001Good evening. Welcome to the board of education regular meeting on Wednesday, March 19th, 2025 at um 700 p.m. calling to order at 7:03. So, if we would stand and Salute the flag and have a moment of silence. Pledge allegiance to the flag of the republic for its one nation under God indivisibley and justice for all. Thank you. Please be seated. recommend approving tonight's agenda as submitted. Second. First, Mr. Nichols. Second, Mrs. Pew, I believe. Roll call vote. Mr. Nichols, approve. Mrs. Pew, approve. Miss Brown, approved. And Mrs. Isler, nice. So approved. recommend to approve of the minutes of the board of education regular meeting of February 26, 2025. First, Mrs. Pew. Second. Second, Mr. Nichols. Roll call vote. Mrs. Pew. Mr. Nichols. Approved. Miss Sizzler abstain. And Miss Ralph approved. So approved. Okay. Recognition of
002guests. Dr. Lammore. Good evening everybody and uh thank you for being here tonight. We are we are truly blessed tonight to be able to recognize some truly outstanding scholars that we have here in the school district whose dedication, talent, and hard work have set them apart in academics, the arts, and extracurricular activities. Um, first I'd like to call up Mr. Jason Rogers. Before uh I turn over the microphone to Mr. Rogers, uh just want to say it's such a privilege to have his students here tonight. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a Sussex County Honors Band here from Laurel Middle High School this evening. How about give them a round of applause? What David and David so accomplished is a testament to their exceptional musicianship, their discipline, their commitment to excellence in the field of the
003arts. Their dedication to the craft not only brings pride to our school but also enriches our entire community. Ladies and gentlemen, how about one more round of applause as I welcome Mr. Jason Roger students. So, let's see. When was this that we got ready for these auditions? These guys I I'll announce to the entire band, the entire population that honors band exist. I tell them what it is. All right? And students have to audition to be selected. And they come from all over Sussex County, from every school district. And usually only a few well I'd like to say everybody would accept the challenge because I think we could dominate the group but I have some students that I'd like to recognize tonight um that they accepted the challenge of auditioning for Strangers and being accepted.
004So, Hi Wilkerson on flu. [Applause] Jordan Molina trumpet. Devote Charles on baritone. Kamari Hins on Mallets. Andrew Kerry on mallets and Josie Cruz on trumpet. [Applause] Okay, I have one more student that couldn't make it tonight and that's Susan Shahid, a senior on flute. Sneakers should know that. Ladies and gentlemen, uh please join me in welcoming Mrs. Chelsea Ling Bell. And next, we're going to recognize our sixth grade gifted and talented students who participated in a mock trial. Um, this mock trial competition saw these young scholars demonstrate remarkable critical thinking, public speaking, and teamwork skills, engaging in regular rigorous legal arguments. and showcase their intellect and their ability to think critically. Ladies and gentlemen, how about a round of applause for them [Applause] all? Tired of clapping. And at this time, please join me in
005welcoming Mrs. Lingfelder as she calls the names of our students. And I need to look at who I have here. So, I'm going to call everyone, but I know that some of my kiddos are not here. So I have Adam [Music] Atwell, Woodley Fuzzil, Alana Fire, Yetel, Choy, Ryder, Cordry, [Applause] uh Leah Edwards Hunt. I don't believe she Allison Garcia Velasquez. There's a lot of them. This is a good thing. Grayson Janna, Donna Jung, Asher Lynch, Michael Me, Dawson Milligan, Anthony Rosano, Dylan Sandival Lopez, Llaya Schaefer, Jen Stroal, and last but not least, Scarlet Williamson. I wasn't expecting to talk tonight. Mrs. V just was. But um this mock trial that we did, we actually started in the beginning of the year um with the students learning about different careers um that they could do
006later in their lives. I'm watching my one and two-year-old wreak havoc in the front. Um, so we did a practice trial in the beginning of the year that was a trial of the big bad wolf and the three little pigs. Um, and we had a lot of fun with that and a lot of learning and then we um changed it into a real life trial that we could do later in the year on um, music copyright laws. So they did an amazing job. Those of you that were able to come and see it got to see how great these students are. Some of these guys have been with me since I started the program when they were in third grade. So, this is a bittersweet year for me saying goodbye to them, but I know
007they're going to go on to do amazing things. So, thank you guys. I've seen you lately. Mrs. constituents, would you mind joining up here? Ladies and gentlemen, uh now we have the privilege and the monumental of honoring all of our readers from the I Love to Read Month winners, uh the Leila. And we have quite a team that we would like to honor first. As we call your name, could our team members, advisors, uh from Nlea please come to the front? Mrs. Jenny [Applause] B, Mrs. Stacy Qua, Mrs. Andrea Henry, This is Amber Justice. Miss Mia Brown. Mrs. Elizabeth Lynch, Jordan Wheel, everybody. This is Chris Banga. Mrs. Mallalerie Steels. Ladies and gentlemen, how about one round of applause for our team. Now I'm going to turn the ceremony over to their principal. Give it
008up for Mrs. Fedra deploy. [Applause] Good evening and thank you for this opportunity to s to celebrate the success of our bull pups. This year we encouraged our bull pups to read more books for our farm theme and read more is exactly what they did with a grand total of 7,187 books. Our early childhood friends read books. Our preschool friends read 1,178 books. And our kindergarten pups read 5,533 books. Our top early childhood classroom was Mrs. Given morning group with 135 books in preschool, Mrs. Carson's morning group read 443 books and Mrs. Field's kindergarten bull pups read 1,829 books. Awesome work, Bull Pups. Thank you to our students, our families for building a love for reading that will last a lifetime. Again, thank you to our committee. You are amazing. Now, without further ado, let's
009meet our readers. And as I announce Mrs. Given AM PreK um one for um early childhood, Miss Parsons, do you want to come and accept your four-year-old one? And Miss Steel, she's already up here, but this is for your kindergarten friend. Our first place reader for the entire school was Bodie Ule. was Kaani [Applause] Drummond. And our third place reader was Junior Rodriguez Lopez. All right. And here are other readers. I have a long list, so bear with me. Parker Firestone Raiden Puerto Raiden coming on. And next is Graham Parson. I don't want to Marcel trader Bolton Waller, Charlie Stanfield, Ricky Passwaters. Come on, Ricky. Brooklyn Stewart. Hazel Hunucker, come here. Blair Jenkins, Amos Seismore, Gracie Be Champlin, Ava Trader, Matteo Mcrono, John Stouse, Travis Johnson, Asher Carrie, Olivia Meler, There she is. McKenzie DS
010Skyler Justice Joshua Flores Hunter is Eastston Phillips, Selvin Amro, Jefferson Perez, Sanchez, Gemma Stanfield, Ember James, Kani Drummond, Brody Glass, Alani Johnson, Mason Chanley, Delaney A celeb, Olivia Paul, Everly Greenwood, Jacob Bar, I don't desele Dir long, Isabelle Arnet, Bodule, Junior, Rodriguez, Lopez, Brooklyn, Landon Short, Jackson Hicks, and AJ Peterson. Good job. [Applause] scary. Some of these little stones Shouldn't me. [Music] real. Yeah. It's not on recording, is it? So crooked. um communications and announcements and then public participation venue because there isn't any public. Okay. Hello. Hello. Look down kind of like a loose stack. Okay, we're going to move right along now. Okay, next would be public participation and I have no one that signed up for it. So, we'll move right along. Superintendent remarks. meet in the parking lot. Thanks for coming everybody.
011Uh, real quick. Uh, we shined a spotlight on a lot of our students this evening, but I felt I would be remiss if we didn't shine a spotlight on our exceptional staff who were honored this past week with our of the year um, staff selections. Our building educational support staff of the year. We have five schools now. So at North Florida Academy, Michaela Brown. Yeah, there we go. At least head chief custodian Dante Matthews. Laurel Elementary School, Briana Phillips. And Laurel Middle School, Donna Ward. And in his first year, chief custodian at Laurel High School, Aaron Johnson. Our behavioral health professionals of the year at each of our schools at North Florida learning learning academy educational do school psychologist Christina Fishbrook Laurel Elementary School counselor Heather O'Neal school psychologist at Laurel Intermediate School Nicole Pearl
012counselor at Laurel Middle School Justin Young and counselor at Laurel High School Jamie Juel Reynolds [Applause] And last but certainly not least, our teachers of the year for each of the buildings from North Floral Early Learning Academy, Stacy Puerto just here with us at Eden. Laurel Intermediate School math teacher Corey Sullivan. Familiar theme here. Laurel Middle School math teacher Ashley Phillips at Laurel Elementary School. Dr. Betsy McDorman. and at Laura High School science teacher Courtney Baker. One more round of applause for all of our folks. Thank you very much. One last thing, um Andrea Yodar's working hard on this, our HR director and also our director of student nutrition. Uh first annual Grow and Know Career Expo. We're going to grow our own. We're going to have um Andrew, you want to come up and
013tell everybody about it real quick? What do you think? Come on. Give a hand up to Andrea Yoshi. We're almost out of here, folks. Tell them about your vision. Hello, everybody. Hello. All right, Laurel. No, we I I had an idea not too long ago about just having our own community job fair. And so I kind of I shared the information with Dr. Larore and I said I called it something like Laurel community job fair and like employee information event and Dr. Dr. Larmore said, "Why don't we do this grow a no career expo and that is a really it's a much nicer title." So anyway, yes, thank you. So, no, but the point is we'd like to grow our own. We want to we have some vacancies and we I know we have some
014wonderful people right here in our community and so we'd like to tap into our community. We want to fill all those vacancies with really great people that we have right here in Laurel. So, we're inviting them to come April 2nd. Um, [Music] he called them kids. That's right. We're gonna give them whatever their journey is, whatever their road is, we're going to get them right into a teaching position. Um, among other things, there's all kinds of opportunities and we want to share those all of those with everybody who might be interested. And then also on the other side for our current employees who might have some benefits, questions, supplemental benefits, whatever that might be, we'll have some stations there for our current employees as well. So, it's a little something for everybody. Yeah, that's all
015we got, folks. Thank you very much. Done. Thanks. Okay, next we have um forward participation. Um Miss Ralph, would you like to say anything? Uh, I enjoyed walking through the schools um the past week and I think Miss Sku and myself are going to be walking through again. Um, it's good to be able to see everybody in an informal setting. So, thank you for welcoming us. I did over what she said and we both participated in the uh I love to read month and that was so much fun to go to those little kids um both middle school teachers and they don't appreciate these little kids that really did appreciate it so that was enjoyable. Thank you for that. Thank you um Miss Mrs. This was such a great um thing tonight. we had all
016those young folks in here. That was like, woo, y'all, right? Celebrating our young people. And that's part of um what is a great thing to do um so that we can continue to encourage them to to do the things that we, you know, need them to do. And so um thank you to those um all who coordinated those activities that our young people did. I want to start calling names cuz I'll miss somebody. But um and then I know we have some more things coming up as of on the horizon coming up. Um even on I think it was last week we um celebrated our athletes and our cheerleaders and we had a good time. Um again just watching and hearing you know their different accomplishments. Um, so like I said, anytime we can just
017celebrate our kids like I'm put I'm somewhere there right in the front of the line. It brings great joy to highlight the positive things that our young people are doing here in our district. And thank you to those who coordinate those things um so that our young people can um take part in those uh opportunities. Okay, Mr. Nicholas. I I love to see little readers. I'm I'm a big reader, but I I just love it. I I find that more and more people are wanting to watch their video and stuff like that instead of reading. Uh I I don't even like to read off the computer. I I like to turn pages and you know, I'm tickled to see these people up here. The the honors band, in case everybody doesn't know what that's about,
018you're selected. It's it's a county band thing. It's it's quite an it is an honor to be selected to be on that and our our academic students too. I'm just I'm just hoping to keep it up. I mean, let's let's just keep our keep our readers going, keep our our students and and keep them them uh academically inclined and let's get her done. Awesome. Right. Uh let's see. Spring sports has started. Tomorrow's the first day of spring. No more snow hopefully. Nobody. And it's getting warmer. Okay. Financial report. Oh, you're already up there, Mrs. Horsey. Be ready. Good evening, everybody. Good evening. Um, didn't have a whole lot to update you on since our last meeting. Um, so just things that are still coming up. We still have our uh several audits that are uh
019taking place. Um we have a personnel change coming um in April with our uh change of a payroll administrative assistant. Miss Donna Atkins is retiring. Um and next month I'll have for you the financial position report um that will be due May 1st and we have started working on our estimated unit count for next year which determines our preliminary funding. And uh we'll also have the quarterly bond bill uh report that'll be due. Um, and then this is just the check with our reserve and local fund that's still tracking uh similar to where we were last year. Any questions on finance? No. Okay. Unfinished business. Thank you. um recommend the second reading of policy GBJC criminal history information as submitted and found on the district website in the board of education policy section and as
020found at the law school district sites. This policy is available for review by the community at the law school district buildings and on the district website. So move first. Mr. Nichols second. Second, Mrs. Pew. Roll call vote. Mr. Nichols. Mrs. Pew. Miss Ralph approved and Mrs. Isler approved. So approved. The second reading of policy J the law school district furpa policy as submitted and found on the district website in the board of education policy section and as found the law school district sites. This policy is available for review by the community at the law school district buildings and on the district website. First Mrs. Pew. Second. Second. Mr. Nichols. Roll call vote. Mrs. Pew approved. Mr. Nichols approved. Miss Ralph approved. And Mrs. Isler approved. So approved. New business. We have no school choice or
021fundraisers. Recommend approval of fundraisers as a group. First, Mrs. Pew. Second. Second. Mr. Nichols. Roll call vote. Mrs. Pew. Mr. Nichols. Approved. Miss RS. Approved. And Mrs. Ller. Approved. So approved. Recommend the approval of fundraisers as submitted. So move. First, Mrs. Isler. Second. Second, Mrs. Pew. Roll call vote. Mrs. Isler, approve. Mrs. Pew. Miss Ralph, approved. And Mr. Nichols, approved. So approved. Rentals recommend to approve request of Josh Tucker, Route One Sports, for use of Laurel Middle High School grass athletic fields to hold youth soccer camp beginning June 23rd. to June 26, 2025 from 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Participation fee of 175 is to be charged and the certificate of liability insurance has been provided. I recommend approval of use of facility fee applied and custodial fees waved. Okay. Mrs. Ller has recommended approval
022of use of facility fee applied and custodial fee wave. Do I have a second? Mrs. Pew, roll call vote. Mrs. Isler, approved. Mrs. Pew, approved. Miss Ralph, approved. Mr. Nichols, approved. So approved. Recommend to approve the request of Suzanne Barger, Western Sussex Chamber of Commerce for use of North Law Early Learning Academy parking lot and Laurel Elementary Intermediate School parking lot to hold Broad Creek Bash Bike Ride. Say that three times. and 5K run on August August the 16th, 2025 from 6:30 a.m. to 300 pm. Stability of liability insurance provided. I recommend approval with use of facility custodial and constable fee wave. Second. Okay. First by Mrs. Isler, second by Mr. Nichols. Roll call vote. Mrs. Isler, approve. Mr. Nichols approved. Miss Pew. And Miss Ralph, approved. So approved. Professional trips. Recommend approval of professional
023trips as a group. So move. First, Mr. Nichols. Second. Second. Miss Pew. Roll call vote. Mr. Nichols. Approve. Miss Pew. Approve. Miss Rouse. Approved. And Mrs. Isler, approved. So approved. Recommend approval of professional trips as submitted. So move. First, Mr. Nichols. Second. Second. Mrs. Pew. Roll call vote. Mr. Nichols. Approved. Mrs. Pew. Approve. Miss Ralph. Approved. And Mrs. Isler, approved. So approved. The first reading, the law school district 2025 2026 school calendar as submitted and found on the district website and as found at the law school district sites. The school calendar will be available for review by the community at the law school district buildings and on the district website. Community input is welcome and should be directed to the superintendent of schools no later than Tuesday, April the 8th, 2025. Possible action on executive
024session items. Recommend to approve the personnel report with recommendations as discussed in executive session as listed in attachment A. First, Mrs. Pew. Second. Second. Mr. Nichols. Roll call vote. Mrs. Pew. Mr. Nichols. Approved. Miss Ralph, approved. And Mrs. Ller, approved. So approved. Recommend to approve the personnel report with recommendations as discussed. We executive session as listed in attachment B. First, Mr. Nichols. Second. Second. Mrs. Isler. Roll call vote. Mr. Nichols. Approved. Miss Isler approved. Miss Pew approved. And Miss Ralph approved. So approved. Personnel attachment C. Coaches recommend to approve the personnel report with recommendations as discussed in executive session as listed in attachment C. First, Mrs. Pew. Second, Mrs. Isler. Roll call vote. Mrs. Pew. Mrs. Sler approved. Miss Ralph approved. Mr. Nichols approved. So approved. Personnel attachment D. Cafeteria recommend to approve the personnel
025report with recommendations as discussed in executive session as listed. Attachment D. First, Mr. Nichols. Second. Second, Mrs. Isler. Roll call vote. Mr. Nichols, approve. Mrs. Isler, approved. Mrs. Pew, and Miss Ralph, approved. So approved. Um, future agenda items. The next regular board meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, April the 9th at 7 p.m. right here. And do I have a motion we adjurnn? So move. First, Mrs. Isler, second, Mr. Nichols. Roll call vote. Mrs. Isler, approve. Mr. Nichols, approved. Mrs. Pew, approve. Miss Ralph, approved. 74 743 adjourned.