001good evening everyone welcome to the board of education meeting the board has already met in executive session and we did salute the flag at that time so with that if we could please have a roll call mr mclaughlin mr salmon here ms schaefer here ms beckman here mrs white here ms singh here mrs corn here miss hero here mrs bacoon here mrs frey here madam president thank you mr mclaughlin welcome again everyone this is a regular meeting of the board of education at bernard's township notice that the time and place of the meeting was provided and copies of that resolution were forwarded to the official newspapers as designated by the board of education and to the township clerk and a copy of the notice was posted on the bulletin board at the board of education
002offices due to the pandemic the board of education expects in-person attendees at this meeting to have completed and passed a self-assessment of personal health to be wearing a face covering to sit in a socially distanced manner from members of different households and to maintain social distancing if waiting in line to make a public comment for those members of the public who are unable to attend our in person meeting there are two live stream links of the meeting posted through the district website www.bernardsboe.com the two live stream links are both airing our meeting simply to back one to back the other one up if there's a technical difficulty we're very we very much welcome input from the public there are two times during regular meetings that the public is invited to speak one time is early
003in the meeting before the board votes when you may speak about any item that is listed on tonight's agenda toward the end of the meeting there's another public forum to address any matter of public concern related to the schools when you approach the microphone please state your name and address each statement made by a participant shall be limited to three minutes duration no participant may speak more than once during a given public comments session in order to run efficient meetings and to allow maximum opportunity for members of the public to speak the board reserves the right to set a different time limit which will be 45 minutes this evening for members of the public who are not attending our meeting in person public comments may be submitted via email starting at 7 pm email your
004comment to bt connect at or text or bernardsboe.com to 908 292-3047 use public comment as the email subject or the start of a text message indicate your first and last name and your address this is required for your public 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 after seven be i'm sorry before 7pm or after item 19 board forum on the agenda please understand the public comment portions of our agendas are not structured as question and answer sessions but rather they are offered as opportunity to share your thoughts with the board may or may not respond to public comments any board responses to public comments will generally be addressed during board forum or during committee reports
005all 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 need to go into an executive session at the end of the meeting we will provide an estimated length of time and whether any action
006is anticipated upon returning from the to the public session with that we are up to our student representative gordon thanks for being here thank you for having me good evening everyone with thanksgiving just about upon us rich students are definitely looking forward to the holiday season as i'm sure all of you are as well although this year has certainly not been easy we are thankful for all those who continue to work to keep ridge safe and open allowing us to move towards a sense of normalcy or as much normalcy as is possible given the current situation as part of the ongoing mental health initiatives ridge hosted a mental health day on the 18th giving students the chance to relax and give feedback on various aspects of ridge high school administration is currently analyzing the feedback
007and will work closely with both the student government and other student representatives from all grades to ensure that ridge can become an even better place to learn ridge ridge's fall sports season ended on a very high note with the boyd's cross country team as well as the competitive cheer team winning their respective championship tournaments additionally ridge forensics also had an exceptionally good weekend attending not one but two tournaments simultaneously and still placing finalists and champions in multiple events at both ridge extends congratulations to the coaches athletes and students for all of their hard work on behalf of the ridge high school student body i wish everyone here a happy and safe thanksgiving in addition to your family's personal traditions we hope you enjoy the time off with family and friends eat lots of great food
008and enter december with good cheer thank you and once again happy thanksgiving thanks so much gordon board members does anyone have any questions for gordon mrs corn gordon i just want to tell you again what a breath of fresh air you are and have a very happy thanksgiving and enjoy your break well thank you so much mrs corn it's always a pleasure to be here and to represent my my school and to speak to you guys and i just want to say happy thanksgiving to everyone too well happy thanksgiving to you gordon thanks for being here we really appreciate it and we appreciate the time that you take in putting together what you share with us it really shows and we're very grateful for it and as you know you're welcome to stay but you're
009certainly not required happy thanksgiving okay our next item mr marcarian has the american rescue plan presentation for the board so the board is invited to come down into the audience sorry this is a little too weird okay well good evening everybody thanks for being here tonight i wish everybody a happy thanksgiving and with that we'll get right into the american rescue plan grant so for starters i just wanted to define for you a little bit of the the history here behind uh the different federal grants uh you're gonna see the word or the acronym i should say esser used uh frequently throughout a handful of slides here and that stands for the elementary and secondary school emergency relief fund this was established obviously in response to covid in march of 2020 to help local education
010agencies leas local school districts like ours with emergency funds to prevent prepare for or respond to the cover 19 pandemic and notably not just the academic needs of the students but also to use resources to address social emotional mental health as well so we've actually had a couple of rounds of esser grants already there have been two the sr1 grant and the sr2 grant have largely already been expended at this point we are now up to what we anticipate to be the third and final round of esser grants also known as the american rescue plan act the arp act that's interchangeable with sr3 so as i mentioned we've really already expanded our esser 1 and sr2 grant the amounts are noted there and we've used those largely in response to the pandemic for for purposes
011of technology ppe sanitation improvements facility improvements you probably remember the business administrator mr mclaughlin talking about uh different enhancements to our bathroom facilities with touchless faucets and so soap dispensers and paper towel dispensers things of that nature and of course we've been working to use resources to improve air quality as well so for the sr3 allocation there are actually five parts the largest part is listed there first and that is our school district's allocation of resources at about two and a quarter million dollars and then there are some smaller parts to the arp grant that are specifically uh designated for certain uh areas they're listed uh as the accelerated learning coach and educator support grant which is about close to four hundred thousand dollars the evidence-based summer learning and enrichment the evidence-based comprehensive beyond the
012school day grant and the uh new jersey tiered system of supports mental health support staffing grant so the last three are each about forty thousand so we'll go into a little bit of detail on each of these first of course uh the largest allocation part one the arp esser has many allowable uses i think if you read through the list you'll understand that they each have reasonable connections to uh the coven 19 pandemic and the impact that it has had on our school districts around the country technology for students and staff still continues to be an area where you can make investments as our sanitation supplies and also the air quality improvements that we've been talking about other school facility repairs such as hvac repairs can also be part of the grant and these are
013some of the areas that we anticipate focusing on also mental health services summer learning supplemental after-school programs certain uh allocations are specific to those and we'll get into those as we work our way through the slides in our district in particular we anticipate using the two and a quarter million dollars largely for hvac equipment upgrades air filtration maintenance of hvac equipment updating building automation systems and some facility accessibility improvements we'd like to make so just uh for your knowledge i should have spelled out bas that's building automation systems those are the uh computer control systems that manage the hvac equipment so like at home you have a thermostat you can set the thermostat sometimes you can program the thermostat when the heat comes on when the air conditioning goes on when it goes off those
014types of controls so it's a little bit more elaborate with the with the larger uh facilities and all the equipment but it's a similar sort of of thing just on a more grand scale uh a computerized system for the controls of the equipment so over time sometimes those softwares and support systems go out of date or the control systems go out of date and they need to be uh updated and replaced those are called building automation systems that's the bas uh technology supplies we anticipate still needing to supplement we've had some requests from principals for additional outdoor seating we've obviously had to put staff together a little more intently when it comes to nursing services and the additional time that some of our nursing services or even the administrative staff may have to spend after
015hours in responding to emergency issues mental health services uh clearly was mentioned as a topic that we're allowed to use the grant funds for and we have that in mind in particular for additional services at the middle school special education english language learners and tier two services uh are designed to be provided specifically for students in those categories tier two services are are typically supplemental services for the educational program beyond the uh regular program it should be noted as well that the two and a quarter million dollars in this arp esser grant does have restrictions that often come along with federal grants one such restriction is that 20 percent of the grant actually needs to be earmarked for special education ell underprivileged students in order to make sure that that happens we'll have to be
016careful with our budgeting but that's a minimum so we would anticipate spending at least 20 percent in that area the second grant as i mentioned was about 380 000 that grant is earmarked specifically for professional development of staff professional development focused on social and emotional learning and well-being for our students families and educators uh improving equitable access to learning for all students uh prioritizing depth of instruction rather than pace and identifying and addressing learning gaps among our students so again this is specific to professional development of staff what we anticipate doing here is supporting our programming of which we already have a pretty robust program and this allows us to expand our programming a little bit further we typically conduct our professional development through our own staff college where we uh fund teachers to run
017courses for their peers and colleagues so we can enhance that we also have tuition reimbursement whereby staff members that are taking graduate level courses where it applies to this grant we could certainly supplement that the professional development that we often run sometimes involves having students excuse me having staff members step out of classrooms for a portion of the day and obviously when you ask the teachers to come out of the classroom to do professional development during the day you have to have someone there for the students so we sometimes need to bring in substitute teachers so this would help us have a budget to bring in substitute teachers when we do that type of pull out training so i think we've got a lot of great ways that we can put that money to use
018parts three and four are evidence-based summer learning enrichment and evidence-based beyond school day grants now last summer we actually uh started some programs designed to address some gaps that we saw with some of our students in the k-5 age range so we have a template in place already and in fact the cost of those summer programs kind of eclipses the allocations that were noted at forty thousand dollars for part three and part four of the grant so this would certainly help offset some of our costs in that regard quarantined tutors are something that we started during this school year as well where students sometimes spend after after school time with their teachers and teachers are expected to be able to work with those students that have to be home for a quarantine the final part
019of the grant part five is the new jersey tiered system of support mental health support staffing grant so here we've been looking uh for the last couple of years of trying to fund an additional mental health support at the middle school we currently have a program called effective school solutions here at ridge high school and we'd like to expand that program to the middle school that's the intention here for this 45 000 piece which would help support it some considerations uh with respect to the federal grant is to remember that with federal grants in particular the ester grants they are ending okay so there are three grants sr1 sr2 ester3 one and two are basically expended and three uh is the last piece all three of these grants are one time meaning that we will
020not see them renewed we can't expect these funds to recur from one year to the next and therefore as we think about ways to use the funds we just have to keep in mind that if we do use the funds to sustain a program that we want to continue that in fact we need to be prepared that when the funds run out that we're able to use our regular budget to continue to support what we might have started with grant funds so that's something that you always have to be mindful of when you're using one-time funds which is why a lot of times you'll see investments being made into more one-time expenses so things like a new air handler on a roof that should last 20 30 years new controls that might last 20 years
021technology that might last five years things that are more kind of one and done expenditures instead of things that need to be sustained every year the other thing i wanted to share was that the arp grants themselves uh in particular our sr3 uh that we still have the funds to use is in fact available through september of 2024 so that means that here it's november almost december and we're working on finalizing a submission for the grant the fact that the grant is allowed to be used through september of 24 really means that you're planning to use the funds in the next two years okay if we do get the grant uh final approved during this school year we may use be able to use some of the funds towards the latter half of this school
022but this school year but we're really looking more towards the 22-23 and 23-24 school year since the grant does run for that extended period of time we are allowed to make amendments so depending on how things go over time sometimes a financial picture can shift or needs can shift a little bit and certainly the grant recognizes that that can happen and allows you to make amendments to the grant along the way so i want to give everyone a sense of this it's obviously a significant resource for us to use i can appreciate that uh it's kind of a lot so what we did was we set up an email address my it director mr blinder was kind enough to do this this morning so if anybody has any any ideas or feedback on the arp
023grant any questions that you might have please feel free to take advantage of this email address i'll be monitoring that one that helps me out because it keeps all the things on one topic in one bucket it makes it a little easier to sort through uh email so that is the resource with respect to the grant and any questions that you might have but with that if board members have any questions i'll be happy to try to to jump in okay just for a pointer for clarification even though these are grants that are sort of related around covid related stuff it doesn't mean we have to spend it on covid related stuff so in other words all those hvac and the controls and things like that it's still acceptable use for these funds yes yes
024the the um the allowable use is you do have to use the grant for allowable uses and the process of being able to use the grant does require that the grant gets approved so we do have to put detail into our grant application at least in general categories where we anticipate using the funds and assign an approximate budget to those categories and it does get submitted for review and approval so there is a vetting process and we can't we don't want to start spending funds until we know that the grant application has been approved so i'll certainly be keeping you posted on this project as it moves forward i just want to give i guess don't know what this compliment just i'm happy to see the the program at ed ridge has been so successful
025the um the fact that we are moving it to the middle school i think is really great i think that um our students have benefited from it we've been able to grow it here over the past few years and it's something that i think is really really needed so i was glad to see that on there yeah i'm hoping to be able to have that uh in place in january we've already kind of given ess a heads up and and um so they can start looking for someone that could come and help um and this money is we're getting it right the government's not gonna say oh no you can't have it now i don't think so no it's a it's a it's an allocation grant right so it's already been designated all the amounts
026have already been designated for all the districts but you still have to go through the approval process and i also want to say because um noticing that you are spending it on the middle school um mental health because after i read the letter from mrs hudak regarding the bathrooms i was so upset like i almost started crying because it really shows how the school closures and lockdowns and people might think our kids are just nasty kids now this is like a that's like an example of some real problems from school lockdowns from closing schools the lockdowns the impacts they're still having from kovid not from kobit from like the what we're doing to kids because of kovid that i think that it's we really need a lot of mental health outreach for these kids and
027to me that was like a like a warning sign like a flashing like oh my god help us we need some help i mean you know it just it was so extreme i couldn't even believe it quite honestly so i'm glad that you're putting some resources there where i think it's really needed so hopefully it'll do something good you know if it starts sooner than later all right thanks guys appreciate it so which yeah so so i just heard uh from my colleague that uh viewers at home uh might have reported that the slides that we just showed were a little difficult to see uh at the beginning of the presentation so just be advised that we will post the presentation uh with the with the minutes and the meeting recording uh thank you mr
028mc marcarian um our next item is a superintendent's report and we have three items if we could have a motion please mr salmon and mrs white mr mckay thank you madam president yep we have uh three items as usual we report out on our school bus evacuation drills we have one new extracurricular club and we have our usual hib report if there are no board member questions mr mclaughlin can we please have a roll call mr salmon yes ms schaefer yes ms beckman yes mrs white yes ms singh yes mrs corn yes miss hiro yes mrs mccoon yes mrs gray yes madam president thank you one more thing for mr mcmarkharian yes so thank you uh again just to reiterate i hope everybody has a great thanksgiving this upcoming weekend and and just one uh
029pitch from our school nursing our school nursing team um we frequently have to work on contact tracing as it relates to coven when we have a positive case and a lot of energy goes into uh to doing that work so i'm just putting out a plea if you have had your child vaccinated for covet 19 it does help the nursing team to know they maintain a confidential health record for students so if you've had your child vaccinated if you could please reach out to your school nurse uh and and help them get that on their confidential record it would be appreciated because as as everybody probably is aware if there is a exposure uh to somebody with uh coven 19 and an individual's identified as a possible close contact they don't have to quarantine if
030they've been vaccinated and that that just helps the process so we appreciate everybody's support with that thank you mr mark carrion um our next item is public comment on agenda items for the audience at home and here in person a reminder that this is agenda items only at this time we do have the second public comment um at the later in the agenda um please feel free to come forward state your name and address for the record and please try to keep your comments to three minutes thank you okay don't see anyone here in the auditorium although it's nice to see a big group thank you all for being here um miss fox do we have any email comments we don't have any comments on agenda items okay all right thank you hold tight we'll
031get to the non-agenda items later okay so our next item is approval of minutes if we could have a motion please mrs corn and miss beckman and then a roll call mr mclaughlin mr salmon yes miss schaefer yes ms beckmann yes mrs white yes ms singh yes mrs corn yes is hero yes mr specula yes mrs cray yes adam president thank you mr mclaughlin our next item is the finance committee report mr salmon oh i'm sorry my apologies can we please have a motion on the finance items there are um items one through 20. miss white and miss beckman and now mr salmon sorry about that no that's all right uh finance met on thursday november 18th the first item discussed was the enaction of the federal consolidated approach appropriations act of 2021 with the
032no surprises provision this relates to balance billing um so uh this law is very similar to the law that was enacted in new jersey two years ago um at that time the district implemented the new new jersey law was when it was enacted and horizon is now asking whether the district will opt in to implementation of the federal law uh we got a presentation from joe colombo columbo from arthur gallagher who is the district's health benefits advisor he recommended that we opt in as all self-funded districts are opting in and there is no additional cost to the district and the committee agreed with that recommendation the second item for discussion was the oak street school roof replacement project which is slated to begin this summer on november 11th mr mclaughlin opened the bids for the
033repair project three bids were received by the deadline one bid was received after the deadline the late bid was rejected pursuant to statute there were two um significantly lower bids than our anticipated budget and one bid that was higher than our anticipated budget the district mr mclaughlin worked with tony katana who's the district's architect to contact each of the low bidders and it turns out they made mistakes when they were calculating their bids and as a result both withdrew their bids the high bid was rejected as over the budgeted amount we are rebuilding the project in january to again start for the summer there was a discussion about the current standing of the capital reserve account as well as the district's long-range facility plan currently in the account there's a little over eight million dollars
034in the capital reserve account about 2.7 million dollars of that has been allocated for future debt service payments to smooth the debt service payments so the way that the um debt was structured when the referendum was run several years ago was that the balloon payments or large payments would come due periodically so rather than have these large payments come due amidst periods of lower payments the uh capital reserve was augmented with funds to smooth those debt payments out over time the remaining around 5.6 million dollars in the capital reserves is based on the 81 projects that are still outstanding from the district's long-range facility plan that plan was developed in 2011 by architects and engineers in the district that compiled a list of capital projects throughout the years the plan has been amended to add
035projects that were not on the original 2011 list for example the wellness center the varsity softball field and the track and terrific ridge high school were added a major project that is still on the list is to address the drainage at lee field which will likely cost in excess of 1.5 million dollars there are then 16 additional additional large-scale projects such as the whams such as replacing windows and wham's improving all building lighting and boiler replacements that total about 1.367 million and then there are 64 smaller scale projects like door replacements wham's case work intercom repairs and driveway and parking lot repairs that total about 2.52 million dollars and that adds up to the uh 8.387 million dollars that is in the capital reserve account right now um the other item uh the last item
036of the discussion was the the art best or three grant which mark carrying just presented on so i won't go over that again uh on the agenda tonight um one through three are standing items number four is professional development number five is the disposal of chromebooks number six approves path through funds to non-public schools in the district such as st james and all brook school number seven is approval of the bid withdrawal and rejection of the bid that was too high for the oak street school roof project 8 through 16 are student services 17 and 18 are out of district placements 19 approve the submission of the district's sr3 grant and number 20 is the approval of contracting services uh for a interim help for the business administration office of the district anyone have any
037questions for mr salmon i see miss corn just just want just one i wanted to just um the capital reserve and that could only be used there that's earmarked for capital improvement projects right that money just wanna right so it's not tied to any particular project but those that funding corresponds to the the total amount that we believe that the list of projects on the long-range facility plan will require okay we just want to like it's not it can't be used for other things it has to be used for no the improvement projects that we have earmarked for right other than the debt service allocation then no any other questions okay so mr mclaughlin can we please have a roll call mr salmon yes ms schaefer yes ms beckman yes this is white yes yes
038sing yes this is corn yes miss hira yes mrs mckeon yes mrs cray yes madam president thank you our next item is the personnel committee report we have items one two twenty three to approve tonight so can we have a motion please mrs mckeon and miss hira and miss mccoon do you have a report um the personnel committee just met on friday and i will be finishing the minutes my college kids came home this weekend so i did not get them done um i will report out next time thank you so mr mclaughlin can we have a roll call on personnel please mr salmon yes ms schaefer yes ms beckman yes this is white yes miss singh yes this is corn yes masira yes mrs mckeon yes mrs cray yes madam president thank you our
039next item is the policy committee report we have um items one through five uh well actually we have two items for three item oh sorry four items for second reading and then we have a first reading so could we have a motion on those items to be approved tonight mr salmon and mrs white and mrs corn do you have anything you want to update us on here i have minutes but i'm not sure if everyone got them pardon i don't think the man's ever sent out to everybody yeah i didn't see them do that's probably my fault sorry about that i mean i could read them to let me know it's up to you i can give a summary if you want well i can read them and then i'll read the minute is it
040okay if i read the minutes and then you can summarize everybody okay with that is that okay can we do that is everyone all right did the policy committee review the minutes yes yeah i sent it as a policy does anyone object or or you can just summarize i can read the minutes next time whatever yeah we could we could read out the minutes the next time okay the well i think the the simple thing to say is that with respect to the second reading items there were no changes from the first reading so that's very straightforward the only thing that was really discussed at length and first reading was the new policy for sexual harassment of students which really comes down to the investigation process that needs to take place and if you're not
041comfortable we can certainly table item five until after you get the minutes that'd be easy enough to do i know i'd prefer to do that anyone else some nodding okay so we're going to table item 5 on the policy agenda and we're moving items one through four does anyone have any questions after mr markarian has shared that there's no changes or are we ready to go to vote if everyone's in agreement on the tabling it's not necessary to move to do it okay does anyone anyone not agree the table item five so we're all in agreement okay so that if we can just have the roll call on items one through four please mr salmon yes ms schaefer yes ms beckman yes mrs white yes ms singh yes mrs corn yes miss hira yes this
042is hugh yes this is gray yes madam president thank you mr mclaughlin i just want to point out that number four says approved policy on second reading and adopt it doesn't say what policy it is and i think it's the um emergency it's listed it's listed we also didn't make changes on that though no nothing was changed i just wanted to the first three were calendar oh and the fourth was the emergency remote instruction plan it's on the second to last page of the longer agenda not the summary agenda our next item is the curriculum committee report mrs white curriculum just met last week and i'll be reporting out at our next meeting okay thank you very much and that brings us to um the wellness committee wellness postponed our meeting to december 9th so
043we'll be meeting the ninth and i'll report out of the december meeting okay thank you um does anyone have any liaison committee reports okay and that brings us to public comment on non-agenda items once again please state your name and address for the record and please keep your comments to three minutes thank you thank you good evening lauren manduk 46 liberty corner road far hills my first concern is this board's declaration that our district does not have and is not planning to implement a critical race theory curriculum and yet this board has hired miss serene hashim at ridge high school who seems to intend if she has not already to implement i first learned of miss hashim in connection with an email she sent last month to the ridge high school teachers for the benefit
044of those who are not aware miss hashim previously worked at hundred and central thank you sure i'm aware understood appreciate that i'm a practicing attorney in the litigation department so i'm well aware but thank you mrs sheen previously worked at hunter and central her contract was not renewed and she sued her district for alleged discrimination her case picked up media attention quickly including cnn who ultimately interviewed miss hashim about her alleged claims our district hired her in 2016 after she commenced her lawsuit several months earlier she apparently now works in our social studies department as well as according to tonight number sixteen a ridge wellness facilitator trainer at seventy five dollars an hour in her federal lawsuit ms hashem claimed discrimination but in the course of that lawsuit counter allegations emerged she is alleged to
045have held a discussion in her classroom suggesting the manner in which a woman dresses is a method of rape prevention she was alleged to have equated john brown at harpers ferry to osama bin laden she was witnessed asking the jewish children in her class to identify themselves in an incident witnessed on september 8 2014 and she was alleged to have refused to provide a 504 student with their mandated support when her contract was not renewed she sued the lawsuit cost her prior district four expensive years of litigation before being thrown out by the federal district court in 2019 the third circuit upheld that dismissal and now she's here in our schools i am concerned by this district's decision to hire somebody who has red flags to say the least on the issue of her october
0462021 email miss hashim recently emailed the rich high school teachers encouraging them to take training seminars with a group called nj hearts on subjects including how to teach white privilege without saying the words white privilege why if this district is going to embrace teaching white privilege the cloak of secrecy it inherently suggests that you do not want the students or their parents aware that this is being taught my second question is has the district retained this organization nj hearts their website provides no information about what they train how they train it who trains the trainers what materials they use nor do i have any understanding of what material is provided to our teachers how they incorporate it into their own classroom because if they are signing up to take this training it would suggest they
047are doing something with it and how this board squares all of that with their statement on the website that denounces crt sure i'd like my final question is who authorized miss hashim to send the email are teachers using district issued laptops to take the training seminars if they've signed up for it are they taking the seminars while at the public school and will this board be making a statement on this email and answering whether crt is in fact here thank you ms manduk i i neglected to ask everyone to sign in oh thank you sherry nelson 195 smoke rise road kind of piggybacking off of what lauren just said we had a social studies teacher at ridge send an email to all staff at ridge promoting some training sessions the upcoming training dedicated to activities
048for teaching white privilege without ever saying white privilege sounds like a very deceptive way to address a very controversial topic i think that we can all agree that honesty is paramount in how our teachers are presenting topics in the classroom our district email platform should not be used to promote trainings through a direct conflict with the approved curriculum in our district mr markarian should discourage our staff from attending this training and our board of ed members should publicly denounce this type of manipulation in our education system these deceptive teachings activities have no place in our classrooms i also have some comments about the last board forum discussion about social media some board members accused parents of ginning up animosity towards board of ed members some of the comments in question were mischaracterized during that discussion
049in fact some of those comments were not even about the school district at all but yes parents do criticize the school district it's on social media sometimes i wonder if some of our board of ed members have forgotten what it was like to be on the other side when we were here when you were here and you were frustrated and you didn't feel like your voice was being heard i do remember when some of you were posting on social media as well and i went back and looked and found some quotes so you probably all remember park testing was a hot topic and we had some current board of ed members post and they accused teachers administrators and the board of ed members of bullying students and parents they accused them of intimidation and scare
050tactics they said it was utterly disgusting for the board of ed members to limit your public comments to just three minutes like we have here tonight you also accused mr markarian of misleading the public with what he was posting on the district website and said that the lack of information coming out of our board of ed was appalling and embarrassing you called out their lack of leadership and you even said we need to get people angry it sure sounds like you were ginning up animosity before for our board of ed members back then i wonder how those were members felt when you were posting those things about them on social media this anger and frustration that you posted about was over state mandated park testing imagine how much more outrage parents felt after learning that
051their children have recently been coached by a man who is being prosecuted for sexually assaulting the girls he was coaching in bridgewater can you sympathize with those who were upset that they received no official communication from the school district about this yes we understand it is a criminal investigation i'm almost done and there's limits to what you can say but you could issue a statement and offer some resources for these families but you did not can you see why they eventually aired their grievances on social media like you guys used to before you were on the board of education thanks sure hello my name is erica blackman i live at 11 heather lane it has come to my attention that a private email between ridge teachers has been shared on a social media page in
052town first of all i feel compelled to point out that this is highly inappropriate no one would go to a place of business and share personal emails on a town forum when are we going to start teaching treating teachers with the professionalism they deserve the email invited teachers at ridge to a training where they could learn what to say if they heard racist sexist and homophobic statements at their school i can't imagine why anyone wouldn't want our teachers to be able to handle this kind of behavior and stop it immediately however a few parents were so outraged that they felt the need to share this professional business with the town white privilege seems to be the phrase that is scaring these parents into this kind of inappropriate behavior however white privilege isn't a bad word
053and it's not meant to make white kids feel badly about themselves as many people believe it was coined in the 1980s from an article called unpacking the invisible backpack and i ask all parents to read this article so they can understand exactly what the phrase means instead of using fear and anger to turn against our teachers and staff i hope our teachers know how much most of us support them let us research and talk about the things we fear instead of attacking our wonderful teachers in this district finally i would like to say that it seems like a lot of people in town want to put their head in the sand and ignore what is happening they may think racism and xenophobia is very blatant but actually it is the small snide remarks that can
054hurt students the most my own elementary age children have said they have heard many hurtful statements in the cafeteria and on the playground phrases like why are you eating that it smells weird can't you eat normal food or we will be the american team and they can be the un-american team these statements are hurtful and rude if students are saying these things in our schools and it is up to our teachers to learn how to react explain and teach a way to work together things like this are happening everywhere and i applaud our teachers for recognizing an issue and using their resources to combat it thank you for your time hi my name is jennifer blanchard i'm at 49 kensington road a little bit of the same theme here with social media but a different
055topic like many others in town i'm dismayed and puzzled at the sheer volume of content on social media with regard to everything that's going on but i'm here today because one of those comments referred to parts of our health education curriculum as pornography i assume that is in reference to the addition of lessons about the lgbtq spectrum being gay or bisexual or transgender is not a choice it's not a lifestyle and it's not contagious implying that it is and that relationships or actions are pornographic is incredibly damaging to the mental health of our children thank you hi um i didn't pay attention if i just write down my name or i'll just say debbie marcus i'm also i'm here to um well first in general thank you for all the time and effort you put
056into so many things going on but for the task at hand um i wanted to just get a better sense of if there's a policy regarding um the email communication from october that some people have referred to i'm just looking for more generally is there a policy of how communications that are given sent to the mass group who they're from are they vetted i would think that programs that are recommended for teachers would at least go through come from the principal's office as a recommendation after the group has been vetted this group may or may not be approved but just that didn't seem to be the process so i wanted to check if there's a policy for that i also want to check if this particular group had been vetted on the face of it
057it seems nice and good but you actually can't access any of the resources or materials to learn exactly how they are presenting things and the details of the items and they offer classes that about resist what to do when people are showing resistance such as blue lives matter which has a distinct agenda behind it um which we you know need to be aware of at least and um it also specifically talks about um actively teaching white privilege which is a part of the crt theories which the board has repeatedly stated is not in our schools if they want to change that that can be a different discussion but while it's currently we've been currently told it's not we shouldn't be recommending uh training in it um so we also i'm curious what triggered the need
058for such training has there been an uptick in specific incidences and if so um you know that it would be good to just be aware in general but teachers time is very valuable and they have a lot of kinds of training they can do and i our district does do a lot of good trainings in a lot of these areas and we also need development help and content for our classes too regardless of all this if we do embrace these sort of programs more fully i would like to recommend that if they have all these different topics in the email why doesn't it also have something about anti-semitism there are more american jews suffered hate crimes attacks in 2020 than asians muslims and transgender people combined according to fbi crime tracking data now ideally there
059would be zero for all of these groups and it's not a competition i'm just saying if we're going to be heading in that direction with these types of training to make sure they're encompass that the amount and quantity of things are focused on uh that are actually happening but stepping back i just hope we can hear about the policy of how groups are chosen for training and also who gets to decide which ones are recommended thank you good evening um kirsten light 13 victoria drive first i'd like to thank you all for the all the efforts that you make for our community i realize this is a volunteer position and that you all have the best of intentions that being said almost 3 800 community members voted for change this election as i speak to
060different residents different groups of residents in the community i've heard many different concerns that are important to our constituents first and foremost is that they feel like these concerns are not being heard by this board there are serious issues and they need to be shown the proper deference and concern to all the parents and community members affected members of our community that shared their key concerns with me during the most recent election cycle cited the following one the perception is that the board is reporting to the superintendent rather than answering to the community it serves to the lack of transparency on the curriculum and related teacher trainings that occurred cited by other parents in public comment today three the loss of learning that happened during virtual learning particularly for younger children for the lack of
061case managers available for our most vulnerable population five the rubber stamping of an annual two percent increase in the budget for expediency rather than thoughtful consideration for the benefit benefit of the entire community and six concerns over why the comptroller abruptly resigned after a short term education is supposed to be nonpartisan and teach young minds how to think i personally decided to run for this position because of the clear slant to the education i witnessed which upset my daughter during virtual learning of our government government and econ class a teacher openly disparaging the sitting president showing a complete lack of respect and nonpartisanship another teacher inviting the class to call my child names such as selfish and narcissist even though the teacher was aware of my daughter having a 504 designation related to depression and
062anxiety recently parents and students have reached out to me over concerned with the option two physical education changes other students reach out to me with disturbing reports about a teacher who is in charge of patrolling proper match usage in the high school putting his hands on students inappropriately a parent who had a kindergarten aged children during virtual learning sent me copies of a sign out sheet that required the parent to confirm that he actually conducted the lessons for his child rather than the teacher performing those lessons these are some of the concerns by the people who you have been elected to serve supporters of the incumbents and the incumbents themselves pointed out that this is a partisan position and to this i wholeheartedly agree however the perception is that decisions are being made that align
063with the political ideologies of the current federal and state party in power and not for the entire community at large in order for the board to be truly nonpartisan there needs to be a focus on meeting in the middle and really making decisions for the good of all residents of the community and only through listening and considering all sides of a topic can this be achieved let's begin a fresh start next year placing the residents the community the children their education and well-being first and the principle that the board listens to and takes the community's concerns into consideration i look forward to working with each and every one of you throughout my term for the benefit of this amazing community and thank you for your volunteered efforts of doing so thank you aaron weber 15
064hilltop uh i went to the previous boe mor uh meeting on november 8th i wanted to hear the board's response to the allegations of a ridge fencing coach being charged with two counts of child molestation i'd expected the board or someone to take the opportunity to explain to parents and to the kids what processes are in place what kind of background checks are done were those systems followed through under this what other procedures follow up with this type of an incident i expected to hear some something about what type of count special counseling may be provided to the kids instead all we really heard was instead literally nothing was brought up about what was happening currently this was the first boe meeting that happened since the charges came out in the in the newspapers the
065only thing that did get brought up was a six-minute speech about people saying mean things on social media anybody on social media knows people say mean things on social media i'm disappointed in the school's response to this incident so far to say the least i think we can do better hi victoria costa 15 hilltop road i'm just going to leave these i have one for every one of the boards would you like to share what it is you're leaving and it's the timeline in which the fencing board has contacted the school the board and um what i'm going to speak to tonight yeah sure please please begin your comments okay i wasn't sure okay at the last bird meeting during the general comments i was disappointed that the board decided that parents advocacy for their
066children teammates and community was a concerted effort to gin up animosity how shallow a society we've become when we are so busy trying to avoid blame that we forget that two young girls lives have been changed forever and to add insult to injury you didn't even have the respect to get the facts correct let's have a dialogue before we start talking on social media is what was stated i guess 13 emails four phone calls and three formal requests to the boe for a meeting with the red ridge high fencing board was not enough to warrant a dialogue there are multiple pages of a timeline in that packet of the effort some of us parents put in because we care and we wanted our fencers and all of our athletes to know this behavior is not
067acceptable ever and that the community and the school stands with them whether they have direct or indirect impact in these types of situations from the very beginning we consistently ask for two things communications in regards to the situation and specialized counseling we barely communicated about it and we haven't moved the needle on the counseling after the fencing board parents students and captains requested each on multiple occasions i don't understand why our voices were not heard especially those of our children who directly asked for specialized counseling to the principal athletic director coaches and counselors you've refused to hear our voices and then complain that we resort to social media in the last few weeks i saw more effort in splitting hairs as to when stephen kovacs left drafting emails with attorneys on them and calling media
068outlets to retract information up until october 5th when this man formally resigned he had every one of our fencers emails cell phones and addresses through team snap but let us all tell ourselves that he left in february or wait maybe march so someone else can sleep better at night it was a good excuse to say he was the boy's fencing coach to most that wouldn't know the boys and girls team as essentially one team with practices on the same days same times all together in one gym meet at the same time and fundraise all together stephen kovacs was around our girls as much as he was around our boys but if we admit that we may have to have an uncomfortable feeling that it is possible there could be more problems than what we care
069to address let's just remove him from the website and hope that no one questions the fact that he was our coach for several years and that his private fencing school recruited our team members in our very own gym let us throw blame on the parents and put the board as victims and rant for six minutes proudly after second hand and third parity nonsense and just insult our parents and children more the parents in this stitch if i did pause it when you're having i'll just have one more if the parents in this district and our children deserve the attention of all of you when something like this is done i'm passing it as it's not my job or we spoke to the administration getting only one side of the story is not how this ends
070statistics will tell you with the amount of children you have in this district you have kids who have been in this awful situation as awkward and uncomfortable for you to hear this and admit that as an adult is secondary to how the lives of our innocent children are affected when they are victims acknowledge that you will do better as our students deserve better outline strict new measures to protect our athletes going forward and assure the community that communications will be swift meaningful and most of all compassionate good evening my name is carolyn martinowski i live at 3447 valley road i have to admit in all the years my son attended basking rich schools this is the first board meeting that i've attended in person i've zoomed them and live streamed them often i've watched them
071on live stream on occasion but i felt really compelled to be here this evening to utilize my three minutes of fame to support the call out of the board of education for their inexcusable inability to deal promptly deliberately and responsibly with the issue of an alleged predator who operated within our school system and our community for two plus years i volunteered i was not elected to the fencing board and the booster club and i not only supported this person as a coach pled his case on many occasions with team parents and board members but i encouraged my own son who was a fencer and a captain on his fencing team to join his club which he did and he he fenced there for two years at this point in time the legal system is in
072the driver's seat with regard to this person but the school administration totally dropped the ball regarding supporting our concerned students parents and community by not reacting quickly and loudly stating our stance ignoring this is clearly not going to make it go away as you can tell by tonight currently i'm in receipt of a letter from a friend who's a pingree alum granted they want their dough but on october 28th they issued a letter to all of their alum and school community insisting that they quote take seriously its duty to ensure the safety of students this letter is regarding a person who worked in their school system in 2007 and 2008 and this letter came on october 28th of this year that's how important it is to them currently new jersey advanced media printed that there's
073been multiple sexual assault allegations and hazing allegations in the wall township high school they put it out there parents get to see and hear what's going on currently the patch posted that an ocean county police officer has been convicted of of sexually molesting students for charges of sexual assault of a minor the del barton school has 20 lawsuits pending going back 30 years this is all in our current media we we hear about it we know about it our antenna can go up it's not necessary that i point these cases out to you we all read the paper we all read the read our emails and our our news but i pointed out to show that there's no greater priority and transparency than the safety of our children both physically and emotionally incidences like this
074can happen anywhere but we we instruct our children that they should respect and learn from parents teachers coaches police officers clergy and yet these are sometimes the very same people that cause them irreparable harm okay i've got one i'm finished we demand assurance from the ridge high school board that they have the integrity and responsibility to inform our community of such issues and communicate quickly and transparently when they come to our attention regardless of how it makes us look and feel and to quote one of the board members who just said this right during your powerpoint presentation we really need a lot of mental health outreach thank you i appreciate your time would anyone else like to make a public comment my name is mark i'm from gladstone i got to tell you folks i
075think we've got a bigger problem here than covid and uh i can't believe what i'm hearing and i can't believe that this is allowed to go down i can't i can't understand what happened to this world i can't understand why parents don't want to be parents whatever happened to sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me what happened to just washing your hands and what happened to protecting the children i see men up here men sitting on this panel why aren't you guys doing anything to protect these children and to get this stuff out of our schools sexual deviance in our schools really this is horrible teaching our kids about race how to hate each other why don't you teach these kids things that are going to make them successful
076in their lives moving forward when they get older teach them that it's their their skill and their merit that's going to get them ahead teach white kids that oh you got to give up your opportunity if you if you get one and give it to somebody of color and then we teach the kids of color it doesn't matter how good or you are you you're brown so you just get this is how we're going to teach our kids i think it's disgusting i think it's disgusting that i'm here listening to this sexual deviant crap that's going on and how it's being allowed and nobody's listening to these parents and i got to tell you parents you need to start organizing because nobody up here and it doesn't seem like anybody in the public system cares
077about your kids you need to start caring about them and you need to start getting more involved so that's all i gotta say i'm really ashamed i'm really ashamed i'm 44 years old and i can't believe when i was going to school teachers cared and you don't see nobody seems to care about these kids anymore it's all about virtue signaling it's all about politics and it's all about hating donald trump and anyone that's a conservative or republican you want to talk about bullying ask me how i know what bullying's like and so everybody knows i grew up in perth amboy a white kid in a predominantly spanish town you want to talk about racism and being called names it's called toughen up it's called grow a set it's called life is never going to stop
078being bullies there's never going to stop being bullies they're going to be there every waking minute of your life people need to start sucking it up people need to start growing up and parents need to start doing their jobs and the school boards need to start doing their jobs because this is getting out of control put your politics down and start taking care of the kids good night [Applause] anyone else miss fox do we have do we have the name of this individual can we please get your name from gladstone and you need to sign in mark miss fox do we have any email comments yes we do savona 11 arch gate road good evening board members and mr marcarian can you please comment on the rationale behind changing the option 2 program at ridge
079for the 22-23 school year if the current program is meeting state requirements why the need to revise it i hope that you'll seriously consider the stress and pressures the students feel especially student athletes and the strong benefits the option 2 program provides please don't make the students jump through more hoops in order to participate in option two and better balance their challenging classes clubs activities and sports the study hall enables them to better to make better use of their time and provides a way for them to alleviate some of their stress please be transparent with parents and students about any changes you plan to make and explain why those changes are in the best interest of the students and meet the state requirements brenda watt 99 culverson road first in regards to teacher training during
080in-service days or optional trainings available to staff where can the public find a list of the topics offered i think it would be of interest to the community to learn about the professional training opportunities available to our teachers now that most of the school population is eligible for covet vaccinations i think it would be appropriate for a general report to be presented at boe meetings about any adverse reactions experienced by our student population considering how politicized the news is in the media collecting and sharing anonymous information within our specific community would be much more trustworthy and useful to parents and that's it miss mrs gray thank you miss fox mr mccarron is there anything that you would like to address so um with respect to the question about email systems and the use thereof by
081staff members obviously i won't i won't speak uh to any individual staff members uh but i can say that the the board does have policy uh with respect to how email systems uh are used uh and um i i can say that um i i don't feel like there was any uh problems with the use of the email system um with respect to uh the use of an email system for an all staff email i think that's an interesting topic that we haven't discussed as an administration and is not uh specifically detailed in board of education policy and that's something i can certainly take up with the admin team and and get there get their take on that and we can we could consider what may or may not be appropriate on the subject of
082professional development for the staff there is a process by which professional development is approved specifically in the case when staff members are requesting to be away from school during school hours to participate in a pd event or if staff are participating in a a pd event that may have some expense to it a registration fee perhaps those requests are processed by the administration certainly what staff members may do on their own time for professional activities that they're not requesting reimbursement for or they're not requesting time away from the school day four is obviously up to them uh i certainly appreciate the comments uh with respect to the fencing former fencing coach i can certainly take responsibility for not communicating faster and in greater depth and i'm happy to reach out to the parents that have
083signed in to speak about this topic i will reach out to you this week there was a comment about the option two program at ridge no decisions uh have been made to change anything for the current year with respect to option two um there are discussions with respect to uh next year i don't know if you want to speak to that at all miss fox maybe just the timeline right where those those discussions are happening internally and we plan to host a meeting for the parents and the students i believe it's in january although we don't have a date at this time in order to get some input and share the changes we're considering provide an opportunity for input input before making a final decision for the 2020 to 23 school year thank you uh
084finally on the subject of in-service days uh certainly we can share uh the agenda and the topics that uh the teachers experienced while we had those early dismissals i'd be happy to send that out that's it so our next our next item is board forum anybody you know i shouldn't say anything because i should probably take the 24-hour rule and um and cool down a little bit but apparently i i i i struck some nerves last week with my six minute diatribe um which i stand by everything i said i don't think i said anything wrong or inappropriate and if you want to dig back into my social media go for it you know i mean you try to embarrass i'm not embarrassed it doesn't like if i always feel passionate about maybe i did
085i don't know the people who i had real disagreements on the board at that time aren't here anymore i ran for the board because i had issues and here i am i do get people are frustrated i understand that but i never accused anyone of covering up something so horrible and it was horrible things that were said and also going on social media if you come here yeah and they get addressed but if you go we can't like we can't respond to social media we don't if you're going to just post seriously nasty things and the letters we're getting i i i don't know i can't even talk about them because they're just so rude and and and i'm sorry so if you get mad that you get called out could you post some crazy
086stuff on social media stuff that really shouldn't be posted there um and also because you send letters that like question everything like like who we are is people it's not right so you know yeah sorry sorry this is not what you want to hear but you know that's how it is and um i have to say that um it's just not right uh it's not right so we do our best up here and we get letters that tell us how bad people we are and we have to prove that we care about kids and you know there we are so um i'm sorry i'm not going to apologize for what i said last week i stand behind it 100 if you want to dig back into my social media posts and read them out loud
087everyone go ahead because i'm not embarrassed about those either but i do care about the kids very much so or else i wouldn't be sitting here taking abuse night after night or up here it wouldn't be that worth it would it so um you know i just wanted to put that out there i'm just not i just don't get it i don't get why there can't be like a civil conversation about it i just don't get it it's not like it's not like we're all for the same thing but it i don't know why it has to be so like this instead of being like like i don't get it i don't understand i don't know what what was what was necessary but whatever so sorry that you know we're not living up to the
088the high expectations mrs mccoon um i would just like to make a plea to everyone to we have to figure out some way to have civilized dialogue about these issues like miss corn just pointed out um people you know you can post angry things on social media and come here and be angry um and and say what you want to say but people aren't having conversations i mean i just ran for a re-election and like a number of the people who are saying things um who are upset about things not one person has ever reached out to try to have a conversation there are several people who say that the board members don't answer emails well i tried for years i've been on the board for 12 years and i would call people when they're
089upset and talk to them on the phone some of you have stopped stopped they've made it quite clear to me that you don't want to talk to me so i can't really do anything with that if someone doesn't want to talk to me anymore and wants to pretend that i don't exist so i'm always willing to have conversations but if people aren't willing to have a civilized conversation it's kind of hard it's been very frustrating you know this discussion about critical race theory and things that people are upset about not one person has come and tried to have a you know one-on-one conversation about what you know what do we think about these things what what how i mean obviously we need to to um teach our children how to get along with each other
090and obviously we don't want teachers to be in the classroom and not know how to handle situations when they come up if someone does say something that's hurtful to someone else so obviously these are issues that need to be addressed in our society as we can see so it's very frustrating that we can't have conversation about it and no one has to be in a total agreement about everything because we all have very different views and we may not all come to an agreement but we should be able to be respectful to each other and isn't that what we're trying to teach our kids in school like they are going to a public school there's all different types of people in a pelvic school they need to learn how to get along just like when
091they got in the workforce they're going to work with all different types of people you have to be respectful of other people and learn how to get along with them and i'm finding this really challenging because you know i don't think as adults we're setting a good example for what we're trying to teach our children so i just you know i'm just expressing my frustration also like miss corn did this is white i almost don't even know what to say because i'm so appalled by what has transpired this evening um and god love you mr marcarion for staying calm in your responses but i can't do it and i'm going to start by saying part of our job is to support the teachers in this district it is not okay to come here and state
092anything except a compliment about an individual there's a chain of command if you have an issue with the teacher and something that's going on in a classroom reach out to that teacher and then if you find something that is disturbing or that you're not comfortable with and they don't answer it the next chain of command is you go to the building principle but to post something on social media that it individual teacher in this district has shared with colleagues and having the foresight to white or black out your friend's name but not the teacher's name is a complete invasion of privacy and it's wrong and i'm sorry our job here is to protect the teachers who work day and night to educate our kids you may not like something that's in the curriculum you may
093not agree with it there are avenues but attacking a teacher publicly at a board of ed meeting crosses the line and it can't be allowed it just can't be allowed and that's just one of my issues with what has been said tonight i i i just we all have thick skins you want to go on social media and bash us go ahead it's not going to change anything it's not going to help your children our goal is to help to make these kids great citizens and that means recognizing that we all have different experiences and beyond basking ridge bad stuff goes on and we need to prepare our kids to handle those situations and if that means knowing what to say when you're faced with something that you may not know what to do with
094that is the teacher's responsibility to teach them how to do that i just what are you so afraid of what are you so afraid of no one's trying to indoctrinate anybody we're trying to arm our teachers with the tools they need that they can be the best possible teachers for our kids we're trying to make the kids the best citizens of the world so they can go out someday and not have to deal with all of this to make it a better world don't be a part of the problem be a part of the solution [Applause] ms schaefer i think last week i had the only report of a committee we had a very our last board of ed meeting and my committee meeting was the wellness committee and i specifically reported out about the
095teacher in service that was going to be happening and i've reported on every single teacher in service that has happened and the the agenda items on those the fact that somebody went out on social media and tried to manipulate if you will i will use that word parents into thinking that we were suddenly doing backhanded underhanded whatever you want to call it in service training because the way that that was phrased was irresponsible and completely unacceptable you may watch the video from last time you may see exactly what it is and next week or next meeting i will report out again what the next teacher in service is going to be all about we are not manipulating children we are trying to train our teachers just like jen just said i also am livid and
096i will absolutely call this out somebody on social media and yes if you people think that we don't listen watch it we are we are also parents and parts of this community but somebody said show me a racist in bernardsville or basking ridge and i'll stand up with you well i have news for you somebody stood up at this meeting and was completely racist and somebody more than one parent in this organization clapped for that person that is completely appalling what is wrong with us we're clapping for a person who made racist statements at a school board meeting unacceptable nothing that you can say now really has any influence on me ms hero i have so i am beyond like beyond upset to the point that i really will wait before i respond but i
097just have to piggyback off of that what is the most upsetting part is someone did come up here and make racist comments and basically said you know what our children should learn to grow a set and you know what the community members did they clapped and that to me is appalling because this is the town that i live in i have two young children and this is the school district that my kids go to and these are the parents that are clapping so rather than say something that's gonna show up in the newspaper tomorrow i'm gonna just wait and i will respond but it's so so upsetting that we hear this that we don't care and that you actually clap you clap for that oh no okay so i'm just going to say that i'm
098physically ill and i can't talk i mean i really but i have to say to the woman who came for the first time who said something oh no it was a combination of ms nelson and the woman who came for the first time preaching to us about coming to board of ed meetings and shame on you 23 years i've been coming to these meetings 15 as a resident sitting where you are listening and many times feeling like it wasn't heard not once did i attack somebody on social media nor did i attack somebody at that microphone the biggest complaint i ever made was because we had a crappy sound system and sometimes we couldn't hear what the board members were saying i picked up the phone i called mrs mccoon who was back on the
099on the board back then i called mrs carlson and mrs mcgowan and mr carlucci and i'll name them all if you want the point is there's a way to communicate with people there was someone who stood up here tonight and said they sent 13 emails to the board of education i count four on the subject unless you're going to include the perfunctory response of sending something we had already received to say oh we want you to know this one out to the fencing parents so enlighten us as to what those other nine emails were that were an outreach to us i offered to speak with that individual on two occasions and did not receive a response so let's make sure the record reflects what really happens and not the hyperbole that's hyperbole that sounds good
100at the microphone i i can't believe this is what the town that i love that i have been serving as a volunteer in the schools for the past 23 years has come to i just don't even know what to say except that at this exact moment if you guys want to move forward with the board self-avail you're going to do it without me because i'm out of here is everybody okay with skipping it for tonight yes anything else okay so all in favor of adjournment oh can we have an emotion mrs white and mr salmon all in fever