so we talked about that ms dotler is working with the teachers who are interested in leading those organizations and she's going to report back to us with more details at our next meeting but that's very exciting and i know there's a lot of students and teachers excited about the opportunity the only other thing from that meeting is also continues into the next meetings um minutes so i'm going to try to like kind of consolidate at the november meeting we had a zoom meeting with another diversity equity and inclusion consultant that mr syat and ms fox and other administrators had
050met with um this consultant is called us squared right mr syett it always makes me think of you too because it's us2 but it's us squared it's a large company that works in a number of states it's been around for 23 years it does corporate and non-profit and also education work so we had a zoom meeting with the organization and they explained their different packages that you can sign up for the package that we're most interested in is similar to what i discussed when i reported about the first consultant where you do an equity audit where there are surveys for staff students and families and there are is focus groups on different topics and then you get a report what we liked about this particular group is that they have follow-up professional development and a
051lot of resources and support um so the administrators that had met with them really liked the fact that it's a like all-encompassing program where you can continue into the subsequent years with whatever you choose to um to take advantage of for your district so we talked with him at that meeting and board members had some questions some questions about how the focus groups get established um about the different components of the professional development and um so we did ask that they come back and speak to us again at the meeting this month so this time when they came back they did a review of what they had gone over with the first time about the different packages what they call the best package is forty thousand dollars it comes with a um a town hall
052meeting so what is kind of cool is they meet with um the leadership and administrators before the town hall meeting to get ideas of what are the main focus areas we're interested in really diving into deeply and then they hold a it's virtual a town hall meeting for anyone who wants to attend from the district or the community to learn about what the process is like and they gather feedback about what those people might be also interested in and then based on that they designed the surveys for everyone and they designed the focus groups based around the different main themes that came out so it's very custom made for your district which is i think a really good thing because districts are very different some of the districts they work with are very large districts
053that there's other districts that only have a high school and they don't have elementary schools so i think that that custom design is a good thing so we talked to them more and asked some questions about how the whole process works and what are the some of the different topics that districts choose to focus on i'm trying to fund so the main areas that you can examine in an equity audit is programming personnel curriculum and school and community culture so all of those are important but there's different components within each of those and some districts may want to dive deeper into certain things i know there's been a lot of questions and discussion here about curriculum so i'm sure that'll be one of the focus areas but we are obviously going to examine all of
054them so i guess the main good things about this consultant is the follow-up resources and support available the package that's called the best package comes with the whole audit and the report which will be presented back out to the board of education and to the community but also um it comes with 60 hours of support and work with the administrators and the district during the first year and then you can decide what to do after that depending on the results of your audit and the recommendations you can design a plan um based on that so um i don't know if anyone has any questions that's the only other thing from that meeting that i can report out on so do any board members have questions was white can you just review a couple things one
055the time frame from start to finish in terms of meeting with all the different focus groups and also can you just go into a little bit um i know students are going to be part of it parents but it goes a little bit beyond that doesn't it and can you talk about sure make up some of the focus groups yeah i mean i might ask mr science to jump in i know the time frame was that as soon as we can get it going there would be the town hall because that's important so everyone can learn about what's going to be happening and then they designed the survey right and the surveys you want to jump in the service has gotten yeah so from from start to finish for that plan that you just reviewed
056it's six to eight months and they do begin with that town hall and i think what what's interesting about the group actually is that they want to really spend some time talking to the different focus groups at the k5 level 6 8 9 12 make sure they involve community members make sure they involve parents make sure that they involve students having the principles make connections with the students and include them as well and then the outcome is presented to the public so that end of that first phase is really the public presentation from that group to talk about some of their findings and where it's similar to the first consultant we looked at is they do give you a lot of choice at the end of the day it's really the choice of the district
057to move in a certain path based on the results or not you know it's going to depend on what the outcome really is of the audit and what was your other way does that answer both of you yeah okay and one thing i forgot to mention is um some districts that we are quite familiar with have used this consultant i know watching hills um is in maybe your three of working with them and um they have a lot of good things to say and they just won an award from new jersey school boards for their work in diversity equity and inclusion so definitely as a group that you know we were able to find out pretty much about does anyone else have questions miss corn i have a couple questions one is is this something
058we have to do just asking is this like a mandated thing just asking the question is this a mandate from the state is this cover of something that we're mandated to do from the state there is a mandate about diversity equity and inclusion but they don't tell you exactly how you have to go about working on it i think this is something that we've talked about even prior to that um and so this is something that um before bern when we came out of the strategic plan um and we started the bernard's connect threads this was a topic that people were very interested in and there was one meeting before covid hit an in-person meeting about diversity and inclusion with burner's connect so then um we after covid moved forward with hiring the consultant right
059you know i've already voiced my concerns about hiring consultants spending the money when we have all these other concerns really big concerns with the kids mental health and stuff so i'm trying to connect this to like we do the tea time just pull your microphone a little closer to you so everyone can hear you we have like tea time we've which is a great program we're starting we have all our new character education stuff and all this all the schools that i think cover some of this stuff and and our and you know how we have like stephanie like bringing everything together under the castle um so this is on top of that and what does this add to that that we're not doing with this other stuff that we're already doing a lot of
060which and it's great i'm not this i just have questions i have questions about rabbit holes i have questions about looking for things that might not be there or might be there and that when you're hiring someone to find something you know what's their what's their um incentive to not find something you know what i'm saying so i just worry a little bit about that i'm not i'm not saying it's bad it's good i'm just trying to ask questions i think people might be in the audience might be thinking um it's just sometimes when you read about this happening in other places it can cause a lot of problems i would like to nip in the bud before they even got started i mean no place is perfect no there's no one who can say
061that there's that everything's perfect but i worry about bringing someone in from outside to find things you know to nitpick at things that might we'd be able to take care of with our own stuff we're doing already in the school district which hasn't been back to normal in like two years so i'm just trying to you know that's all just trying to tie it all together you know yeah i think actually was interesting the second time that they came back they talked a lot about strategic planning and tying everything together and it was interesting because if you look at the strategic plan we did and the different things we said we were going to focus on we were going to focus on academic you know outcomes we're going to focus on wellness and mental health
062outcomes so all of these things are tied in with you know inclusion and you know equity because if a kid doesn't feel welcome in their school or you know is having a bad experience then you're not going to get the academic outcomes or the mental health or wellness so it does all kind of tie together and i don't know someone else that was there want to jump in about the how it's tied to the strategic plan yeah i see this as an outgrowth of the plan because we were starting work on it with that first pt connect meeting where we were hearing from students about this issue and then we had the report created by the students around this issue and the other thing that i would mention it's an interesting thing that you bring
063up um ms white about i'm not miss white miss corn about the um coming in and looking for problems you know i think what's kind of interesting about their approach is that they make it really clear that they're going to give us the feedback from the community and from the focus groups and simply give us the raw data and their analysis of it but they're not really giving us their you know their edu speak or their you know their lingo it's really coming from the community and which i'd like you know it's going to be unedited we're going to be able to see the raw data and then we're going to be able to see their analysis of it too and i think it's a different you know it's a different approach but i i
064wouldn't say that they're going to be coming in with some canned you know set of answers or responses it's really what the community and the school district is giving through the different the different focus groups but i can certainly understand the questions they're great questions tim i i think the the my main takeaway from it was yes like we have all these programs which are great um it's part of kind of like the feedback system which is i think really important with the focus groups in that they take into account opinions across staff administration uh students parents other community members so i think that's really the most important part in my mind is that the things that we're doing they are looking at and that they might say tea time is a great thing you
065make no changes to it whatsoever or they might say listen we heard about t-time it sounds like a great program we had a focus group that said had this sort of feedback for t-time and would like to see this sort of programming so those things could already happen but i think the focus group just kind of you know gives it a little jolt to make it happen because that's the rabbit hole that i see sometimes is we we initiate programs not we as a body but like we in society we initiate programs and we just somebody else comes in and then there's a new program and then there's a new program and there's so many overlapping programs you don't know what's working and what's not so i think from this perspective the the idea that
066i like about it is that the focus groups will give us more information about how those programs that we do have and that we have initiated recently and that we've had for a long time how they are working in the capacity that we want them to but also how they are working in the overall um scheme of diversity equity inclusion like are they working for their particular purpose and then should the programming change or should we take something different direction or what we're doing is really working great so keep up with that so i think that part of it is absolutely critical to to this bringing in a consultant to do this to help us with this it's great i mean no i don't think it's great but um i understand i just everyone has
067to know that diversity equity inclusion sometimes makes people think of other things it just it just opens up a can of worms i just and i'm not saying it's a bad thing it's just the definition is out there it's like a thing so i just want to make sure that we're very aware that we have control of this that no one else is coming in telling us what to do no one else is coming in and changing what we've set up because we know our town like we know our people the best outside consultants don't know who we are or don't know yeah i think i think the operative word there is weak right like so we think we know what programs the ta the kids the staff need we want to hear from the
068other we the other half of the we are is the programs that we have that we put in place are they working are they working for their particular purpose are they working to enforce good character and and had kids make right judgments so i think that's that's the part that i liked about the program um one of the nice things that i liked um from the presentation is that um that they actually explained that the issues are not issues that they come up with like the topics that they're gonna address so it's actually going back to what you're saying um the way i understood it was you know here's a list of the things that generally we you wanna touch upon but at the town forum everybody in the community has the ability to speak
069up and say hey you know what this is an issue that we think that we need to address so it's not just limited to what they suggest or what we suggest but it could be something that anybody else brings up and then they will incorporate that into the focus groups and what they're actually studying and examining which is which is nice because it takes into account other everybody's input not just what they think and what the board thinks but everyone in the community um jen i know you would ask is this because of the mandate and i mean the fact is that there is a mandate but that's not what is driving this and we went back two years ago when we met with a number of current students an alum who shared their experiences
070in district and their experiences of feeling that they were either treated less than or were excluded and didn't feel part of the group and had really asked for there to be some change and wanted to be involved in it and then we were hit with the the covid and so while yes we are required to do something some of this you know it we we are doing simply because we know it needs to be done and because the students themselves are are asking for help and for change and for a lot of us that are going to be involved in the process this is not our area of expertise and we do need we need somebody who is unbiased who isn't coming in to to say this is who you are but rather to say
071let's see who you are and what your community feels and thinks and then we can hand back to you that data and make suggestions but ultimately you can then go back to whether we do more burners connect meetings but we take the findings to to make changes in the areas that we've identified that we want to look into suzanne go ahead i just want to say it's not an either or also you know if we do this it's not taking away from wellness i mean the wellness initiatives somebody mentioned tea time i mean tea time actually the focus for december is selflessness and gratitude that doesn't you know it's definitely part of the wellness curriculum but it's not necessarily dei i mean we're trying to get everybody thinking about all these things but it's not
072either war so we're continuing moving forward with wellness as well as this and in conjunction and so it's more like the so people understand it's more like when we had those meetings with gwen right as a moderator it's going to be kind of like a strategic plan yes yeah so it's going to be like the strategic planning meeting except for it's going to be like talking about what people's issues with what's going on like what they think has to be that is that am i getting that right is it public meetings like strategic planning if town hall is going to be public the service but everybody oh it's not going to be live though no but can it be live i feel like you get better feedback better if people can be in there in
073person doing yeah they've they've always said that they've done it even before kovid because the way that they do it because the everyone can like you could get students like all kinds of people tune in they get much better participation as we kind of found out during covet sometimes a lot more people to tune in they don't have to leave their house but also you can have other people in the community like anyone who wants to come to it can come to it and they also said a good thing about having it that way is they people can type in their comments and they can capture all of them because there's never going to be time for everyone to get to say their stuff if you held it in person so they get all of
074it captured and then they can incorporate that which i guess makes sense because you could get like a lot of comments i guess if a lot of people are interested and that was no different from the the few that um mr syat had had us meet with they all their launching was all done through the virtual platform okay you know i hate virtual assistants but if that's how they always did it they must yeah no i thought the same thing but like it's just the level of engagement that you get like like working parents people that work in the community like teachers going home after school like they it's just the the level of engagement you get is just so much higher and that's that's really what we're looking for as many opinions and in
075as much input as possible especially at the early stage right when we're formulating kind of like the plan of what we're going to do and what we're going to look at it's just critical to have as much much engagement as we possibly can for that okay if we don't have any additional questions we uh have a motion so if we could have uh we have items one through 27 if we could have a roll call please mr salmon yes miss schaefer yes this is white yes ms singh yes this is corn yes is hero yes this is bacon yes mrs cray yes thank you madam president karen can i just jump in for one second just to clarify we didn't just approve we we talked about the same thing but we didn't actually vote on
076approving the consultant yet we just are saying that we would like to so we didn't actually vote on that we were voting on all the other personnel so right so just for clarity with every agenda i was thinking the exact same thing i'm glad you said that what is written in the agenda items 1 through 27 which is clearly stated is what we just approved which did not include anything which did not include anything on the item just discussed regarding the consultant okay so now we're up to the policy committee report we do have one item for first reading so can we have a motion uh miss schaefer and mr salmon and this is corny of a report i do i have two from two different um because the two weeks just the same so
077i'm going to start with the uh report from november 8th in our discussion we talked about cusack which i think mr mccarran covered um that we talked about governance which governance which is staying on top of policy changes and we reviewed the q2 and found that burns township meets or exceeds all the requirements also operations which is the data collection information management and we reviewed the cusack and found that burns township meets or exceeds all the requirements um we're doing no i think we already did this first reading the safety plan for health care settings last time we're identifying the public employees that are impacted by the medical crisis and identify where the work is happening which is usually the nurses offices the policy is to ensure that nurses offices in each building comply with
078the emergency temporary standards set by the state under the public employees workplace standards which is p-e-d-o-s-h-s and a va a vac status plan is needed to comply a hazard assessment form must be produced as part of this new policy there have been there have been no guidelines shared as to what is expected since we are a school and have and not a medical establishment that must be created from scratch and are being worked on by the administration um and in first reading today i think right is the um sexual harassment of students and this is these are revised on policy 5751 i'm sorry the earlier policy was policy 1648.14 that's all that's brand new um the policy and regulation of the the uh um the u.s department of education finalized title ix rules that define
079sexual harassment the federal regulations have been amended and our policies and regulations we will be replaced to match the updates in the new jersey department of digital education final rule um the new regulations added three roles that need to be designated for sexual harassment cases one is the investigator which can be the title ix coordinator they would gather all the information and evidence regarding the incident two would be the decision maker which cannot be the title ix coordinator or the investigator the board council would fill this role the decision maker must issue a written determination using the clear and convincing legal standard this is a higher standard than the preponderance of evidence standard and considering the seriousness of the subject deemed by the policy committee to be a more suitable standard the decision maker would
080also facilitate a written q a between the parties involved the decision maker would review the questions to make sure they are all they are relevant and appropriate then share with each party involved all answers to the questions will also be shared by the decision maker to both parties the decision maker then reviews the investigators information and the q a information and makes a decision and then there's an appeal officer who would be the superintendent these procedures are similar to do now except the decision maker and the and the q a between parties has been added to the policy and regulations and then there is um policy um three three four six two and policy four three five two they're both regarding sexual harassment it says once the clear and convincing standard has been chosen for
081the sexual harassment of students it then will also apply to these policy to these policies concerning staff and support staff there will be no other changes made to the procedures for these policies um i think last time we did the second reading for the school districts calendar did i read that out last time i think i did right yeah i read that out last um and then did we do the emergency virtual remote instruction program um policy two four two five i think we did we did that last time too right that you have to in the event of a school shutdown there must be a plan for virtual learning schedules lunches and digital access for each school and all schedules are full day must be border proven submitted and we already did that okay
082um now i'm going to do the management no no there are my other maps oh here they are i'm going to do the minutes from december 13th um we did the discussion for public participation in board meetings which is revised which is policy zero one six seven and policy one zero one five four point six which would remote public board meetings during a declared emergency um for policy um zero one six seven it has been amended an update to reflect the three-minute public comment that's been used in public board meetings both live and remote for the past few years um and now we've been holding in-person board meetings since may 24 2021. um therefore starting um in the meeting on january 24th 2022 all public comments will also be required to be in person during
083um the transition period where we moved from remote to in-person meetings and we have continued to allow remote public comment but now we are going to go back to the old way of doing the board meetings which we have done previous to the pandemic um the in-person meetings have been found to be safe and successful therefore remote public will no longer apply starting at that meeting on january 24th we will continue to live stream the meetings to those who wish to watch from home and in addition recordings of the board of edmonds will be posted on the district website anyone have any questions okay if no one has any questions could we please have a roll call mr mclaughlin mr salmon yes miss schaefer yes mrs white yes ms singh yes this is corn yes
084miss hira yes mrs mccoon yes mrs cray yes thank you madam president thank you mr mclaughlin okay our next item is the curriculum committee report mrs white do you have a report yes i do at wams programming and robotics have been merged into a single eighth grade elective it was decided that it would be beneficial to create a course such as this with flexible learning environments previously used lego kits as well as newly purchased ones are still being used students have had a variety of experiences leading up to this course between remote blended and in-person learning some students are coding using java and block-based coding on computers while others are building with kits some students have never taken tech edit whams before while others have so this fluid approach meets students where they are and
085gives them a path forward anatomy and physiology is the first science course to run cp and honors levels concurrently at ridge it replaced the project lead the way courses and is available now to students in 9th to 12th grade the course reviews each major system of the body common ailments of those systems and treatments of common ailments it's a much better built course than what we had previously honors students have a half period of lab while cp students do not have the encroachment into a single lunch period discussion is ongoing as to what course students should take next staffing is always a concern in terms of adding new courses and the next course may be dictated by who can teach it physics courses were revamped as a part of the five-year cycle biology and chemistry
086had already undergone their cycle revisions in all levels the 2016 nj sls was updated to reflect and align with the 2020 and jsls including emphasis on the secondary standards addressed within career readiness life literacies and key skills as well as in computer and design thinking due to changes in ap testing some units in ap physics have been eliminated and pacing has been adjusted so the september through april units aligned better to the exam these topics shifted into ap physics 2 and a similar adjustment was made the biggest change in the physics program is the separation of the great adventure trip from the curriculum and it has been eliminated as part of this course amusement park projects can still occur in the classroom but in addition students are able to explore other projects such as space
087travel it was decided that it is a more it is more appropriate to make this trip separate from the course and it will be addressed by the junior class advisors in the past not all students attended the trip while some went multiple times based on enrollment in physics courses in both junior and senior year forensic science underwent a similar revision to physics and updated the nj sls there are no major changes in the structure of the course discussion has begun as to whether it is time to explore the five or six credit option by having a cp and honors level occur concurrently mr miziak will look into how this could impact lunch and may address that there currently isn't an honors level science course for seniors who have already taken honors anatomy cp environmental science
088underwent a similar revision to physics and updated their nj sls as well updates were made to the type of project in this project-based course the jigsaw model is most prevalent all courses at ridge received time to plan for the implementation of the rotating drop schedule projects did not entail any nj sls revisions one course in particular needed to be addressed not so much due to the rotating drop schedule but rather in response to the remote and blended learning and that is for the woods course some students had never used the shop tools before as a result of last year's school experiences students have been provided with choice boards from which to choose with varying difficulty enabling staff to meet all student needs regardless of prior exposure this has really added support to students and addressed
089varying comfort levels there is also much writing curriculum writing for world language over the summer almost all staff work to compensate for any learning loss and to adjust skills that weren't mastered teachers began to implement the 2020 world language standards and will complete them in the summer of 2022. textbooks have been phased out and readers have been replaced with authentic text and thoughtful authors teachers are continuing to vet books to reflect cultural diversity at the elementary level the current curriculum for fourth and fifth grade was adjusted to address fluidity and level appropriateness units that have been removed for the 2021 year were reinserted sixth graders in middle school spanish should have been the first to have had the language in fourth and fifth grade but this really didn't happen due to cofid therefore units were
090adjusted and re-inserted in addition 8th grade spanish added a robust pen pal letter unit spanish culture and society also was updated and the curriculum was narrowed from 8 to 4 units one for each marking period essential questions have been updated as well as relevant topics there will also be a common assessment for each unit the world land language standards for middle school french were updated from the 2014 standards to the 2020 standards and interdisciplinary connections additional learning activities were added to the curricula french ii cp and honors french 3cp honors and ap french were also updated from the 2014 to 2020 standards emphasis on explicit grammar instruction has been replaced with pace presentation attention co-construction extension this is a popular model grammar is still a part of the curriculum but the approach is different revisions
091were also made to all levels of asl one through four rubrics have been revised and authentic resources for each level has been researched college board has amped up his resources for ap italian and ap latin changes to the courses reflect this lastly tomorrow's teachers creation was aligned to reflect the 2020 career readiness life literacy and key skills there has been ongoing discussion as to how best to support gen ed students at wams who might need extra support sometimes at times these students come through s they may need intervention to address issues such as struggling with executive functioning students can be referred to irs by teachers or parents some students have been referred to viking academy but there is a group of students at wams that need direct instruction these students have been assessed using the
092pearson executive functioning assessment there is a teacher and a parent component the assessment provides information of both the students strengths and weaknesses as a result of this assessment a group of students are being pulled one time a week from physical education to receive support for 10 to 12 weeks with an interventionist one day is not ideal so mrs orr has been exploring possible options and proposed one such idea she would like to add an interventionist monday through thursday to homework club students who have been identified in need of support could feasibly receive help five times a week if they attended after school there simply is not enough time in the day without pulling students from other cycle classes to offer help mrs orr is also looking at a proposal from a consultant who could offer
093monthly two hour training to staff dr lazadek and miss howarth provided an update on option two as previously mentioned there will not be any additional changes to option two for the remainder of the school year they shared discussions have taken place in regards to the 2022-23 school year but prefaced no final decisions have been made mr shellow our athletic director has surveyed all of his coaches and determined that the average ridge athlete spends between 11 to 12 hours a week in practice or competition with 7 hours the low end and 18 the high end for off-site option 2 a required 300 minute or five hour requirement is under consideration and is well within the low end of what athletes engage in weekly a vetting process is underway which would make the application to specific organizations
094easier as these sites will have agreed to approve on signing off of a student's participation students will still be able to apply for option 2 off site in an organization not on the pre-approved list in addition students may be asked to keep a weekly log and complete a project at the end of each marketing period as they did this year an evening for parents and students will be held at ridge on january 10th at 7 pm for dr lazavik will present what is under consideration for all of option 2 and it includes an opportunity for q a and feedback in march or april the final decision regarding option 2 requirements will be shared in a timely manner that allows students to make any desired changes by the april 8th change of course deadline dr lasmik
095also reintermit reiterated information shared at the first tea time all students participated in a special schedule on november 18th this was the first of several mornings that will be devoted to tea time wellness activities throughout the year juniors and seniors had two important meetings with their counselors and that covered junior and senior events freshmen and sophomores rotated through six central activities four corners icebreaker to do versus to be where students created a list of all their priorities compare them to others and then determine what habits and traits could help them succeed at accomplishing their lists dissonance and integrity where students engage in an activity designed to help them realize when they experience cognitive dissonance as well as seeing how frequent these moments were for their peers helping them know they are not alone silent discussion
096which was with students engaged with each other in a silent discussion regarding prompts about living ethically practicing honesty and integrity and the pressures of success to be card reminders where students refrain their struggles with dissonance with the previous to be list setting themselves up to better face these challenges in the future in addition an explanation of the opportunity period was provided to students opportunity periods involves three components one study space two support space for teachers and counselors will be available and three connect spaces where students can talk with peers and adults there will be other two times and parents are encouraged to attend and our next curriculum meeting will be friday january 7th any questions for mrs white okay our next item is the wellness committee report ms schaefer well mrs white stole a lot
097of our wellness thunder but the december meeting minutes were just sent out this morning and we actually have a correction that will be going out so i will report out on january 3rd however i did want to draw everyone's attention to something that's happening during december as part of our tea time that we could apply to any students in the district or families or any parents the tee time team worked up a selflessness and gratitude bingo card which you can find in the december 10th friday folder on the website of ridge high school so anybody can find that and it just contains some fun ideas of things that students parents everyone can do to demonstrate some selflessness and gratitude during december and things as simple as holding a door for someone to sorting through clothes
098and donating what you can which sounds good to me um or you know even providing a meal for someone so there's some great ideas i encourage you to look on that and i wanted to just mention it because by the time january comes around this will be over i'm just going to jump on your coattails there and say that um i had the opportunity to attend the last um evening tea time no community brew sorry and um first of all kudos to the three staff members who i apologize but i'm not going to be able to recall at this moment and i didn't write it down but they did a beautiful job they have so much energy and enthusiasm for what they're doing and the work that they put into what they shared with the
099group of six of us three board of education or were there four of us four four board of education members and two members of the municipal alliance were in attendance that was it so i encourage members of the community families parents or just someone who's interested in finding out what it's all about to come and attend the next one they did a really wonderful job of walking through exactly what they did with students in one of the most recent lessons and i think it was uh you know really great to see that firsthand and i i do think and i'd love to hear feedback from parents if they're hearing it um that the kids are enjoying these opportunities to fill in some of the data the next brew which is the parent meeting any to
100anybody can come it's february 15th and just as a shout out our three wellness coordinators are mrs hoyer ms doskey and ms mckay thank you so much okay so our next item uh mrs corner mr salmon do you have anything from municipal alliance or um s-c-e-s-c i understand we had a municipal alliance meeting but um it wasn't very long i just wanted to mention that they're gonna still try to do the twilight challenge or one of their big fundraisers it's a race in um pleasant valley park and if you want to put on your calendar for june 5th 2022 and it's a great event and they do really good work with the kids and um but hopefully they'll be they they're determined to do it so it'll be june 5th the twilight challenge uh the
101somerset county head services commission did me i forgot my notes so i'll report on the next at the next meeting thank you karen i have a legislative oh i'm sorry that's okay i'll be really quick because nobody wants to listen to this right now the legislative committee of new jersey school boards had a meeting two weekends ago and i will email this document around to the board it's their advocacy action plan of things that they're going to push for in trenton but two things of note for our district that are on the list that have been coming up a lot is one of the things is um relief for districts who have been negatively impacted financially by the state um health plans that they mandated which were supposed to help districts which helped a lot
102of districts and didn't necessarily help ours and then the other one that they're pushing really hard for is funding for special education for it to be fully funded but i'll email this to everyone so you can see the whole list thank you with that we are up to our public comment on non-agenda items so once again we invite you to come up to the microphone please state your name and your address and then we have a moment sign in thank you hi good evening melanie dupuis 70 quincy road my name is melanie dupuy and i'm the co-president of the berners township education association i have been a teacher at william annan for the past 16 years a varsity coach at ridge for the past 15 and a team leader at anand for the past 10.
103i really do mean it when i say that i've always loved working here in berners township i don't think you'll be surprised to hear that these past two years in particular have been incredibly difficult teaching and parenting my young children through a pandemic has been one of the hardest things i have ever done i think i speak for all of our staff when i say that despite those challenges our shared commitment to teaching and our shared commitment to the students here in berners township has never wavered our classroom teachers instructional aides therapists counselors and nurses have all risen to the challenge and i am consistently blown away and impressed by their dedication to their students despite tremendous challenges because i know firsthand the extent of the staff's hard work and commitment to this district it
104was incredibly disheartening to sit and hear such negative and hateful remarks at the last board meeting that demeaned the professionalism of our staff there were also remarks that i would characterize as racist and misogynistic that were directed at this district and at you as members of the board of education we are all fortunate that our district is led by members of the board of education who stand up against those who seek to divide us so i want to thank you for speaking out and standing up for civility and respect regardless of anyone's political affiliation educating the children of bernards township is and should always be a mission which rises above political disagreements we will continue to work together with the boe and the community to support all of our students and their families i want
105to conclude by statement by reading an excerpt from a recent article in the atlantic by david blight which i found to be particularly relevant and timely it reads in part every effective american teacher seeks the trust of society of parents and of the young people that they teach public education as a whole depends on these bonds of trust our divisive politics regarding how to teach children about slavery race and other difficult subjects in school has broken that trust what teachers most need is autonomy community respect the right to some creativity within their craft time to read and perhaps above all support for their intellectual lives teachers with a passion to improve their game to embrace embrace professional development opportunities come listen to teachers debate the books they read and wrestle with how to create pedagogical
106stories about both the darkest and most uplifting history listen to them figure out the balance in their own classrooms between the heroic and the tragic between war and peace as they wrestle with how to teach about the changing character of racism and about the forces of change in history that humans can only hope to withstand if never control come feel their intensity see them move in and out of the irony of human folly and aspiration as they confront their own assumptions and beliefs we need to trust the teachers i want to thank my colleagues for coming out tonight and standing up for civility and respect at public meetings and respect for our profession i wish all of you on stage and everyone here in the audience a wonderful holiday and a happy new year thank
107you [Music] [Applause] any additional members of the audience good evening lauren mantuck 46 liberty corner road far hills i've been a resident of basking ridge for 40 years i bought my childhood house from my parents where i'm currently raising my three kids i currently serve on this township's planning board before that the board of adjustment i'm also involved with a top 50 university as a trustee member i tell you all this not to tell you how old i am but to express how vested i am in bernie township the township and the school i know what it takes to be a volunteer try to be on the quarry and say the word i'm sorry try to be on the planning board and say the word quarry i get it i get what it's like to
108be on the unpopular side of public opinion last month at the board meeting things were said and the public wasn't given the opportunity to respond to those things so i'm going to briefly raise some issues that i have now one of the things that was mentioned at the end of the board meeting was that the only thing us parents should do when we come here is praise the teachers now please make no mistake about it i absolutely have the utmost respect for teachers i have a huge gratitude for my kids for these teachers but we as parents are allowed to express concerns on what our kids are being taught and how and for the board to say that the only thing us parents should do when we come here is praise the teachers was inappropriate
109the board has to have the students interest at heart first and foremost the teachers have organizations to advocate for their interests as they should but this board it's the students with respect to the comment about district emails or not private that's just incorrect emails sent on a district account are not private and being and having been called unethical for asking questions about that email which we all know i'm talking about is also inappropriate parents are allowed to ask questions there has to be a dialogue between the parents and the board i believe a board member mentioned that last month and i respect that there has to be a dialogue between the parents and the board mr sam and i applaud you you stuck around last month when everyone else left thank you for for speaking
110to the parents and showing us some respect miss fox thank you for reaching out and answering some questions about curriculum the bottom line is we're all here for one reason and that's for our kids and when we have questions we should at least be able to have a conversation about those questions i wish you all happy holidays i'm sure i'll be seeing you all again thank you [Applause] i believe most of you know me by now kirsten light 13 victoria drive i feel as a community we have lost the true meaning of what diversity and inclusion really is i looked up various definitions and found this one which i believe truly embodies the sentiment diversity is the range of human differences including but not limited to race ethnicity ethnicity gender gender identity sexual orientation age
111social class fiscal ability or attributes religious or ethical value systems national or origin and political beliefs inclusion is involvement and empowerment where the inherent worth and dignity of all people are recognized an inclusive environment promotes and sustains a sense of belonging it values and practices respects for the talents beliefs backgrounds and way of living of its members i think that it is time that this community embraces this definition the word racist is now thrown around so freely that its definition should be changed to a person who belongs to a group with an ideology a different ideology than that of another member throughout the last few months i have seen the ugliest side of our community i have seen people call me an imbecile and incite violence against me because i don't have the same political
112beliefs which resulted in a very serious threat to my personal safety this was instigated by tax on my curriculum platform i have seen members of this community call parents too effing stupid to make decisions on our curriculum i have seen what people say twisted into something that isn't intended to fit a narrative that is intended to fit a narrative i have also seen some of the most beautiful sides of our community parents rallied around our children concerned about their well-being and safety people reaching out to try to help people in need whether it is hurricane ida relief helping victims of a house fire providing meals to our veterans or collecting money to buy gifts for the boys of bonnie bray so that their holidays can be happy calling members of the community racist excluding people
113that don't have the same beliefs as you may have does not model the true meaning of diversity of inclusion and quite frankly our children see that and it only serves to push us further and further apart while damaging our children's hearts and minds so i call upon this community this board the administration and the teachers to do some soul searching during this holiday break and ask yourselves am i being a model for our children am i supporting diversity inclusion in its truest form this will be the path forward in 2022 and to help heal our community and set ourselves apart from the rest of the nation i want to thank you again all for your volunteer service and to the administration for all the hard work that you do and i want to wish everybody
114in this room and happy holidays and hope that the holidays that have already occurred we're happy as well and i look forward to seeing you in the new year thank you very much [Applause] deirdre batchelor 70 quincy road my name is georgia batchelor i am melanie's counterpart as the co-president of the berners township educators association i've been a teacher in burns township since 2007 and i currently teach in william and mount prospect as a spanish teacher i am constantly striving to help my students reach the language proficiency and cultural awareness levels necessary to for them to each become knowledgeable and cooperative citizens in a global society i work to ensure that my students can advance towards their future as open-minded responsible and compassionate individuals who can create positive changes in our world in bernard's township
115staff have long been provided with training opportunities for many topics over the years related to the annual goals of the entire district these goals include important topics like health and wellness technology initiatives for interactive learning environments fostering safe and healthy learning communities and reflective teaching practices through these district offered training sessions and once we participate in on our own personal time we continue to learn and grow in order to improve ourselves for our students and our future students the support from the bcea the community the administrators and the board members over the past month has demonstrated that all educators should feel empowered to grow professionally in service to our students thank you for your time tonight and thank you to everyone who showed up tonight to support everything that has been on the agenda and
116anything else that was brought up happy holidays thank you [Applause] hi good evening joshua lake 380 south findlay avenue i just wanted to share my thoughts about the situation surrounding the fencing team and the comments made during the prior meeting i'm aware i don't have all the details nor do i expect to as an outsider not being engaged with the fencing team just being someone who's listening i am a friend of the president of the fencing board is where she was very frustrated with her discussions with administration and board prior to the meeting and she planned to address that at that time the facts and the events that i heard from the pres from them presented during the meeting and from the timeline she provided at the meeting was you know a former fencing coach
117had been arrested for allegedly sexually assaulting uh minors not here at ridge but while being a coach at ridge same time frame once a separate coach communicates the administration there may be need for specialized counseling to support the rich fencers fencing board inquired with administration about potential for specialized counseling captains directly special requested specialized counseling several different times these requests were made to the coaches athletic director principal and counseling department from my understanding all these seem as procedural standpoint seem like their proper dialogue escalation the issue between the school the fencing team and the fencing board everyone seemed to be moot you know proper in those aspects during the response though there were only two responses from the administration on the board superintendent acknowledges spronts could have been provided with greater depth and speed the
118other response was the challenge of the number of emails sent to the board of ed in terms of that number of four or 13. sitting up here you know maybe it's easy for me to kind of go is it possible the fencing board president when stating 13 emails and multiple formal requests including emails with superintendent principal a.d and guidance i'm not sure but maybe those emails got lumped together just because i know when we're all sitting here we view you as one group you know not bored admin separate things but that's kind of secondary my other key thoughts were under what premise were the multiple requests for specialized counseling denied what circumstances does the administration deem it appropriate to provide specialized counseling there's no acknowledgment of concern why is the only board comment defensive posturing
119where's the concern for the well-being of these girls they're around this coach at the same time he allegedly committed crimes against other athletes who have the same background and interests is it possible not likely some of these girls know and compete with these who were assaulted and understand why some of the fencers could benefit from having someone with experience to discuss all this with i do believe everyone here on the stage in this room all these parents who spoke up deeply care about all these students and i don't want to imply otherwise you know fair or not my assumption is no one really wants to touch the subject whether it's guidance from count from legal counsel or just uncomfortable nature of the topic the silence seemed full of easy excuses it wasn't directly our girls
120criminal acts were not allegedly committed while performing duties as a rich coach but as every ridge coach tells our children they're always represented as rich when they're in public okay all right where's the board performing the oversight of so the public can see the engagement i've witnessed full board discussions 20-minute discussions about snow removal you know the track i love this track team but i've just viewed this type of situation a little more concerning a little more troubling there was nothing there was no questioning of the administration board asking similar questions i just asked when's it appropriate for specialized counseling when's it not how do we have those standards you'll let the public see that let us see that due diligence let us see that guidance that we know that you're caring about uh all
121the students here you know we teach our daughters to speak with strong voice and advocate for themselves they did in this case it appears they were rebuffed in their efforts while an important lesson is they'll not always get what they ask for it seems to me they deserve a little a lot better from all of us to know we have their backs in full support thank you cindy wong 22 carriageway good evening to mr mercarian members of the board and my fellow neighbors and residents of the berners township whatever you are here today after months of lackluster attendance i hope you all will continue to stay vested in the health and well-being safety and education of our children in this community for the benefit of everyone here the last few meetings parents have come in
122person to continue to ask the sport to respond to some of the items you had heard addressed today uh rewarding a school bus back to a safer and quieter street street instead of a main road questions about option two changes for students response and action for students who may need support or counseling about the aforementioned fencing instructor who was arrested whether certain controversial topics are being implemented directly or indirectly through various direct or indirect programs available teachers what whether you agree with these matters or not whatever your opinion is is just a small sample of concerns parents of children have raised some of these parents have reached out to this board electronically on numerous occasions and finally come to a public meeting because they haven't had a response as we all understand there's a process
123to get things done and procedures in place many of the in-person comments from these parents have indicated lack of responses from their emails i hope the board would be able to better respond to and manage the response expectations of all parents and this constituents in this community in a reasonable time frame in the future we can as we all know the board had communicated at least three public communications reactions to the meeting last month three more public responses than to some of the topics i followed up on just now from the last two meetings to be honest the multiple responses from the board also feels like an attempt to continue to pit our community against each other as we can see today to fuel divide to further whatever agenda is on the table and at
124the same time diverting our attention from what the motive is and trying to pin it on the few parents who actually have continuously come in person to these meetings to advocate for their children and support the parents of all children here on any and all issues while and also if you don't know these are the same parents who have publicly on this mic also praised and thanked the same board and our educators for the passion accomplishments the challenges they they faced especially these two years much more acolytes than what many of us can say we have given in public today we made national headlines because of last month's meeting due to certain perspectives and interpretations of one certain speech our community has chosen one person's comment from last month's meeting to represent everyone else one
125person who wasn't even stopped by the board to declare their actual address and how we know whether this person represented anyone here or is vested in this community i hope everyone actually made the time to watch over the the the last month's meeting after the opinion headlines came out to really see what was said and if the members of the community really are as deplorable as all these articles and comments made it seem it is unfortunate and shameful it took many of us who came here today because you got a call in last week in the last week to support an agenda but not the actual concern of the education of the children of our community it is a shame to see this as a mother of young children to see how low on priority
126all of this has been in our community even after all that though the one thing i know that is we all have love our children and we all want them to grow to be outstanding citizens we all really need to stay the course and not get distracted by this decisive bickering on both sides and and bickering on both sides okay i'm wrapping up thank you i hope as parents residents and teachers can really dig deep in our guts to have clear minds and more importantly pure intended hearts it hasn't been pretty for this community during these times i hope you parents will stay involved and vocal in our community to help establish a strong foundation for our children to build outstanding character to be outstanding citizens our children and the future generations are the ones
127we need to be better for and there's too much stake at our end thanks [Applause] annika forzani 45 john drive first of all i want to thank the board and the administration and the teachers for helping to keep our kids in school and safe during the challenging two and a half year two years i'm also sorry about the vitriol that you had to endure in some of the recent meetings in response to the hateful comments that were made at the last board meeting not by all but by some i understand that the rules don't allow the board of ed to restrict who makes comments during the public comment period however going forward i know we can't legally keep people out but as a community we do have the ability to disregard inappropriate statements from people
128outside of our community knowing that they're simply there to try to inflame and divide and we can move on certainly no one should stoop down to the level of applauding hateful comments as happened at the last meeting second i feel that too much time is being wasted in these meetings and out of these meetings with people attacking others sometimes very personally trying to pin blame on others and trying to divide us if someone has an issue with something being taught a concern needs clarification on the topic um i do not feel that well i have found that reaching out to teachers principals or superint attendants in my experience has elicited responses um so i do not see that these issues are not being responded to i find it's really not productive to have the board
129of ed meetings become an airing of grievances an attack on individuals or a political stage i personally am not very active on social media but i know there are people spending hours on social media dividing spreading rumors blaming attacking and i would say please stop if it's behavior you wouldn't want your child doing then please don't do it yourself please consider shifting all that energy and passion to making a positive difference with many of the great community organizations our kids are watching i know that many of them re-watched parts of the last board ed meeting i find it an embarrassment and i also feel it's counterproductive while we will not always agree i do believe we can return to a civil discourse as we have in the past so i would ask the community members
130please give another chance and try reaching out again when you have concerns directly to teachers not turning it into a tax allow our board and administration and teachers to focus on the important issues of keeping our kids in school supporting their academic and social development and keeping them safe rather than on the divisive distractions that have been consuming too much of their time thank you [Applause] [Music] [Applause] hi my name is tina i'm in basking ridge i'll write my address on there but i don't want to say it publicly because this is on although the last meeting when i went to watch it you guys made it private i don't know it does that happen every meeting excuse me tina could you just tell us um your full name and put on your math please
131sure tina stratus i'm way past six feet from you but i'll do it okay other people are using the microphone okay i you're everyone's here and they're just talking about excuse me excuse me we we have been chastised by the community for not requesting an address we're asking for your street without your number please okay hillcrest everyone's coming up here and they're talking about divisiveness and they're talking about let's get together let's be civil discourse okay the teachers are here in red we're not attacking the teachers you say you want us to trust you we trust you to teach our children academics we trust you that when our children and we are putting the trust that our children are going in that classroom that you are teaching them english reading writing math science that they're
132going to leave the basking ridge school system and be proficient in these things and that will allow them to be citizens of the world global society that is the best way we can help our children is to make sure that they are prepared academically to participate in this world that we live in we trust the teachers but by trusting them we also as parents have a right to know what our children are being taught in the classroom and i appreciate the teachers that they want to have training however if that training and the ideology that they are putting on our students the morals ethics and values are not compatible with the ideology and morals ethings and values that the parents are teaching at home then the state has crossed the line and they've gone too
133far because that is the role of the parent to instill these morals ethics and values on their children and we have a right to know what that is being taught in the classroom so we are not against the teachers we support you but as parents and as there are kids we want to know what they are being told in the classroom that's all and when parents come here and have concerns and raise concerns to the board of education they are coming here because they want to be heard they want their voices heard and to be told that they're not being responded to or what they're trying to talk about is irrelevant belittled racist that is not constructive when someone comes up here and talks and they talk about sexual harassment or what's happening with defense
134coach and not one teacher claps for that person what that is not us coming together and being united that is very divisive and that is a hard thing to he people they want to protect their children they want what's best for those children and the fact that someone comes up here and nobody claps and then the last woman comes up here and all of the teachers and everyone's clapping what are you guys saying so keep having these board of education meetings thank you for letting parents come up and express their ideas thank you for letting them express their concerns but please when they do that do not start attacking them thank you [Applause] sorry just wanted to make sure i didn't forget um i wanted to follow up uh to my comments i'm sorry just
135sorry debbie marcus i wrote it down but i didn't say 16 lafayette lane thank you um i do thank the board and the teachers for all the effort and time they were putting into so many issues i also concur with a lot of the points some people have made about the issues that are chosen to be responded to i questioned at the last meeting how choices for developmental teacher development were decided and when they were publicized what the rubric was for approving different groups at the time i was told there isn't really a formal methodology i still encourage you to create one i attended some of the training that the group offered so i could gain more insight into some issues about which i admit i was not fully informed i do have a phd
136in education administration so i have some perspective although not recent experience i attained the training called teaching white privilege without saying white privilege this course was recommended for the teachers in our district to take from a bernard's boe email address it was the most one-sided dogma of presentation that i had ever attended there was no thoughtful discussion about the multiple factors involved in current situations there was a recommendation to teach it starting at the latest six years old and if there was any pushback there they were told telling teachers that just say that the students are experiencing cognitive dissonance they claimed to say we're using critical thinking to let students make come to conclusions themselves about the situation or the differences in racial experiences in this country they put up slides that said things presented
137the percentage of women and men and blacks whites and hispanics in various situations for example they said in the u.s blacks died a younger age than whites that's what they present to the kids that is true that is a fact i there are a lot of factors that go into that i am aware that there is a lot of health issues within that community i'm also aware that some of those health issues are because there's not access to healthy food and other factors socioeconomic issues as well however they are just teaching recommending this was not only recommended to be taught to the kids it was already it's already being taught in some of the school districts around us that just it's the white's fault there is another presentation about the percentage of doctors in each
138area with a complaint that asians were over represented and that that's a problem that we need to fix there was other presentation about the fact that teachers 76 of them are female and 79 of them are white which is disproportionate to the representation in society now yes that is all true in effect is that a problem that our kids need to deal with is it i mean we have a precious amount of instructional time and a precious amount of time that our teachers can spend on developmental training this these are such simplistic okay um my main question is we were told there's no critical race theory in our classrooms how if we decide to add it which is seem to be recommended in this email how is this helpful for student success even if we
139agreed with the premise i agree i want to emphasize i don't understand how it's helpful for our kids to be taught this to be productive citizens it was not critical thinking it is a theory that can be discussed for factors of trying to improve things and policies at the adult level but i don't see how it could help our kids now so i again ask how we are choosing which programs we recommend for our teachers and i encourage us to focus our efforts in areas that will help our children succeed thank you [Applause] hello so um i'm audrey kachoraj i'm from sixth wharton way that's where i live and uh i graduated last year i'm actually a 2021 senior and i've just completed my first semester of college and i just want to say that
140i'm thankful that this district not only taught me like math science you know social studies and stuff but also taught me how to think critically and understand the world better like in college i met all these people that i would not have been able to meet if i had stayed in basking ridge and not only was i able to like make a name for myself academically in school but also start to understand the world more socially and i think it's very very important that our school is making that step or thinking about making a step towards supporting our kids socially and understanding the world better that way i trust my teachers immensely i've learned so much from them not only academically but again also socially and i think it's nice that we're continuing to like
141make that effort to teach our students more diversity and inclusion and as a student who's now a first year and has gone through this this district and learned so much that way i understand the importance of doing that even more i do want to say like it is quite difficult i'm sure it is very difficult for the board to be here and hear like how divisive our town is currently but as a student who has gone through this district i do want to like praise the lord for like trying to listen to everyone and i think the consultant program is something that might be um beneficial towards the school because not only do we have these opinions from all these students teachers but it's important to also take an objective view and i again also
142want to praise any teacher that i've had and any teacher that i haven't had any teacher that has worked at this district that has worked to support students academically and socially and help us develop a sense of citizenship in this world and understand like how we can become important citizens and better develop like the way that our world works so thank you very much [Applause] hi everyone i'm devin mccown um i live in bullion road um i just wanted to respond to one person who already made a comment here um who basically said that like yes we trust teachers but also we want to know every single thing you ever say or teach in the classroom i think that that's i'm not trying to be sarcastic but also i am a little bit um i
143i think that's comparable to saying you know oh i trust my boyfriend but also i need to read every single text he ever sends and i want to know every person he talks to all day long like if we if we trust our teachers we have to trust them wholly um and i do personally because i've had many of them um and they know what they're doing you know like trust that they have like good intentions they're clearly trying to learn if they're um recommending trainings to each other which by the way the email in question was not sent by the board of education or anything like that it was just teachers sharing information that they saw and you know like shouldn't we want them to do that you know if they have the best
144interests of our children in mind the fact that they're taking their personal time to grow and attend these trainings whether they agree with them or not like i don't know i would trust that if they sat through a training where something just didn't make sense or it was illogical that they would be able to recognize that so yeah that's all i want to say [Applause] anyone else for public comment in person miss fox do we have any email yes we do mrs gray and mr recruit has approved the original message that was on an agenda item that i will read in the order they came in thank you so this is from miss from carolyn gaziano 17 manchester drive dear boe and mr marcarian i am writing today to follow up on previous emails i
145sent in november thank you karen gray for responding immediately by both email and phone karen provided a great deal of information to me personally however i believe it is important to give the same information to the public i plan to attend tonight's meeting but now i will not be able to therefore i would appreciate it if you could read and respond to this email at the meeting for the public sexual assault of minors has become prevalent in today's society particularly for student athletes one is the school district offering specific counseling for students if so has this been communicated to students and parents how is it currently available to all students if not will it be in the future two has or will the school district offer resources to students and parents on minor abuse prevention
146three will the school district add professional development or training courses on minor abuse prevention to teachers and coaches four do teachers and coaches have specific rules to adhere to on overnight trips is there a manual that can be shared with parents and students before going on overnight trips next christine tomah south maple avenue to our board of education members i never thought i would have to say this but after the last few boe meetings it needs to be heard no one none of us in the great majority think any of our board of education ever ignored minimized or encouraged the actions of an accused pedophile that he is accused of hurting children in another district is horrific but as it was a criminal investigation no member of the bernards township board of education would have
147been alerted as one member said we found out when you did the last few meetings were taken up by a few parents insisting on specialized counseling for members of the fencing team if our district was to pay for specialized counseling for every student who came across an adult who then went on to do something bad somewhere else well i think we would be broke this issue is best left to parents to take care of and address this with their children directly i was particularly appalled with the comments of a woman who was incensed outraged even that the term white privilege turned up in a training manual for teachers its comments like hers along with the videos we are all seeing far too often from other school board meetings that i find myself thinking yet again
148parents are idiots and there is no way i want any of these people to influence my children's schooling in any way they have no business trying to dictate curriculum their ignorance and racism has no place in public education no that is better left in the hands of the people who dedicate their careers to education we are so fortunate that so many of our teachers have advanced degrees it is a sad reflection of the current cultural and race war going on in this country that right-wing extremists are looking to banish studying fact-based history of slavery and civil rights education is meant to challenge ideas and theories and even try to learn from mistakes of the past and maybe even teach our children how to differentiate between fact-based information and propaganda and finally thank you to every
149member of the board to our teachers to the administrative and maintenance staffs you have had to reinvent the wheel several times this past year and a half the great majority thanks thanks you for your herculean efforts sherry nelson smoke rise road i have some questions regarding school security what is the district policy regarding students who make threats of violence against other students we have a policy in place to immediately suspend students who talk about harming themselves they have to be cleared by a mental health professional before they can return to school but when we have students that threaten violence and even go as far as talking about killing other students an hiv investigation is done instead of treating it like the mental health crisis that it is any student who threatens violence should be suspended
150immediately pending an emergency psych evaluation if the school administration in michigan had done that instead of sending a student who was clearly in crisis back to class all of those people would still be alive today on december 4th mr marcarian sent an email stating that our school community is committed to utilizing all the mortal resources it has to keep our students safe and well but our district is not actually using all possible resources to keep students safe after the parkland school shooting in february of 2018 the burners township police chief recommended that our district hire six special law enforcement officers so there would be adequate coverage for all six schools in town but you only hired one officer this past thursday the district sent out a message because of the social media threats of nationwide
151school shootings on friday and what did you do to ensure the safety of the students and staff you had a strong police presence at the schools that day we all know that this is the best way to protect everyone and yet we have not provided the amount of officers that our own police chief recommended years ago we need to hire more officers immediately and it is time to seriously consider metal detectors as well as change our policy on how we handle students who threaten violence against others and that is the last public comment mrs gray thank you ms fox um before mr markerian attempts to address what he can this evening i just want to say a couple of things with regard to the question about the fencing coach and the dialogue about non-responsiveness efforts
152were made to respond and they were not from from board members i can't speak to who someone might have tried to reach out to and i i do take uh the point about the 13 to be maybe a collective and that that's fair but those of us being accosted verbally were only privy to what we saw and it was the board that was being scolded so i received the email that precipitated the conversation that mrs gaziano referred to in that um recent email public comment and um i invited her to call me and she did and i did mention that i tried to do the same with the president of the fencing parents board and that those those attempts to speak with the president did were not responded to so i spoke with mrs gaziano
153i guess mistakenly under the impression that she would in fact be in some way working with the bridge fencing board and maybe conveying those um the the nature of our conversation i did speak to some of the particulars on not not specifics but timeline wise which i had to get from the administration because the board is not directly involved in these matters they are handled by the administration or the school building professionals and the two fencing captains were invited to meet with dr lazavick they were subsequent he subsequently met with our sacks that is student assistance counselors those counselors were advised of the dialogue between the captains and the principal and then they were connected together they had a meeting with it the students had a meeting with the sax and then the eventually the
154sax met with the entire fencing team so i i don't i mean i don't have the exact dates with me here right now but suffice it to say that it seems to have been glossed over that any of that happened in any detail i wasn't presented any of them nor were any other board members present but i encourage the public to speak to the people involved because that's how you get the best answer someone spoke to that here this evening and give people a chance to give an answer before assuming that they won't or they didn't or they haven't i spent an enormous amount of time in them the last month responding directly many of you probably got some type of email from me responding to individual emails sent by members of the public we
155do the very best that we can we are not professional board of education members we are people with lives and jobs and families and i i know it's hard to believe and i try not to be sassy but for god seeks do you think we're sitting at home waiting for an email or 45 emails from from the public just so that we can recompose an individual response it takes time it's sometimes we have to get information that we don't have at our disposal before we can do so so they're not always timely they're not certainly not immediate and we work very hard to do the best that we can but it's never going to be perfect and i hope that we can start to realize that we don't have to be perfect to be given
156credit for trying to do something that is not easy nor is it um i'm going to stop there i'm sorry i have two other things to say um and one is about the comment that was made that the training was recommended and i think that's a little confusing and i don't think that it should be left to hang there our staff share things with each other so when when i inquired about that email which i found out through social media about i asked the question how does this work and the answer was the staff is a family and anyone who works in a workplace can probably imagine that very readily as a family they share things if they learn about something they think hey maybe my colleagues might be interested interested in that and it
157gets shared that that's a far cry from a recommendation and i think it's an important distinction um and then [Music] as far as the commenter who spoke about um the concerns with what the state may or may be telling may or may not be telling um districts that they have to deliver is in terms of state standards for curriculum writing i strongly encourage anyone who has feelings about this that they're not happy with to go to the state and speak to your legislators and get your message across if it's something that you have concerns with we are bound by a code of ethics and we can't just change things because someone in the community or many in the community don't like something it's it's just not within our purview to do so so i'm sorry
158mr mccarran if you have other things you want to say i just needed to say those few things okay thank you madam president um so just in general not close enough is that better okay so uh just in general uh tonight just really appreciated everybody's comments uh and uh the positive tenor of the dialogue uh or at least the comments so that was really nice thank you everybody for that you know definitely a lot of feelings about wanting to have open conversations and understand uh what someone may be doing or what may be happening here there or elsewhere in a classroom or otherwise just really appreciated all the thoughts about that and encourage people to you know try to go to the source uh if you have questions about what might be happening in the
159in a classroom reach out to a teacher have a conversation with a teacher it's really the best way to to understand i think we heard a little bit today from the teachers and even from some students uh who recognize uh some of the challenging topics that are sometimes taught uh and and are grappled with and if you really want to understand or have a question about what might be happening uh in a particular situation i really think the best thing to do is to start by talking to the teacher because we we do live in a complex world and uh we we have challenging issues that the teachers are are working hard to try to prepare the students for in a complex society so it's not simple sometimes and and i know they they work
160hard to uh really try to challenge the kids and help them to be thinkers and that that's not an easy thing let's see here some specifics uh i think miss gray spoke a little bit about the the fencing team questions uh or comments i should say uh and at this point i i can tell you that i feel very confident that the students know what their resources are and they know that they have counseling resources available to them and i would say that extends you know even beyond the specific situation that has been questioned with regard to fencing but i but i also know that the the counseling team has a a specific triage approach that they take uh in the counseling suite at ridge high school even when a student comes in for any
161particular issue that they may be concerned about uh just a bunch of folks kind of commented on uh divisiveness and uh distraction and um you know i kind of see that you know we have a lot a lot that goes on and and there's a lot going on in the world and we can kind of get sucked into to conversations that sometimes are not particularly uh productive and it can be challenging to stay focused so i appreciated those comments i also appreciated the the comment of you know really understanding ideology uh is is what uh is what is what's being talked about or discussed in class consistent with values at home those are great questions and really important questions and and that's why it's great to pick up a phone and and talk to a
162teacher to try to understand something if you have a concern uh miss gray already talked a little bit about uh the pd issue uh that that question of an email that was sent i think we talked about this a little bit at the last board meeting as well certainly uh teachers being able to share resources with one another emailing one another i think that's pretty commonplace among the schools i had a little conversation with the principals about it whether it's you know looking for colored pencils or a particular classroom supply can somebody share this or share that i'm out of this does anybody have that uh here's some training opportunities i'm checking them out these seem like commonplace things i i don't think that there's anything wrong with them i did i did speak to
163this issue of how are things formally approved with respect to pd uh in the district obviously the district has uh some formal programs that it runs on in-service days it has formal programs for training of new staff in annual mandatory required training that occurs with the staff staff college programs there's a budget to send staff to conferences anything that is involved in school time or school financial resources does have a vetting process staff members apply specifically uh to to go to those pd opportunities and they get reviewed and approved but staff members doing training on their own time not asking for district resources to do them that's that's perfectly uh commonplace it's not unusual uh and i think that any of us that have ever gone to any pd experience uh know that sometimes they're
164good and and sometimes we think uh i should have gone to something else uh and we take away some things and other times we don't take away anything and uh and and that's up to the professionalism of the staff member to to kind of decide uh if something was worthwhile and they want to bring it back uh and use it uh mr merkarian but i just i just said it but this is not part of our pd at all it was just recommended by featured a teacher and it's not part of our professional development we're not we have no affiliation with that group or anything uh it was a resource shared from one staff member to another it's not uh a resource that we were providing to the to i just wanna because i feel
165like that's getting lost in um when everyone talks about it like it's some kind of training we are putting on that's all yeah all but all people that we pay for is approved in every it's approved right it's approved through the board everything that everything that the truck pays for is approved and we report out in wellness reports has brought and i even i'm just i'm just trying to like you know consolidate all that as to um you know just to make it clear crystal clear so we don't have to really talk about it anymore okay um there was a question about again some questions about counseling for students specifically to fencing as i think that's been answered a couple times certainly those opportunities were made very clear to the students there were some questions
166about what type of pd the staff gets part of the the professional development required on an annual basis is uh is designed to target the issue of uh child abuse and neglect so annually the staff members are doing that with respect to overnight trips we don't have a lot of overnight trips but i also don't think we have a specific training about overnight trips as i said it's more in general about child abuse and neglect uh and finally there was a question i think it was the last comment about um school security and crisis response what is the district's uh policy on that so the violence prevention policy is actually part of the crisis response policy uh which is number eight four six eight all of the district's policies and procedures are available through the
167district website if you're interested in looking at policy eight four six eight it does talk about uh mental health evaluation in the process of a certain analysis of threats if it's a threat issue i think that was part of the question with respect to comments that i posted or wrote about or sent messages about with regard to school safety and security um i was speaking about the resources that we have in play now uh the resources that we have in play now we are using fully uh obviously there is no end to what you might do to change what other resources you add to any effort whether it's your athletic program your academic program or your school security program certainly we you could consider adding more i meant to say that we're using the resources
168that we have at our disposal right now as we consider next year's budget maybe there would be different resources added that's all thank you okay so our next agenda item is board forum and um i know several board members have things they'd like to say but i want to start by reading an um email from um lauren beckman one of our board members um dear members of the board of education i am sorry to announce that personal circumstances prevent me from finishing my term as board member on the berners township board of education as such i will be resigning from my position on the board effective monday december 20th 2021. it was truly an honor to be elected to the board and serve the school district these past two years my best wishes to you
169all sincerely lauren beckman so i just want to say that we will miss lauren um you know god bless her she came on in january of 2020 she was on the board for about what nine weeks and we shut down so it was a very very difficult time to join the board of education there couldn't be any in-person training she really didn't know any of us and didn't really get a lot of opportunities to get to know us and as any of you who watched on zoom know that was not the easiest way to you know run meetings so um she did a great job and we really appreciate her service and we will miss her and we wish her well um i know mrs mckeon wanted to say something and then you know everyone
170else can go from there yeah um i kind of felt compelled to jump in um when you were talking about the code of ethics i had jotted down a few things because i think of anyone here i've been at more board meetings than anyone except for maybe karen gray because she started going to board meetings way before i was on the board and you went to pretty much all of them even before you were on the board so i don't know who has the record um i just feel like there's a lot of misunderstanding in the community about the role of the board and i think over time you know things have kind of evolved in terms of communication the way the board communicates you know things are different now than they were when i
171first came on the board that's for sure but we have a code of ethics which which karen referred to and um part of the code of ethics says that you know we can only we're a policy-making body we don't administer the schools and we can only respond to things um if they come to us through certain channels so there's a chain of command and so if you have a question or concern about your child or about what they're learning in school you have to start and go through the chain of command and that applies to us too as parents we go to the teacher or the staff member the coach whoever first and then if we still have questions we can go to someone else we can go to the principal or an administrator or
172supervisor you know on up the chain and the board really only gets involved if it's gone through the entire chain of command and there's some kind of decision or something that needs to come to the board which does sometimes happen about individual students we also have in our code of ethics you know we have to keep things confidential and that applies to things about students staff members any kind of pending litigation ongoing litigation contract negotiations there's a big long list of things we can't respond to or answer and so when someone comes to try to talk to us or come to a public meeting with certain topics it's not that we don't want to answer or we don't care about those topics we can't respond we're not supposed to we're not allowed to so um
173i think that there's you know i think a lot of people are expecting a response when they um are coming to us and if if you come to us in person when you see us in town we'll tell you why we can't respond we'll say we're not allowed to respond to that you have to go through the chain of command we might help direct you to how to do that but when we're sitting here up on stage it's not really a back and forth dialogue so i think that sometimes gets missed so i think that was really just what i wanted to say i just wanted to put that out there because we have been getting so much feedback about lack of communication and um you know a public board of education meeting is not
174an easy way to communicate the way it's structured obviously and we've encouraged people to reach out to us individually and also to go through the chain of command when there's topics that need to go through the chain of command so anyway that's i feel sorry anyone else yep i'm good yeah oh yeah go ahead i'm sorry oh let me get my glasses on so they're first of all it's amazing to see all these people here i mean even though some left it was really pretty cool to have a lot of people a lot of teachers was very nice um there's a lot to unpack from what's being said i i want to tell dr marcus she might be the only person who went to that white privilege today which congratulations holy crap who wouldn't even
175waste their time but you know like that is like um kudos to you to you know learn about it and tell us about it how awful it was um and for mr lake who's a neighbor and friend i hope that what um mrs gray and mr mccarran said straighten out some of the misinformation going on about just about that issue that i really feel like is it's hard because you can't answer things from here and talk like that about it and and it was about it bothers me that people think that we don't care um so really um what i have a statement to say today um regarding me being on the board and um i just want to say not everyone will agree with what i'm saying i'm not look this is not popularity
176conscious for me is something i have to say because i feel so strongly about it um it's something that keeps me awake at night so it's been an honor a real honor to serve on the board of ed for the last five years and i have the utmost respect and appreciation for everyone here on the dais and the board members and the administrators are like i also consider them friends and i've enjoyed my enjoyed it's so much getting to know everyone um they're all great people who truly truly do care about our kids here on baskin ridge and i appreciate that and i i'm not one to mince words or tell you that i think something when i really don't um and we've accomplished many positive things i mean since i've been on it's been
177it's been great it's probably the biggest would be like the schedule at the high school which we should i'm really proud of which i think is really successful our wellness programs all things like that they're awesome we have great dedicated teachers and staff that have worked super duper hard over the last two years and no one's saying it was easy it's been difficult and it's still difficult which i can't even believe i'm saying that right now um and i want to stress that the events in the board meeting earlier this month had nothing to do with the decision i make regarding my service on the board difficult conversations and decisions regarding school matters are something that we signed up for so that's that doesn't bother me um i can disagree with friends and neighbors and
178have healthy productive discussions and that's how it's supposed to work um i would never be intimidated or scared off the board i can take it i can handle it and i can empathize i can really empathize with people who are passionately defend their children while completely disagreeing with the tactics they are employing um having said that the reasons i can no longer serve on the board have everything to do with mandates imposed by governor murphy executive orders and i do implore all those against them to raise their voices in unison and directed at trenton and the policies that are affecting our children um the forced masking of children is morally wrong and in my opinion opinion akin to child abuse for some of them it's an unproven tactic that can cause harm when we blindly
179implement a medical intervention uh we really better be 100 sure that there's no unintended consequences and that will cause cause no harm the masking of children does not pass it doesn't pass the smell test in my opinion um it should really be up to the parents for their children and the teachers and the teachers as well um it should be up to them for their themselves they shouldn't be forced to miss in school either um uh whether or not they want to wear a mask um we have vaccines treatments and boosters and tons of natural immunity it's time to stop forcing our kids to shoulder the responsibility of a disease that is not that is a very little or no danger to them because of our adult fear it's really not the child's job to
180keep us adults safe although and although we have different experiences of the virus this is still not doesn't justify the mass from me they don't send the message of safety or welcome they say there's danger here i'm afraid stay away or worse they send the message our children and our teachers that they're nothing but disease vectors and the only the only place where mass are mandated are schools or children where the children spend most of their time restaurants bars sports venues movies all open for business with no mandates but our children our teachers are forced to wear these masks for six to eight hours a day i say let's have mass our kids time three school years and nearly two years is long it's long enough childhood is finite time it doesn't go on forever
181and we've taken a lot away from them already and i think we need to get their life back um i also can't accept the state-sponsored discrimination that that's happening we're discriminating against teachers and parents who have made a personal medical decision that are right for them and and or their children and for that very reason the fact that they are doing not with the government want not what the government wants them to do they have they are forced to test once a week to stay in school for the teachers and kids are quarantined for up to eight days which was just downgraded from 14. it's wrong like testing quarantine healthy children is is not justified or good for their mental health as of now we know that vaccines the vaccines don't stop the virus you
182can still get it and spread it therefore there's no need for the discrimination luckily the vaccines can help prevent severe disease in the vulnerable which is great news which people don't talk about more there's also data beyond the shadow of a doubt that children are almost at no risk for bad outcomes this is also great news and not talked about so with vaccines available and all vulnerable people able to get them there should be no discrimination against those with vaccine hesitancy either for their children or themselves no matter what you think of the virus this kind of discrimination and coercion should scare you it can be applied to almost anything to create a desired outcome and i have not even brought the fact that entire isle of manhattan is off limits to adults and children
183who have chosen not to get the shots which is amazing to me and it has been argued that there's not enough data from the past two years um to stop what we're doing to do it out of an abundance of caution but it when's the end game it was two weeks to stop the spread and it was like if everyone gets vaccinated we're good if um the colleges still shut these kids down they're still wearing them and everyone's done everything they've been told to do and nothing's changed it actually seems i've gotten worse which makes me very nervous um and i vehemently disagree that and encounter that if the case that we don't have enough data then how can we have enough information to put three shots into our children in less than eight months
184i can't understand that argument on an intellectual level if we don't have enough data about that virus how can we have enough data about the vaccines to trust them and this is not for everyone it's everyone's decision to do it what they feel comfortable to do and the discrimination is what bothers me we talk about mental health and school safety and we have such wonderful programs we are implementing but nothing is going to make any difference until our children are allowed to get back to normal school life the surgeon general's even come out with an emergency declaration about the dire state of kids mental health like the kids are not all right at school we have our safety officers our age or our teachers are being forced to be masked police pictures being taken of
185masculist kids and try to try to identify them being sent down to the office or reprimanded for not wearing masks properly this is just an unacceptable waste of everyone's time this doesn't build school spirit or make kids want to be there the safety officers and teachers should be building kids trust and creating a fun nurturing learning environment which in turn will win kids respect and make them take pride in their school which actually makes school a safer place um and what we're doing now is like kind of turning kids off and it's like the last thing we want and i think mr warner would agree the more kids are enjoying school they want to be there and make school safer as well like the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over
186and expecting a different outcome these tactics haven't worked in the past and they won't work now so let's do better for our kids at ridge i truly love it here on basking ridge i really do i love our school and i love our town people are kind generous and and dare i say fun i mean these these past few years have put too many up too many like fake barriers between people i say we break down the barriers stop watching the tv news get off the phones and social media they go back outside can reconnect with our neighbors and friends have boisterous conversations and look around at our own lives to make the right decisions for ourselves we want to let those who try to divide us when we are much much better than that
187and have much more in common than we think it would just take some time and patience to get back to the lives we all deserve to live not at each other but with each other so i'm going to ask my friends here on the board to join me for a farewell drink after the meeting because i probably need it even if i can use it and the one thing we won't have to do is um take and take a vote or wear a mask so join out [Applause] um i just want to say we're going to miss you jen not that we're not going to see you because i know you're going to be standing right there so i'm looking forward to seeing you there too but we're going to miss you we love you
188we've enjoyed serving with you and we respect your decision and we know we're going to see you around town and right here and these are my opinions i just want everyone to know that i appreciate anyone who doesn't agree but i had to be i have to go on record thank you and i love working with all you i really did i love being on the board this is very emotional and hard for me i'm not a quitter and i feel like a quitter but i promise my husband i would resign and i respond so um yes good yeah um jen thanks for all of the experience that i've gained from you in the last few months i think it's been really nice to get getting to know you and i'll definitely miss you on
189the stage um but i'm sure i'll see you there so anytime you want to drop off some snacks absolutely i know where to find you um i've been doing a lot of reflecting leading up to today's meeting as well and i started thinking about why i wanted to be sitting up here as a board member in the first place i came out here to make a positive change for students and the staff in town i'm incredibly invested in the wellness and the mental health of our students and staff and our academic excellence and figuring out how to maintain that in a healthy sustainable way i want to be supportive of the teachers and the administration who take care of our kids but being a parent of three little ones i also wear that hat so
190being on the board i'm definitely an advocate of start of starting to have those conversations more uh dialogues that are open between the parents so everyone feels a little bit more comfortable we live in an amazing town and it's because of all of us the concerned parents the educated teachers the astute students the dynamic administrators and the diligent law enforcement it makes me really proud to live here lately though i think it's been a little bit too much negativity coming our way and it's it's been a little bit of a disappointing reality to come to because i didn't expect that coming onto the board in june we as a community and board have been having uncomfortable conversations and i think that's something we need to all keep doing and we can do this better in
191a civilized way you know it doesn't mean that accusations are just thrown out falsely on social media when people can sit behind a screen and put out negativity out there and manifest all of these false stories and then everyone believes it it's not the way to do it there's many more good people than not in this town and i think the pandemic has been tough on all of us in very very different ways and someone felt the need to come up to me at a target and yell at me while i was shopping with my kids which actually happened i really want to give that person the benefit of the doubt that maybe they had a bad week or a bad day or bad month or a bad year but it doesn't make it right
192or fair i love hearing the public's opinion i look forward to public comment at every meeting i hear you and it's been eye-opening as a board we all like to hear from the public the good the bad so we can help that's why we're all up here it's just to help it's been an interesting few months sitting up on the stage as i look around at everyone's faces up here i feel very thankful that i've been able to work with all of you sometimes we may have differing views but at the end of the day we all really really genuinely care about the kids in this district as well as the staff that's our common thread it's a dedication and a passion that we all really do share and i think that's what makes the
193board so dynamic it's been nice seeing so many community members in the audience today and i'm really hoping that this is indicative of what the new year brings so i just wanted to share some thoughts with you guys and say thank you so much and happy holidays to everybody tim uh so first thank you to lauren for her service on the board um thank you to goodia for her her service on the board i hope she stays engaged i know it's impossible for you not to be so um i can just count we can just count on that and uh miss corn so uh i i remember uh when i first came out for the board um you you came to the podium and came with a lot more thunder than i did so you
194were appointed before me and i'll never let you forget that uh but i really remember um the the the kind of the speech that you gave and the the emotion that you had and at that time you were talking about the kids in the middle how are we helping the kids in the middle because i think at that time it was the view like you know uh it was that the the high achievers get the most and the struggling learners get the most attention and how can we help that those kids in the middle and um i can honestly say from that moment before you are on the board watching you until to right now you've had that same passion and enthusiasm for for kids for for all kids and regardless of whether we agree
195or disagree on anything that emotion that constructive way of conveying it um has been here the whole time so i really i really appreciate that and i think um you've been a good example for other members of the community that are passionate about topics to to come on the board and then be part of the entire board process right you might have one issue that makes you want to be a board member and then when you come on the board you realize how much is involved and how much is here and how many different ways you can help so um i really do appreciate that and that will always always stick with me um just two other quick things i wanted to say was um you know i wish i had like a graph of
196like my kind of enthusiasm and optimism during a board meeting because like when gordon speaks i'm just you can't see because i have a mess but i'm smiling and it's just like i'm sky high and i just can't wait and it's it's always great to hear gordon speak and i think everybody regardless of you know even if you're not listening you kind of have to perk up and listen to what he's saying because he's so enthusiastic he's so positive and it's just so refreshing to hear that um and then you know when you have other students and alumni come and speak and say how proud they are of ridge and how proud they are of their friends and um it's just it's it's overwhelming and it's so empowering um and it's just so great to
197hear so i really love to hear that um and then for some reason the board meeting the board meetings generally have have devolved a little bit into into high static environments and i'm not sure why that is because you know recently and over my board service and before that i've gone to you know pto meetings and pec meetings and bt connect meetings when we were having them and then strategic planning and it was so um amicable and and kind of uh unifying and for some reason i don't know why it is i don't know if it's the construct of the meeting that it's kind of like you know public talk board talk public you know like maybe that's what it is but and there's there's a less conversation but at all those meetings it's it's
198so congenial and so constructive and then for some reason we come here and there's more static coming from the public coming from us it whatever it is it's just makes it more intense and i leave the meetings and i'm like i wish we you know you know could have got somewhere or could respond or something like that so i haven't cracked the code on that one but i'm still working on it so uh stick with me in 2022 and i might have something for you um the last thing i want to say is um kind of what jen was saying and um it's been so stressful uh over these past two years i can't even imagine what lauren thought when she came on the board and kind of like everything shut down i mean obviously
199that was crazy for all of us but just kind of having to be in an oversight role at that point and being new i i don't even i can't imagine what that was like but i know everyone over the past two years has been stretched to their absolute limits i know it's been incredibly stressful kids in school kids out of school we don't know what to do what's right what's wrong from a health perspective from an educational perspective from a mental health perspective and and i just hope that we can all really this might sound corny but like we can all really stick together on this i you know there is a way out i i think we're we're on that path and it's going to take just us kind of doing it together kids
200parents staff administration members of the community just just really taking the village concept take it takes a village and and we have to be that village for the kids and and i really uh i i appreciate um everybody's emotion like judy was saying it whether it's frustration or something or having a bad day and everybody's absolutely entitled to that and and now more than ever and i just hope that um if we're having that bad day or there is static in the environment we can do something to acknowledge it and and bring the temperature down and you know be more like gordon and and just have some turn it and somehow turn it into enthusiasm or hope or optimism or positivity um and with that i'll just say i hope everybody has a chance to
201get together with loved ones relax experience have some joy over this holiday break and the new year and recharge and and come back at it because um it might be tough when we come back but but there there is a there's some light at the end of the rainbow and if we can hang together and stick to it for a little longer we'll we'll get there i know it um so uh happy holidays everybody and happy new year thank you i'm just going to say what i've said to jen for all along which is i could always count on you to say exactly what you were thinking and never hold back and um it's really really appreciated you know i don't think that we all always agree and we have different opinions but the respect
202that you always have shown um goes along with the passion that you feel for you know how you how you look look at things and i i i think you you exemplify what what robin described when she talked about the code of ethics that we um we sign each year for that we re-up that you know that we we will we may have personal feelings um but you abide by those those rules that we had to follow but in the same time speaking your peace and i i think that that's really really it's so admirable and you'll be you'll be missed but i'll see you down the road so um we have two items of business left one if we could have a motion on the board forum item number one uh miss shaffer and
203yeah i'm sorry it is on the addendum page um and uh i'm sorry missing i wanted to say it and then i turned my head um and i don't know if the community has the or the audience has the addendum but the this board forum item is um each year the board approves board goals so i'm just going to quickly read them because they aren't too long um the first one is resume work on the bernards connect strands as part of the strategic plan the continued strategic planning the second one is to participate in opportunities to expand on working knowledge of the district and the third one is make communications to the public more efficient with a focus on the chain of command so the these uh board goals um are proposed and considered and
204then you know if anyone has any questions or concerns or would like to potentially i don't know propose something else we can do that or we can just take a vote yes uh miss schaefer and this thing or the first and the second so does anyone have any comments or concerns okay seeing none i will ask mr mclaughlin for a roll call mr salmon yes ms schaefer yes mrs white yes miss singh yes this is corn yes okay uh ms hero yes mrs mchugh yes mrs gray yes thank you madam president and then one last item which is not really an agenda item so much as it's an opportunity to share with the community that um those at home and here in the audience that as you heard tonight we have two resignations from the
205board of education and we also um you know wanna just step through what the process will look like so um something will go up on the website that invites anyone who is interested in applying for the appointment um to complete the packet there's a packet that you can link to and then it gets sent to our um jen nicholson who uh i think is that by email now it used to be in person and um if you have any questions please don't hesitate to contact me or mrs mccune and we can help with if you you know if someone's interested in applying and wants more information um don't don't hesitate to reach out or any of us really um and um that appointment well because the january third meeting is a um election of officers
206meeting we can't do an appointment there and there wouldn't be enough time to properly advertise anyway so that will that appointment will be done at the second meeting in january which is scheduled for january 24th um i just want to say one more thing i've very much enjoyed working with you eugeria and seeing as we have two openings i hope you'll consider applying for one of them um and anyone else who's out there who's come out before or is interested in coming out for the first time we hope you'll put in the um the packet and we look forward to hearing you on the public meeting on the 24th of january i just want to wish everyone who's still here with us and everyone at home happy holidays and safe holidays and enjoy yourselves uh
207can we well everyone in favor of adjournment oh i'm sorry can we have a motion i'm jumping ahead miss white and mr salmon and now all in favor i think we're that's it