001okay well rice please i pledge allegiance injustice okay roll call claudia here alan here john here tracy ellen here doug barber barber here joe here stephanie here and um here oh really is jessie there google meet me jesse jessie's not able to attend tonight is noel there here and joshua i'm here okay ladies and gentlemen the new jersey open public meetings law was enacted to ensure the right of the public to advance notice of and to attend the meetings about public bodies of which any business affecting their interest is discussed directed upon in accordance with the vision of this act the rival regional board of education has caused notice this meeting to be publicized by having the date time in place thereof that's the record the ridgewood news and the town news newspapers the constituent
002bureau clerks and borough libraries as well as posting in the school district's principal's offices faculty rooms and board office according to new jersey public law 2001 chapter 226 the smoking or use of any tobacco product strictly prohibited anywhere in public school buildings or anywhere in school grounds including but not limited to the parking lots grassy areas and athletic fields violent is subject to a fine not to exceed this is stephanie the mission of the riverdale regional school district is to provide a safe student-centered environment in which each student is valued and respected to challenge each student to reach his her their potential to nurture every student's intellectual social physical and emotional growth to promote a healthy work ethic a passion for learning and a respect for oneself and other to develop responsible citizens for our
003diverse community and in ever-changing world to continue to involve our community in an active partnership to provide all students the opportunity to achieve and exceed the new jersey student learning standards and the new jersey core curriculum content standards thank you stephanie uh we now have a segment for public comments on agenda items only there will be a segment at the end of the meeting for public comments on anything that is not currently on the agenda please limit your time to three minutes and be respectful with your questions mark do we have anything nothing mark okay uh patrick do you want to introduce our presenter tonight thank you uh it's my pleasure to once again bring back before the board uh matt lee who is our new jersey school boards association uh a field service representative
004that services uh the riverdale board i think you've been with us about five years now matt i'm not quite sure if it's that okay yeah uh matt is a familiar face to most of the board members because he has provided continuing professional education for us which he will once again do this evening uh for uh a presentation regarding uh ethics and then uh he's also helpful whenever we're doing or arranging other types of professional development which we do have scheduled for march 15th where we're bringing in another representative from new jersey school boards vince delucia who will be talking about hidden bias in school systems so without further ado i turn it over to matthew thank you patrick um hopefully everyone can hear me okay excellent um so as patrick mentioned this is sort of
005our annual ethics update as you all know school board members and school officials are governed by a code of ethics which is a result of the school ethics act which was passed in 1992 and part of that requirement is that you review ethics every year and many boards probably on uh yourselves as well will review this at reorganization time but it's typically then just a a look at the 10 tenets of the code and then you move on to other business so our intent with this presentation is to give a lot more uh depth to the presentation to the topic and especially to provide you with details of some of the most recent advisory opinions and ethics decisions to help guide your conduct in terms of governance in the district so i will begin now
006by sharing my screen and you all should be able to see that now can you see that uh yes yes excellent okay so uh to jump right in um i mentioned before that the school ethics act was was passed in 1992 and the idea here is that the legislature thought that it was important that the conduct of members of local boards and administrators hold the respect and confidence of the people they were serving and that board members needed to avoid conduct that's in violation of the public trust or which creates a justifiable impression among the public that such trust is being violated and we're going to see an example in one of the latest advisory decisions as to just what a justifiable impression might be so the last part that i'm going to address as
007it relates to the uh origins of the school ethics act are these two pieces um which really sort of give the background for what we're going to discuss tonight the first is that the legislature shot thought that school board members and administrators should have specific standards to guide their conduct and that manifested itself in the code of ethics which we're going to review tonight and then in addition it also um [Music] made the case for some kind of a disciplinary mechanism to make sure that those standards were maintained and that is um again manifested in the school ethics commission which we will talk about as well the uh one of the things to remember about this is that even though charter schools sit slightly aside the public school system since they are funded with public
008money they are also subject to this for their boards and their administrators one of the reasons that we talk about ethics on an annual basis and make sure that board members are very close to the responsibilities that are required by it is that it's a very important component of the new jersey cusack monitoring system and you can see from the slide here that we we talk about one of the governance indicators because as you know cusack does look at the governance function in the district which is chiefly the board of education and this governance indicator states that both board of education members and administrators need to annually file a uh financial disclosure statement which we'll talk about as we go forward and also that the board annually discusses the school ethics act and that no
009member has been found in violation of the school ethics act and if those things are present then the board earns all of its eight points in that particular indicator and as uh anybody's been around education knows you don't want to lose any points on cusack so the school ethics act established a number of things we already talked about the school ethics commission as a way to enforce the standards we talked about the code as a set of guidelines for administrators and board members to adhere to uh we also alluded to the conflicts of interest and the personal and relative financial disclosure statements that are required of officials each year and then there are also training requirements that are outlined in the school ethics act and those look like this for every uh first or first
010term board member in their initial year they need to do training on some of the foundational concepts of being a board of education member so we we generally refer to that as the skills and knowledge necessary to serve and then also board members need to get some background on cusack and what are the areas that are monitored by cusack and then also on the csa evaluation process in years two and three of a board member's first term there are also mandatory training um classes required and they are creatively referred to as governance two and governance three governance two is related to school finance and the role that board members play in that function of the district and governance 3 is all about student achievement and the ways in which boards contribute to that function of
011the district and then going into each subsequent term of a board member within the first year after each re-election they're required to take uh once again the creatively named governance four and that is about updates on uh things related to school law and other appropriate information which you can see in the next column there so things about hib and a district's responsibilities there and uh important note um only uh required once uh the initial training in governance won and the updates in governance for and and that's as it relates to hiv with the school ethics commission uh it's a nine-member body when fully staffed there are five members appointed uh max from any one political party that are non-school officials and they all serve for a three-year term in addition there are two school administrators
012and two school board members that are appointed to the commission and again that totals nine when fully staffed and when we talk about when fully staffed it's an important number to have present on the commission because there needs to be a six vote uh the six votes cast from the body in order to have advisory opinions made public and therefore provide some guidance to the rest of the state as it relates to certain issues and again that's part of the sec's jurisdiction they issue two kinds of output essentially you have advisory opinions in which a school official can request to determine whether or not some proposed activity or conduct might be a violation of the school ethics act uh once again six votes needed to make those public and at times in the past the
013sec has not had um any more than five members which meant that there was quite a backlog of advisory opinions that could have been useful to the rest of the state and once they did get staffed up to that level uh quite a few were released at one time which caused a lot of people to have to kind of scramble to catch up with that so again important for the governor to keep that fully staffed and then um the other piece of the sec jurisdiction is their ruling on ethics complaints ethics complaints can be filed by anyone so a school board member versus a school board member a staff member versus a school board member an administrator versus a school board member or even any member of the public versus school board member and these
014complaints are specific they are not anonymous and they have to uh refer to a specific tenet of the code of ethics that may have been violated so what happens if a school official is found guilty of a violation of the act well there's a progressive set of penalties that can be applied depending on the severity of the infraction if you start at the left side of this slide you can see that at the very beginning there is something called a reprimand which is a rebuke by the commissioner it is generally speaking a letter that points out the fact that the violation has been found to have been committed by that member and they are cautioned to refrain from conduct um that is in violation of the act as you move up in severity if you
015look at the next level which is accenture and this is a bit more serious in that you will like a reprimand receive a formal disapproval by the commissioner but in this case excuse me it is publicized by the adoption of a resolution by your board again signifying that it's a more serious infraction the next two are suspensions and removals in the case of a suspension there is a link that's recommended by the school ethics commission and then formally ruled upon by the commissioner and once again there is a formal resolution adopted by your board that acknowledges the fact that a violation has been committed and that you will be removed from school board activity for a period of time as decided by the commissioner when you go up to removal that is for the most
016serious of infractions and in that case you will be removed should you be found guilty from office for the remaining length of your term as mentioned earlier the sec makes a recommendation to the commissioner who then makes the final decision and any appeals to that may be heard by the appellate division this slide really speaks to what you could call a score card for the sec from the 2020 cases and as we go one by one starting with advisory opinions you can see on the left that there were 21 advisory opinions that were drafted but only one advisory opinion that was made public and again that's at the discretion of the e school ethics commission what what gets made public and what does not in the middle column you can see that there are mandatory
017training violations so folks who did not complete their governance one two three or four as mandated by the school ethics act and there were 22 cases of that throughout the state with removals for eight members um suspensions there were four members who were suspended for 30 days each and then there were 10 reprimands and again those are all very specific uh penalties to the circumstances around the infraction last column you can see that there were 28 school ethics violations considered 24 of them were dismissed four of the cases were recommended to the commissioner and we're going to address them as we go further in the presentation i'm going to take a quick breath here and ask if there were any questions so far okay excellent all right uh beginning with the first or the only
018public advisory opinion that was rendered in the pertinent facts around this appear in the top box and we see that a superintendent's sister-in-law who was his brother's wife who was a lunch aide in the district and hired before the superintendent was selected by principals as a finalist for secretarial roles the superintendent reached out to the sec again this is an anticipation of of certain conduct to see if it was fair to prohibit a qualified invented employee to move into another role only because her brother-in-law is a superintendent and you can see underneath the two bullets the outcome of that advisory opinion was such that the sec advised that if the superintendent recommended his sister-in-law he would violate tenets b and c b and or c i should say of the code of ethics what they
019said was that the public could reasonably perceive that this action was securing an unwanted privilege advantage or employment for an other and other is a designation of someone's relationship to a school official or a school board member and that would leave a justifiable impression remember we referred to that a little bit earlier in the first slide that the public trust was being violated now it could certainly be that the superintendent really had no role in the recommendation of this person for the job and it seems that he didn't as this person was recommended by the principals but folks could reasonably from the public infer that because of their relationship this person was being given an unwarranted um advantage in being appointed to this role further in this advisory opinion the superintendent also was reminded that
020he needs to recuse himself from any discussion on his sister-in-law's employment in her current role as a lunch aide so those were the two main points from this advisory opinion in 2020 had i been able to join you in person here tonight you may recall that we typically will do a little bit of a round robin with the code of ethics and have everybody read a little piece of it but this is a little more difficult in a virtual environment so i think i'm just going to roll through these myself again if there's any questions or comments stop me along the way and then just a quick note as to what appears underneath each of the tenants those are the standards that the sec uses to determine whether or not a violation has occurred in
021relation to that particular tenant so not something we're going to review tonight but reference material if you will if you're considering whether or not something that you or another official may be doing or proposing to do would be a violation so beginning with tenant a i will uphold all and enforce all laws rules and regulations of the state board of education and court orders pertaining to schools desired changes shall be brought about only through legal and ethical procedures this is really just a a way to remind board members that they are officials of the state and that those things that they try to accomplish in their role as school board members can only be done legally and ethically tenet b i will make decisions in terms of the educational welfare of children and will seek
022to develop and maintain public schools that meet the individual needs of all children regardless of their ability race create sex or social standing if you're like most board members you were brought to your service as someone who was interested in their child's education or perhaps interested in a particular issue revolving around the district at the time you ran this piece of the code of ethics is meant to uh basically emphasize the fact that no matter what it is that brought you to your board service once you are seated as a board member the scope of your involvement and interest needs to expand to all children in the district uh regardless of any distinguishing characteristics c i will confine my board action to policy making planning an appraisal and i will help to frame policies and
023plans only after board has consulted those who will be affected by them and these really um are your main duties as a board member your policy making planning appraisal and communication and um yeah this piece of the code really is uh laying out what it is you are responsible for and we'll see a little bit further as we go to the code there are things that um the code will specify that you are not responsible for and here is one right now tenant d i will carry out my responsibility not to administer the schools but together with my fellow board members to see that they're well run so while we defined our responsibilities in tennessee we're reminded that it is not our role to administer the schools to manage them day-to-day and it also reminds
024us that in order to accomplish anything we need to work together with fellow board members and to exercise our oversight responsibilities in conjunction with other members of the governance team e i will recognize that authority rests with the board of education and will make no personal promises nor take any private action that may compromise the board again once uh we talk about the uh the governance team within the district uh this one reminds you that they are um they are the sole decision-making body and that board members are their own cannot make any take any action or make any promises or do anything that may compromise the board f i will refuse to surrender my independent judgment to special interests or partisan political groups or to use the schools for personal gain or to gain
025a friends and there's uh obviously a an inclination to look at this piece of the code and think only about partisan political groups um especially now that our school board elections are typically done in november along with the rest of the election activity that happens in the fall but this also should be construed to mean that any special interest group that may have expected you to act on their behalf as a board member you need to make sure that you are not uh making decisions with their interest in mind but all but only with the interest of students and certainly not to use the schools to try to gain some kind of advantage either for yourself or folks you know gee i will hold confidential all matters pertaining to the schools which if disclosed would
026be mostly indian individuals or schools in all other matters that will provide accurate information in concert with my fellow board members interpret to the staff the aspirations of the community for at school two very important um concepts here the first is that obviously when we talk about executive session matters um it's quite a serious thing and um you know those things that happen in executive session are done so for a reason and that they might cause some kind of damage or harm to folks outside of the board itself should those matters be disclosed and also that in terms of communication board members want to ensure that they're providing accurate information and also speaking to the administration about the things that the board understands to be the aspirations of the community for its school h i'll
027vote to appoint the best qualified personnel available after consideration of the recommendation of the chief administrative officer as board members we do vote for personnel appointments but the scope of what we're voting on in the scope of the things that we consider in those appointments are very heavily weighted around the administration of the chief administrative officer in terms of the personnel function the board's role is to provide proper policy to ensure that the superintendent is using his or her best practices and event candidates and also that that personnel appointment will be consistent with the educational goals and the budgeting that the district has put in place and that is really their role when it comes to personnel appointments i i will support and protect school personnel in proper performance of their duties this one certainly
028speaks to not only um you know providing uh support for school personnel but also ensuring that those instances where board members are approached about school personnel conduct that their role is to refer that to the chain of command and to not pass judgment on or to speak negatively about uh employees of the district and that leads directly into the next tenant j which is i will refer all complaints to the chief administrative officer and will act on the complaints at public meetings only after the failure of an administrative solution tenant j specifically refers to the chain of commands um quite often board members know that we'll be approached on the soccer field or in the supermarket about things that may be going on in the district it's a board member's responsibility to point folks like
029that to the chain of command whether that be a coach an athletic director or supervisor or principal in order to ensure that the that there are attempts being made at the source of the issue to solve that and as those administrative solutions fail they are referred up the chain of command and they may eventually reach the board as the court of last resort in the district and should board members become involved before that they have compromised their ability to render an impartial decision in that issue so this part of the tenant ensures or reminds board members that they need to respect the chain of command and certainly if there are issues that do come to your attention as a board member it's good practice always to give the superintendent a heads up so that they
030will not be surprised by those meeting by those issues at any point if they do reach the superintendent so that is the code and now i just want to walk us through a couple of the decisions that happened within 2020 and i'm going to ask for a little bit of input for the board given that we now have some background on both the code itself and also on the penalties that may be assessed so starting with the case at the top of the page a board member is employed as a teacher in another district and failed to disclose income received as president of that district's education association so clearly since this is a commissioner decision there's a violation that has taken place here i'd like to know from the board if you have any sense
031of what that might have led to in terms of a penalty and which piece of the code may have been violated a reprimand anybody else all right i'm gonna go with censure okay any guesses to the piece of the code since i don't have all the numbers up in front of me matt i don't recall all right let's just give it a go here we go actually um this was a violation of a statute so that as we discussed before the financial disclosure statement is a function of the statute 18a and in this case the penalty was a century so looking at the next excuse me case at the bottom of the page a teacher parent sent an email to the full board about the superintendent's handling of an incident a board member intending to
032email the board use reply all so that the parent teacher also received the email it included details of the board's executive session discussion what do we think happened in that case i'll reprimand yeah i'm going to go with a reprimand also okay elated sunshine laws um make something different that's a big no-no i'm going with central i'm getting accenture on this one that was stephanie and it's g yeah all right let's see what we got g very good so confidentiality and potential to violate the public meetings act penalty recommended was a reprimand and the commissioner has yet to assess that penalty good guess good guess okay well gee that was right on the nose uh so a board member posted content on a blog that contained deliberate repeated and unnecessary attacks i don't know if
033there are necessary attacks uh of the qualifications salary and general employment of a tenured teacher in the district so this is actually before the sec in late 2019 what are we thinking there censure what's the next one up from sanchez remote suspension suspension i'm all right here we go six months suspension oh my gosh violations of c e and i right so c gross misrepresentations meant to interfere with negotiations that was a detail we didn't provide um framed policies and plans before the board consulted those who would be affected by them on e board members smearing and verbally attacking a staff member in a publicly accessible forum and then i harm the staff members ability to properly teach and perform obligations and in this case this is interesting because the board member argued his rights
034as a private citizen and the required disclaimer was used so you all may recall that when we talk about things like a letter to the editor we say that board members need to identify themselves as a board member who is speaking for themselves so in this case the board member did that but they they ruled that however his status as a board member was referenced several times in the blog so it was not convincing that he was speaking as a private citizen which i thought was quite unusual but um i see the point they're making so that was that case moving on to the next one the commissioner revoked the district's send receive relationship with an out of state district identifying an in-state district to instead receive the district students the decision impacted the board
035president's child and the president fully participated in actions that resulted in the passing of a board resolution to continue the relationship with the out-of-state district with tuition to be paid by the district blatantly disregarding the commissioner's decision and certainly um suggesting a real conflict of interest so what do we think went on in that one we haven't had removal yet let's try that one [Laughter] with suspension let's try that even though they should be removed so there you go given all these violations that the penalty was accenture but the uh the mitigating circumstance there was that the sec would have recommended removal but the member was off the board already so whoever said removal you're you're spot on i did all right and the last one a board member attended an all expenses paid conference
036offered by a potential vendor that the member introduced to the board excuse me to the district based on a pre-existing relationship this occurred not too far from uh you guys so really yeah been going on for a couple years actually did they get to go somewhere good uh i guess it depends on your definition pre-pandemic or i would say post-pandemic no i'm going with suspension i agree me too i was gonna say okay that's a good call six months suspension so you can see cenf were all violated and um the sec's recommendation was to deter school officials from accepting gifts my understanding is that this board member appealed this and asked to remain on the board while the appeal took place and that was denied all right quick quiz there's a board resolution to approve
037the hiring of the architecture firm that you work for can you participate in the vote no no no resounding knows that's perfect so that would obviously constitute a conflict of interest and those are defined by some kind of a benefit to you as a school official or your immediate family and in those cases you need to recuse yourself a number of those situations are listed on the slide and they typically involve some kind of a financial benefit whether it be for your business or some other kind of gift or favor or whether there's some other kind of benefit derived from that situation uh if board members have a question about that they should definitely reach out to the board attorney for some clarification want to draw your attention very quickly to the bar at the
038bottom in that we talk about the fact that the standard used in determining conflict of interest is the sec definition of the media family which is set out in statute and that is that a spouse or dependent child residing in the same household you can see that those standards depending on the situation can be a little different so we'll talk about that in a couple of uh other slides that we're going to look at tonight so here we're talking about who qualifies as a relative and that is important again in determining conflicts in some other situations especially as it relates to negotiations so you look at this um pretty expensive list of people who might qualify as a relative to a school official and they are quite large as i said and the asterisk at
039the bottom even emphasizes it further in that it's whether it's related to the school official or their spouse a partner by blood marriage or adoption so it's quite a big list and in this case if you look at the citation at the top of the slide the relative that is used often by the sct sec that definition is defined in code and uh it's uh laid out in the accountability regulations that took place about 12 years ago so that is the relative piece so a couple other quick questions the district has an opening for a guidance counselor it would be a perfect job for your nephew who lives two towns away can the district hire your nephew no no mostly you're right but there are exceptions that can be made if you are trying to
040find a very specific set of skills or knowledge the example i often use is if you're trying to hire a latin teacher and your superintendent can demonstrate that he or she has done an exhaustive search and cannot find someone and that someone with this type of relationship is capable and qualified you can appeal to the ecs in order to make that higher it's rare though um next question the board is meeting to discuss the superintendent's performance evaluation your spouse is an aide in the district can you participate in the discussion yes yes yeah yes no so um this piece right here is what's pertinent to that particular fact um a board member may not take part in the search selection or vote to hire a new csa and post higher evaluations and contract discussions so
041if you have a relative working in this school you don't have any of those abilities to to participate in um we talked about the fact that you can't hire a relative or board member but there may be exceptions and if the relative already works in the district an administrator can't exercise director and direct authority over their own relative and a board member can't take part in any employment matters concerning the csa or the supervisors within the chain of command between the relative and the csa so that in-district relationship can definitely uh curtail some involvement by board members if you have any questions about your own particular situation your board attorney is your best resource next question the board is voting to approve the memorandum agreement with the local education association you are a teacher in
042another district can you participate in the both yes yes ah look at that you guys are good so this is a result of a bit of relaxing of these um restrictions took place in 2017 um this chart uh going column like column talks about um the board member or the relationship to the board member second column talks about whether they're a current member of a statewide public teachers union the third column is whether they can participate negotiations and the fourth is whether they be able to ratify the contract the example that we just looked at is this one here so your self-spouse or dependent child who works out of district but is in a public teachers union they may vote to ratify the contract although they may not have participated in negotiations and this is
043asterisk because there may be another conflict present that could complicate this and that is what's termed heightened union involvement and that would be a case of that relative being on the negotiations team in their district uh being a building rep or an officer in the local there then there is likely some kind of a conflict there that will prohibit voting on the contract and again your board attorney should have the opportunity to determine that the last row is worth mentioning because again this is a little bit um less restrictive than it used to be so if you have a child who's not dependent or a relative remember that big expansive group of people who qualify as a relative who works out of district you may now participate in negotiations again absent another conflict and you
044may vote to ratify the contract and um you know all again with the blessing of your court attorney so we talked about the fact that um one of the other possible conflicts and the most common is this this one at the bottom here this immediate family member has heightened union involvement and then another advisory opinion that spoke to um a little bit less restrictive environment for board members is a 10-18 which says that endorsement of a candidate by a local or statewide union does not create a per se future conflict unless a financial contribution is given and is intended to influence the member it used to be that uh the practice was that if you were endorsed by your local union as a board member you would refrain from any negotiations uh for the first
045year of the term so again a little bit less restricted than it used to be doctrine of necessity i don't think comes into play in your district but very quickly if there are not enough unconflicted board members to take a particular vote then the board members can declare their conflicts publicly post them for a period of time and then the board can again convene as a whole um under the doctrine in order to fully participate in discussion and voting on that item in order to get the required number of people to vote volunteerism um school board members are not banned from volunteering but they have to think about a number of things generally they may volunteer for activities uh including holding an executive position in the pta pt or hsa in any outside organizations so
046that's not a problem however if your football club where you're an officer or your pta comes before the board and uh is asking for something from the board it's probably in your best interest as a person involved in both organizations to recuse yourself from voting and discussion of those items board members do need to refrain from activities uh that would create a high degree of involvement with students or staff and um also be aware of their ability if you will to or opportunity i should say to have uh authority and or give directions to students and our staff those things are not permitted for board members uh and uh it's also a good practice for board members who do come into the schools for volunteer activities to let the superintendent know that they will be
047in the school um to do take part in that activity but limit your activity in the school that day to just whatever that volunteer program was and then leave the school i don't treat it as an opportunity to take an informal tour or to check up on things we put together this kind of uh checklist if you will for volunteering in the schools that will um help you be in compliance with the citations you see above related to advisors on volunteering uh all the answers in green are what the what you should be able to answer about this volunteer activity and if you're uncertain about it or the answer is different than what we have in green then you need to talk to your board attorney or your superintendent about that planned activity on your
048part we talk about interview committees this is a good example to point out how sometimes over time the sec changes its uh position and if you look at ao4-12 at the top of the page at one point in 2012 which is what the citation refers to they advise that one or two board members with the administrator's permission and participation can take part in interviews their activity is limited to observation assessments and the csa uh has the sole ability to make a recommendation to the board just three years later in a 31-15 the sec clarified that board member involvement in interviews for positions other than that of the superintendent is not encouraged but they do say within that opinion that if there are some circumstances that speak to board members being involved they need to do
049so under the guidelines in ao4-12 they did rule in 2010 that exit interviews are off-limits for board members in that they stray too far in the day-to-day management of the district couple closing points so as it relates to conflicts our recommendation is to develop a list of those and to review it regularly to ensure that you know relatives haven't changed their uh stature or standing within their own locals and or you didn't have any relatives who got themselves into the teaching profession and they present some kind of a conflict for you um the board attorney once again should be your last word on whether or not you have a problem and certainly if they recommend to you that you should get an advisory opinion uh i would certainly follow through with that to ensure that
050you're in compliance and we do in school board notes which you should all receive either in print or digitally or both um any of the newest advisory opinions because we do um try to keep when we do keep up with them as they are issued uh last piece once again from an advisory opinion from 2018 i think it's a good closing quote for this presentation school officials must always be cognizant of their responsibility to protect public trust to honor their obligation to serve the interests of the public and the board and periodically re-evaluate the existence of potential conflicts last page um if you're ever caught up in quarantine again there's a lot of light reading you can do about all these cases even just a rainy afternoon you can cut yourself up on all kinds
051of ethical issues folks thank you for your attention is there any questions okay good to see everyone again good to see you folks are healthy um can't wait to be back here next year in person to actually see all you guys once again thank you matt matt can you help us can you send a powerpoint copy to us so we can click those links instead of trying to type them off the printed copy absolutely thank you you're welcome uh so matt before you leave i just want to again thank you on behalf of the board for uh making the time to be here um as some of the public uh is trying to understand because i've monitored chat a little bit presentations like this need to be done in public uh they need to be
052done as a part of regular board training uh so that uh so that board members remain in compliance not only with the school ethics act that we did here but our other responsibilities as set forth by the new jersey school boards association on how to become good board members yeah um and uh as i mentioned at the very beginning you've been working with us for about five years now and i think this is probably the fifth time that you've done this presentation for us as we've moved through it because this is one of the ones that we annually do and one of the ones that we annually pay attention to because it is so important to our role as school officials yeah that's uh you know once again the core of it is immutable right
053the uh the code of ethics doesn't change over time but all the things surrounding it and the um the climate if you will about some of these decisions does change over time so it's important to review these things with a little more depth each year to ensure that you're getting you know all the latest information and all of the latest kind of uh you know feelings around uh school board member conduct so i thank you once again for all your attention and uh possibly be with you on march 15th when uh vince comes back to present on hidden bias thanks matthew have a good night folks thank you mr smith sharon okay uh board members i just want to uh on the back side of one of these handouts there was an acknowledgment of receipt
054that needs to be signed and uh handed in to uh tom so just make sure you take care of that let's move into the student member report if noel is still out there do you have anything for us um so a lot of the sports have been going on the past few weeks i know swim started last week we got back in the pool so that's pretty exciting and the theater program is working on song for the new world and that's going to be streaming at the end of the month okay thank you how about josh um honors societies are trying to figure out how to do fundraisers during this because they need funds to um you know um have their scholarships so what they um i know the science and spanish have both decided
055to do a raffle so they're gonna do that so it's like a 50 50 and um the proceeds go to the their respective scholarships so that's happening um the quiz bowl team has their first competition this saturday i think so that's something they're looking forward to and they're excited about it sound virtual so they're using like something similar to teams and in order to do it wouldn't normally be in the school um and i think the last thing is that um the biz one of the teams in the business club um they're part of a competition of i think 200 students and one of the and it's like a mock stock market challenge and one of the teams um is in the top five currently they were at the top position so out of these
056200 teams all the schools in the northeast one of ours was in the top and we're proud of that very good thank you very much my report tonight is short and patrick stole some of my thunder i just wanted to remind everybody of our visit from vince delucia about the hidden bias training for march 15th we did had a march first meeting if i'm not mistaken correct okay that was not on our original schedule so we do have a meeting march first uh and vince will be here um the following meeting on march 15th uh and also i believe tom has uh during the end of this meeting some of the board requirements uh that matt did mention before is foreign governance one two three four and any other requirements that any other board members
057uh will have uh with that i will pass it on to mr fletcher for his superintendent's report thank you uh four items for uh to come forward i'm very pleased at this point to announce that we have three finalists for the national merit scholarship program to put that into perspective approximately 1.5 million students participate in the psat program and the upside and about approximately 50 000 of those are stratified into the highest scores then you can become a summary finalist etc etc finalist is one of the final if you will aspects of the scholarship program which would allow these students to then qualify for scholarships at the schools that they wish to attend so we go from 1.5 million down to uh about 15 000 students across the country that qualify as finalists and we
058have paul young sophie ding and ori ben yosef who were selected as national merit finalists for riverdale we'd like to congratulate them all uh my second item is i just want to bring and mention to everyone that uh the the weather has become unsettled as is typical in february uh we are expecting some more inclement weather this evening i will be having a conference call with regional superintendents tomorrow morning at 5 00 a.m uh if we were to have an interruption uh we would uh likely go to a full virtual day tomorrow just want to give people a heads up on that uh which we would notify early uh in the morning should we go in that direction we we are also predicted where there is predicted i should say in the area some other
059unsettled weather for the end of the week thursday into friday which could also impact our schedule as we draw close to the february break which is um at the end of this week we will then have uh president's weekend and the following few days off and school will return on the 22nd i bring that up because i want to remind everybody that while we are experiencing some decline in the infection rate with covid and there are some positive signs that are that the increase that we did see after the holidays is stepping backward we could easily find ourselves back in that situation and that there are still travel restrictions in place for those who leave new jersey which requires uh quarantining on the way back so as we get to that holiday period or that
060that break period i'll also remind staff and students and families of those obligations as we approach that period of time so just ask everybody to continue to be vigilant with the issues of covet because unfortunately we are seeing numerous infections here at the school and it has penetrated into our student body and we currently have the basketball program that was under current team will be returning and our hockey program i'm sorry our hockey program has been shut down and just today i had to close the wrestling program for two weeks because of infections so we need to keep keep in mind that the infection takes place at the local level even though we're seeing some declines at the state level and then the final item is uh i want to continue the discussion that i
061started at the last board meeting regarding changes to the schedule for students we will be implementing a new program a new schedule once we return from the february break beginning on march i'm sorry on february 22nd basically um it is we will be eliminating the all virtual day on wednesday and having students come to school five days a week where we will have a rotating continue the rotating av cohort so as an example we would have cohort a on monday cohort b on tuesday cohort a on wednesday cohort b on thursday cohort b on friday and then continue over the course of uh the next week and the next week and the next week the uh schedule would or calls for a shortening of the periods that we have in the morning by a few
062minutes and adding those to the periods that we have virtually every afternoon so that every period now has the same number of minutes in it uh regardless of whether it's in person or virtual uh and what would happen is that over the course of of a two-week period one cohort would be in school three days a week the second cohort would be in two days a week the following week would be reversed the cohort would would be in three days a week the other one would be in two and over the course of a four week period all uh students uh in all periods would balance out as to the number of uh in person and virtual periods that would take place once we have that into motion is our intention then to open the
063cohorts to allow students who would like to attend more frequently beyond just the elimination of the wednesday virtual day to attend and we would approach it in an organized manner by uh first addressing all students that have ieps currently our self-contained class attends four days a week with this we would open it up to all students with ieps next we would go to all students that have 504 plans then we would go to all of our struggling learners who are defined by by our r i sorry i our i n r s process which is intervention and referral services and then finally we will be able to open it up to general education students after the survey that we did last week it still is we still will have the opportunity to bring more students
064back to attend on a more frequent basis and but however we would still have to have anybody that is attending more frequently sign or acknowledge at least that the fact that depending on how many students do eventually return to in-person instruction that we may have to revert back to a more clean approach to our cohort period or cohorts of cohort a and b i'll be communicating this information out to the community this week and send a reminder during the following week what we would do just to be very clear is institute the new schedule on monday february 22nd when we return that will be the first week that we would eliminate the virtual schedule on wednesday thank you that will be the first day that we eliminate the virtual schedule on wednesday and then we
065would begin the process of bringing back the students and that stratified approach that i just excuse me mentioned that concludes my report okay thank you patrick let's get into the committee reports budget and finance uh all right well we met um on january 21st and that particular meeting um dealt with going over the audit which will be presented at our next meeting um just uh i don't want to take steal any issues thunder if you will but the bottom line is there's another clean audit no recommendations and i'll do which is good um so we'll wait to the next meeting to go through that and we also talked a little bit more about this upcoming budget and we are meeting tomorrow um evening to talk about that so um to let the rest of the
066board know i'm sorry i'm just looking at something here as well and we will have some of the preliminary numbers together that we're going to be talking about and just some important dates to know for the rest of the board is the the state aid the governor's address is tentatively scheduled for the 23rd so and as tom says therefore it's probably the 25th we'll actually get those numbers um for state aid but we're looking pretty good with our preliminary budget and the uh initial vote on that is on monday march 15th um and then a final vote on that is april 26th so just everybody kind of get those dates in mind but uh um we will have uh the board the the board the committee um is looking to make sure that the rest
067of the board members have the um preliminary budget um as we said the time as soon as possible um so that you'll have some time to review that before that uh preliminary vote on march 15th so that's the end of my report thanks joe uh doug facilities and security uh we haven't met but i'll be talking to um tom this week about setting up a committee meeting within the next week or week and a half community relations job and technology no meeting since the last one probably will have one coming month okay uh curriculum claudia i'm just being prepared to send us out our new schedule we haven't met okay and last uh policy in governance stephanie we haven't met um nothing major is coming down the pike but there's always something to review at
068some point okay and i guess uh just to recap patrick and tom will get schedules together for future meetings for all the committees okay let's move into the consent agenda may have a motion for consent it's claudia i'll make a motion and joe will second it okay does anybody have any questions on the consent agenda it's pretty short okay tom when you're ready please roll call it yes yes john yes tracy young yes doug yes yes joe yes stephanie yes now yes okay our first vote is under miscellaneous number 11. number one whereas provides that the school district may request a waiver of compliance with respect to the district's participation in the special education medicare initiative program for 2122 and whereas the riverdale regional board of education desires to apply for this waiver due to
069the fact that we project having fewer than 30 medicaid eligib eligible classified students and participation in s-e-m-i would not provide a cost benefit to the district based on the projection of the district's available semi reimbursement for the 21 22 budget year now therefore it be resolved that the riverdale regional board of education hereby authorizes the superintendent to submit to the interim executive county superintendent of schools for the county of bergen an appropriate waiver of requirements tom maybe you could just give a little recap on all this uh mumbo jumbo law speak for us well it really has to deal with the number of children that riverdale has that does require some medicare medicaid issues and riverdale does not fall in that in that category it's a the threshold is generally more than we have and
070therefore we have not been wanting to grant this uh this this type of funding it's not beneficial to the district okay thank you i may have a motion i'll make a motion stephanie a second claudia okay and tom when you're ready for roll call here what if anybody has a question anyone have any questions on this yes joe yes stephanie yes and now yes um i would like to make a motion or do we have a motion to bring an item forward from the executive uh agenda all right al i'd like to make a motion to move the executive item for the appointment okay um i don't have it right in front of me so you can read we have a second okay i have it here joe i'll read it okay uh under uh
071the salary adjustments correction uh i'm sorry under e appointments it is recommended by the superintendent that the board approved the appointment of elon sue uh as teacher of mandarin long-term substitute in the high school at a rate of 248 18 per diem ba step one for the period beginning january 26 2021 and ending june 25th 2021. uh tom when you're ready claudia yeah helen yes yes chris you know yes doug yes barbara yeah joe yes stephanie yes no yes okay [Applause] okay we'll get into old business new business anybody have anything did you say i know any agenda tom can you let us know you're going to email us about the board requirements or you're going to discuss it this evening um right now i think i've put a memo together for you guys to
072show you who um who's required to do what it's in your packet okay so there's only one two three four people that are required uh to fulfill their school board requirements okay okay anybody else have any old business or new business okay if nobody has anything we'll get into uh public comments and as i stated before you are limited to three minutes uh of the time and please be respectful in your dealings with your questions and uh mark is going to facilitate this part of the meeting so mark if you have uh some hands up or questions for us we actually have three written questions already so i'll read those in order and then i'll get to the hands after that uh the first question um kind of goes back to the uh the new
073schedule the plan schedule and it's from susan garcia and she asks can you delineate or post a schedule length of class time lunch period length of time in school etc what is the net increase of in-person instruction for the average student [Music] so the answer to your question is yes we'll be sending that information out with an example of the schedule to everyone and you know the net increase depends on if someone is attending or um or not attending and choosing to be virtual uh regarding um the uh you know the personal choice that people made so it's going to be a little different based upon whatever choice people have made during the course of the process the next question is from karen gleystein what percentage of students are currently attending in-person slash hybrid and
074based on the server results what percentage are expected to be in post-february break um so that's been a difficult question for us always to uh knock down i once we started in october i was given a regular report regarding the students and their attendance what we've been find having it happening is that while we do have people who have actually chosen to be virtual entirely and those who have chosen to be hybrid we have a number of students a number of families where students are attending on a more casual basis so even though they may be identified as a hybrid student and when they and i'm just as an example expect them to attend school on a monday and a thursday they're coming on monday but not on thursday and we do have a mechanism
075to account for everyone's attendance whether they're attending in person or virtually so it's very difficult to narrow that down however to give you some numbers uh we're experiencing about 170 students per day attending in the middle school and before or in january we were experiencing about a hundred and a hundred students on one day and 110 on another in the attending on the high school however over the last two weeks the middle school has remained relatively stable in the number of students attending and the high schools begin to tick upward and now we're seeing approximately 110 students attending and then 120 students on a different um on the other day for by cohort all righty the next question is uh from zenobia busha why was rotating a b cohort selected instead of fixed with wednesday
076changing this does not align for parents that have children in ops and rd uh i uh what we've done is we've tried to notify we did notify and inform or i did i should say notified and inform both oradella and river edge as to what uh what was uh what our plans were to increase in person instruction um so i i i can't answer as to what individual nuances will be uh based upon the other schools this is an opi if i may my question is just i get it that virtual is gone now and you want instructions you could have just gone alternate a and b for wednesdays and just left the monday tuesday and thursday friday as it was to align with the ops schedule right now it's just triple the chaos for
077parents to drop bake lunch all of that every single day every single day of the week i just for a parent that has kids in both school districts it does not make sense to me it would have been easier to just alternate the wednesdays than to change the entire schedule if it's something that can still be considered it would be worthwhile thank you all righty we have hands raised and uh daniella bosco you can unbeat yourself please good evening um i want to start off by um by asking the question how are we as parents supposed to how are we as parents supposed to have our children's best interests at heart when our children are receiving the schedule proposed schedule before we are the the in-person school day has shrunk with each revision that the
078school board has made these kids are going to school less today than they were in september in person the river edge school grades k to one has only recently extended the school day from 8 30 to 1 15 4 days a week but yet our older kids can only make it to 11 30. the two-week alternating schedule makes it hard for working parents and even more impossible for working parents with younger children as zenobia just mentioned i'm a working mom with a child in middle school and two children at ops my second grader goes to school from 8 30 to 11 o'clock every day my middle child goes to school from 8 30 to 12 40 twice a week my seventh grader will be going to school less than my second grader who is asking
079for this schedule and who is it helping the parents and the students that are going into school want more time in school not just a day but more actual time more hours in a day the local districts or other local districts are looking looking to extend the local day but yet we're not we should be looking for ways to extend the in-person day they can make it past 11 30 in person when ops created their hybrid hybrid schedule they worked with riverdale schedule to ensure that the hybrid schedules were the same and pickup times were different zenobia alluded to this the fact that our schedule has changed so many times and shows me that we're inconsistent and that we're not being cohesive and we're not working with the three districts in our group not to
080mention the fact that this is going to be confusing for our children now which week do they go in three days a week which week do they go in twice a week why can't we just have more hours in the in-person day why can't we extend past 11 30 why can't we offer one more class that's my one question my other question is why are we having an hour and 15-minute lunch break for my children i as a working professional don't get an hour and a 15-minute lunch our children need more in-person time they need more hours in their day that's my other question is i want to know if we have plans if we're starting to look for plans of what we're going to do in september and really just the biggest question is
081why can't we go past 11 30. when we started off the schedule we started off at 12 50 it was 8 30 to 12 50. we've decreased it we started going 8 20 to 11 11 55 and now it's to 11 30. i'm just trying to understand the logic here all right so a couple of points uh i i just want to address i don't know what you mean by have students have the schedule before parents do i've only had a conversation with the board of education two times in a row here and as a courtesy i shared the schedule with our staff only i did not share it with students nor did i share it with anybody outside that that community so if students got the schedule they didn't get it from me and
082they didn't get it from a member of the board of education it must have been shared by by others which i find unfortunate that that would be the case to do that secondly the issue regarding the the frequency we're we're trying to just increase the number of times the kids come to school i think what the first schedule that we had looked at regarding this is uh was way more confusing than this basically students attend school every other day so cohort a attends pardon me beginning uh in in on monday when we return cohort a would attend on monday cohort b would attend on tuesday and then it just goes like that for the remainder of for the school year or until there's a relaxation of the rules associated with social distancing in schools so
083students are just going to attend school every other day there it shouldn't be uh overall more complicated than that uh the the reason for the extended period of time at lunch is so that some so that students can whoever's attending here can leave get home get uh to a place where they can have lunch and then prepare to go into the virtual classes in the afternoon and that's the same thing applies to our our staff and their ability to uh be able to prepare to move into the classes in the afternoon the biggest problem that river delta has opposed to the other two buildings is that we share staff between the high school and the middle school it is important for us to be able to maintain a morning schedule and an afternoon schedule as
084far as our periods are concerned which is why the periods one through four and five through eight or five through ten at the at the middle school are are clustered together it allows us to share staff um between the buildings and if we were to deviate from that model what would happen is we end up having the inability to share staff and we have a bigger problem with uh with filling the positions that that we have here and finally what we're trying to do is balance the number of minutes per period that students are experiencing so in the current model they have one length appeared in the morning a little different in the afternoon and then on wednesday it's entirely different this way all the periods will be the same for the remainder of the
085period of time now as far as uh plans for going forward yes it is our our hope and desire that uh as uh as if you'll as hurt immunity becomes more and more of a possibility for our communities through either vaccine or people recovering from the from the virus that we will be able to increase instruction more and more it is certainly our hope that we would be able to as the weather turns nicer have that ability to bring students back particularly those who haven't had a more traditional experience we are certainly looking to whatever is going to be available to us in september biggest problem that we have is that despite the fact that we seem to be experiencing some good news regarding the decline in the number of affection infections the rules associated
086with opening schools and having students in school have not changed since since july when they were put forward by the department of education and the governor's office so the social distancing the number of students that you can have in the classroom the precautions that need to be taken are still in effect unfortunately all three of those things are impacting our ability to continue to move forward the next raised hand is vanessa b you may mute yourself hi good evening uh hello members of the board and riverdale community i just wanted to take a brief moment um and i'll make this brief as uh we appreciate there is much to cover this evening um so i'm speaking on behalf of the parents alumni and students interested in promoting diversity and inclusion in riverdale um we thank
087you for the action taken in adding the diversity equity and inclusion section of the climate survey um we want you to know uh we are doing what we can to bring awareness to this section and look forward to next steps once the data is made available um your efforts do not go unnoticed um but i do have a question actually for you by when do you believe those results would be ready so the portal uh for students and families to uh complete the survey extends uh to i believe yeah right so i believe it i was going to say 18 but thank you it's february 19th generally speaking uh we get the quantitative data in about three weeks and then uh the open-ended questions uh another week or so after that excuse me so um
088i would think that we would have that data available to us by the end of march okay about a month give or take okay give or take so much thank you so much and we're grateful for your time and attention i'd also just like to remind you uh you know as we mentioned twice earlier this evening with school board school boards will be making a presentation on march 15th regarding hidden bias in schools here as a part of the public board meeting thank you so much okay i'm gonna go back to the written questions uh elaine dong from ordeal the new schedule adds less than an hour slash week to in-person instruction from 7 hours 10 minutes to 8 hours 7 and a half minutes out of 32 or 33 total hours a week when
089are you going to offer full day instruction or at least meaningful increases uh as i just indicated yeah that was answered already okay yes uh the next question also asks about uh what would we take away from in-person learning and not adjust the schedule to keep them in school longer and it asks about the launch schedule which you had mentioned previously and let's see okay uh next is from susan garcia uh a follow-up to my question what is the net increase of in-person instruction on a weekly basis for those students who have elected hybrid this whole time and there's a second question and that is what percentage of teachers are full-time remote currently can you provide a breakdown by subject so there are answers to all those questions uh off the top of my head
090i i don't have it all here in front of me particularly the questions regarding the number of staff who are teaching remotely and and of course that number fluctuates because of uh exposures and um and infections uh so and as the board just approved this evening that we've or will be approving we've had some other non-coveted related medical issues that we're dealing with so that number fluctuates uh uh unfortunately over the course of uh of a month quite frankly and from daniella bostico thank you for your time and answering my question it is my understanding that the rules set forth by the state of new jersey are recommendations there are some districts that are allowing lunch for example and others now allow the children to be separated by four feet instead of six feet the
091state recommendations are changing and thus so should our implementation rules thank you for your consideration and then from elaine dong a follow-up has will the boe looked or looking to work with any government or private agency to provide our teachers with vaccinations we have offered to the department of education to be a site for vaccinations they have no one has brought that out to the remote locations other than uh through a pharmacy or a an established government site but we've offered to do that and we've offered to be available and both of our school nurses have been very aggressive in trying to get information into the hands of the staff in order to become a vaccinated so we're we're hoping that that opens up even further for for our staff and a question from fran
092kelleher is there a plan in progress to have students safely eat lunch and school and offer full days uh as i've indicated at this point we don't have that ability to do so i we continue to examine the different operations that are available to us but there are some restrictions that due to the nature of the lunch program here at the high school and the nature of the lunch program at the middle school just we don't have the the space available to be able to do it and unfortunately we don't have a local downtown if you will that students can easily get to have a lunch and then return and we've raised hand from debbie borgiacci you may unmute yourself hi good evening um i have a question what is how is what is oh
093i'm sorry um you know for the students who have been coming to the school we're just about at the end of our rope to see the value of coming to school when the teachers are teaching to the screens versus to the students so we are just about at the end so because again my daughter has come in from day one but uh as a parent i'm finding it really hard to justify yes go in just so that she's not seeing any other students on the screen the teachers are for the most part teaching to the screen and not to the students that are physically in the classroom so do you do you understand that that's a big issue and if so how are you addressing to fix that going forward after the break to encourage
094more students to come in to see the value of it this is very sad for me as a parent who values academics well i i mean i i know and you and i know this because you and i had a conversation about this not less than a week ago regarding the difficulties that are taking place with this matter unfortunately with the number of students who are attending virtually there is a management issue between the number of students that are in the classroom and the number of students who are participating in a virtual world and it's a very difficult thing for anybody to do it's easier uh for for all involved if we're either all in person or all virtual the split between the two is it's a very difficult thing to do to manage it
095we have uh and are making um more technology available to the staff through cameras that would if you will uh free a teacher from sitting in in their in their um excuse me at their desk trying to manage it and we're trying to figure out some ways and we do have some staff members who are excelling at this and as a result our uh our supervisor of um of uh technology is in in the process of having professional development to assist uh teachers transition better uh there's no question about it i'm not gonna you know sugarcoat this it is a very difficult proposition and i can appreciate how how it is for you as a parent when your student says to you there's only two kids in class i don't want to be there thank
096you uh next we have a question or comment from elaine dong of orodel have you ever have you considered using outside contact tracers when there is a covert exposure event so that contact tracing doesn't have to shut down at three when school ends which seems to result in school closure even when exposure hasn't been confirmed i think what you're referring to is there are three opportunities during the course of since we opened in october where i uh closed the building twice in the middle school once in the high school because of the difficulty assist of contact tracing and i don't know if it was you or some other members of the public that i had some communication with over the fact that when we're notified of an exposure is critical in our ability to respond
097based upon staff the unfortunate aspect of this is that the contact chasing just takes time to be able to get to it and the we work with the both the local health department in riveredge and the bergen county health department out of orodel in order to try to expedite these matters sometimes they're more complex than others and sometimes we have multiple uh infections taking place at one time which only complicates the situation further so we try as best we can to complete it as quickly as possible uh and only affect those that necessarily that need to be quarantined but there have been three times where we had to take some additional time in order to do contact tracing and as we're all aware two of those three times resulted us in closing the school for
09814 days from daniela bosco will the survey results be shared with the parents if you're talking about the youth truth survey yeah that'll be made available and a question from jane kiernan are those cameras available in all the classrooms so the teachers can stand and make eye contact with the students in the room i completely agree with debbie my son shows up and is the only one in the room i can't blame him for not wanting to go this is a huge problem we have sufficient cameras to put it out into every classroom however again as i've indicated to you it is a it is a very difficult proposition for any individual uh to be able to manage both in-person and virtual participation any more questions or comments is that it mark okay thank you
099okay thank you um let's uh i guess we move to adjourn at this point definitely i'll make a motion to adjourn claudia second all in favor 42 time