001i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all melissa you can call the roll miss egan here miss fahey here miss marcus here mr peratti gotcha okay mr stampone here miss wadgewood here okay notice of the november 18th 2020 meeting of the board of education was emailed to the clerks of the boroughs of essex fells north caldwell and roseland and to the township of fairfield and the editor of the progress on november 2nd 2020 and the star ledger on the same day okay to any of the board members have any comments before we start mary i do yes um i want to take a moment to address a few recent complaints about my
002opinions expressed on my personal facebook page regarding my support of specific candidates for office according to the school ethics act as a member of this board i do not give up my fundamental rights as a citizen with regard to endorsement or support of candidates in any election the appropriate disclaimer stating that posts on my social media accounts or as a private citizen have been posted and to those members of the community who were offended by the language of my post i do apologize thank you jan [Music] okay anything else from board members okay so this time we will open i'm sorry just one question mary if i know yes was i'm just wondering was the agenda posted because i couldn't i could only find it as a in the board portal i couldn't find an
003agenda or um anything on the meeting other than a link to it for the public it was posted actually that's where i pulled this from it's on the board of ed page on the board meeting information the agenda's up there with the link it is yes okay okay i couldn't find it but okay glad to know that thank you you're welcome anything else okay so this time i will open up the floor for public comments on agenda and non-agenda items just read this um in accordance with bylaws0167 a copy of which is available on the district's website the board is now opening up the meeting for a period of public comments please remember to announce your name place of residence and group affiliation if appropriate your statements will be limited to three minutes in duration
004the board will of course consider your comments as they relate to the obligation to effectively govern the west essex district melissa are there any comments or questions from the public no no okay um so moving along let's see um and will you take finance sure the following finance motions are remain at the recommendation of the superintendent of schools anything placed on this agenda items one to two will be voted upon in one motion and i still move beckon are there any um questions or comments from the board okay so you can call the roll miss egan yes miss fahey yes miss marcus yes mr peratti yes mr rubinich miss calderon yes miss skelton yes mr sampon yes miss wadgewood yes okay um jill you want to take personnel sure the following personal motions were made
005at the recommendation of the superintendent of schools anything placed on this agenda items one through four will be voted upon in one motion and i still move okay are there any um questions or comments uh mary this is calling i just want to say i was glad that the replacement for ms demayo was was handled so timely you know there was concern i believe at the last meeting and that's unfortunate but it's really great that we were able to do that yes thank you damian anyone else melissa you can call the roll miss egan yes miss fahey yes miss marcus yes mr peratti yes mr rubinich miss calderon oh yes miss skelton yes mr stampone yes miss wadwitz yes okay um frank do you want to take curriculum yes the following curriculum special education motions
006are made at the recommendation of the superintendent of schools anything placed on this agenda item one we voted on in one motion isil move okay thank you are there any uh questions or comments what's you can call the roll miss egan yes miss fahey yes miss marcus yes mr peratti yes mr rubinich yes miss calderon um i need to abstain because i work for this company miss skelton yes [Music] mr sampon yes miss wadwitz yes um okay so at this time i am going to turn it over to charlene peterson our new jersey school boards rep and she will guide us through our board self-evaluation um hopefully we can move on to um putting some goals together and then uh go over something that um she and i have discussed a couple times which is
007a board's best practices that you can help us out with so charlene you're on thank you so much it is my pleasure i am going to try and share my screen here and see how that goes um [Music] let's see so i just wanted to you know thank the board for for filling out the board self evaluation and just for the benefit of any public um that's here that a board you know each one of the members feels that that individually and then this is the you know compiled results of all member scores um and just really wanted to thank the board for taking the time to do it it was probably i don't know five or six years ago that the state required boards to complete a self-evaluation and then they relax that requirement
008so we consider those boards that continue to fill it out on those boards that you know it's a good governance practice you know we say that we hold the rest of the district accountable this is the way that we hold ourselves accountable that we take that step back and you know look at our work and see how we're doing um so like it was said we're going to look at the board self-evaluation and usually you know one of the benefits of this tool is that then it segues into board goals based on the outcome of our board self-evaluation what are some things that we've identified then that we would like to focus on as we look at you know continuing continuously improving our board work and the piece of this is that discussion of the
009word governance code so i'm just going to walk the board through this and you know i guess would like you to consider this to be um a conversational type of discussion and since this is the board's work this is you know for you to please you know stop at any time join the conversation at any time um i don't see everyone's faces so if somebody you know looks like they have something to say to please you know let me know and recognize them and we'd be happy to hear from everyone um so just wanted to you know first say it was great that all nine members filled out the board self evaluation that because this is a tool for you you know for the board it's much more meaningful when we you know when we've
010heard everyone's voices um so the board self-evaluation is based on a 4.0 scale so you know one of the things kind of new jersey school boards as we look at a cutoff of things that you know we would consider perhaps need more focus we kind of use 3.0 as that cut off and would consider anything under a 3.0 as an area that the board might want to give more focus or attention to so if you look in the in the middle column at your overall board score the work that you do as a board um you can see that over the nine different areas the um average score over those nine areas for the board was at 3.4 um so you know you can see that that the board you know is working at a
011high level um so the lowest area that the board evaluated itself was a 3.0 and that was in planning and the highest of the board evaluated itself was the board and staff relationships at a 3.8 and then separate from there you know members were asked to fill out two parts in each one of the nine areas um the first part was about the board and then the second part was about you as the member so one of the things that we'll see here and it's you know consistent with almost any of these that i do is usually the areas where the board evaluates itself the lowest as a board it typically evaluates itself among the highest as the member or at least when you look at the gap of the scores like in the first
012one there's you know 8.8 difference between the board score and the member score and it's you know one of the larger gaps so ideally we would like to see the board scores be higher than the member scores if we look at ourselves or consider ourselves to be functioning as a team you know that ideally the work that we do together as a team and the synergy that comes from all of us working together would be more than any of us could accomplish on our own so that would be something that we would you know continue to strive for the first column here the value which scores it just ask you know what you value as a board so what we look at from new jersey school boards is to see how you evaluated student achievement
013recognizing that we consider that to be you know the focus of your work so you can see as a board that you evaluated student achievement you know the highest that you could is a 4.0 you know making it clear that that's you know drives the work of your board and is something that's very important to you so i'm just then kind of going to go through that each one of the areas and like i said you know please stop at any time good questions at any time um so here you know we said that this was planning was the area that the board evaluated itself the lowest in a 3.0 and said that's not necessarily you know a low score but for this board you know it is its lowest and some of it i
014think has to do with the fact that um you weren't able to accomplish the strategic planning like you had hoped and you know some of the members even said that i would have given it a higher score if we had been able to accomplish this um there was recognition of the fact you know that we're making strides to make sure that we get community input and the value of you know learning hearing from our community what's important to them and strategic planning is the perfect way to do that so that really is kind of the the crux of how the planning process works that that's going to give us our three to five year direction and then we would take that and use that to guide the work we do by helping set annual goals
015helping set the board goals you know that that once we know what's important to our staff our community all of our stakeholders you know a lot of times people say well how do i know that that's going to drive the work of the district and you're not just going to take all that work and put it on a shelf well this is how we bring it to life is when we set those annual goals that we put in the superintendent's evaluation this is where they're going to come from now is your strategic plan and as a board we're going to look at from our own work how can we support that so you know again recognize that we've got all the steps in place or you know you've got the plan in place to get
016there just you know weren't able to carry it out in the way that you had hoped to so this is cindy eagan just a quick question is it um i guess consistent that the board score is lower than the board member is that what you said or so what is consistent is that usually the lowest area like if you look at areas i think there's two areas that the board scored itself the lowest here and maybe in board performance in both of those situations the gap between the board score and the individual score that had the largest gap so it was a i think a point eight for both of them so that's kind of what's consistent is wherever the board evaluates itself the lowest whatever it is it typically as individuals then rate themselves
017higher in that area so i mean ideally we're trying to get those scores flip-flopped and that the board scores would be higher than the individual scores okay thank you sure anyone else this is tony i'm never seen i don't think i've ever seen an unset so we do we get more how do you get more insight into the drivers for that is it just the comments that we receive or do we get to talk about it you are that's the whole you know the whole purpose of this is like i said this is this is your tool this is your onboard self-evaluation and that's what the intent of this is to have those conversations and talk about what those drivers are the confidence might give us some indication into it but you know it also
018would benefit from conversations so you're you know willing to you know able to open the floor and have anyone share or you know what what was honest is there any anything any comments regarding the unsatisfactory for the uh um you know it's sometimes it's hard to to tie and and make the connection i don't know that there was anything that specifically said that well can we just ask whoever put unsatisfactory or it may be even adequate if you would like to share with us why you have that point of view so we can learn from you that would be great and if you don't that's fine too but we would put a score like that we'd want to know why okay and i was also going to mention so so not to be too disruptive
019so charlene i know there's a bunch of different sections so can we do section by section so this is the planning section so once you review our scores um and then any comments that might be beneficial then they will just open up for any comments by the board members to you know if they want to reflect on whether they've scored high low or whatever we can do that section by section okay okay okay so we'll move on to the next one then before we go on to paul okay i'm sorry isaiah had said is there anyone who has any comments um there were a couple unsatisfactory um you know comments here does anyone have any insight that they would like to share i think i can share on that i think there wasn't planning i
020mean because we didn't have the strategic planning process then because we didn't have a board retreat at least for those of us who knew there wasn't a plan okay the packet that was emailed to us has the comments in it and i think that might be helpful to put on the screen so that we can all just you know rather like like i don't remember like this was a while ago that we filled this out so um you know i think it would be helpful if we did you have those comments to post up here for us charlie instead of just say even if we don't put it up there i don't think charlene has it right charlene you can just read the comments if you like yeah i mean i just have the the
021scores up to kind of help guide the discussion and then we would use the comments and then whatever discussion um that anyone would want to add to it rather just focusing solely on the comments the intent was you know to kind of use this to help guide discussion okay so and you know and some of the two especially for for new members you know the the playing when they changed us to a january election and the planning for the goals typically takes place in the summer and then you join the board in january and have to kind of inherit work that was already done that you weren't able to take part in um you know what that's one of the things that we're finding for new members you know one one of the kind of
022the outcomes or unintended consequences of you know moving the election to january but the school year is still starting you know july 1 that it sometimes makes it a challenge when you haven't had the opportunity to observe and be part of the process just like just just say item three reviews action plans develop to support goals and these are district and board goals i like the way i understand we've been operating is basically there's a speaker presentation for each board meeting that the intent is to for the departments the the departments report progress against the status of their departments and progress against goals and those individually address each each supervisor director each department and collectively their their aim is to show them and demonstrate performance against the goals for the district and the board provides
023the higher overarching policy that the district goals support so i don't understand that one that'd be unsad but i can answer that from my perspective that action plans are typically specific written objectives that go toward meeting those goals and if there are action plans for this board under any of the goals i've never seen yeah you've said that before the sme rt yeah you should yes i acknowledge that i don't have to agree that that's how they have to be for the board but we can talk about that i know that how to work our concept operations going forward what we've done is what i said is each department feeds into it by providing the monthly presentation which includes performance against the goals that's how it's been done we can certainly revisit it but it's
024just a difference in um tactical planning and approach but we can we can certainly talk that i and i have heard about the smart you said that in a public meeting i and we can always put action plans to our board goals um you know take it a step further and and have them written what the action plans will be so right and also we um we also have our board calendar so we plan the whole entire year out and then um correct me if i'm wrong tony monthly you um mark off what we've done during the year or if we're behind and then we catch up so it'll be either green yellow or red and so every month as a board we know what we're doing yeah the breakdown there is it wasn't i
025wasn't putting it out to be fair even with cope it was a funky kind of year right the first one that was put out in march that's the month when we went into this situation with the pandemic so we did update it and unfortunately we're still behind for the current for the last academic year but after tonight we'll actually be complete we've always been right on track and with the retreat in july we would have been you know right on track as well but but that's correct the 12-month planner in fact i didn't talk about it well i think it will be discussing it at the next board meeting in fact so yeah just a lot of those things that we would do on a regular basis like we would normally pass that out you
026know just at a board meeting just because we're sitting there hey look just update the calendar and i think we've missed out on a lot of those things by not having our normal meetings i agree with you cindy i was just going to say that so our 12-month calendar which we're usually good at that we you know kind of update and um update the board on you know every three months you know quarterly um you know we really kind of fell behind with that and that is um one of our action plans that we do use and we do use this tool a lot and i know charlene has taken this from us this is something that we developed six years ago and i know charlene you said you distribute this to many uh school
027districts now that use this action plan that we came up with but we fall behind a lot this year on um this this in particular and like you said cindy some other things so it's been a crazy year so moving forward we will get back on track with that and tony like you said you can report that out i know you had um sent that to the board but moving forward um and maybe our next meeting you can report that on that for us like a question comment um the we're talking about the goals here and we're talking about having measurable um you know strategies to support the goals i'm looking at the two goal i want to make sure we're talking about the same set of goals um because i know there are others
028that damien has included in some of some of the district planning but here i'm looking at our board goals to work towards a master board certification and to improve communication within the board as well as all stakeholders through continued use of board portal and shared documents so those are the only two goals that i'm like that's what you set out mary so i just like and so so in so i guess i'm having a hard time you know i've had a hard time in general and in this conversation understanding how and the rest of our workloads that's like those are two i mean so master certification is is a credential right but uh like it's training it's additional training that was that we chose to take by ourselves but it's not necessarily the certification that
029was i guess the end of additional training that we wanted to acquire okay so but but i guess these just i i would just think we would have i remember when we set these goals i think did we do this in january no no we haven't said it so we haven't had a chance to when you first came on the board i did ask you and jan um for your ideas with board goals because we had hoped to um we had we had originally three goals and we admit you know we had our goals so we had planned on um you know adding an additional goal this past year um but again with kovid we never did and then we never did our board retreat during the summer so we just have these two goals
030which were our current goals and that's the thing so with this looking at our board self-evaluation moving forward we will set new goals now sometimes school boards schools will add to those goals or um you know we can either add to them or just come up with completely different goals but um that is part of what we're doing this evening after we go through evaluation so the ones you just read are our current goals and they're a year and a half old now because we never did set our goals during the summer those are the board goals four goals right and the district goals are completely different those are goals that those are the ones that we approved i think last meeting or two meetings ago that's set by damian and the administration those are
031different goals than the board goals so they set goals for the district we set goals for the board okay all right and this indicator with the action plan so the board you know relate to both of them so you know the district goals are how you as the board evaluate the superintendent and you talk to you know sign someone mentioned smart goals so typically when we set the goals they're more broad in general in nature and the smart aspect comes in the action plans as we look at the indicators of success as we look at how we're going to measure it so that when you as a board are evaluating the superintendent it's not you know kind of your interpretation of what this goal is supposed to mean it's not my interpretation it's you know
032that the superintendent outlined action steps that he was going to take to accomplish this goal did he do what he said he was going to do that that led us to the end result so you know as a board we should have a place of um well we don't set the action plans that's the how we're responsible for helping with you know monitoring or the what of you know what is the direction for the year what are these goals both for the district and for ourselves and i can say that it is know less and you know common for boards not to have as formal you know some parts do a really good job of it but for the most part board goals don't have as formal of an action plan like a lot of
033times you might assign it to a committee or you know kind of just look at it as a group every so often but you know really kind of where the more formality comes in is in district goals because it's important for you as a board to know the progress that's being made in the direction that you set for the district not only you but also the community to know so that's why we say you know regularly monitors progress you know because are we moving the district forward so the way you would find out you know you mentioned that you have updates at your meetings um so some boards do it that way some boards may pick you know three or four times a year that there's just specifically an update just on that alone you
034know there just needs to be a way as a board that you are aware of the progress that's being made on the district goals so that when it's time to evaluate the superintendent there's no surprise to the board on where the district is in its accomplishment of the goals and no surprise to the superintendent in where you know the board's perception of that because we've had this communication we've had these updates um you know we should all be clear on the direction we set for ourselves and how we're doing and getting there thanks for that clarification charlene so it is important to have objective not subjective action plans that can be measured yes yep usually like i said one of the important columns or like you know when we give an example of what an
035action plan might look like one of the columns is an indicator for success so that it provides an objective measure of how i would know whether you accomplish that or not so typical it may be subjective but it is some way to you know some way to measure it but when you say goals are used as far as objective versus subject i'm not advocating subject were you talking about the board goals or the district goals that the csa is measured against when you can you say yes so emphatically for smart i took it as the latter the board goals can be more broad in nature but the csa goals aren't can't be and that's what that's what's close to the district administration just to be specific in response to what ms skelton said so the
036goals themselves so the goal statements so the specificity more often than not comes in the action plans so you know your goal may be that we're going to you say increase our math scores or increase student achievement or increase communications you know something like that so there may not be a number there may not be specifics in there but then when you get the plan from the superintendent that tells you how he's going to accomplish that then that's perhaps where you'll find the specifics that's the distinction i'm trying to get at we can always revisit it but that's that's that's all i'm saying i i have a question it might be for charlene and maybe the rest of my colleagues when i when i look at the planning about the board when you know it
037was pretty consistent you know you had a bunch a bunch and good and you had to put them in satisfactory and i guess that led to the overall lower scores there i'm wondering if people felt that with the year we had with cove we just weren't able to do the normal board functions that we would do in previous years like you know somebody brought up the board planner for instance i mean so that that might be you know it seemed it seemed kind of all on the same page there that it wasn't we didn't really do all the things that we normally would have done in a non-covered you know school year we were we were behind yeah kobe definitely had impact for sure i feel like i did too i mean even the meetings
038of our meetings we talked a lot about things that weren't necessarily part of the the board operations that we're measuring ourselves against but they're all important you know we had a lot of we spent a lot of time on things that were not part of plan right and and i don't think that and i think because of covid and because of what we've been going through these past eight months it doesn't reflect the board as being unsatisfactory it may be yes we are remiss in that we didn't achieve things that we did on a normal basis these past years that we've been together as bored but i think when we look at this planner it it kind of a nurse me because it says that we did something and we were unsatisfactory in doing it
039that it was something that we did that we it was you know i received this as a teacher or someone being observed i would say okay someone observed me doing you know um one one and three and said i was unsatisfactory at it but i think we have to take into account that during this time period as tony says and everyone else has said cobit has brought to us a whole different demeanor in how we have had to carry out ourselves as board members but yet i don't feel that this board has operated unsatisfactorily in our planning of anything that we now need to going forward with everything else going on and the fact that we do have to put so much time and effort into cobin and planning for our children that we do
040have to remember we have to take care of the general housekeeping that a board is responsible for right and i agree i think that's going to be inside i think we we definitely let some of our normal planning fall to the wayside because it had to other things had to take precedence and i think you know we didn't i guess do all the planning we should have done and i think that's okay because other things had to happen and that were more important at that moment so even if you know i don't think we were perfect and that's okay we have to just move on from it and go along absolutely i mean i i have to say i feel like that we're being a little bit um too critical yeah and i i disagree
041we did a lot of planning it was just different planning we had to plan on whether we're opening the school or not opening the school about hiring teachers teachers retiring there was a lot going on and just because we didn't fill out our calendar does not mean we weren't planning i think also that and this happened i mean i was new once i know we all were new once there are a lot of things that when you first get on the board you don't observe because they may not have happened yet or they happened before you were there and so i think you know there is a column for not observed rather than unsatisfactory and um i also think that um because i guess that this is supposed to be um borders self-evaluation so i
042don't know that i necessarily did it for months like for the one year you know i know that we plan we do calendars and i gave us a lot of credit for switching on a dime to this is we're planning for the instant now we're in one day at a time not let's plan for the year because who knows what's even going to happen in a month from now so um you know i i think we're being too hard on ourselves i think the board has done a great job planning and um you know and and still now we don't plan very far in advance we can't who knows this this got worse we're hoping for better soon but we can't plan for that so that's all i have great to say um i actually
043i don't think it's possible to be too hard on ourselves i think that you know i like if this was my personal report card like if i got straight a's i'd say i wasn't working hard enough or i wasn't pushing my limits um and so i'm sensing a lot of um i don't just just unease with the idea of a score that's not excellent and i think the reality is that this year was not normal and and it's understandable that the the process that we set out to um to work on in terms of strategic planning this year didn't unfold as intended and as these um the criteria were listed that we were asked to evaluate i think you know it's okay to like take a yellow highlighter and say you know what like we
044need to revisit this stuff let's work on it going forward it doesn't mean we didn't do other things that were of value but i think it's important to not be afraid to expose our our shortcomings in some areas and just know that it's an opportunity to work on them so um and and i also think that you know if you look at the title columns because i'm sensing i'm hearing everybody saying you know reacting to the word unsatisfactory and you know that's just the word that was chosen to describe a number one right so if it's you know four is the best and one was the lowest um you know it was you know you know less than adequate right and in under these circumstances in this given year and i just think we we
045like tag it and say let's go back to it and when we make our when we work on new goals and planning we make sure that we address it um going forward as best we can in light of a pandemic right so we need some criticism to know what is wrong just to say something is wrong isn't enough to know why someone feels something is wrong we need there's if you can't work on it if you don't know what someone feels is wrong well i think i read the comments and i thought the comments captured it pretty well me too they're not they're not measurable and they're not specific and we weren't part that planning some of the planning didn't occur unless to keep in mind when this when we did this evaluation also guys
046like we did it right as the world was falling out from under so we can look back and hide inside and say you know you know we did do if there was a question that said how did you do on code playing we'd have a different score but that's what it was i think that's the i think that's that's a good point i mean we're in the middle of a pandemic and you know not making any excuses some stuff did get pushed aside in having to support the administration with dealing with the pandemic and you know anne's right we were making split decisions um we were dealing with the pandemic planning for the pandemic um i'll just respectfully disagree in that i'm not just taking all all that saying it's all coveted 19 impacts when
047i see three and four and knowing each meeting there's there's a department presentation of progress against goals that were set developed and there's monitoring which is item four i i don't i struggle to see the unsatisfactory part but i'm willing to certainly have the conversation when we can go over it when we set the new the new year ones to see if we want to change what we're doing because i think the things we're doing i don't know if they were really well understood the presentations we get and how they fit into this but i could be mistaken let me ask a question i can respect that but i'm curious other than ryan making a presentation this year um it seemed that you know one covenant fell upon us i don't recollect at least you
048know since january uh a department head other than ryan coming up and making a presentation on how that that department did versus the plan guidance presented guidance maybe goddess and ryan but i don't i don't particularly remember throughout the year getting it no i'm not blaming anybody i think i'm saying i think this is a unique year in unique circumstances and people over here though this is the academic school year july 1st through june 30th okay it isn't just january all right okay i've got an academic year right so so during this academic year and and as we always do which we did you know again with kovid we you know uh fell a little bit but we do have the department heads come in or the supervisors every month to give their presentation on
049how their departments are doing um so from july to january february they were doing that but then past that i think you're right we only had ryan and maybe um lisa holtz but um you know again it's something that we'll get back on track um and something that you know is something that we always do we'll you know keep moving forward um just in light of time i mean i just you know if anybody if anybody has any final thoughts on this say them and then i'll ask surely that you know she can move on so anyone else have any thoughts okay we're moving on to policy then so as we look at the policy section we look at it from two different perspectives it would be um you know your actual policy work that
050you do you know in terms of the development and overview of policies and then secondly understanding our role as a policy-making body after we leave the the day-to-day running of the district to the administration you know recognizing that that's not our role so you know i thought it was good you this is some pretty high areas that the board evaluated itself and you know a couple areas where you know seven of the nine of you thought the board was commendable and doing it um so i just thought you know it was also good too and looking at some of the comments that you talked about how you rotate different members into the you know the policy committee so that to kind of increase people's understanding of it um there was some you know mention of
051you know as we talk about covet how it's even impacted our policies and you know now we've had a need for some more policies even you know as we look at remote board meetings and you know it's caused all kinds of you know ways for us to look at our policies look at the way we do things um and and then again you know the board was pretty consistent in its you know feeling that they do need the policy implementation to the staff and that they do recognize your role as a policy making body so i don't know if anyone has any specific other thoughts or anything you'd like to add to your work as a policy body i just want to um i think it's uh interesting how people um scored themselves as understanding
052policy and i just um i think that uh that um that we need to remember when we're making decisions that our decisions are not based on our feelings but based on our policy go ahead and anyone else regarding policy in the comments section um one of the comments reads um the board currently operates as a body that rubber stamps policies and proposals with little engagement or input or on critical issues my experience so far is that the board is not involved or engaged in meaningful discussion or decision making that to me is is pretty harsh you know i kind of feel like if that's the way someone feels we need to figure out why they feel that way and fix that because it shouldn't be and i think that shows up again in board operations
053i think there's you know sentimental comment there as well i agree cindy because you know because we have a policy committee and this committee is some is that the committee members look at all the policies that come through from um s miss strauss see what needs to be aligned to west essex and because they take so much time and effort into doing it and then presented to us as a board i don't feel that anything is just coming through the channels rubber stamping and pushing it ahead if we have a committee that is aligning themselves with reviewing all of this we've never had an issue with that before and i agree with cindy i don't know i would need a little bit more explanation on it if they feel that the committee isn't doing their
054job i don't know what more a committee would do than to review it and align it with the west essex policies and regulations and then present it to the board for approval that's how we operate and we trust what the committee comes to us with and if we don't then we question it at that time but there has been no discussion of that so i'm a little bit you know confused same as cindy has said anyone all right i know that um you know i've been on the policy committee and i know anne has two and she can speak to this as well um you know many of the policies that we do get are mandatory um they're you know state policies that are mandatory that you know we may be able to pick an
055option and we do and that to me is not rubber stamping but a lot of the policies we do receive are state mandated so if someone considers that rubber stamping there's really not much we can do on that because they're you know they're given to us by the state my experience has been that um disagreement or different opinions or questions are not welcome and so in in in that way i would say that it doesn't feel like a healthy operating body to be able to share different points of view and talk through things and i think that that does come across in our public board meetings um you know when we go through the agenda and it's just you know a process of reading it and then voting on it and when um questions are
056raised it's it's the um the sense is that those questions are unwelcome and there are board members that have commented both in committee meetings that i've been in as well as in publicly held board meetings when other board members have asked questions and made those board members asking questions feel less than valued or out of line and so i think it's hard to operate as a healthy uh functioning board some members feel intimidated by the the group mentality i'd like to talk more when we get to the operation site section some overlap here like on the policy for me it's it's frustrating if we do meet as a board um in the board committee we vote on what we're going to promote to the board at our board meeting the votes for zero meaning four
057yes zero no and then we go to the board meeting and then you know there's suggestions to table an item and i realize that that can happen based on feedback but if that comes across as is intimidating or unwelcome it's just that i i think that we we're bored not as a whole by committee and we need to take advantage of the committee time but then we go around we try to reach consensus and then i'm thinking once we come out of a policy committee meeting and go to the board where we've we've we're aligned and i don't always feel like we're aligned i feel like you go in thinking that you're aligned and you come out with with tabling and moving deferring action on it and i'm just more active very action-oriented trying to
058get things done but you know i like to look forward to getting to operations too but i think there's some common themes here we can operations we can really have some good discussion too i look forward to that so i was going to say too so um in policy um jill when you're referring to rubber stamping you don't mean regarding policies you mean regarding our agendas and the items that we vote on that you feel are a rubber stamped and there's no room for discussion there you don't mean as far as our policy making um decisions i think it's it's co-mingled i think i understand being on the policy committee that i understand that we've received the majority of policies that are that are handed to us and that there's really not much to do
059rather other than adopt them or not um so i i fully understand that um yeah so it's um i would say it's it's more of um you know on the few instances when there's been policies to discuss it just uh it just again it's it's a culture where it doesn't where different perspectives don't feel welcome that's the best way i can and if your question yes and i would say that this would extend to um yes not policies specifically but but agenda items as well yes where and so maybe that was uh you know inaccurately um directed um comments um because it it's it feels more of a and and that's more of a reaction to um like rubber stamping things as we go through an agenda yes mary that would be more that would
060be more accurate yeah what's more in line and what you're saying okay yeah yeah i just want to share one example for someone who's not on the policy committee who has raised and you and i have talked about this by email very specific and critical issues around policy and those go not only unacknowledged oftentimes on the drugs so it's very difficult if you're not on that committee to have things um addressed or even brought forward because because those those opinions and those perspectives are simply not even acknowledged often yeah and moving forward i was i was going to suggest like when there's something like that if it's a policy issue it should also incorporate um the chairperson on unacknowledged and unaddressed [Music] i'm personally unaware though so i can't comment okay yeah and then and
061moving forward i did speak to stephen regarding that so when i you know when i do receive an email such as that i will forward it on to a policy chair or to you know whether it's curriculum or anything like that i'll forward them on to the specific chairperson so that they can also be uh involved in the discussion um okay yes so jill was your um what you were speaking about as tony said we'll get on to that with um the operations of the board with that but also i mean i just want to add one other comment sorry shirley before you guys okay okay so even i mean even when we have whether it's a um curriculum or a policy or a finance meeting um or even just a you know regular board
062meeting it may not always be unanimous but um you know whatever the majority is is how you know a vote would go so let's take for instance a policy let's say it was you know three to one i mean it's a majority you know it's a majority rule that's how the boards work so um you know discussion can continue but if it's something that has been voted on and it's not unanimous i mean if there's four or five people it's three to two four to four one whatever it is um that would be the ruling on a committee so just a question on that mary so if that's the case though um it's it's not prohibited for a board member to publicly voice their lack of support for that policy recommendation from the committee isn't
063that right i mean you know because we each have a voice on the board that we're right yes we each have a voice on the board correct so if you're in a specific pile a specific committee and um you voice your opinion but if if a vote has been tallied um you know you go with a majority vote can you speak about that publicly at a meeting you certainly can but the but you know the ruling or the vote would still stand at what the majority is right okay yeah i mean it would it is nice and and we've said this before i mean listen we don't all have the same ideas we don't all come to the same conclusion but i mean my hope would be even if if i'm voting on something and
064i vote against something else because if i the way i feel or my personal opinion i would still hope that as a majority i would vote in favor of what the majority of the board votes for because we're here for the greater good of every child so we may not always see eye to eye but in the end whatever is best for the the students the staff the community you know i would hope that we would all come to an um you know a vote in you know in the majority bag you know there may not be a ruling that you know i may have voted on but i'm not going to speak against it because that's how the majority voted but you have every right to you know speak how you want to speak
065but it is based on majority vote so kind of a saying that we have to support that as we say you always get your say but you don't always get your way so it's you know so it's important like you're saying to be able to you know speak you know oops to speak your mind on something but recognize that when the majority does make a decision and then that's the decision that we support um it's also important too you know that if we are going to you know disagree with something we'll publicly disagree with something and we know that that's going to happen i guess that ideally there would be no surprises as well so if you're on a committee and the committee's going to recommend something and you say i have the minority opinion
066on something it might be fair for me to let the president or let someone know and just say you know while the committee is making this recommendation you know it's not my opinion and i intend to share my opinion tonight that differs from that recommendation so that you know that's kind of how you build trust is no surprises so that we you know we don't have to agree but we can respect that we are not going to surprise one another and you know kind of take steps to work together as a team charlene i think that's one of the biggest things that we all need to keep in mind is that you can share your opinion and your opinion can be different but i feel that um as of late or whatever it sort of
067like comes out of nowhere that the president doesn't know about it or you know where you're you know there isn't communication that you're there's going to be speaking against something because you're not in favor of it and that's fine to do but um it shouldn't be just that it's a surprise that night that a board member just starts you know making that commentary during a board meeting and no one's aware of it and i think it is a respect for um the position of the president that they're just made aware of what's going to come so they can be prepared also i think that's a great point and it allows for more fruitful discussion if you know then i can kind of make sure that i'm doing right like if i'm in favor but i
068want to make sure that i'm coming prepared to be able to discuss my points versus someone who's not in favor to come just you know prepare to discuss their points so that together the board you know we want to make sure as a board that we're having informed conversations you know i think people have mentioned you know the value in conversations and conversations taking place at the poor table but i play their informed conversations so that when we do take a vote and we do you know form a majority opinion that it's you know it's everyone's had the opportunity to come prepared come from you know inform we can turn that stone over however many times so that you know the final outcome ideally that is the best outcome for the benefit of your students
069mary a question um would you say that same thing applies if i wasn't on a committee and something was voted out of committee and i disagreed with them probably the right thing to do is to let you know ahead of time that i might be not voting in favor yeah okay that's good okay i think when we get the board operate i was holding off some comments to board operations but i think that it's it's the right thing to do the way we structure ourselves the opportunities we issue committee reports we do i'd really press to have us issue committee reports and three within three days of a meeting but i don't like to get committee reports the night of the board meeting we've done a really great job to show all the committees it's
070great with safety and security um policy we get the reports out early and the point to me and that's i'm looking forward to if we have a discussion about it with operations there's so many surprises and i just don't know who that serves if you don't i don't get any feedback from the night of the meeting in public there's comments and that it just seems like it's it it seems counterproductive to me and it's just tony's opinion that having feedback in advance to prepare so that we can work together that's what's lacking and i see a lot of this in the in the operations part about collaborating about working together a willingness to work together and and not just here well nobody said anything to me or no thank you though i'm sorry no i'm
071i want to finish i i um with that in mind um with that progress i feel a board member has should should be asking questions of the committee heads you know you get the report three days in advance you know these committee heads are taking the time to you know to do that and you're reading a report call the committee chair instead of waiting to the board meeting email the committee chair hey can we have five minutes or ten minutes to discuss and that's the whole purpose of getting them out early right yeah i'd like to address that too because i think that obviously these comments are being directed at jill and i and i'm going to speak very directly early in my board tenure i actually did reach out to committee chairs and ask
072for specific responses to questions and i will share the emails back to the person that's actually raising this was actually told that he wasn't comfortable talking to me one-on-one i had been on this board for literally a month and a half so from that point forward i have made the determination that i was going to ask my my questions in public i have actually asked on numerous occasions for information to be provided and i've asked questions and in many many cases i have never gotten responses so i would love more than anything for that problem to be resolved and then everything that you're talking about i think would very easily be resolved okay so to that point the incident you're referring to is when i issue minutes finance committee minutes never got any feedback from
073you before the meeting 10 days after the regular committee meeting you reached out to me to answer questions so let's put those those emails on the table those discussions and i said i don't feel comfortable what were the meeting was before the meeting when i read the minute that i was asking for that information you're crying it wasn't before the board meeting but we should leave that let's put a lot on the table that's free and i even explained why i wasn't answering here so i'm not going to manage facts i'm not going to manage i know exactly what happened the instance and that that's that we'll check let's check that out together shoulder to shoulder when we can and and go through that but we issue minutes in advance i said comments were coincidental
074and curious and you there was some there was some sensitivity about that that that was my feeling about at the time but then i got questions after the board meeting about a committee report that was issued before that's the specific instance since then i'm not aware of any issues where i want to wear any inquiries or questions other than comments made in public which i'm not sure how well that serves us coming into a meeting as you're about to wrap up and have something um come out like that but by all means let's i do want him i'm here for three more years i want to work together and see this board and see this district be as best as it can be just like i believe everyone else does for their kids as as
075i think every single one of us and i'm more than happy to have that conversation but i also want to make it very clear that we are permitted to speak we are permitted to raise those issues if we choose for whatever reason in public or in private session so i think there's really a disconnect on this board we we are permitted to ask questions in public and this this sort of pervasive um operations that you're not allowed to speak in public is simply inaccurate the reason you have boards is so that you can ask questions in public and so i've actually addressed this as recently as this past week with our attorney so we are permitted to speak and so i think this ongoing sort of um narrative around that it's inappropriate for us to
076speak is completely enough i'm not saying anybody if you issue minutes i'm saying it's an opportunity for feedback if it's a conscious decision not to provide feedback in advance and wait until it's in public i dare i say it's more grandstanding than working together as a board member but the reference to ligo i don't understand that but you know i won't say you have to want to work together we're a board of nine we have to want to work together to move forward okay that's all and i can't imagine there's any i'm not quite sure if there's any i don't think there's disagreement on that it's just style okay so let me let me interject here for just one minute okay so jan you are correct and and we've discussed this you can ask at
077any point in the meeting any questions you like any board member can um during any you know any whether it's in board comments because you and i have talked about whether it should be in board comments or when you're having to vote it can be at any time um you know and at to tony's point we have just always worked as a you know if you have get board committee reports and you have questions you ask it ahead of time this way someone can come prepared as i think charlene has even said they can come prepared to that meeting with answers to your questions i mean can you ask during the meeting you absolutely can but you may not always get an answer you might get a you'll have to check into that and get
078back to you um it's more of a courtesy than you know anything else is to ask ahead of time this way someone is prepared you know and has answers for you but as you and i have talked jan you can ask at any point um that's absolutely correct barry um you know you know the interesting point you're making um when we discuss best practices tonight that that's one of the issues on there yes yes it's after after the committees before and after the committee it talks about i guess the common courtesy you know to ask the question ahead of time no surprises respect your fellow board members that that kind of thing right right which is just a you know again i mean we all want to you know we all want what's best for
079all the children at west essex and i'm hoping that you know moving forward we can be a more cohesive board and try to respect one another and you know if it's our style that we ask questions ahead of time i'm not saying jan that you can't it just you know we just do it as a courtesy and that's what we've always done you can ask at any point jan and tony if you need a referee for your little going over your um you know your finance stuff i'd be happy to sit in on that with you and maybe we could just settle that once and for all and you know move past that you know so let me know um okay so that is more board operation so i know we got sidetracked charlene i'm
080sorry nope that's i mean that's the whole intent of the board self-evaluation is to have conversations like this you know we talked about you know all the work that you have to do now because of coven and other times but most of the work you do is focused on the work of the district and you often have that opportunity to just talk about your own work so a lot of times you know the whole intent of the board self-evaluation is just to provide this opportunity to talk about the board's work so i appreciate the fact that we're doing this that we're having honest conversations that we're doing it respectfully and doing it from the intent of wanting to move forward and wanting to come together as a team and you know it starts with you
081know and i think you mentioned that we all want the same thing so it starts with what is that you know that common thread that we're all working toward and then you know recognition that that we're redeemed you're nine people your successes come not as individuals your success comes as a team um we don't get to pick our team we you know we we come on the board with for with different reasons with different intents but at the end of the day as we you know of course we can't look around the table anymore but as we would look around the table we would say that you know this is our team we you know we shouldn't be talking about well what did this individual say and how did this happen what is our team
082doing what does our team need to work on how is because i am sitting on this board how am i making this a stronger team how am i making this a better team why how i help you know help the team make a difference by me being here what skills and talents can i bring to this team to help make this team stronger and each and every one of us has that responsibility to say what can i do to help this team because that's you know that's who's going to benefit the kids it's not going to be me it's not going to be seven of us it's not going to be two of us it's not going to be it is one team and how is that team going to be the best and most
083effective team it can be for the benefit of the kids so that's ideally where we're trying to go and you know trying to you know kind of identify what that common ground is and how then can we figure out what works for the nine people you are now you're one team right now what does this team need to do in order for this team to be effective so like i said i appreciate your conversations and we'll keep rolling here um so the the next section was student achievement um you know and like i said the board makes it clear that student achievement is a priority for you and it drives the work of the board there was mention of an active curriculum committee talked about the multiple opportunities that you provide for your students and
084i know that i have been to enough of your meetings to hear all of the things you know that that that are going on in your school and i just um you know felt that the board reflected that as well i mean you talked about you know seeking data and looking for ways to you know enhance student growth um you know and there's mention of even you know looking at your students from the perspective of you know future readiness of non-college-bound learners but you know really kind of looking at your student body and looking for success for all of your students so um i leave it up to you as a group to see if anyone has anything more to add to the you know the board's reflection on student achievement i think we're all
085in agreement on this one okay good okay so we'll move on then to the next one is finance um and here again i think it was an area that the board was pretty much in agreement you know when you look at the board score the 3.7 so that was you know a high board score and you can see that the first two board areas where the board scored itself at 3.9 so again you know high areas for the board and you know it was mentioned that it's felt that this is a strong for the board and the district you know talked about the support that you get from the administration in this area the work that the finance committee does and i thought it was really good someone mentioned how important it is to make
086sure that your budget and your finances are in alignment with your goals to make sure that you are supporting the work that you need to do or that you want to do to move the school forward so just even looking at it from that way is a really important perspective um there's talked about you know the fact that you've received training on it um but it's always a continual need and i thought it was really good i've never seen a board say this before that you there was a proposal just develop tutorials for the board like that what great idea that you know that that would definitely be something that's helpful because i know many boards say you know because i don't do this enough i look at it once and then six months later
087i'm looking at it again and it really would be helpful to have something to refer to um so you know it really is important for board members to have training in this area to ask questions in this area um because you know you really are kind of playing that delicate dance of how do you make sure that you're providing the best education you can for your students at a price that your communities can afford and it really is a challenge as the squeeze keeps getting tighter and get you know your budget keeps getting and pulled in so many different directions that again that's even more of a reason for the strategic planning is to make sure that we are putting our resources in in the right places to you know move our district forward in
088a way that's of value to our communities any comments thoughts from anyone else on the finance is that i hope we continue as many uh sessions as i take on finance and things like that it um always makes a world of difference to me when our business administrator shows it in my numbers something that is much more personal to me and you can understand it so much better so um i appreciate melissa that she does this for us and i hope continues at least on a yearly basis that we can have our own numbers in the training because it makes it so much easier for me to get a better grip on it absolutely when you look at your reports and she can show you this number should match to this number and yeah okay
089anyone else for finance okay so then we'll move to to board operations which is you know an area that we said okay we know that we've got a lot of things to talk about here and also thought you know that the sports would even suggest that you know that as a board you're not on the same page that in some things four of you would think you're commendable in it and three of you would think you're unsatisfactory in the same thing so you can see you know like i said that the board is not on the same page in this area and even you know if you took out some of the the descriptors and some of the comments the ways you know the board talked about itself and the way that you get along
090and work together you know we're seeing words like toxic dysfunctional confrontational argumentative um so it would not necessarily be ways that you know obviously a team would want itself to be described um and you know and i think that we talked about that that climate of allowing for free and open discussion and i have to say that when i look at board self evaluations to me this is number two on the top here that this is an area that i always look at because i feel that this is where your work takes place is at the board table and that we do need to have those discussions but you know they need to be respectful discussions and form discussions with no surprises um so we need to you know figure out a way then to
091provide for that climate recognizing that you know like i said that that is where your work gets done and that is how you make the best decisions so um recognizing that there's a lot to be said here um i guess i will leave it up to the board and you know to to get your thoughts and feelings and like i said hopefully that we can talk this through and not so much from the perspective of finger pointing or this or that but looking at identifying areas where we need to look at our process look at areas where we as a board um you know need to come together in a way that makes sense where this group of nine people for this team i just have one comment um where it says our board acts
092as a board of a hall or a committee so one person thinks we act as a board of a whole so just for whoever that is we we work under committees not as a board of a whole and maybe charlene you could just give them the definition or speak to that so they understand how the board works well i can also tell you i don't know that i've ever had a board self evaluation where everyone answered the same to one thing so so it's not uncommon for that to happen and sometimes the confusion comes because there are some things that you do discuss as a group as a whole but you know typically this is looking at your governance structure and when we talked about your governance structure it means do you have standing committees
093versus do you do everything together with all nine of you discussing you know everything at the same time and not have standing committees um you know it's not that often that boards of nine people are able to work as a board up the whole just because there's so much that you need to accomplish that um boards usually who you know who try this method are not usually find that they're not able to get the work done that they need to get done and not able to have discussions in the level of depth often that is you know beneficial so it's you know it is an option but i would say that most nine member boards work in the way that you do with standing committees okay so at this point i know jill you had
094wanted to i guess speak out and speak on this um so let's say i'm just reviewing the comments so i i think it's as i mentioned earlier about the the way we um the way the public meetings go um in that when we get to the agenda we just go through the agenda and there's not a lot of robust dialogue and when questions come up it's it's uh awkward and it [Applause] seems to be perceived as hostile for you know asking you know the idea of asking a question seems to be perceived as a hostile affront to the rest of the board and you know i i that's my perception my experience and i know that i've had you know i've heard countless members of the community um you know comment on it and as
095a as a new board member it's been um extremely challenging this year to um to engage productively with the board and to feel like i am to feel like i do have a voice one of nine but to feel like that it matters and to also feel like i it is comfortable for me to bring forth sentiments that are brought to me by constituents and i know that um again i can't even count how many people or inquiries have come my way where i've encouraged people to reach out to either the administration or come to a board meeting and um you know you know follow the chain of command and if they don't get the resolution then then show up at a board meeting and ask the questions themselves and the members of the public
096are intimidated they don't feel um they don't feel welcomed appreciated or encouraged to speak out and um you know at board meetings they don't um that the agendas are um you know i know it's you know it's a style thing but even just the lack of detail sometimes what agendas leaves the public um in the dark um and even me i i don't you know sometimes i happen to know more of what's going to be on the agenda but i think the more information that's shared the more productive our meetings could be um and um so yeah and so when i've suggested to people come to a board meeting um and they um listen to the board they don't they don't even know what to ask sometimes and i've heard um many instances where i
097you know other board members have made comments that made members of the public feel extremely um dismissed uh unwelcome and it's very unpleasant and embarrassing okay so i'm just writing these notes as you're saying so i just want to like talk about a couple of things so one thing you said lack of information on the agendas meaning what because our agendas are pretty detailed on what we're voting on so voting items yes there's detail on the voting items and i think you and i have i know you and i have um discussed this previously and i i i don't again i don't recall where we met it out if it was just a a business or an executive decision um but the the the part of what i'm calling the agenda that precedes the agenda
098items that we vote on um there are typically you know that's where um department heads may present or you know what whatever it is mr chochi may present and those topics are of interest and knowing in advance what those topics are could be very helpful um to you know all of us as board members as well as to the community um so that's what i'm right okay so we have had the discussion so getting back to when we have our supervisors who give the reports every month you want to know specifically what they're going to be reporting as opposed to just putting on the agenda that like say supervisor of english report you want to know you want the community to know exactly what the reporting which is just really their monthly report or their
099yearly report but there's usually a topic right like when um i don't know what you know guys it's really nice i mean guidance is different twice a year that's a that that's not a department right no but i'm just saying so jill and i did have this conversation once when we have our supervisors who come and give their um you know they come you know each month we would have a supervisor come and give their departments like over you know overview of what they're doing and how they're doing uh jill did say to me at one point she thought it should be a little more specific but i mean it really is just their kind of annual report of their department um is is what they they do at that point um so i know
100you did say that jill but i don't know how more specific that it can be it's not really a topic it's really just they're giving us their kind of their annual you know update on where their department is um i think even even mary saying that like when mr gupta gave his presentation on um gosh it was so long ago right before culvert i think um it was right i don't know yes like having that show up on the you know at the top of the agenda um would be meaningful um just to you know as opposed to you know often i think that it just is you know superintendents report and maybe department heads reports i don't have it in front of me but i think you know for the most part it's it's
101just kind of blank um and you know even just for the benefit of all you know listing the names of you know instead of principles like the you know it's helpful for um incoming you know families who are have children who are just in seventh grade or eighth grade and they don't know who the the high school principal is so it would be nice to put um mr gilberto's name on there comma you know principal of the high school and then you know just a little something to make it a little more informative and i think that would help um with public questions as well because i i know it's been um a bit of chaos at times when the public starts asking questions and not understanding agenda versus non-agenda items and um i just
102think just a little more information about what it is and when possible okay would be helpful that's it okay um and then you also said that you wanted to know um so you said um there's no dialogue the public doesn't hear any dialogue during our um they want to hear some kind of dialogue during our um meetings so i guess i think that's where you're saying that we kind of rubber stamp stuff that we don't when we go through the agenda we vote on things and we don't really have a discussion um and i'd be wrong in assuming that but i'm assuming that's what you meant is that where you're saying that we rubber stamp i it's a perception that and it's a feeling that again i'm trying to yeah yeah is rubber stamping i
103i i i i'm a little confused here jill um there are a lot of things that are on their agenda the recommendations of the superintendent i mean in other words are we going to have a discussion what gym teacher is hiring what what no no let me finish you you spoke quite a while there and like finance um have you taken fighting the finance course yet to understand that's a perfect example of what we're talking about it's a perfect it's not it's not it's not because i i think i think your perception of my perception of how the board operates and what's the role of the superintendent is we're not representing anything we understand what the superintendent's recommending you're confident to say to jill you spoke for quite a while is exactly what we're talking
104about looked at me as you did as you just did to me that's that's part of the problem too okay so so these are things that we are going to work on [Music] when i first started but she explained the con ops about how all these presentations feed into the full the district goals and achievement progress towards them there was one time we tried having a calendar the the for the month this month in advance and it didn't really help um it didn't really make a difference in in the participation level from the community but we were hoping it would we identified each month what topic it would be um i forgot about that tony we did put that out one year that we have every month what yes once the advisor was going to
105say okay is that enough cue or you're saying when you say details so the topic and who's going to be presenting is that you're not asking yeah i think i'm not asking for much i think i think man i'm sorry i didn't want to interrupt you look that's okay i was just trying to respond i um i think it was it's just that often that the top part of the agenda document just has you know superintendents report colon principles report colon and it's black so all i'm all i'm suggesting is that putting you know the names of the speakers in their department description and if there is a particular title of their you know our subject that they're something specific they're hitting on to put it in there because that's the one document i think
106that's typically the only document that the public has access to prior to the meeting and we're asking them to you know hold their comments to agenda item only and and i think it's just you know it would be a nice helpful thing to do that was good it seems reasonable right he's been posting on the website for the year but yeah it could be in both places right i think it's a great suggestion it just makes it a little more personal it's just giving a person rather than just a report i think it's a nice suggestion and and tony's right we did do that at one point that we had the calendar planned out in advance and put that out there but again it's something that we can um you know we can revisit good
107work um yeah sure um look i'm not looking to intimidate anybody because i understand um i'm looking to talk to you and want to understand what you want to say but i feel you're not understanding what other people have to say okay some of the stuff that's on the agenda in in those items let's say you know we you know you make one of us makes the motion items one through seven i mean i i want your opinion on that do you think we should be discussing personnel issues i mean i mean because you just said it very very bro with a broad stroke a very broad stroke that we just rubber stamp everything and i'm i take offense to that because i don't i don't think we do and if you think that there
108should be more discussion on those individual items um speak up and let us know because um that's the comment i'm just making i'm not saying you have you don't have a right to speak i'm not saying you don't have a right to talk about these issues and i'm not trying to intimidate you i'm just trying to understand and i think you're getting confused with intimidation and trying to understand and i don't appreciate being accused of intimidation because that's not my style you'll know when you're being intimidated very badly i have um you you made a statement a couple of minutes ago that this is something we're gonna work on and and you know to you know try and revamp or whatever um how our board meetings are going forward but um i'm having just difficulty
109understanding if this is a systemic issue or if this is just an issue that is pursuant to a certain group of people i mean i can only speak about roseland and the people that i know here and i haven't had any complaints or concerns or negative comments so i need clarification on this on this item if this is if you maybe or um damien has been receiving global complaints about how we have been operating as a board because if there are so many complaints and i know this is a bit of an aside i congratulate those candidates who got in again um you know the three candidates were voted back in to their seats on the board and i would think that if this was something that the community was so upset with us about
110that it would have been evident in removing them from the board so that they were changed so i need to understand is this just a perception of a small group of people that we need to just focus and reach out to them personally or is this systemic across all four sending districts and something that the board needs to reevaluate themselves on and how we are going to operate going forward i am not going to start addressing a small group or a group of people who are just extremely vocal i want to know if we are seeing this across the entire force ending districts if it's something that you can share with us mary if you've received emails if things have been generated i think that we should be privy to that so that we can
111change our behaviors in how we do our board operations so i mean i have not received any emails about our board operations and how our meetings have gone i mean with that said i mean i've received one or two emails from parents during this coveid um you know with their thoughts and ideas of um you know one or two parents from north carolina and i think they're i think um i think january copying on one or two and so is jill um so i've been contacted by one or two north pole parents just you know covet related but overall no i have not received emails from you know as the board president i have not received emails from community members about um likes and dislikes about the board meetings or um you know issues that
112they're having um you know stuff like that i have not received anything no and i could just speak for essex bills there haven't been any complaints from this expels that's what i'm saying overall i have not received anything from any of the four districts uh recently i've received one or two emails from north pole residents but it was more coveted related not in overall you know what any kind of other issues no i'm sure that you know covet is a heightened sense for everyone i'm sure there's a lot of concern across all four districts about covid and how we're going forward i i just you know i just need clarification because if we need to look at ourselves as a nine-member board and how we operate then we will address that but if it's not
113systemic and it's not global in all four then i i have to say by the fact that we've you know had our three candidates voted back in that we must be doing something right i mean i can't believe that we are i think that's what i'm coming away with all of this and really has me so upset that um i feel that we're being judged and fingers pointed at and we're really not trying to come together as a cohesive group without pointing fingers and that's bothersome right i agree i mean you know i just you know you know i i think that there needs to be like mutual respect for one another and um you know we need to move forward with that and just kind of get to a point where we can um
114you know i say i say respect and trust and i think that that is where we are lacking on the board um in both those areas so um you know we need to i think that's our you know our bigger issue then parents don't know what to ask at a board meeting if they don't know what to ask at a board meeting then they're probably in the wrong place and i'm not saying that you know i think jill that was one of the things you had said that you know parent had said to you they don't know what to ask at a board meeting and not saying this first time just saying like if they don't know what to ask then there's you know the neighborhood's not the right avenue maybe it's something that if
115they have an issue they should be going to a principal or a teacher maybe it's not a board issue if they're not sure what to ask at a board meeting because you don't have to ask anything at a board meeting you can just come to a board meeting listen hear what the takeaway is and you can always if they have questions afterwards you know email damian or myself i mean it doesn't always have to be something that they ask at a meeting um you know just is more for informational purposes for them you know so um yeah i mean you know we'll have to look at the bigger picture and and you know move move forward and see what else we can do but um here we go i just say two two no i
116don't know okay and i was gonna go ahead get out it's gonna sound unintended i don't want to have a long discussion if you were gonna move on no no i was gonna say one other thing but go ahead and i'll i'll i know my morning very so your last name no no the only other thing i was gonna say about that is like the you know i know what we're using is for rubber stamping but you know in the um you know board best practices and you know kind of moving forward i mean it's not necessarily a rubber stamping if you know we do have questions which we have said that you know we can ask either ahead of time or at the meeting neither way is wrong but you know a little bit
117of the perception from the public might be that if i have questions i call melissa if i have a you know policy question i might call ann i get clarification um you know ahead of time this way i don't really have a question that night so it may you know be perceived as a rubber stamping but you know hopefully with this board best practices and we are looking at our packets ahead of time and um kind of answering or getting answers to questions ahead of time and you know things come up that day that may not have been answered that certainly you can ask but i mean that may come off as a rubber stamping but it's not necessarily a rubber stamping it's that they you know we get information ahead of time so that
118was the only other point it's going to finish but go ahead tony well one was on the rubber stamping perception i i could understand that because when i first started i i thought it was just these people were sitting up there just saying yes yes yes you know we act on the recommendations of the superintendent of course but it's the work leading up to the meetings that you have to do you have to be prepared and ask questions then and then it is almost like a formality so the public may say hey folks this is what people doing i can understand why it may seem like a rougher stamp and the second thing is earlier this year you know the public has reached out you know fairfield has had some provided some feedback some pointed
119emails that have come in but i i enjoyed it i actually went to see you some of you know i went and reached out to one of the people that sent an email into rachochi and i didn't know the guy he looked pretty close to where i live too but i made arrangements and went to see him and sat on his front steps about eight feet apart not six and had a great conversation and i think i think i look at it my role i could be wrong is that i need to as a board member i want to try to you know to i want to engage with the public doesn't have to be in a public meeting i'm willing to if i if i can if i know something i'm going to reach
120out to the person outside of the board me too and talk with them i feel like that's everybody has a different style that's how i like to i would like to be let them know that i want to be approachable and if i know i'm going to take the initiative and that was the case with the one with a lot of um cited excuses for why we weren't reopening schools the one gentleman but it was great having a conversation with them and getting to know him and talking with him and it was just by going out going contacting him going over his house now it doesn't charlene that may not say in a board in the fundamentals somewhere that that's what board members do but everybody has a different style but i i think making
121the public feel um feel valued and and that we listen i think that's what the board members are doing it could be done many ways that's one example what i tried to do unless you tell me don't do that anymore i just want to make one comment about um i guess i think sometimes we don't have enough conversation during our board meetings and i think asking questions is okay but i think we need to give whoever you're going to ask the questions to a little heads up i'm going to ask this question so i can be prepared with an answer so i think it's not surprising someone with a question but allowing them time to prepare and then have the discussion um so i want to clarify that my comment was a perception the lack
122of public discussion often translates into a perception of rubber stamping so i want to make clear that i understand and i review the board packets ahead of time as well to the best of my ability to make you know understand as best i can what we are voting on so um but that said there are times when there's a question that maybe i didn't realize i had ahead of time so i didn't have an opportunity to reach out and that if that's the case on those occasions and i've tried not to um to grandstanding anyway because honestly my experience speaking out at board meetings has been unpleasant so it's actually quite the opposite for me of grandstanding for me it is intimidating and uncomfortable but i do it because i feel a responsibility when i
123have a question to speak up and ask it and so and i have listened to board meetings of other districts and i've heard board members of other school boards ask questions in a conversational sort of way as they're going through the agenda asking questions of the superintendent and and it's it's a dialogue it's not i've not perceived it to be contentious or threatening of you know the by the board member towards the superintendent and um and and so that is where i'm coming from i am not trying i am not intending or plotting to show up at a public meeting to make a an event um i would like to share one example though where i felt that there was a rubber stamping and maybe you someone or all of you will correct me on
124my understanding of this but the instance was when there was a we were voting on um it was like the the report a self report card for uh hib um uh report card that um our people are you know the members of our administration who are responsible for that we're submitting it to the state and the um attachment which you know i just printed out prior to the meeting i couldn't read it it was very small and i asked about it at the meeting and it became this this very contentious issue and in that instance that was not something that came out of a committee and it was something where i was genuinely asking for and understanding it as i recall i think the report card had like it was like an ollie report card
125and as i mentioned earlier that to me is a red flag for anyone myself included so i was just seeking information and in that instance um we went through the process of potentially emotion to table and revisit and i still don't understand what harm would have come from tabling that that motion and revisiting it to allow the the members of the administration to provide all of us on the board with a little more documentation and understanding maybe i'll give everyone else the benefit of the doubt maybe you all knew or know a whole lot more than me and so maybe it wasn't necessary for any of you but if we're talking about operating as a board it didn't seem to be it didn't i don't recall that it was time sensitive that we that we
126vote to turn it in and it just seemed like an opportunity where we could have and i wasn't attacking you i was just asking for more information so that would have seemed like an opportunity to to table it and revisit it at the next meeting after we had more information so so that was time sensitive because that is an hiv self-assessment report that was that's done um after the year so um it is a time sensitive um material number one you know the state has very specific dates that you have to approve these twice a year and you have to you know prove to them through upward agenda that these reports took place by certain dates so not knowing when you had the conversation i don't know how close it was to the time requirements
127but there are time restrictions um for the the twice a year and then maybe charlene you know maybe can you speak to that um so you know um the self-assessment report which um our staff did give themselves an a on and i know um jill you had um questioned that report um you know there's certain check marks that they have to meet which they did so they get a certain you know um grading on that um but maybe you can speak to that in a little more detail if you know anything more this way maybe that might help jill because i know you know like from my standpoint you know it's it's kind of like this like a board self-evaluation which is kind of exactly what it's like they have to meet certain requirements and
128if they meet them they get a certain number and that's how you come to the um you know your report card um and which is what our staff did um and again it was time sensitive and that is why we moved on with it jill but um charlene do you have any more insight into that um you know i mean with it without obviously knowing any of the circumstances or anything but like you said it's just about how this stuff yeah yeah i mean there is a checklist there is criteria under each checklist the state will tell you what things they're looking for you know what things constitute this response versus that response so it's a formulaic report that you are you know kind of putting your occurrences in that formulaic report and kind of
129getting been getting a score it's not there's not a lot of subjectivity you know there's criteria that help determine what how you're filling it out tony you had your hand raised go ahead and then maybe i could be wrong i thought even jan had commented about that one going back and it was it looked um was suspect because it was like a perfect um perfect reporter and and i mean you said something funny like maybe uh that's always good not you i would my words have been raised a bs flag you may have said something like it just raised it just caught your attention that it was a you get a perfect score it's going to catch my attention but this report does have certain criteria if you meet that criteria that's the score you
130get so i think that literally mary what was just said by you and charlene had that been explained um that was the information that was being um requested at that time and instead it was an opportunity to pile on and and you know make sure that we weren't going to get that information i think there's you know that it's a perfect example that jill gave but you know it's it's basic things that anybody with common sense that's watching this is like that doesn't make any sense why wouldn't you address that why wouldn't that information be available to board members um as board members why wouldn't that information be available to board members and why couldn't that be discussed in a reasonable way in the way that you guys just said it um but but it
131wasn't it was a a very different experience on that night for both of us we've gone through it but and know the people involved with it like julianne and luisa but so i and i've been through it too tony for six years on a different board and it's a different level of conversation so i'm used to a very open conversation i'm actually used to seeing the report with the defense so i can understand where the evaluation came and where we were specifically exceptional and where we might have fallen short so that's the information that we didn't have in this particular case and and i think if i'm and i take thank you jan for that information and i think i did that night save was time stamps today i think that was one i didn't
132go into any other detail i'm sure but um and i think if um i'm not positive um was that one of the things that was in the office that we can go in and see now i'm trying i know i'm blurring a lot of different things together but i think that might have been a report that wasn't able to be released but if you wanted to go see it uh you could um and maybe damien knows that better than me but i appreciate the you know the feedback and you know moving forward like i said i mean i'm hoping that we can move to a better dialogue moving forward and um you know this can all be very helpful so all right so uh jill did that answer your question on that i mean i
133know that was just an example but in in answering that does that help it does have yeah i just you i felt like i've sensed that you're all seeking examples so i that was one that's not like a good example perfect i mean that i yeah thank you um as far as board operations are there any other um any other topics or anything else that needs to be discussed addressed i think there's one thing that is very important to both jill and i you know we hear it over and over and over again um is that somehow the constituents in north caldwell are both small groups of people and it's not that many um people to be very honest with you we've had literally hundreds of north caldwell parents on these meetings so it is
134not one or two parents who have some level of dissatisfaction or have questions about what's happening it is a large number of individuals and jill and i represent those constituents i do i don't know he does too and you hear it mary as well as we do um in many respects so i think sort of this this constant dismissal of one of the four towns is is really not appropriate um because our town might happen to be more engaged and more involved and more focused on these issues is not a negative um and it is consistently treated as a negative people who speak out are are just summarily dismissed or eyes are rolling or whatever on on the screen i just think it's really inappropriate and i also don't think it's really fair to say
135i'm glad our colleagues won their elections and i think that's terrific but obviously they're for the first time they were contested elections so i'm telling you that there are lots of other people who have um questions and concerns they may have the same issues of not feeling comfortable speaking out in front of this board if they've watched it even for five minutes so i think you know we should be a place where regardless of what town you're from or what your issue is that you have a right to speak and be heard and be heard with respect from members of this board i i agree and i think um you know agreed whatever town i mean north pole is more vocal i think each town has and i think i've said this to you before
136jan 2. i mean each town has different issues and uh this might be something that north pole is a little more passionate about than some other towns but um you know we all bring different things to the table um board members and and parents so um you know we just be respectful to everyone and and i you know i'm open to everyone coming to the meetings and asking questions you know it's fine i mean it's you know if if they have questions come uh if it's something that can be answered in the email and they're more comfortable that way then you know they can email me they can email damian um you know we can respond to them however they want so um okay mary one one last i i just just to clarify i
137think you had said when recalling a conversation we had that you had described it as me saying that that parents said they didn't know what to ask and as i recall it was that parents were uncomfortable asking and uncertain how you know what the right time was and that they just they just felt uncomfortable like it wasn't an awkward thing for them so it wasn't it wasn't like oh i want to come ask a question and can you help me with the question it was it was more difficult you did say both to me okay that's okay but i don't recall that one but okay because you had said parents weren't were uncomfortable and not sure when to ask and what and what to even when when and what so that that's fine i mean
138you know yes that that may have been a risk that if i'd said that it was likely i'm guessing again i don't know when our timeline this conversation was but there was a meeting or two where other board members instructed community members that their questions may have been inappropriate at the board meeting and if they should take them elsewhere and so i think that that that the way that landed with people was was like whoa you know because people are you know you know no matter what people do in life you show up at a board meeting you kind of you want to i think i think most people want to be respectful um but i i think but not to interrupt you real quick i'm sorry i'm done i'm done so there are so
139there and and i'm i don't want parents to think we don't want them to come to a meeting um but there are appropriate like we did have a couple parents who spoke to us regarding their own child's personal issues at school um you know one was an iep i just me personally it's just it's not the right platform because number one you know we can't help them i mean it's you know we're bored we're not involved to the d you know with the daily operations we don't know their case you know it's just not they should take that kind of question directly to either their case manager you know we always say follow the chain of command whether it's the teacher or the supervisor or the building principle or these you know um you know
140if it's something to do with um special ed you know special services department um that that's my only i mean i hate not that hate i i feel bad when parents bring that kind of question to us because it's really not in our purview to answer something like that and and i feel bad that they put their own kid out there for you know we were having you know two or three hundred people on on our meetings and parents are asking these kind of questions that i feel bad for the parent asking you know especially when we know who their name is somebody might know who their kid is you know that's my only um thing where listen they want to come ask a question at a board meeting you know i can direct them
141i mean last meeting i did start saying like what is an agenda item i am going to continue to read if it's something to do a personal question regarding your own child's um you know a question regarding your child's personal education i mean those just aren't for the board of education it really should go to you know a supervisor or principal or something like that to be handled so um you know i know we have had questions on like people being not sure what to ask but those kind of questions really shouldn't be asked in a board meeting and they need more personal attention you know so that i totally hear you and support you and i think i also applaud that you you have explained it with greater detail so that the public i
142think is better understanding and i think that's been helpful um i think i think one of the the comments that i recall at some point it was one of the reopening it was a board meeting that was taking place as we were approaching reopening and there were just we were inundated with questions about reopening and no doubt there were a few inappropriate questions but i think that you know there was some comment made by someone on the board at some point that that i was was like uh was expressing the frustration with all of these questions and saying like that that's not what we're here for and i think in this time of you know the middle of this crisis oh i'll just interrupt you because a person mary was actually trying to answer that
143person very diplomatically and that person kept saying but you're not answering my your question i'm not answering my your my question so i jumped in and i answered her question honestly which she then thanked me and appreciated the honest answer it was not saying that we did not want questions but you you know bringing up your own children in front of 300 people is inappropriate besides that we cannot give those answers we are of no help to these parents every time mary kept saying oh ask damian ask the guidance counselor ask the head of the department all that stuff should be going through email to those people so that person was actually appreciative that they got a straight answer so i think i'm just going to say tony let me just say one thing i
144i'm sorry and then i'll let you think this has been a learning curve for all of us this going to virtual um you know having three to six one meeting we had 600 people on it on a phone call or on our zoom call so it has been a learning learning curve for all of us um as far as just trying to you know as the parents are trying to navigate we're trying to navigate this is not something that we've ever been used to so um you know not trying to be short with parents and you know i know i had gotten a call from someone saying well you know you like there were other people and you you know you ended you ended the meeting at 11 o'clock we still had like hours to
145go and i was like i mean but you know we're just you know it again it's a learning curve for all of us i mean you know we're all trying to get through this time and you know we're all trying to figure out you know what we should answer how to direct people you know what what is the best solution for the public the parents the kids the students and us as a board so i mean i just think that we all you know need to be um you know just a little more understanding of each other and you know if we're not doing it the right way well we're learning you know i mean this is just something different so um i know tony you wanted to say something i didn't mean to interrupt
146you made me think it would something something that jill said made me think i don't know if the re tonight you opened up the public to both agenda and non-agenda at the same time upfront was that this is this is this was a board retreat or is that something that's not allowed or is it is that something that maybe we can consider doing if there's if there's a question is this a gender item not an agenda item and it's causing this this um strain just doing it up front it was that is that possible to do all the time or is that only because this was a retreat that it was done that way tonight i really just did this because it was a retreat um charlene said you know we have to at least
147have one time for the public to be able to speak and figuring you know i mean if there was going to be a lot of people on i might we might have had it you know a second um public session but since it's really just us and a couple other people on on the call we just did one public comment because you know this is more of a working meeting anything that we were voting on you know they had the chance they had they would have had the chance to speak i mean moving forward i mean like charlene said you only right am i right charlene you only have to have one public comment uh section we happen to have two i mean we don't have to have it that way but that's the way
148our policy you know that's how we that's the way we do yeah well speak i mean i don't know if that then then you get into should it be the beginning or the end i don't know when but if you just do it one time but i was just curious so i think that's a i think it's a great suggestion to do it at the beginning and do it once and then everybody can just talk and then you can deal right so so usually it comes down to kind of the you know when the board wants to conduct its business so you should always definitely you know allow the public to comment on things before you vote on them you can hear what the public has to say before you vote on them so if
149a board's you know only going to have one section of public comments it should be in the beginning because like say it should you should want to know what the public thinks about something before you vote on so you can take that into consideration you know it comes down to you know i guess kind of looking at the context of your meeting and thinking as you know as a board you know this is where you get your business done this is the one and only time you know once a month maybe twice a month you come together to conduct your your business so if there are going to be hours of public comment you know so and again it you know depends on that is it going to sidetrack or you know kind of push
150back the business that you need to have so you know it's kind of one of those you know is that this is the board's meeting in public not the public's meeting with the board so it's kind of that philosophy of as a board you need to strike that balance of we have important work to do we have important discussions we need to have we need to you know talk about student achievement are we able to accomplish those things you know still hearing public comment first or is you know or will that impact our ability to do the work that we need to do and strike that balance okay how do you know though because a lot of times you don't even know there's going to be public comment until it happens you know what i
151mean you don't know that there's an issue you know maybe when you're writing the agenda yeah i guess you don't i mean we've always allowed the public to speak twice just because in case something does come up like you said cindy i mean but maybe it may be it is a better option to just do it all at once you know because then there's no clarify you know there's there's not that well it's not an agenda item so let's ship off so you know what it what's the difference i mean i guess that's my opinion now if if if there's a time to speak what does it matter what it's on well that could be something i mean i know there's a policy um on the right on the um public participation the format structure
152like the format of a board meeting am i correct surely i think there is a policy on for uh so it would just be a question of what level of detail is in your bible it's not that detailed i look for it's not that special i have two and i i just can't remember chance you remember the bylaw number um it's it's actually it's just in the bylaws in the beginning and it talks about it doesn't it doesn't go into detail about the structure of the i meeting it just tells you to use like robert's rule of order and things like that but i don't think it puts it in a a specific structure so maybe that's something we can you know look into changing as as you know just try it for me and
153see how it works yeah exactly right okay to consider okay charlie yes okay we're rolling then we're we're chugging oh my gosh so this was just the bottom and part of the one we just looked at so there's not really much here so we'll go then to the the next section which was board performance and probably really a lot of that is what we already just talked about okay you know because here it shows your lowest indicator and the whole board self evaluation in the board part was you know works together in an atmosphere of you know mutual trust and respect and you can see you know that like you said that the board only evaluated itself at 2.3 in that particular indicator and so a lot of it is probably you know like i
154said a lot of it i feel like we've talked about um probably already other that just looks at it more from a perspective of um you know the code of ethics from confidentiality from you know conflicts of interest so just looking at that same kind of concept from from that lens um but probably the single biggest item we have is where the data is showing that that's good it's consistent yes but you know i also feel i don't know how you feel as you're talking through these things that you're you know you're coming up with ideas and suggestions and ways to move forward so i think nope discussion that's great i think okay anything separate from this that we haven't talked about already in this area no i'd say that's probably our biggest goal okay
155good um so then the next area then was board and superintendent relationships so here it's you know kind of looks at you know really you know kind of what makes for that successful board superintendent relationship is you know do we both understand our roles do we use the chain of command you know those are a lot of things that we've already talked about tonight you know kind of that respect working together as a team you know to achieve a common vision and you know so making sure that that we're all kind of pulling in that same direction and sometimes you know we we talked about rubber stamping a little bit you know and sometimes a lot of times it has to do with the committee structure but also a lot of times it has to
156do with if we all are in alignment and we all agree that these are the things we're supposed to be working on and the superintendent is moving the district in the direction of these things that we agreed upon then we should be you know supporting the work that he's doing and holding him accountable for the outcome so sometimes too when boards are in alignment and in agreement with what those strategic priorities are and the things that need to get accomplished then sometimes it might look like the board is just going along with the superintendent but really the superintendent is carrying out the work that we all have already had a lengthy conversation to agree upon that this is the work that we want to take place um charlene real quick before you move on number
157five which i think it's number five which i meant to bring up when we had board comments um so damian's moving forward damian's contract says that we have to notify him july 1st which came and went as the tool we will be using to evaluate him for his um you know evaluation so i know last year we um you know there's a little issue with that but moving forward i just like to um suggest to the board that we evaluate him with the new jersey school boards tool and i want to make sure that everyone is on board with that i am conflicted so i i'm the one who says not observed in that number five um because i am a conflicted board member but moving forward um mary wasn't the only issue that we
158couldn't because we needed everyone to be trained in it so that that issue is resolved so that issue is resolved yes but um his contract states that he um has to be told in advance well he has to be on on july 1st he's supposed to be notified what tool we will be using to evaluate him and and he we did not do that which is fine he's okay he just you know he and i had the conversation that moving forward i'd like to use the new jersey school boards um so i just want to see with everyone else if they are okay with that this way we can let him know while he's on this call obviously he will know that is um okay that you know moving forward that that is what we
159will use to evaluate him okay so i agree i think we should just by raising hands everyone's okay with it we're on agreement okay damien i know you're on here so that is how we will be evaluated for using the new jersey school board's tool okay sorry i meant to bring that up earlier in the meeting and i forgot so when i saw that i thought of it okay sorry to interrupt you nope you know and also just to clarify too in terms of new board members being trained on the tool so it's in statute that board members have to be trained um you know within six months of taking office it's in cue set that board members it just has to be trained just says new board members it doesn't specify a time frame
160but it doesn't disallow you from using the tool it's just a better practice if you have been you know trained obviously you're required to be trained on the process so it's just a better situation to do that um so you know and now we have increased the um i guess the resources you know that now there's you know webinars out on our on our website that anybody can watch at any time on the process and on the tool so again we're continuing to increase the resources we have available again recognizing the importance of board members having training on this but maybe not being able to you know sit down at one point in time and do it so you know hopefully this will all help to make this be a better process for everyone can
161we use it because after this we're going to have one more hour that we need for our certification so can we just um use this at you know get an hour training on it for everyone i don't know if you what do you think mary yeah that that works for me i mean if we all do a uh training on it because that was i guess some confusion um charlene i know you and i had spoken about it um one thing said that everyone had to be trained or or you would get um points deducted from uh cusack so that's why we were skeptical in using it because we were afraid that with not having all of our board members certified in it we were going to get points taken away from cusack which then
162i guess after we used a different tool we found out was not the case so it's it's the process you know so in in statute and in code it outlines certain things that need to be included in a superintendent's evaluation so the state doesn't care which tool your new board members use they just want to make sure that your new board members understand the process and what the legal guidelines and requirements are as part of that process okay so like anthony i mean i think after tonight we'll um we'll probably have one more hour that we'll need for our board master certification which i think though our deadline is may uh is march right is it march it would be two years from when you were last certified just this past year it was i
163think it was september i think you were certified in the fall maybe just this past september or a year ago september i think it was september 2019 so i don't have until september of 2021 to get more credits in okay so i do like the group training though because i think it leads to a lot of discussion so you know instead of individual hour training i do think that group discussion training is much better because it allows us to you know hear each other's questions and brings up some good discussion okay so so we can put that on so if we need to do our um evaluation um you know realistically if we start that in june i mean we should probably try and do this kind of training may april this way you know
164it's completed far enough in advance that's a good time for it okay okay but the big part of the process is communication throughout this school year right so we there that communication aspect should be we should be in that already he has the goal set for the 2021 year it should be monthly every other month there should be that dialogue with the artifacts being dumped up it's going to be placed in for for reference right is that tool open charlene because i know damian also said last year i guess one of his issues was the new jersey school board's um csa evaluation tool uh it i guess it didn't open until like february so he couldn't really as he's going along put like tony said the artifacts into that um documentation so is that is
165that something that normally has done or is it open now that he can start to put stuff in there so it's still open now unfortunately for those boards that are still working on last year's okay so then we you know take it down at on december 31st and then open it back up again in february but um you know but the tool is designed i guess like not for him to put things in here as he goes so like what most or many superintendents do is kind of put boulders on you know create folders for themselves put documents in there that they want the board to you know to share with the board and then just download the contents from those folders when it's time to complete the evaluation because right for the superintendents it
166really is like a 12-month documentation process of them needing to to save things for the board as evidence of the work that was accomplished we do it earlier than um well may i think we're really busy in may can we do it more like in march before all the budget and then the other issues can we do it in march i think we're less busy sure march tony we submit the budget in the budget gets submitted that's where a lot of heavy lifting well melissa's on but the heavy lifting's really in march for the budget so maybe february yeah march is a busy time because we are doing the preliminary budget submission so it could go off to the county oh okay so why don't we do it in february before the budget gets starts
167we can i mean we could certainly do february i mean i know um you know what like we always do uh our retreats january and you know june but since we're doing this in november i was gonna suggest we don't do january anyway just because it's only two months away so maybe we do february and then june again so um that's that's fine and then we can bring up anything else that we need to do in february okay so we'll do february training we might have to get a date on the calendar right now to make sure that we get it all right we're ready to move on yep just want to make that note so the next section was board and staff relationship this was the area that the board evaluated itself the highest
168and an area where all of them you know the one member selected not observed so that doesn't you know count into the totals but the eight members that did evaluate the last indicator um ensures our actions and decisions are quickly and effectively communicated to the staff that the board gave itself a 4.0 in that area um and you know i thought it was interesting because for a lot of boards that's a challenging area for them so i thought it was great that that there is that level of you know communication from the work that happens at the board to um you know being communicated to the district so when we look at board and staff relationships and you know if we say that we are following the chain of command and you know and also
169our communication goes to the superintendent we you know so you know you might ask well how do we have a relationship with the staff and really it would be making sure do we you know recognize our staff and make sure then that we give them the professional development funds that they need do we have sound personnel policies and then also you know when we were able to attend school and community activities you know our visibility in supporting the work that's going on in the schools so those are the ways then as a board then that we are able to have relationships and support the work of our staff so it sounded like the board you know was pretty much in agreement that they do value the staff it is important to recognize the work of
170the staff it is important to attend school you know community activities so you know the board made it pretty clear that you know that this relationship is important to you if anyone has anything they wanted to add to it okay i'll move on then and then the last section was boarding community so here again you know just kind of looking at our our relationship with the community and you know i think that the board we talked about it in planning but we also talked about it here you know how important or how how vital the input is from the community and how much you know we value that work we talked about the fact that there have been more opportunities for the public to be able to participate just based on you know what how
171much you were able to get started in strategic planning um with the covid and you had surveys and different committees that the community was able to participate on and just kind of seeing um you know the value in that work and i think one of the things that it always comes down to in communicating with our community is that no matter how you know how much we do or how well we think we're doing it you know that we really just need to keep working at it we need to keep finding new and different ways to engage our community to make them aware of the great things that are going on in the district and also for them to be partners and you know hear what they have to say um you know have outreach
172into our community for them to help us in the work that we're doing so it's just an important relationship for a board so i don't know if anyone has anything more that they would like to add okay so then the last piece of this was two open-ended questions that as a board you were asked to talk about you know challenges that you considered that the district is facing recognizing that student achievement is your highest priority so you know not surprisingly it came out you know the covet resonated through a lot of the challenges that the board identified and in different ways looking at your remote learning your academic achievement the involvement of students making sure we have an effective learning environment the reopening plan missed milestones all of those things are ways that you know
173as a board you felt that coped you know impacted your creative challenges for the district the social emotional needs of students and staff financial resources but you can kind of go through the list here but you know you touched on a lot of important things that um you know you recognize as a group or challenges that your district is facing and you know and just even in the conversation we had tonight this is probably where you have spent a lot of your time in a lot of your conversation again like i said not always getting the opportunity to talk about board work because of some of you know so many of these other important challenges and then the last question that you were asked was you know if you looking at you know governance and
174saying if there's any idea you know any areas that would be helpful to have an additional focus and training and so i just kind of you know there are a lot of different answers but if there was an answer that was given more than once or you know like kind of the more frequent answer to talk about ethics hiv roles um team building working together on policy so a lot of it mirrors the conversations that you know we've had tonight so um and then the last piece of the board self-evaluation we always look at this year versus last year um and then you can just so kind of say last year the overall score was a little bit higher it was the 3.6 versus 3.4 but you know i guess recognizing in the grand scheme
175of things you know it still you know would demonstrate that a lot of good work is going on here and i think you know we talked about tonight some opportunities then to continue to even you know even to get better at the work that we're doing so um so that was it for the board self evaluation and we're ready to move into talking about board goals do we feel like we need a short break like you tell me how how you want to keep i'm ready to keep going if you guys are but um i mean i'm ready to keep going it depends how does everyone else feel keep going yeah yeah we only have 20 more minutes so wow we could go further i mean we don't have to stop at nine but um
176plan oh yeah i can catch up i have to take a bio break but i'll be back in next yeah i mean if you need to leave and go get a glass of water or something i mean do we want to take a two minute break but i mean except everyone else flexible so let me just keep going or again you can keep going if anybody needs to just step away and get something to drink or go to the ladies room or boys room you can go ahead and go so this was really just to kind of show the context of starting the conversation about board goals and kind of how all the pieces fit together they talked about it really a little bit when we were in the planning section of just kind of
177saying how you know once you have that strategic plan and have those longer-term goals how it really then will start driving the other work that we do um so you know because then the district goals are the annual goal so we would carry out this long-term work on an annual basis and we say then that you know what makes district goals or how they're different is that this is how we're helping set the direction for the district you know we say there's usually three to five district goals so i just kind of use the number four for conversation and say you know like what are those four things that i think are so important to move the district forward that that's going to be the focus for the year and we're going to hold the
178superintendent accountable by putting these goals in his evaluation so you know that's it in a sense it involves everyone in the district then because so we've kind of helped you know be part of this discussion of this what of what these four goals what this direction needs to be then the administration should provide action plans again it breaks down that how with kind of that the more smart aspect to it kind of giving us some you know a clear understanding of how they're going to accomplish the what um and then it should kind of be a stair-step approach where it should then translate into goals that are happening in the building with you know with other staff members to what's going on in the classroom and then you're getting that feedback back that's going to
179come through the chain of command and eventually come back to the board through the superintendent so that at some point everyone is involved in these goals in some way and then we're all moving in the same direction to move the district forward and the portables would be looking at the work that we do you know and recognizing that there is more and more evidence that you know high performing boards that work together collaboratively with their superintendents can make a positive impact on student achievement so what are things that we can do then to focus on and recognizing then that all of the tasks to complete these goals have to be within the board's purview so if it requires the administration to get the work done then it's not a board goal a board goal or
180you know work that you can do to help support the work that's going on in the district and at the same time you know looking at your work and i guess kind of say that the same thing here um and just you know making sure that we you know talked about the fact that we can consider the board self-evaluation to be a tool in helping us look at that um so we did look at then you know what your two goals were for last year um and those being the board goals and you said that you had wanted to work toward masterboard certification so that said it is a requirement that and it's more just kind of a commitment to training um and because that's a lot of time sports will say to me like
181what's the big deal you know why should we work for these certifications and it's pretty much just that it's um you know a way to kind of show your community show the staff show you know show the other district stakeholders that as a group you are interested in having shared learning experiences your interest in gaining shared knowledge you're interested in you know kind of agreeing on things and working together as a team to to move forward um so this is just a way to validate that um so the requirement for this particular certification is that within a two-year period after you have earned your board certification to get 10 more credits then in that two-year period in each hour of training together with at least seven of the nine of you present equals one credit
182so you know that's so you know so you were saying that yeah by the time we're done tonight we certainly have chipped away at some of this and then your second goal was to improve communication within the board as well as with all the stakeholders through continued use of the board portal and shared documents so if there's anything that you would like to share in terms of things that you feel like you did last year that you were able to you know kind of help do some work on this goal or yeah i just have a comment i haven't looked but last time i looked it was a while ago we used to um when we had committee meeting minutes then we would email them to i think donna and then she would put them
183on the board portal and i don't think every committee is doing that so i think it's good to have the committee minutes in the board portal that's something we were doing regularly and i think we got away from them we thought we were with you so sorry i have been uploading minutes that i'm receiving i i might have missed a few but i've been trying to um upload everything that we currently have um i know finance is up i believe safety and security is up and europe and i believe i have almost i think all the curriculum might be up there too okay like i said i haven't looked in a while so you probably caught up that's good and a question are those the committee minutes available to the public or only in the
184private board portal only in the private board portal and is that are they confidential is that if that yeah yeah so i i didn't mean to like the reports though because we give reports the committee shares give reports at the meetings but there's no written document that's available to the public you know that's what i was trying to get at right there's no written document available um it'll usually be part of the minutes that that there was a committee report given but the actual written report is not public now because committees can only make recommendations and committees can't make decisions then you know the government records council who oversees what documents are available to the public and what documents are not would say that those documents that are just consultative or deliberative like it's not
185a final document you can't make it you know it's not making a decision so then that's not a document then that would be made available to the public because it doesn't meet the kind of it's a like i said a consultative or deliberative document because it's only making recommendations so the public is entitled to actions that the board takes that would impact the public so because committees only can make recommendations then it's more the actions and the work of the full board that is you know public interest got it and just to follow up the um the task force committees that um that mr michochi created um in response to cobid are those is that a different or is is the output of those meetings different or is that something that is shared can be
186shared with the public those again i would say um are more they're not making decisions they're just kind of acting as a committee also so they are not public record either um [Music] they just are helped to guide and discuss like all the other committees but they're not actually i don't want to say david you could chime in here i mean they kind of guide the administration on how we're making our final decisions they provide input and they contribute to uh the discussion but in the end you know they're not making any formal um decisions we don't have many chairpersons on each of those committees being represented by you know every board member who's on it isn't there's no chairperson and it's just a matter of getting a opinion from all the different members of
187all the stakeholders that is brought to damien's attention or to administration attention so that they can go forward in what um everyone is contributing to the meeting they're handled more like a company meeting right okay yeah i guess i was just wondering because we have the the section on the website for updates on on our copic response and um was just wondering if that was if the if the evolving i don't know discussions and and consideration were something that was either appropriate or relevant to share as part of our like coveted response section on the website jill has it sounds like it's not oh yeah has anybody asked you for committee reports or is that just you were just asking people no people have asked me well what's how i hear about these committees and
188yeah so i mean not like nobody said can i have a report from this committee but but it's more you know general questions people trying to get a sense of what's going on in a general you know just an interest if they want to check in where could they look you know they didn't see something there where could they find it that's it no no you know i mean if it's a um you know if it's something to do with a committee like if they have just like a policy question and they can always you can always refer them to you know contact the committee chair if they had a question or you know damian or myself you know right okay so like if somebody has a question about the facilities or our you know
189the the medical committee or something you know it's kind of you know more you know who knows what's coming up as things continue to change um yeah always perfect i mean people have questions i know you and i have had this conversation yeah that people don't want to but um yeah always try and tell them just either contact you know myself if i can answer it or do it or i do okay all right i do okay okay charlene you're yeah okay so i guess recognizing that these were our two goals from last year just wanted to you know the next thing would be to have a discussion about what you want your goals to be for this year um what things that you feel like as a board it would be helpful for you
190to work on and hold yourself accountable to it can be continuing either one of these goals it can be something completely different it's just as a group would need to come to an agreement on what it is that you feel would be helpful for you as a board to focus on to advance your work again recognizing that all the steps to accomplish it has to be the board's work so my initial thought i'm just going to throw out my initial thought right here um and i'm not adding anything i'm just saying the master certification i mean we're we're working towards that so obviously i would think that would stay on um improved communication is always a great one so my suggestion would be to add on to these as opposed to get rid of them
191and start from scratch i mean my thought was to add on to them since we you know and i am taking notes and so whatever ideas you come up with with the goals i will type it up and send it to you just okay there with my big yellow pad right yeah yeah i think i i'm not sure if this is the appropriate place to add like is it a board goal but we often talk about you know the unconscious bias and the culture and maybe bringing more training or or more programs to the school to to i guess keep it as a forefront of discussion would that be a board goal or is that more of a district goal because that's not really something we can facilitate it's really just something that we want
192to well we could do training for ourselves i mean i agree i'm not saying right i mean but you know i'm not sure if it could be a board goal because we really can't make the programs happen no but you can we can i think it is absolutely within the square squarely within our responsibilities mary do you have i know early on you asked us to send in examples of goals that i know i i did i do have your goals yeah i have one on that actively engaged to create a safe and welcoming environment for every student by facilitating the development of culturally informed individuals and diminishing misconceptions and prejudices that fuel discrimination bias again it's general doesn't talk about specifically what has to happen but says as a board that this is what
193we stand for well then that gets that we get flowed to the administration to execute and correct to get the specifics and the goals around it so that's a district goal i i think we board goals are things that we actually do that's the only thing only issue i would have said yeah yeah can i just uh make a comment guys real quick i know it's going back a while but our part of our goal number one as a district was to improve school climate and culture this year and part of that district goal involves um you know our um diversity equity and inclusion training and we're working with a consultant to continue those trainings in those programs through the year and we we could um you know at some point try to schedule some
194training that comes off that district goal with the board but we do have that as part of our district goals and that should be a district goal that's something that the the faculty the administration the people who have the daily connection with these kids and everything that's going on on campus should be working too yes we as a board can support programs but it's not for us to actually be the ones who are you know bringing these to the to the community to the st to the staff and the campus it has to be someone who's you know people who are working there and engage with the students on a regular basis i think that what i really what i have a problem with on the planning is that our board goals are completely distinct
195and divorced from anything that is moving the district forward or anything that is directly associated with the district goals so as i think charlotte said pretty clearly we have to be able to link the goals that the board has to what the goals of of the district are and ours should be should be broad and again i think to say that this board doesn't have a responsibility in creating a safe and welcoming culture is an unfortunate thing i mean we absolutely are 100 responsible for that hey mary yes regarding goals and this is just my opinion on i i guess this was developed last year i wasn't there but uh i think item two makes two statements um and they're both important statements um i think as a board based on what i heard tonight
196we d we do need to improve communication we need to work as a as a functional board and and communicate with each other and i think the second point is just as important it was discussed tonight and i'd like to use the word on the second point enhance the ability um of stakeholders to kind of participate and and and and us communicating with them and communicating you know back and forth i think the suggestion tonight in the board agenda to include like a little bit more of a breakdown what happens around when the superintendent talks talks you know maybe like apartment head's going to talk tonight i mean i think it's a great idea in giving the public the ability to understand what's going on little things like that so when i look at that
197i almost feel like two statements that are very important that that were discussed pretty much all night long okay yeah i mean i i agree i think that you know it should stay and we should still work towards that and then add on to you know so if we wanted to be something in the um you know we can you know we can again we can improve our communication we can come up with action ideas action plans on how to get to that i mean i i have here like livingston did like they broke those down into four components board communications budget developments board professional development forward to board engagement like they visited that way that they had like four different kind of things and then um had mill burns um theirs is more well
198they're actually they put on for this year they want they're going to work towards their boardmaster certification um i guess they're going to go out for a referendum so they're talking about the board will examine the facilities finance policy and academic impact of enrollment and increases in the district and then the next one is about um negotiating a collective bargaining agreement which you know we were okay with all that stuff so i mean [Music] you know i mean i'm i'm open i mean whatever you know whatever you know i think we should definitely keep number two and add to it so whatever else you want and i was thinking of breaking it into two distinct statements one what i was talking about maybe breaking it into this distinct statements communication within the board the second
199is the communication with the public enhancing that ability oh okay i see we could do that um very important issues and i think they were talked quite amazingly well not noisy but they talked quite a bit i think the point was well taken by everybody so and i'm just looking at dan i'm looking at yours here um i mean you have community relations on yours improve that so i mean and we do have we do provide inherent bias training and it seems to be getting a lot of traction lately he's going to living the the person that does it from new jersey school boards is going to livingston shortly he's going to mod film next week so you know so it is an area that boards are wanting to learn more about at you know
200another way from a board's perspective that you would add this to the work you're doing would be like in your policies like some words will look at their policies and look at it through an equity lens and say as i look at this policy are we making sure that we're addressing the the equity needs of our students and staff in the policy so you know those could be ways as a board you know that you could help support the work that the district is doing and we had talked about doing um some um training on that but you know time's gotten away from us and it's the end of the year so maybe that's something that we could put into our if we're going to have a retreat in march and do um training for
201the new jersey school board's csa evaluation we can always add this in as well um you know do that could we just do it as as you know i'm going to say a separate thing rather than making it a you know a three or four evening you know hour thing just kind of just do that training on its own you know we can do it on its own or we can have we can have the person come to a public board meeting and do the presentation there as well i kind of like that idea you know like as part of a public board meeting and you know i i think that's a good place to do it i think a lot of people would be interested and it will show that we're trying to make
202a difference in what is a really big issue okay so i mean we just i mean we could you know we're going to do that because we said that we're going to do that do we want to incorporate that somehow into our goals um what seems to be the biggest topic that anybody you know thinks that we need to have in our goals um i would have said we'll and working together somehow becoming a more function a better functioning board by working together is that training that means respect i mean it's yeah so that might even be that that code of governance best practices or whatever that we were going to talk about you know so how you might accomplish that as one of your goals to say to to put this you know code
203into place and i guess and hold yourselves accountable to carrying it out i think we definitely have to look into that mary okay yeah i like that i mean okay i'm sorry i'm sorry that's okay um i think that um this best practice for boards is probably something that should be a uniformed you know document that all boards run by um i think you know boards get to become very complacent i think a lot of members forget that you know we are quote-unquote elected officials and that we need to maintain the proper protocol and ethics and i think best practices is something that should be part of our board goals going forward especially looking at the documents and trying to make them compatible with what west essex needs so i mean not to jump off
204the board goals but did everyone review the uh board's best practices i mean you know do we need to change that and then adopt that into a board board goal and then also like some you know um i mean i think the goal could be to develop and implement go best practices for our board that could be the goal i don't think you can do i don't really think it's realistic to do this in one night correct all right that would be good yeah i like that i think so that would give us four goals because if you didn't keep the master board uh divide number two into in half so that way it would be each thing would be a little bit more uh prevalent and then number three would be best practices wherever
205you word that and then the action plan for three would be you know we'll take what you sent which was really good i thought both of them were good i think i like mill burns a little better but um i i think there wouldn't be much work there i mean they've already done the work we don't have to reinvent the wheel but we should look at them and you know make a few changes to what's good for us but it's basically done and then we actually have to implement that i just i feel really strongly that we need to say something publicly that we are committed to a safe and welcoming environment for all students i mean i know not everyone in this four degrees but we have students that do not feel safe and
206it's our responsibility to make a statement to that effect i just i think could you jan could you explain that because i don't what do you mean that you don't feel that all of us here are in agreement with your statement and i took a lot of backlash when i spoke out about the black lives matter peace and my frustration that the board hadn't stepped up i took a significant amount of backlash from this board um in what way because i'm not i i need clarification i need some clarity jan so that i can understand and i can move forward i was told that it was inappropriate for me to speak i was told that people will need a quote very angry with me and that we would not do training for the board because
207i had had the audacity to speak out on that topic i was told that i had to call the board racist which i did not do i was specifically speaking about a larger issue that i felt was very important and i still think is very important and maybe because it impacts the group that i represent maybe disproportionately um and in many reasons stop one minute what's the group that you represent i represent north caldwell new jersey which has probably the largest percentage of jewish students that attend west essex and we have a significant issue among that population where there is a lot of bias and intimidation issues that are occurring and i know that that no one wants to hear that and no one wants to talk about that we have had numerous issues that
208have come before this board around other issues of racial discrimination and commentary and and things like that so it's not a it's not a singular event it's not something that happens once in a while it's unfortunately and i'm not saying it's it's limited at all to what's happening in west ethics okay so i think you guys keep misunderstanding what i'm saying i think it is a much more global problem that in many respects also impacts us but we have a responsibility to address it within this board as well and we have a responsibility as board members to make sure that we are as educated as we can possibly be to create environments that are safe and welcoming for all students and we have a responsibility to make sure that that happens throughout the district as
209members of the board so that's simply what i'm saying and i think it is important that we say that out loud um i i feel very strongly that we that we have to have something that says that we are we are standing for those issues particularly right now well i think you know to clarify something i i i don't know where the statements came from and i don't want to know who said these things to you about your comments uh that's neither here nor there at this moment but i think what the thing is is that the impression was that when and this is only me this is only me speaking is that when you made that statement it felt it was my perception and it was it felt that you were pointing the fingers
210at those of us on the board and i think that's what created a lot of animosity about things because that's how we heard it because we all have to remember that when we speak we need to preface things by saying i'm not saying it's about you know myself as a board member or i this a disclaimer but i'm just saying that this is a cultural being that's out there in the west i don't know or collectively need to that caused a lot of strain from that comment from you and that's and that's me being totally honest and and that's you know that's how i think we need to all that's why when you read the best practice and how it states how you need to represent yourself i think going forward we need to look
211at and we have to stop and think about how things are coming out of our mouths and how the perception is going to be received by the community and also by your fellow board members and i think that's what we need to work on and again i appreciate your perspective but again i was very clear that it was a much more global issue and that we had a responsibility as a board as i still think we have a responsibility as a board to address these issues that are uncomfortable to address i guess you know i went to west africa i never experienced it my children never experienced it um i guess it's just something you know that i i've never been a part of in the community in the west essex community and and i've
212never had a parent share it with me but that's exactly the point you would never have had you you likely would have never been in that situation that is exactly the point i was making in my statement is that most of us on this um on this board have never been in a situation where we find ourselves in that position however we have a responsibility to those students who are minority students in whatever respect to make sure that they have the same safe and welcoming environment that most of us enjoy all of the time so we don't run the school that's up to damien and the principals and it is in our policy already that we don't discriminate it's in a number of different policies and also you know i also worry like there's a
213line where some of these things become political and some of these things are you know there's just as a board we're not actually a political body i know that we are voted in but are our um but and in fact that's why board elections used to be in april and not in november because they wanted to separate it out from politics but um i think we're looking for government the safe and welcoming environment is not political well that is in our policy it is in many of our policies so um so we already are doing that and if there's kids that are experiencing different things when that comes to damien's attention i know he's handling that so making a statement saying we have a safe environment doesn't necessarily mean we really do have a safe
214environment a statement's not going to do anything the actual the thing that is going to do something is that it's in policy that's what makes the school run it's in policy damian knows about it and he's developing that culture so i'm not sure what more you want because that's how a school runs so i think you can learn many other districts where there are very similar statements um particularly at this time where boards have taken their rightful responsibility to ensure there is a safe and welcoming environment for all students so we should pretty much look across all boards right now let me just interject for one second chance when you say that you want a statement i'm just gonna call it a board goal that will focus on creating a safe and welcoming environment for
215every student right and we will work the diminished biases and we will work to diminish discrimination i mean right no no no i i hear i heard what you're saying i just want i was you cut me off before i finished my thought what i wanted to say to you was so with that statement in our um our board goal is it something that you see maybe like we've just developed this multicultural club is it something that we can you know intertwine something with that within our board goal to maybe help them along or something along those lines i was just trying to clarify what your vision might be on that i think that some of the things that damian has already outlined make it perfect i mean again your board goals should feed in
216there should not be a gap between the board goals and what the district is doing right i think some of the things that damian has laid out has certainly been uh will certainly fit perfectly into what we're talking about however i think the board i mean it would wouldn't hurt for us to go through the training that we just talked about then we're definitely going to do the training it wouldn't hurt for us to to have a better understanding of the kinds of things that are happening because again ann i think you're responding from a place where i'm not sure we have a complete understanding of what's happening on the day-to-day level and that leaves all of us with a level um a gap in information that makes it very difficult uh to be able
217to make approach to oversee appropriate policy so again i think that there are a lot more incidents occurring that we don't and mary you and i have had this conversation at length there are incidents that are occurring that we never hear about as board members we hear about them as community members possibly but we don't hear about them as board members and so it's hard to really understand the depth of the issue when you don't have the data right i hear you so so what i'm saying is so as a as a board goal self and well a safe and welcoming environment you know one of the things like an action plan would be the training at a board meeting we have a lot of safety measures in place that also fall into that so
218safety you know can fall on there as well it doesn't have to necessarily be about bias yeah here's what right safe and welcoming environment is more and like and you said i mean so we're saying with that with that board goal i mean training you know you're saying through policy changes oh no there's no changes the policy already has that in there right so policies that we have an effect but i mean we could always look at them like i think charlene had mentioned some policies that may have an effect um maybe can be looked at to be how'd you say that charlene they could be looked at to be you know seen kind of throw it through an equity lens so you look at a policy you're not only looking at it just strictly
219for the policy content but also looking at how it approaches equity yeah and i think strauss estimate does that i mean we have a transgender policy we have a religion policy so i mean really if you um and for the people on the policy committee over the last year we've seen a bunch of policies come through and that's why i'm saying when we were doing the board self-evaluation under policy people rated themselves very high and i was a little surprised because i think not everyone knows our policies in my opinion um because i can see by their discussions that they're not reading the policies many of our policies have a lot of these things that jan wants and then damien i know for sure is carrying them out but i mean he can't do he
220doesn't know of a case he can't change anything he can't do anything but when the case comes up he's providing counseling for these kids we have um we used to have assemblies for them in middle school and high school so you know it's fine if we want to write a statement that we have a safe and welcoming environment but you know i don't think that's very substantive and i think that the policy and the actions that we're taking have more substance but can i uh writing it in our goals i mean because i know we're already doing so just really really quick and you're saying that there are instances that are not being reported i would jan said i i'm not i'm not aware of these instances so that's a that's that's a problem is
221that are there instances that are not being reported or getting to damian i don't know they're getting to damian damian gets all kinds of reports of things that happen but we don't hear about them unless they rise to hiv but that doesn't mean it's not occurring so i think it's just really important that there's a differential there and it's a fairly large differential and again my point to marry when we had the conversation is as a board member i'd like to understand not the details but you know it's hard to judge when you don't have a concept of actually what's happening as far as quantity of um of incidences that occur it's really hard to make that judgment when you're only getting a portion of the information so i have made a recommendation many many
222months ago that similar to how we get reports about the number of suspensions per month that we we understand the number of reports of anti-semitic issues the number of times that you know someone says um a discriminatory thing that the faculty become aware of just because that happens doesn't mean it's an hiv it could be a code of conduct violation um so i think that i think that if we got that information it would be better but again you're you are qualified by what becomes a bit what becomes available or awareness to the war to the district we to the district correct yeah that if it's a way if the district is aware of it i feel like the board should be equally as aware of it so that we can again that we can
223excuse me i have told oh i'm sorry mary charlene could you just step in here a minute and explain so that we have a clear picture is this within our rights to have this information um since it's nothing that we specifically govern since it's the daily happenings in the school with damien so i want to make sure if we make a decision to do something it's something within our rights as board policy so wait real quick charlene before you answer that because i i just want to um just say so i had spoken to jan last week we had had a discussion on this what can be you know what is reported to us what is not reported to us so i was going to bring this up as well what can be reported and
224what can't so now go ahead and if you've got just because obviously i'm no no so we're looking to for guidance to know like um you know like we get like deb said so what in so in general i mean i guess without knowing how much of it is confidential information about student you know actually just wanted kind of macro information um but you know in general boards get information if it's board business and they identify something as being board business it's something that you are being asked to take action on so i don't know how any of that fits in the context of the conversation that's just their general statement um that has you know not specific to this um but i just kind of wanted to circle back to the board goals and
225just really kind of wanted to ask if perhaps it would make sense you know we talked about the fact that we're all in agreement that we have a good district goal on this topic and i think damian mentioned that it was your number your first district goal would we feel comfortable as a board saying that we are going to support the district's work in this area through increased understanding and training that'd be wonderful yes that'd be fantastic darling thank you that's great but wait real quick so um when when we were talking about the um jan had said about the anti-semitic reports that are you know reported to the school or whether they're um suspensions so i do want clarification on that because the hivs we do vote on so that is why they are
226board business and they're reported to us so anything else that is not something that we have um a vote on is that you know i guess we're trying to find out where is where is that so in general yeah that's um kind of what distinguishes so sometimes information will be shared to the board and and sometimes sports have a hard time understanding sometimes like especially in committees where you're looking at things in depth a lot of times administration will share information with you and maybe it's not you know maybe they're over sharing just because as part of this committee discussion so what are you really entitled to what really bored business is you know things that the board has to take a vote on so you know step say that you need to cast informed
227vote so what information do you need so i am asking for something that is not you know fits in that hole then as a board member i have a right to bring something up that i might be interested in and if a majority of my board members agree that this is information that would be a value for the board for the board to do its work um then you know you might be able to ask for that information but you know at one member regardless what the subject is i shouldn't be asking for things that either i'm not asked to vote on or it's not the portsmouth okay [Applause] i just want to make a comment guys this uh to the point earlier about trying to have the goals you know somewhat aligned with the
228district goals we do have our third goal is about strengthening communication with our stakeholders okay just to your point of the communication piece that is a big goal of ours with um to improve that communication with the school and the community and all of our stakeholders so then just kind of to sum up since we had so much conversation here about the so we agreed that we were going to keep the first goal the master board we talked about the communication goal and said that we were going to break it into two parts one of them that would be communication within the board and then the other one would be kind of external communication with the community they talked about the fact that we were going to develop and implement the board best practices so
229that would be something of a later discussion that as a group you would figure out you know how you're going to do that and then agree then that we have as a goal that we were going to support the district goal kind of in the equity and safe area there through um increased understanding and training so you would have five board goals then went from two to five so that was you know a good conversation but i think that you you know have pulled everything that we've talked about tonight together in these goals so i am really proud of the work that you did tonight i appreciate this excellent may i ask a question for clarification and maybe this is for you charlene um regarding the or jan was suggesting um or are asking about
230uh a reporting of incidents that aren't um designated hiv incidents so they're not currently brought to our attention so just getting that macro information like number of incidents on a same monthly basis wouldn't that be something just a macro report like that something that would help keep us as a board informed as to the level of you know the the quantity or you know i don't know if they could be categorized by nature or whatever but just so that we could be prepared in the event policy modifications might need to be made so i mean it's really hard for me to respond to that because i don't know how much of its student specific i don't know how much of it is unfounded so i mean what i don't know what value there would be
231in looking at things that are come back as being unfounded i guess so it really you know is something i guess from a district perspective that you really have to come to an agreement on what information the board needs in that area i mean i can't really weigh in on it without knowing the things that are happening in the district without knowing the things that you're hearing and the things that you're talking about it really would be something that um you know it would be a district discussion charlene do you know of any other districts who do this kind of reporting or do other districts do it i mean i don't get involved in that level of detail of what you know what's happening in districts like just as a rule of thumb whenever i'm
232asked whether where boards should be involved or where they shouldn't be involved it's typically that line is drawn at whether it's you know whether the board belongs it so i don't know if there's i guess we kind of went a little over probably than what you thought i'm gonna stop sharing my screen right i don't know if there's anything more that um the group wanted to talk about or felt that we didn't discuss tonight that you think would be helpful or um good plan moving forward here right yes i think so so you'll you'll type up the goals you'll send them to me okay and then um at a later date we'll look at you know on our own the best practices at a meeting um does anyone else have any other last thoughts or
233questions or anything i just thought on the board goals i wasn't here the last time you adopted is this something the board just internally adopts um or do we vote on it or something like that we vote on we vote on them at a board meeting yearly we um you know we um either update or you know renew or sometimes there's ongoing things or whatever but every year we um it's supposed to be we usually do them in september right after the school year starts because there are school year um goals i think august august okay yeah okay so we're a little behind this year so thank you very much mary since we're all here yes um do we have a moment to just discuss because i think it's it at the you know the
234forefront of everything going on with cobin right now is the surrounding you know essex county numbers and schools closing and those choosing to close as of monday some are going monday to the beginning of december then they're going to revisit it some of them are going straight through from monday to martin luther king to get through all of the holidays you know the thanksgiving the hanukkah the christmas the kids coming home from college the families getting together um do we have any anything that we're looking at or any numbers or any information that we need to be shared since we're all here together right now you mean if like cases or something or or any you know anything that we're looking at with damien or i know damien's here anything that you know we know
235what's going on i know damien you you know you're always in contact you network with all the superintendents have you heard anything with the surrounding districts are going to be doing yeah so obviously we are we are keeping an eye on um on the cases and they're obviously on a rise and essex county is one of the highest counties in the state of new jersey right now um and i did send out communication to the community yesterday letting them know that we are you know going to continue to monitor public health data you know a lot of these districts are are they're taking these measures um proactively you know to try to mitigate the spread with with the holidays coming and travel potential for travel and things like that um you know technically the governor
236has not given us that provision to proactively close we've not been given that um provision now you know can things change they can they can change within a day and right now the latest report that we have was through november 7th and were the case where we were still um rated at a moderate risk and um you know when that next report comes out things could be different i know the public health officers were on a big meeting today um with the state and um tomorrow we'll be reconvening with our public health officers so you know there's definitely some value to what some of the districts are doing you know um the two weeks after thanksgiving that's a big travel time you know to try to go remote and reduce the the risk of of
237uh spread could be a proactive measure you know the same thing some districts are going the first two weeks of the new year as well um so it's definitely something on the radar um you know there can be other issues you know districts may run into staffing issues if they have too many teachers quarantined or you know staff members that um they can't staff their buildings properly so they'll have no choice but to close down you know child care centers are closing more people qualify for the fcra so the short of it is it's on the radar but we have not made any any um decision to do that at this point oh i mean i don't know how the board feels about that i know that our community really wants our buildings open i'm
238really i'm really interested to hear what the board members think i'll tell you what i think i've i've been working since july 13th and i tell my family and friends i i feel safer at work than anywhere else but maybe it's different the way in a school you're doing the protocols that the school's doing or what we're doing in industry we the thermal scanning the questionnaires and the masks so it's i can understand some i know some of the folks in the public they've been really vocal about it and i know in class instruction is is best and i just know from working that it's if done right it's very safe it's it could be the safest place to be but right i would love this i would hate i would as a last resort
239remote distance learn i i'd like to see as much in classroom as subject to the condition it's safe i think it's best for the students and the staff i think it's safe that's my opinion i'm just content that i was just going to leave you while you guys finish this conversation and so thank you charlie thank you so much i'm sorry tonight everyone's okay everyone thank happy thanksgiving yes they do say that testing within schools is is lower than regular general population is from what you read you know so you as long as you can keep your staff you know happy is where my concern lies and you know i don't know how how they feel can we can we keep the staff there well the challenge is you have districts closing every day and
240then um as districts close staff members qualify for ffcri so so so buildings are losing their staff and then absolutely what's the value in having kids coming in if ten of the classrooms have subs in them and they're all learning remotely anyway i almost think we need to give the teachers a little notice like you know and i i feel like they're more prepared now to teach remotely you know and and i think they they have come up with good methods to teach remotely so you know if we can give them a little i guess notice i don't know if that's the right word i want to use but you know when you say tomorrow we're closing it's a lot harder to prepare no i think we should you know and i think the schools
241are safe i think of anything west essex when you hear about everything that they're doing i think it is a safe environment and not that i think it i know it's a safe environment but it's it's the outs you know it's everything that's happening outside of west essex you know with the holiday the traveling the you know the celebrations and i my opinion is it's just you know these kids need structure and they need consistency so like cindy said to let them know you know i think damien if you saw the numbers and you talked to the other superintendents i'm just of the opinion i would rather keep everyone on one set schedule through the holiday season through the traveling season make sure the kids know exactly what to anticipate the teachers know what to
242expect and that we can give them concentrated academics and work schedule and then come back and revisit it when it's all over and hope that we can go straight through you know with more time spent in on campus that's just my opinion i i just think that with with all the schools around here you know um that it's something we should consider so we do have a building's operations committee meeting tomorrow um that i think this will be the biggest topic of discussion so far um you know i just want to say so damian was saying i mean i think it's safe for the kids i think a bigger issue for our district is going to be as all these other school districts are closing teachers are entitled to to work from home and i
243think that's going to be our biggest issue moving forward not whether or not our schools are clean and safe but can they you know can they be staff so i know we have a meeting that will be discussing a lot of different you know scenarios and what's going on in the world so you would think a lot of teachers have students coming home from college so you think you know they're telling you to quarantine if you have a student coming home from college so how do you you know i feel bad for these teachers i don't know i guess what they're supposed to do you know what i mean they're kids coming home from college are you telling me i can't go to work anymore like i i don't know what you're supposed to do
244yeah sitting in there today on new jersey online there was an article about there was an increasing pressure around the country from teachers saying that we should go all remote you know i'm curious is is that fueling the fire is it is it the fact that they go on you know leave is it just they feel it's unsafe well they're entitled if they're if their kid's school is closed they are entitled to work from home with that leave that damian was saying so but other than that we haven't gotten any indication from the teachers that they're uncomfortable with the hybrid yeah okay great i just got good news that's good you know stay the course and i don't think you know well because i um we're doing a lot of stuff at work about opening
245and reopening all this stuff but you know and today we had this discussion and i was like because we we have to think about summer camp now and i'm like i i don't feel like it's going to be our decision i feel like if if it gets out of hand we have to close and if it doesn't get out of hand we'll be able to open and so i think at this point if we're not getting that many cases and we have the teachers we stay open and then if something happens where you don't have enough teachers or there's cases or just like you've been handling it the whole time you just day by day you have to make that decision and you make that call and it is tough on parents and teachers not
246getting notice i mean i'm like the biggest planner there is in the world this is like a crazy time for me because i can't plan but that's what we're living with and you know i do think the teachers are probably getting better at remote learning but i do think it's tough going back and forth you know it's i it's just a bad situation but i feel like west essex has been doing a good job you know and i feel like you just have to you know see what the the data is and then make a decision from that and for me i'll support you uh damien within whatever you think is best for the school for me it's about making sure that we we look at everything and we we have data to support our
247decisions i think one thing that we've we've we've lived by for the last six months is we make good decisions based on the data and we have good reasoning for for what we're doing so we're looking at the health and safety piece we're looking at the cases we're looking at at the staffing because it's not just it's also you know you can get a call that an individual has a close contact who has covered now they have to quarantine or with somebody that they were contacted with another close contact so now they have to quarantine there's a case in the school it's more the other cases that require people to quarantine or have to telework because their child care center closed so you know it's not just oh they're closing there's no cases they're closing
248because there's all these other variables that are impacting the operations of the school every day you're just literally covet management all day as you can go remote and you can really just focus on instruction all day okay so that's where where the big decisions have to come but you know this is big week we have a lot of decisions to make we have a lot of conversations we're meeting with the public health department tomorrow i met with all four ascending districts today with their superintendents you know and everybody has very different needs you know when you have a high school it's a it's a lot of different variables with a high school so right we're at a pivotal point right now with the holidays approaching so like you said you got to follow the data
249and see where it takes us and you know look at everything not just the you know like just the overall picture you know and the committees have been great you know we have the medical committee we have the building operations committee we have the distance learning committee and now they're kind of all coming together right now so right okay well good luck damian i wish you a lot on your shoulders and i just wish you a lot of luck well it's good to know that you guys will um support whatever the decisions are because just know that the decisions that we make they're well thought out we're not just reacting we we just trust me that we really will look at all of the different variables and and have you know consulted with everybody that
250we need when we do make the decision it's well thought out i i really i i believe you completely and i i really took that away in the summer that the public believed that too they saw how thorough the whole planning process with the committees and the you know obviously playing abc and then i i believe that i i think we have the public was supportive some things came up surprising and you know delaying the opening but you can't control that but i think i agree i have complete i support you completely i i i mean you've done a lot of planning sorry i mean you know from the beginning from the summer i mean we've come up with you know i know people were thinking that we didn't have a plan in place when
251we did it just wasn't you know when we were ready to roll it out because it still needed some fine tuning but i mean i think that we've been very diligent in all of our decisions you know the first two weeks we decided not to open because of filters i mean that was you know thought out and what were the pros and cons so i mean whatever our decision is going forward i mean i know that you're looking at the data and and the overall picture whether it be your people home quarantining or teachers or [Music] you know whatever it is you know we know that you're looking at everything so i appreciate it many of you are on these committees so you see the work we're doing you see the people that are involved
252in the decision making you see the the experts that we have that we we lean on for their advice and their guidance so we wanted to say something oh sorry go ahead i think clarification is the and i'm sorry we have so many test committees at this point is the building ops committee or task force the same as the facilities yeah those are two different ones correct management is separate yeah okay the building was integral in creating the hybrid model um the building is involved with um the bell schedules and you know um they would have impact on if we um wanted to keep going remote we would let that committee weigh in but developing the actual cohorts and that whole um phasing that was all building operations building ops okay facilities was a different
253setting the actual physical plant uh yeah building facilities was involved with all the ppe and the social distancing in the classrooms and the temperature scanners and you know the physical the physical building okay thanks um okay does anybody else have anything else before we close out i just didn't want to say one other thing and i feel like i've been doing a lot of talking tonight i'm sorry um tony uh since it is late your account the 12-month calendar you'll go over it with us i mean everyone's gotten a copy of it if anyone has any questions about it you can um email tony and then you'll report out on it next month yes uh yes or next meeting i should say okay sorry to delay that i might since since we're not we didn't
254discuss it tonight i could even there were only there were only two items that were not complete but as of getting through this retreat i think those i'll revisit the criteria but i think those two items are complete and instead of being um green on 96 of 98 items we're nine we're 98 of 98 but i can report on that one that was as of november 1st where i can update it through because the next meeting is what the december 7th right the right will update it as a month in november and again that'll then will be complete on the that's academic school year 2019 20. i'm just gonna say that's last year's calendar so we need to start working on this year i guess too if anyone has any comments they want to you
255know reach out to me on or if you get them and let me know otherwise like i would plan on updating it for those two because those were title those were pegged to the retreat which we've completed okay perfect and then i think it'd be great to talk to and you know talk about it in public and they may be interested to know that the things we do track throughout the year thank you um anything else okay um then tony you want to read it out um can you put it up on the screen melissa uh there being no way should we have a wait there being no phone i forgot to ask for a motion to i'm sorry emotion can i get a motion to adjourn for the evening second okay sorry tony now
256you can go i didn't have it up i forgot thank you madam president there being no further business before this board of education be it resolved at this public meeting be adjourned uh 9 47. excellent happy thanksgiving everybody