March 12, Oradell Board Meeting

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 Sunshine Law statement all requirements of the open public meetings act have been met for this meeting of the Board of Education of the buau of ordell notice of this meeting was filed with the record in town news and all persons requesting such notice Mrs noran would you read the mission statement certainly uh the orell public school district is dedicated to the ongoing pursuit of educational Excellence through comprehensive Innovative curriculum and instruction the district is committed to providing opportunities for social emotional and academic Discovery to Foster curiosity courage and character our goal is to prepare our students to become lifelong Learners who are self-directed resilient

002productive responsible citizens thank you roll call on the rooll Mr Del grea here Mr Daren here Mrs Downey will not be here Mrs Moran here Mr nutlin here Mrs Walker here Mr Walsh will not be here Mrs noran here Mrs Nichols here um at this time I'm going to again make a switch in the order of the meeting normally we would uh open to the public for agenda items only but I want to move um that public comment to after the business administrator's report because he's going to be presenting the tentative budget so I'm going to open up questions after that um so at this point I'm going to move to my report and we had um let the community know that we were open to having an information question and answer session so if

003anyone would like to come forward I know there have been many questions raised in the last few weeks but if anyone has any specific question questions they wanted to ask or in general and we can just take it from there and as always if you can state your name and then just fill out the paper up there hello okay good it works hello everyone okay my name is Vanessa Gales and over the past two meetings I've raised um some concerns about the critical response process and since then I have had a very productive meeting with Miss BOS and um and and have been approached by many many parents with concerns about transparency safety and the school budget and give it that the pre preliminary budget is on tonight's agenda I wanted to speak now while

004not every parent is comfortable speaking publicly I agree to voice the concerns that have been shared with me by many parents over the over the last month kids are kids and it is expected that there will be incidents that pop up it is how the school is handling these incidents the parents are concerned about since the beginning of 2025 I've learned of many different incidents where students safeties safety was compromised that is only what I've heard from other parents it is hard to know what has resulted in overall policy changes and what has not parents understand the need for some safety protocols to remain private for the school's overall safety but we believe that there's more that we can do and as a counselor myself and by speaking with Educators outside Ops I know other

005districts have clear crisis protocols and incident reports incident reports attract incidents they measure data and allow the schools to identify any Trends or weak spots they can address after incidents which can vary from Big to small parents typically also receive these reports to understand what happened and children often often get individual support plans whether they're the victim or the aggressor to help them improve we need as a community in school to be proactive versus reactive safety safety should be our top priority because if our kids aren't safe then nothing really matters um and if you if we don't have enough money to hire the right people or budget to implement uh consistent safety protocols then we are going to keep putting out fires versus working towards preventing them from happening all together uh I understand

006that the budget is limited so we need to identify ways to cut cost in February 2024 you mentioned that legal costs per pupil from 2022 to 2023 were were over 130% of the state average and these high costs limit our ability to invest in other areas uh it was also stated that the board would look for more ways to reduce costs so we are hopeful that tonight's budget includes a plan to address these legal fees I believe that we need to take a hard honest look at our safety policies and resources and hopefully after tonight's meeting we can come to a resolution I will be sending an email with full with a full list of questions and ideas from parents uh and one of the questions that I I had myself is are we properly

007staffed for our growing school thank you uh before you leave sorry thank you for coming up um so you made a comment that I think the board would be interesting and you said you may not know because other people told you but I will tell you that if you know of an incident or someone knows that that they believe that children were not safe in the building this is something we would want to know now sometimes there are rumors that go on but I would encourage you to tell anyone who mentioned you to please inform us of what these incidents were because that is something we would definitely want to know um like I said sometimes things are blown out of portion we don't know but have them um get back to us I'm going

008to let Miss bosos uh speak a little bit to I know you met with her but on the crisis management this is something we do have in place and Miss V has talked to the board about um maybe just putting out to the public when things happening something happening like with red light yellow light green light so um and how things would happen do you want to talk about that quick we do have things in place I know people don't think we legally we have to have an emergency when there's all kinds of Crisis management um things in place but I'm going to let Miss Bose was talking about that because that's more her so we believe that the best thing we can do as a school is to document things so we have documented

009Protocols of what we do in a crisis situation if a child is arrest to themselves AR rest to others okay um I've never thought to put it that overview out to the parent community and as I shared with you I look forward to putting that together because just like we talked about um communication and what's a yellow event what's a green event what's a red event if we as a community agree this is how we're going to communicate if something is a yellow event and that's it it's like the code of conduct you know we we like a clear code of conduct because when this happens this happens and we all know it and we all agree to it so I'm I'm looking forward as I shared with putting that together and again assuring you

010that we definitely have protocols about crisis not only do we have um all the required and mandated policies but we have internal documents that guide our staff that guide our counselors that guide our administrators down to even when they notify me when I notify the board of EV and I just wanted to make one the comment with our legal fees this this is something that um the community is going to see every year on our audit because out you know we are a one school building District we have I think a $15 million budget um so we are held kind of to the same percentages as you know the huge districts so if you look at our legal fees I think we budgeted this year I want to say I think like 67,000 I was

011in the budget meeting the other night it's broken down by 5 57,000 so be the way they calculate Peter do you want to talk about that the way they calculate is like even though it's like our attorney his fees are the same as like if we have a grievance it's the same cost here as it's going to be in let's say pamis or rid with hacken like it's so it's spread over 800 kids here versus you know 2,000 4,000 kids that was in the 2223 budget the 2324 budget the costs were not 130% they were below and in this budget going forward the costs are below 130% so there are years where it could be above depending on the litigation that comes to the board it's not that the board is pursuing litigation the board

012is has different issues it has to attend to um but those costs we're not in 2324 and they're not in 2425 and they are not in the 2526 budget that was a historical 2223 also um you know it it goes by now we're going into negotiations year this year so you could see that line be a little bit higher so it there's nothing we can really do about that um it'll also depend on you know sometimes we have special ed cases there's nothing we can do about that it's we're going to spend it if we have to spend it but um one of the one of the things we have in place is that the way we keep legal fees down is there's really only two people that can call the attorney it's a superintendent

013myself I believe the um business administrator and then can the director of special services Dr Roth can nobody else is allowed to call them because that in other districts you see like a lot of people just pick up no one can do it here so we do I just want you to know we do watch it as much as we can it's just that our legal costs are going to be spread over 800 kids whereas others are going to be spend over so negotiations one district is going to cost the same as could here but but we do watch it very carefully but appreciate you bringing it to our attention I just wanted to add something really quick because you said you wanted for parents to be able to um bring these concerns to to

014you or you don't know about these these issues that take place or any safety concerns that are going on on a daytoday well that's what I mean that there's the disconnection right um with the school and maybe with the board as well not only just with the parents but you should know at the end of the day you guys should have a report of like incidents that have taken place something whether it was yellow whether it was green or whether it was a red incident right because we shouldn't be coming here to share our concerns Weare the board is notified of any um risk assessments that do go out so that's why um when you say incident can you like well any incident right because if you say if you're saying that you're not aware

015of like oh please come forward we're not aware of the incidents that are taking place I guess I was saying it from the aspect that you made it sound like our students have been in an unsafe situation oh you do no no no that's my oh and that's why Miss B just was saying that she's going to create this way of communicating more effectively and be a little bit more transparent so then they you don't have these uh and not everybody's playing telephone I believe the board is informed of all um incidents where there would be someone in the Cy but I just don't know I think it's how we Define it and that's why we need this green yellow red document because sometimes if it's a green incident they may not know red incident

016um if there is a cap gun in the classroom the board president gets the call before the email goes out even okay so um or the attorney may get the call because I I I need assistance in next steps so I think by creating that green yellow red we'll be able to better Define what is an incident what are we talking about because incident is a very big term right now thank you thank you for coming hi um Kristen Genji 251 Maple La um I have two I think pretty easy questions um so obviously the Common Thread is better and more communication the question is how do we get there so as parents we want to know every tiny detail of every single thing that happens obviously there's some stuff that we shouldn't be privy

017to and stuff that's like not ours necessarily to know separate from privacy things so I've searched the internet I've looked on other school websites I can't find anything that clearly defines what does and doesn't need to be communicated to the parents because I think if we had a better understanding of what we should know we could you know it would be a lot easier that doesn't feel very clear what can be communicated to us and how it should be and then there's a lot of chat at pickup well that's going to be part of this exercise and I think Miss B will probably do a presentation at a board meeting so people can come see what she's designating as you know red yellow green and then we can have the conversation from there because then

018the conversation is if it's green and it's no communication we need to have trust that it's green and that's why it wasn't communicated and I think sometimes by by documenting and you know coming to agreement on that green yellow red we're on the same page so sometimes I think what happens now is school administrators we see something as not a big event because you know we've seen lots of things and so when we um don't communicate it's it's not because we're trying to hide anything ever it's because we don't see it as a big event so this document is a is an opportunity for us to have a solid clear slate for all of us you might have said this it was kind of hard to hear from back there what is the collaboration on

019what determin that is that like a conversation with parents with the administration so well I think it's going to start at the board level in the pr committee right and then I think it's going to come to a present well you probably talk to your staff I would assume and they're going to do a presentation and then the public will have time to comment on it okay um and then my next question is we know that obviously we can come to the board meetings we can speak we can ask questions we can email we also know that we don't necessarily get a response which I also understand why that is so what is a better way or what is a way that we as parents know that our communication to the board is truly being

020addressed so public comment at public meetings is basically public comment like it's not a question and answer but at our with our board we do try to answer questions and we don't know we try to get back we had someone come complain about the water fountains a while ago and the next day someone from the admin got back to them um these last two weeks a lot of emails came in and we're just kind of repeating the same thing so I was using this um meeting as a way to kind of answer certain questions but generally if you email the board we will get back to you if it is a school level issue though we will tell you you know there's a chain of commands start with the principal start with your teacher start

021with principal go to the superintendent we are kind of like the last one in that depending on the topic right but um generally at our meetings like we are we try to answer questions a lot of boards don't but we if we know we try to or we try to get an answer so something like the issue over the last couple of weeks the book for instance yes how we you had to bring that up right you knew I was going we're trying to avoid that yeah go ahead can you a little B closer to the closer oh sure I was loud I thought I was loud yeah my kids would say I was um like how do we know what the conversation is leading up to a vote on something so that we know

022that like voices have been heard and people you know and something like that how do we know what the discussion was or is it just not our business to know the discussion because I think that's part of what's unclear okay so I was going to kind of go through what a board is so maybe I'll do it at this point a little bit may I can't okay so so the Board of Education only has Authority when they're in the meeting in this public meeting this public forum that's been noticed so there there is no there's no discussion there's should be no discussions in between um board meetings so you see you see the public the Sunshine Law you get to see the board deliberating and taking action so when you want to know what what

023the board where is the board is the board made a decision you you're going to see it only at a board meeting so you know so when you're asking hey has a board made up its mind U we can't respond to that because there there has not been that decision yet so how does the I guess then the next question is what is the vote based on if there has been no conversation about certain topics okay so I kind of was going to go through this anyway so um that's it's good I'm glad you asked so um boards in New Jersey are made up of like an odd number of people five 79 a board cannot meet in public we cannot have an official public meeting without a quorum our Quorum is five so if

024four people four of us show up one night we can we can have the meeting we can talk about things but we cannot vote the open public meetings is that we cannot take action which is our votes on resolution not in public there's only two times we can do that it is on tenure charges on an employee and sometimes a certain uh disenrollment issue on a student for privacy issues those are the only times the board can take action and take a vote in private session the board can meet in private sessions on other matters so most boards almost all boards in New Jersey work through the committee structure so the work of the board is done behind the scenes so like I said we cannot meet with five PE without five people in public

025five however we can never meet behind the scenes with five people without announcing it it would have to be a closed session only certain topics because that means we have a quorum and we're not allowed to meet five people or more so all of our committees are based on with three people and the president of the board pretty much goes to every meeting so that is where the work of the board is done that is where discussions are held so um like tonight you'll see the budget presentation so Finance met last when did we meet last Wednesday I don't remember when that was and we went through the whole budget we did everything and then minutes are dispersed to the board members if they have questions they can reach out to the chair they can

026reach out to Mr iell the superintendent and then by the time we get to our meetings um most most of the time we're ready to vote now what happened two weeks ago was we weren't and we should have pulled it from the agenda so that I explained was like a big whatever we're waiting for information um so what was your question like how so that's really where our work is done okay so it's these subcommittees that kind of filter down the information and then it gets on the minutes it gets dispersed and that's how people are for in their their vote and that's where you see on our agenda's committee reports these are our committees and it lists the chairs so on our agendas normally when we come in you know we have the Sunshine

027Law statement roll call I always automatically open to the public for agenda items only and our agenda items are all the things we're going to vote on because legally we cannot take a vote in public on any of our items before we've open up for public comment so I'm going to tell you a secret to all the people here which I wish I could have said last meeting but at our last meeting what we really wanted to do was just come out open the meeting and vote because you would have had the same result okay the result was the same we got the information we were waiting for we were going to come out but legally you can you can correct me if any of this is wrong we cannot take a vote without opening

028to the public so we opened to the public and then we took our vote but we cannot we cannot take any votes on things without opening for public comment on the issues sure I understand all that I guess my question and I think you've answered it in there is that how do how does the whole board get the information to be able to decide how they're going to vote and it's these subcommittees it's through internal Communications to the board it is um minutes from the meetings that go to the a lot of our stuff is just wrote you know the same things every you'll see we do the Bills list we do the payroll we're move we're doing transfers you know doing our building a lot of it is just normal we're accepting from the

029PTA it's not a lot of different things we're doing Personnel we you have people going out you know coming in taking classes most of the time it's very repetitious and we do go through in committee so after you've been on in a while you kind of just and if there's a question you call the chair of the committee you can call the superintendent but it tends to start to get repetitious okay but that's how okay thank you that help at all uh yes yes all right if you think of anything else come on back up thank you thanks for coming hi Rachel kogal Mass 640 blah belt drive um can you guys hear me in the back I think there's something wrong with this mic because that's why we moved further forward do it come

030off the stand because I just want to make sure we like people can't hear is this better okay um so I just had a follow-up question because I want to understand a little bit better what you were just talking about because on the one hand you said the work of the board is all in public but then you've got the committee and so I just want to get a better understanding of sort of the elephant in the room topic and two weeks ago we had you know I think a a a good outcome with the vote um in terms of clarity and people getting a chance to speak um but I want to sort of go back to the vote that took place before that and understand how we got there and how people would

031know how the board got there um in the sense that it seems like items were broken down into separate votes when they're usually a block vote something had to happen in the Committees to get there and I just want to understand what that process was which meeting are you talking about the last one so at the last meeting there was a vote on the authors last one the very last one where it was voted yes yes okay but my understanding is there was a meeting before that which I was not present at where there was a no vote and at that one there was a that proposal to break what's normally a block into separate items okay I okay did I misunderstand what happened there okay I got you so first I I'm sorry because

032Mrs noran's shaking her head so um first I want to correct what you said okay I didn't say that the board does their work in public what I said was the board can only take action in public so we can only we can only vote on items and take action in public except for those two things I said right I understand that so on the last one like I said it was partially my fault I should have caught it and then also miss Bo boio says she should have caught it also but what is your question specifically as to well it seemed like a lot of the people who came to speak at the last meeting this the last one this very last one where there was a yes vote okay a lot of those

033people were addressing an issue but it seems that that issue was never clearly articulated by the board as the the issue of concern and so what I'm asking is as a community how do we get to the point where if the board has concerns and there's something Brewing like there was that everybody in the community has an opportunity to understand what the issues are because clearly there were committee conversations clearly there were board members who had concerns and you know I I applaud every member of the board for taking this job so seriously that they had those concerns but how is the community walking in to understand why that got split into multiple votes so we talked about the subcommittees or the Committees the Committees do the due diligence ask questions they make a recommendation

034their recommendation is when it gets on to the agenda um unfortunately a few weeks ago something got on the agenda that the committee had not yet recommended to be put on the agenda and and that's what that's what caused all the confusion so when things got broken up it was really because not everything was supposed to be there it was not ready for to take action on and make that recommendation um and unfortunately we we it it ended up it ended up on the agenda anyway without the committee's recommendation and that's what caused all the awkwardness um and why there were certain votes because people were not ready to yet vote because that information that the committee was looking for had still not yet been received okay and and and and that's what caused all

035this um when the committee did get that information in between the two meetings um the committee then was recommending it to the board for action and it was back on the agenda and at that point it was clear that it was now being recommended because that gave this the indication that all the information was now received okay because it it just it felt like everything was a little murky like people were coming and there was a lot of rumors swirling in the community and there was a lot of confusion because it seemed like there was there was an action that was being proposed to split up a vote but there was no Clarity or statement from the board as to why something that was always put together was suddenly split the way the reason it

036was split I think is because we I'm going to speak for myself now I think because it was in one resolution so if we had voted no everything would have gone down with it so that's why it was split out so so everything else in that resolution could move forward that's why it was split out we could have just voted no on everything because we're waiting for information but we were only waiting for information on one aspect of the whole resolution so that's why it was split out and then we voted the top ones would could go but I want to answer your question about something where you said like how would the how would the community know if there's concerns at the board level you probably would not not to be rude but like

037we do have concerns we meet in committees we have concerns we go through them we work through them and then they hit the agenda so generally that is not something like we're going to discuss with the public because it's just the the committee meetings are confidential we talk about things and then they come up and then we vote and generally like everything is very smooth and we vote what should have happened last time is it should not have been on there and then it should have been on the last one and it would have been fine but yes it just caused a whole issue yeah it just very blown out of proportion yes it just seems like there was a lack of transparency as to how it got split why it got split the reason

038it got split concern well the reason it got split is so the other things in B1 could move ahead right the fact that there was a concern and nobody knew what the articulated concern was I think is is what I'm expressing as as conc also think it was that big of a deal I was just like we're wait it wasn't like like we wait for information a lot of times like we're always waiting for information we're always talking about things so we're always questioning so to us I don't think it was that big of a thing but it turned into a huge right I was the issue wasn't the subject of the of the information that was being requested it was just the fact that the information was being requested and had not been received

039and and that was that was what would it made it awkward because all those things were this one item was not supposed to be on the group of thing of on the agenda and it was and it was a typographical error that that that somebody did not notice it should not have been there um and and like I said it caused a lot of awkwardness and a lot of confusion when unnecessarily um yeah I mean I guess absent that specific item it just it seems like you know it's hard for us as a community to react to you know like you say there's you know there's an opportunity for public comment before a vote um if if members of an involved Community need to sort of understand what the issues are and if there was

040an issue or in the future if there is an issue it's helpful to have some context you know something just comes up for a vote people say yay or nay without context and I think that's what a lot of people were reacting to was a lack of context I'll tell you we heard you like we've talked about it we have heard everybody so we hope to avoid this in the future and apologize for any issues it did cause thanks very much thank you for coming I appreciate it Jen Allen sorry Jen Allen Wildwood Road my question is sort of on the same line but take context of last meeting out think bigger I've been talking for years about curriculum I've got other concerns too so if not all boards follow a committee structure what do

041other boards do you want all boards follow committee structure in New Jersey all some some might have a committee of the whole but they all have I just heard most board so I assumed I wasn't sure like there's two committee structur there's two structures you can um choose you can choose the committee you know board by committee or Board of the whole so Board of the whole means that everything is done in public everything I don't know if there is the public can be involved in voting for everything done in public if everything is done in a committee structure and there's very little board conversation period most of the time it's based on recommendation by the student most superintendent most of the time votes are yay a couple of times there's a no in there

042but for the most part at the end of every vote it's approved for the most part we don't even know except for what's very line item little information on an agenda so most people don't attend or even listen because there isn't a lot of information so if we're talking like Community involvement and showing up wonderful usually like I said I'm solo the last few this is great I like we're always happy to see you too great but there's very little conversation so I understand like Clos session is off the books closed I'm a school administrator I get what cannot be shared with public however there's no committee notes ever shared with public there's very little report from committee it's you have your notes does anybody have questions you've asked each other questions already so there's

043very little information period given to the public for us to have any context about anything let alone the last few weeks of then the rumors Mill starts so my question is more what are what is the public entitled to can we have notes from meetings if that is not closed and they can't take any action at those sessions then why isn't that public information or why isn't that on the agenda not just what's to be voted on the well that's what the committee so the committee makes recommendations to what goes on the agenda so the agenda is the committee report so the agenda items are the it's not the report the you said the minutes are dispersed the Committees of three meet the board receives all of their minutes so all of the board is

044informed Med before that vote no no so what gets on the agenda is the board that's the committee recommendations that the committee report in the minutes is what's on the agenda so so Chris nutland then is trusting what Jess Moran decided at her committee without any information sorry to use you both at the end that's just what it is it's just we trust whatever happened at your threepers committee since you've put it on the agenda and it says based on the recommendation of the superintendent that's it that's gen generally how it works so the committee does all the the due diligence all the groundwork superintendent makes a recommendation the committee which is three or four members that will then make a recommendation put it on the agenda so now it's on the agenda the rest

045of the board can vote for it or they if they have questions we could go into executive but but you know they're not going to have any questions because they already have the minutes then then yes you're right then in that case they're going to tr never getting any information the the public gets what what the that's what's on the agenda is the information but honestly what's on the agenda is the only thing that's happening that's it nothing that's nothing is nothing happens that's not on the agenda really so this is it this is our action as a board but are things that happen like your public relations you've talked about your website it's been viewed there's a lot of work that happens I know you guys spend a lot of time you devote a

046lot of hours to this there is a lot of behind the scenes work but the community has no information from that we have a line item of what you're voting on and there's never there isn't discussion amongst board members because there isn't a reason to I get it you want to be in and out you've done your work in your committees but where does that leave the rest of the public I've listened to so many board meetings across the state of New Jersey I'm like you know as I'm I'm sitting in my car commuting and I I hear these rich conversations between board members asking questions it never happens here but there's no need and I understand why you've already done work but we don't know that and we don't have any of the information

047and I feel like that's why there is a lack of trust so if we're not entitled to that information I find it very strange but if that's the structure thanks for answering my question I am back David L and I live at 640 plow Bel so um my wife a moment ago asked you about um what happened a couple of weeks ago and I don't want to beat a dead horse you know and you guys work really hard and you have reasons for doing what you do and I asked a question uh at the last meeting which was why so the one thing that we haven't gotten an answer to because a lot of people showed up that day and made assumptions because of rumors and you know maybe it was a waste of time

048maybe it was a waste of your time because they were responding to rumors because they didn't have facts facts that you could have easily put on the table as that woman said a moment ago to make things a little bit more transparent we love facts we love love we appreciate the work you do we do not want to be in an adversarial situation we want to work with you we want to help you we want to understand why you're doing what you're doing these people really care they show up so many people showed up last time because of a rumor do you want people showing up for rumors or do you want them to know what's going on what our board of education is is is standing for and we still haven't gotten a real

049oh we had a little we needed more information okay here's my question what was the more information you needed a few weeks ago that generated the no vote that generated this this room because for every person who was here there were two or three or 10 people watching at home and they came to me and they were like oh I saw you were at the meeting you know you had a lot of interest two weeks ago so what's what what happened and don't just say oh we needed more information what was the more information I will answer you I answered it at the last question actually one of the last people that came up asked us three questions and that was one of them and what I said was subject matter and then why was

050the book changed and miss bosos explained so I don't know if you want to talk about that at all but that was it age appropriateness and subject matter what was the subject matter that was a pro that was problematic do you feel can I yeah I'm going to let okay so I was I actually now you know me so I do I know you well so um that item shouldn't have gone on the agenda because the board had asked me a question and I hadn't had the answer and didn't notice it was on the question that specific question had to do with did the presentation require a conflict of conscience opt out in the state of New Jersey anything that comes under Health sexual orientation or gender identity a parent must be providing an opt

051out now we hadn't planned to do any opt out and the board wanted to know was that required would that have stopped a presentation or not stopped a presentation wasn't even a question at that time they just wanted that piece of information that's very fair we reached out to the author and and just asked that and he just hadn't gotten back we actually asked all they they hadn't gotten back yet so we were waiting for it we got that information between the two meetings that little one minute explanation would have saved you guys a lot of time at the last board meeting early beforehand that's all I'm saying and and I respect I respect what you guys are doing I respect what you just told me and if I missed it at the last meeting

052I that's on me and I apologize no don't apologize we're happy you're here but I do have a question for you and the public sure so I mean the board was dragged through the mud I've been here a long time so we've been dragged through the mud for I don't really care but I do have a question why why the assumptions why assume the worst of the board when this came out I made no assumptions I'm not telling you but but we were called some serious there were some serious assumptions made about some board members so why go to that immediately when nothing was ever put out like why would everyone just assume that because we are living in very and I said this last time too we are living in very difficult times okay

053I find that I have friends that I have that I have known since I was in elementary school and there are certain things we can no longer talk about there are there is so much dissension and there is so much I mean look the cops were here last last time and the media was here because they probably wanted to see some Sparks Fly because Sparks are flying at Town meetings and at Board of Ed meetings and all over the place so yeah people are a little suspicious and so the more you can do to make things transparent even if you're not obligated to the better it will be for our whole town and you don't need to bring a lawyer you know sorry but you know no no no disrespect I'm glad you're here here

054okay but the more we can do to Foster trust in this town the better so why not speak up if you and by the way you guys hear rumors you live in this town so if you're hearing rumors that something is is brewing why not take action beforehand and say look I know that you're all here because of this particular concern and we will hear your concerns let me just say one thing about what happened why not I said last time why or why not I didn't make any comments about whether it's sexuality or what what I didn't make any assumptions I just said why and that's always my question all right you guys work so hard nobody really even knows how hard you guys work and how much time you put into this I

055appreciate that you know but when something happens and when we start hearing and when you hear words like book Banning or non-inclusion people get their hackles up that's why that's why you and you know that because we live in this country we're so happy to live in this country where we have free speech and where we can embrace our neighbors and now we're going through this weird period and I'm not going to make assumptions why about that we're just there so let's fix it here at least in Orel let's fix it here that's it thank you for coming thank you for having me sorry I'm short Hi how are youber yes is she okay am I okay can you hear me okay um my name is Stacy Denberg I live on Beachwood Road I have

056two children in Ops um one I just wanted to say thank you for all your service I have friends neighbors my daughter's friends parents here so I know you guys work really hard and I wanted to just quickly comment about what you had mentioned about um why why did some parents go to that extreme um and I'm sure you guys know there's always a few people that take things out of proportion um however we heard from board members things being said that shouldn't have been said alluding to the fact that there was other parents that had brought concerns to the board specifically about content you mentioned Health where was Health mentioned in Chad cell's books does he talk about health at all go ahead it's it's Health gender identity or sexual orientation and again it

057all it would have meant was an opt out needed to be provided it doesn't mean anything would have stopped I would have put the district in a legally bad situation right so that's what I'm trying to say does his book specifically talk about sexuality and things like that if you read the reviews online and we hadn't read all nine books so this was just a safety measure okay again because one of my jobs on top of keeping all of your children safe is to ensure that I'm keeping the district in a legally safe place got it and I I understand that and again app appreciate everybody's concern over everything I think it's really important that you know you have that option okay so now my real questions um are these ones you email to us

058yes because I have them with me good hold on let me get my sheet um so my first question is about classroom overcrowding you have to ask me by the way oh I'm sorry and I'm just going to say you some of these are School level so we may not answer but shoot away and then we'll go okay um so I guess you know um I want to know what the district's plan is to reduce classroom size um my daughter is in third grade and she has 26 children in her class um she also has a 504 and um I am a uh former educator special educator um I worked with children um on the Spectrum I'm a seasoned educator I have a background in behavior therapy um I'll tell you right now there's no

059way I would be able to take care of 26 children with all different needs differentiation with without support um so I commend these teachers who continue to work in this type of environment um because I know it's not easy it's really very difficult and I know that there are supports but um I I kind of just wanted to see where we're going because I think Ops is really just going to continue to grow um so I'm going to let the superintendent take this we have discussed this um the growing is actually not likely um we do have some classroom some great levels third grade being one of them that has a large number of students sixth grade is one of them there is 135 students in sixth grade because we got nine new sixth graders

060this summer we currently have 85 kindergarteners registered um if you've study birth rates in the state of New Jersey you will see that most people are talking about declining enrollments so with regards to your question I would focus it more on like the overcrowding of a classroom versus the crowding of a school because I know that there is this belief that we are outgrowing Orel public school but actually we have so much here that so many other schools don't have so for example um you know as a former teacher our occupational therapist has a classroom how many schools have an OT with a classroom our instructional music program has a classroom our ESL teachers have a full classroom we don't share space is so if suddenly we needed more classrooms we have them right right

061now when we have resource room classes in special education where in many districts it is common to put two classes in one room with a divider and the county comes in and they evaluate and you do a waiver we have none of that so we have room to grow if that was the case but as I said based on um our incoming enrollment next year and even the inventory in s on sale in the dist in idel right now we don't predict that we actually anticipate um a net change next year of probably minus 30 students across the across the district okay and classrooms and that's wonderful that you do have classrooms available in case we need them um I think I'm just talking more about support and um also you know coming to an

062event like um the sing along and they're only being standing room um not being afforded opportunities as parents to be able to volunteer because there's 700 people ahead of us um you know these are all situations I think that you know need to be figured out um safety and you know that's a huge issue um having an entire second grade class walking around the school with three AIDS is unacceptable that's a safety issue so obviously there needs to be more support that goes into this planning I think we have to stop pretending we're a small Hometown school because we're not we're a big town and we have a lot of students and and we definitely hear that we have 29 AIDS in the building right now and and um during that walk there were actually

063just and not that this makes it better there were five okay adults um you know we can never have enough and and we will continue to look to hire um lunch AIDS especially because that is a time when we know we're you know the more the merrier right you can imagine it's not a job people are of course looking for so if you know anyone we have to figure out a way to in you know incentivize it and to to get these people and to make sure that they're all trained making sure that our substitutes have appropriate training um I know everybody complains about you know training days I say take them have them you know let them be I'll keep kids home for a day to you know have a training um but I

064guess that kind of goes into um my second question um in regards to support for all students um and yes idell has some amazing programs for um Children at Risk special ed 504 um but I have to disagree I've worked in many public schools um and they have a lot more than what we have to offer saying that one OT for 800 potential students um I don't know how Miller stays here I really don't um and with the amount of school anxiety social skills sensory disorders and all of these other things that are popping up whether they're due to covid whether they're due to the changes of the times and you know Internet it's here and we need to make sure that every single child is getting what they need um so I guess um

065some of the things that I was able to identify um particularly was um you know having scientifically proven um curriculum in the classroom um there are schools like Patterson New Jersey that does Wilson and Orton that's their curriculum um we know that that is going to be an amazing way to teach all children um not necessarily children that are at risk but that it's a great way to make sure that everybody's at the same playing field um also access to a reading specialist um I'm appalled um that Ops does not have a specific position of reading specialist um I worked in a one District school a one school district as well and they had three um and it was not a well-off town it wasn't anything crazy it was a very small District too um

066let's see um also teacher coaching I um I was a teachers coach for a little bit um and it was so helpful to our teachers because I would go in I would help them modify lessons I would help them with behavioral issues if there were anything kind of Brewing before it got to the crisis level um I would help to support um you know different learning differences in the classroom um help the teachers to differentiate and I really was just able to provide that support to them I feel like that's something especially with 26 children in a class that would be appropriate to fix a situation like that um this way a reading specialist can come in maybe even do a lesson here and there um but it's really important and it's an important thing

067right now um being that our reading levels you know as a country um are suffering um my phone keeps sure um I'm just gonna sure please comment a little bit on the reading specialist piece we have two yeah certified reading specialists in the building I could take one of them and say you are just the reading specialist but right now what if there's a period that I don't need a reading specialist that's all they can do then if I keep them as an intervention teacher because both of them are interventionists in the building then they can act as a reading specialist when needed but they can also do math if needed so that's why I mean it would be very easy for us to take one of them as they both are certified and say

068you're the reading specialist but it also opens us up to not being able to use them if suddenly we have a cohort that needs more math support so I mean it's really just a decision that we make of everybody wears many hats and the more hats you can give a person it's like we why we love to hire General eded special ed certified teachers right because we want to be able to put them where we need them in that moment that's the only reason but we do have two certified reading specialist it's basically the legal issue with the title and what they can do and what you can do you can't do math if you're telling me that with 800 plus people that there would be a reading specialist that didn't have anything to do

069I find that hard to believe it would depend on scheduling schedules are weird that way you know I mean I think that that's kind of crazy to say because I mean with 800 plus children and I know that we have a high incident rate of children doing RTI and things like that or you know at least those children who are now being pulled out for those services and of course we always fight for least restricted environment um so now my child who did gly on the Dibbles now is being pulled out I don't care what time it is she's being pulled out and as a third grader she's self-conscious about that and is now doing worse because she's worried about being pulled out when you know children with IEPs that's all we do is want

070to push them in push them in push them in push them in so maybe that reading specialist could now go in instead of having that RTI class and do in-class support and help the teacher modify the already reading lessons that they have or supplement with a small group and doing one of those other scientifically proven curriculums um I just I think there's room for for improvement and at our next admin meeting one of the things that I will ask the admin team to bring to me is how many students are we are providing intervention for reading and how many students we are providing intervention for math because as a district we know our language arts scores are much higher so and it may be grade specific it may be that we have to look at

071having more of a reading support program in the primary grades than when we're getting to the upper grades um and we're more than willing to look at that right how many classrooms have um special ed teachers that push in for services I would have to get back to you on that I can tell you every like if there are special education students all our science and social studies classes are co-taught um but I don't know in every grade level how many um reading and writing um some grades have an in-class support class and a resource room cohort some may not some might only have an inclass so but I would H be happy to get back to you on that okay thank you um additional guidance counselors I know that there are so much going

072on with our children in regards to anxiety um both of my children have anxiety they didn't get it from me um guidance counselors social workers somebody to run social skills groups navigating um this the Third thir grade girl situation is not easy there should be a girls group um you know why don't we have these options um it seems like we do have special ed um social skills groups um and we have a bunch of children that are pulled into that to you know help with um that particular um piece of you know appropriate socialization and things like that but I'm looking at like greater level type we do have general led social skills groups and that third grade one actually is interesting as a former third grade teacher so when something like that comes

073up and you think it would be a betterment of the school reach out to Mrs Granado because sometimes it's knowing like hey this is this is kind of bubbling up right now because we do run social skills groups um and Lunch Bunch yes Lunch Bunch yeah but again I feel like the children who are targeted with that are or the children who um are included in some of those things are children that have had issues in the past or so you know my daughter who is a rule follower doesn't necessarily want to go to lunch Bunch with so and so and so and so who are known children for having issues but again if you bring that to them and you know both of them well enough then we talk about outside the box and

074can we run a group after school there's absolute things that we can do but I will be honest that one wasn't even on my radar so it's a really good one so if you share that with them trust me they're going to run with it okay um so modern technology crisis management plan again all of these things are things that we need to have in place and I just really want to know what are the steps that are being taken to improve these Ser services and continue to keep up with some of the other districts um you know I came here three years ago um we moved here three years ago because of the amazing school system um when I got here I was so pleasantly taken back by the Educators um you guys have

075phenomenal Educators that I believe carry the back of the school um the Administration has been nothing but open to me um very you know um understanding to any of my children's needs my needs um so I I really do appreciate that but when I look at this District I don't necessarily look at it as an amazing school district there are a lot of things that need to change um and I want want to be able to have that all for my children um so before I answer that can I ask specifically what you're um speaking about with regards to technology um you know just being able to have all the most up-to-date technology classrooms so every year we buy 250 Chromebooks we have state-of-the-art infrastructure every classroom doesn't just have Wi-Fi but has digital access

076if I know you listen to board meetings so you'll know that this year we also took on a study of different interactive panels in fact your child's classroom just got one installed today today's professional development was all based on technology we have five I'm so proud of this and that's why you're going have to listen to me a little bit um we have a I was in another school recently and I am incredibly critical of a or public school because like you I don't I don't want to be the superintendent of a subpar school district and I don't believe I am but when people keep telling you you're subpar you start to take that on so I was in a school district last week and I was walking through that school and anybody who saw

077me afterwards heard me I take for granted sometimes what we have because we're so used to seeing it we have a stem lab that has five 3D printers that has a laser cutter cutter um that has hydroponics gardening that has robotics programming that has coding every grade here is doing something that I would say is Cutting Edge our third graders right now are looking at the playground and creating 3D models of how else to make an inclusive playground that's really cool stuff and that's technology for creativity and creation Now when we talk about technology for differentiation the district not only is of course one to one we're one to one with a plan again just talked to another superintendent today he's like I'm going to buy 700 Chromebooks why are you buying 700 Chromebooks oral

078public school has a plan every first grader gets a Chromebook they keep until third grade every fourth grader gets a new Chromebook it is in our budget it happens every single year in addition to those Chromebooks because what's a Chromebook if you don't have a plan right we have over $42,000 worth of digital subscriptions to help teaching and learning again I love to talk about orell public school if you ever have a question about something like that ask I mean I will I will show you it um and I have a question what what do you want to see that you're not seeing in technology um specifically just you know making sure that all of the classrooms have these you you know these tools and that each child has access to to those tools um

079you know and and building confidence you know using those tools I don't necessarily find you know time on a computer withl um a wonderful learning tool it's a it's something that could help a child get better at what they've already learned but you know just making sure that all of the children have exactly the most uptate to technology tools that's kind of where I'm going with that especially the specialed population and the only thing I'll ask on is please know that we are also deliberate there are districts that put kindergarteners on Chromebooks and we philosophically have some concerns with that so you will see and and and your kids are kind of in those Middle grades right you're going to see more and more as you go on and some of that is very deliberate

080yeah I mean last year I know my daughter was involved with a stem project um they were supposed to be building like I guess a town or something like that and I guess it failed very poorly um and my daughter was so upset about it um you know so I we do appreciate those stem nights and I know my family loves those things so um you know just making sure that everybody has access to those tools and you know not having to to beg for them um and then I guess my last question is about um funding um I know there's a lot of talk about Murphy really kind of you know cutting back some things hopefully we don't see anything until 2026 um but you know I just wanted to make sure that our

081state and school budgets are being utilized effectively um what kind of impact that will have on us especially being um you know a Bergen County School District um obviously there's a need for you know various improvements within Ops um but the district continues to report a budget surplus so what improvements are you mentioning when you say there's obvious improvements that need to be done the special education the community um the communication the um everything that everybody is talking about making oral best I thought you meant building wise sorry oh no a bigger Auditorium I mean you just redid this so right I misunderstood you yeah yeah no that's fine um so um just making sure that those things like an extra reading specialist having maybe a district behaviorist having teacher coaches um making sure that

082those are all not have you're not able to utilize those things because you don't want to spend money on the budget and have a certain Surplus you know listen money is not my thing I'll tell you right now um but I know that our children are worth every penny and I paid a I pay a lot in taxes I paid a lot for my home to come here so my children have the best education and I just want to make sure that we're constantly on top of that we're constantly looking how to better ourselves I agree that we should praise what should be praised and again when I look at idell I don't look at bottom in any way shape or form I look more towards the top but there are still room there's still

083room for improvement there will always be room for improvement and I just want you to know that you have an amazing family and Resident support we want to make our children the best that they can be by supporting our admin by supporting our Educators um so you know just I want as a board to always keep that in mind that we're looking to always improve so I just want to say something to that um I can assure you and I said it in my last um in the last meeting that this board is hypercritical there they go of everything almost too much maybe so I can tell you from a board level we are always trying to improve things but I will tell you this you have probably the most Su the the most caring

084superintendent and admin team in the county they put in hours and they are constantly constantly thinking about your children and how to do better how to do better how to do better so I will tell you that without you even coming up here and telling us all this these things are in discussion weekly yeah with our superintendent and admin so I do want you to have the um confidence that this is a constant conversation between admin superintendent the teachers at the grade level but you really have one of the most hardworking I can well Superintendent at admin any for children unbelievable to that I can totally attest to that I've had wor about I've had ad men call me at 5 o'clock in the evening and I'm like go home so um but you know

085I just want as a parent to tell you what I see um and that what I wish for so this is my wish we appreciate you coming this is what we was for so thank you for coming thanks hi there okay my name is Danielle vagero I'm at 139 Gordon Court um I did sorry it's this better oh okay I'll hold on to it um I did email this one over but just thought um better to get it on the radar here um and this kind of goes hand inand with some of the safety that we've been talking about and also of course for Budget um the topic of do you have a different last name on your email MAFO I have it with me my professional and my I have it with me yes

086okay um basically the topic of a school resource officer um so I think I I have a kindergartener so I apologize if I don't know all the background here but it does seem like there is a little bit of ambiguity when bringing this topic up on whether this is something that would be kind of like a board decision or principal superintendent Deion Deion um is it something that you would look to the parents to say is this you know where you would like your tax dollars to go to and support um I know typically and statistically speaking my husband is in law enforcement I'm on finance so I I get the battle here um but yes when we think about a grade school acts of violence is statistically lower um but I think even listening

087to some of the arguments made at the last meeting just around school safety bullying in general um that presence from a you know a law enforcement professional really does kind of help Foster positive relationship um among students um you know teachers and just that overall sense of safety I know there's been a few of the arguments that point to the live cameras or proximity to to ell police which is great but i' hate it to be like a false sense of hope especially with younger kids who would be the ones that do need that guidance in a time of you know a bullying an incident a fight that were to break out it's definitely a topic that's been discussed it would have to be board approved many Pros many cons heavy Financial um implications but

088you want to speak on this Miss Boos a little bit and also really understanding what like a class three can and cannot do so they can be that buddy in the hallway like you know I always say one of the reasons I support the lead program is there's an actually a lot of research that it actually stops drug usage later but it gives our students a face with the police department and for that um I value the program so much but when it comes to an actual bullying investigation or a fight they actually can't talk to kids yeah so that you know it's it's kind of saying you know if that's what we want then then a class three is not the right choice and and to look at something else but as president Nicholls

089said it is something that we continue to talk about definitely something that it could be beneficial I know um I think surrounding schools have it as well so it would be nice to know that we fall into that camp thank you for coming let give you a oh dear God hi Kelly Leia from First Street um I originally wasn't planning on speaking so I don't have any fancy speech or anything planned just warning you um but I have some follow-up questions I know I think way back to the beginning of the meeting we were talking about safety and I just as a parent want to understand and what you're talking about when you mean the red yellow green system and is that specifically for communication that you give to the community as a whole okay

090so um when the two parents came to the board meeting and started talking about crisis communication one of the things they followed up with is they gave me some guiding documents from some other districts so the first thing we realized is we have all of those things we've just never shared them with you because we've always seen them as internal documents and some of those documents have to stay internal right but one of the pieces that I did see as a something that was missing was a communication guide so when an incident happens if it's in the green level this is how we're going to communicate to the community this is when we're going to communicate to the community if it's in the yellow level these are yellow type incidents at orell public school this

091is how we're going to deal with them this is how we're going to communicate does that answer yes perfect so then my follow-up question is regarding this idea of incident reports and and like how you're using data right so like if I I'm going to make something hypothetical examples help me like learn and understand better so let's say my child someone calls them a name right a pretty bad name how is that communicated to me as a parent are you keeping an incident report can I receive a copy of the incident report like I don't think that's clear to parents either um I discussed it with my sister I'm not an educator but like all my family is I'm I'm one of those and she's been an educator for over 20 years in three different

092school districts and she was like yeah there's always an incident report something happens to your child you get a copy you in the school discuss it and then we even keep data because if there's repeat offenders we're able to like identify weak spots of like where we need to adjust so I don't know what's happening with like into regards as to we how we handle that so I just wanted to follow up um so we def we keep track and so our assistant principles keep you know interaction logs and we enfor the parent but there isn't a form so that could be something then that we say with this communication this is a yellow incident and one of our internal factors is we're going to communicate using this incident log okay so I mean all

093of these and again as president Nicholls said like we're always driven to get better and sometimes when things have been happening a certain way you just keep doing it and it sounds really weird I'm really excited to create this because I think what happens is it's it's a clear document between us and our parent community and our board and we need that because right now what's happening is we're just interpret things differently and this will hopefully clarify all that sure um and then I guess my last question is then how are the kids supported so say my kid is the one who said a b b word what are you all doing to support them so that they you know obviously I'll talk to them at home once again this is hypothetical um but like

094you know it was mentioned earlier that sometimes there's like individual support for the students do we have a system like that in place as well yes any um alleged perpetrator alleged victim of any incident um gets offered counseling to their parent and also I mean most of our code of conduct what does it talk about it talks about detention but it also talks about reflection so what that reflection is is kind of a time for the assistant principal or the counselor deciding who depending on who we assign it to to sit and talk about the event from the perpetrator perspective also and are we keeping track of how many incidences are occurring so that we know if that we have to have an appropriate amount of guidance counselors we do keep track of the amount

095of the one guidance counselor right now is able to handle all of that counseling we have more than one guidance counselor the one part fulltime in one one part time so I mean we've listen there could always be more right but we have doubled that number since data because the numbers can always tell you know what I will ask our assistant principles to share their logs with me so I can do a more thorough analysis all right thank you thank you for coming we're boring people they're all leaving how are you Amanda Harrison uh 479 lak view I just have a follow-up question with the red light green light um so you're going to put a procedure are we the community allowed to vote what we think is red yellow and green we're going to

096have a present it's going to go through the board first PR it's going to be all put together then uh Miss we'll have Miss boio do a presentation in at one of our board meetings where afterwards you can comment make you know suggestions so then our suggestions will then be counted for and okay perect definitely okay there will be things though that parents may suggest that the admin does in agreement so like it gets a little bit tricky because then people say well you asked my opinion we didn't take it but you know we have two ends of the Spectrum we have some parents that want to know everything and then we have some that say don't bother me at all and then we have to really focus on what do we want our admins

097to be spending their time on every day and some things are just going to happen in an elementary school that they don't think Rises to the level so it's it'll be a balancing app but there will be a public presentation on it and you will be able to comment or ask questions or whatever you want wonderful thank you and now one of the earlier parents said um well miss bosos you mentioned that there's protocol and that the staff follows the protocol my question is and I know it's um it's difficult because we manage a lot of students throughout the day and you know we try to stick to protocol at what if a staff member you know kind of has an overwhelming day and is also stressed and sometimes you know misses protocol for whatever

098reason for whatever the situation is how is that handled by the administration I'm sorry it's okay I um there are some things we don't mess with and safety like if there was a risk that was missed frankly we've taken disciplinary action I I hate to say it I don't want to sound harsh but there's certain things it doesn't matter if if you had a tough day um we've had staff members who forgot and came back at 305 and even then when we've had to then put this crisis protocol and if you've worked in a school trying to put something in place when kids are already at home is even harder we've kind of said our crisis protocol the way it's written it for danger to um self or others actually even goes as far as

099to say you heard it someone told you it and the first thing is you stop what you're doing and you get an administrator got it so there's just I again there's no excuses for that perfect okay thank you very much thank you let me go through my emails because some people had emailed me questions so I wanted to get to them so Danielle's was one there's one on communication um Steinberg I have Okay so this was something that was uh kind of brought up before our last meeting about our buildings and grounds policy and this is a legal question so one of the questions that two of our parents had I guess there was confusion on our board policy was why was the board voting on um you know things during the day they people

100thought we could only vote on use of our school facilities after school so that was the one question and then in our policy it states let me read this um we can refuse uh Grant use of the building whenever in the board's judging there's good reason so um they were wondering what good reason so I guess the questions were does the board have um the authority to vote on uh outside groups using the building during the day and what would be you know our judgment on good reason that's in the policy well I think the the policy says that first of all it's always board board authority or board discretion as to use of the facilities by outside groups whether it's during the day or if it's after the day um there's a presumption that

101during the day it's going to be scrutinized we really want this for instructional use however on a case-by Case basis there might be exceptions um and I think the case by case example or that language is is to give it broad enough where the board can look at certain things and certain uses and certain proposals that come up on a case-by Case basis um to make those exceptions but I think the priority and what the intent of the the policy is instruction first during the day um fund things outside of the day um so that's if I answer that question that's what the intent is that would be like good reason or whatever and then there's another part of it which I think I can answer but one was that um this is from the

102email the understanding is that school property is open to one group all other groups must be granted access and they were saying that if one order was one author was granted permission to use the facilities and all others must be granted so just to clarify that the authors were not um you know asking for access to our building it was the PTA so never was one author you know pulled here that it was just the PTA so also that is not true that just because we Grant the PTA a access to our building that we have to Grant all other groups there are there are different Columns of groups on our building use you can go yeah there's different classes of users so instructional users come first um so anything related directly with the kids

103comes first um and I think that's what what the intent is so uh um there's other groups that may want to use a room um whether it's um girl scouts or Boy Scouts um it's not necessarily considered instructional even though it directly impacts the kids but that's considered like a second second group of users and there's some CL some some clarifications they you know it might be only after school it's not during the instructional day um but those are the type of different categories of of different users we have four profit categories all kinds and if there's ever a question we just um you know the board office calls the attorney but I just wanted to get through those because they were emailed to us any other questions does any board member want to make

104a comment about anything I do Mr Daran yeah um so uh you had mentioned that a lot of times we uh address issues at a subcommittee level and that is absolutely true a lot of things uh start at the subcommittee and work its way up onto the agenda um the reason why we don't talk about them in public is probably two main reasons one is we're a relatively small school relatively small board this meeting is is held in public so everyone has a chance to see it but it's really our meeting where we just sit down and we go through the mundane work of approving things uh we have our meeting every two weeks because the administration needs to cut checks more than once a month um and they can't cut checks until they get

105board approval so in a lot of ways these meetings are just um board members amongst themselves just going through and approving agenda items um we don't sit here and have lengthy discussions among ourselves over things we've already discussed for the purpose of the community because a lot of times nobody really is interested um so so that's one of the reason why we don't usually spend 10 or 15 minutes discussing things now we do have questions a lot about uh things that are going on at the school and we do discuss them at subcommittees but then generally we ask the superintendent uh toe to present to the board so when it comes to you know grades or o other things or our goals we we develop goals annually uh we ask the superintendent to present and

106and that's where a lot of what we feel is important gets shared with the community um the other thing uh is sometimes when we discussing things it's not really confidential like it's you know obviously with with Personnel related issues but it does involve other groups and uh when there's two sides of a coin sometimes you just don't want to talk about that in public or if a group uh submitted an incomplete application you don't want to call them out so a lot of times we just don't talk about it we just kind of you know just say hey this is something we should maybe table or we vote no and it gets pushed back and you know what have you but um it really doesn't help to highlight all issues so uh those are the

107two things that I don't think were clear especially after the the Fiasco not the board last meeting but two meetings ago and um and that's all I have to say thank you any other board members Mrs Walker I I think the one thing we didn't mention was that after each committee meeting the teachers are of the teachers the board is PR the entire board so three of us meet I'm chair of personnel after my Personnel meeting notes were taken by Miss bosos and those notes are title of what was discussed and an explanation of what we have discussed so that the whole board then is privy to what we had been doing at our meeting and if anyone has any questions they'd reach out to either me the chairman or Miss bosio so that it

108isn't just something the committee is privy to but the entire board does get it or if something is listed on there that isn't quite explicit enough the com the the board has all the right to and and well we welcome it to question so I have Mr Daran yeah and uh I don't know if the community is aware but we get the uh preliminary agenda uh for Wednesday's meetings on Friday and I know that it's very difficult for the administration to put together because it's a lot of information they got to get it way ahead of time and usually when we get our final it has red red text which means something happened between last Friday and today uh but that gives us time to make sure that we understand what's going on and if

109we have any questions we can reach out and get a clear understanding so that when we make a decision it's an informed decision and just wanted to let the community know right as a board right we all come from different Industries we all have different expertise right so we have you know CPA's on here Educators right technologists right so as you kind of look at well could we do better with technology right could we do better with curriculum could we do better with the budget right you know social emotional right we have guidance counselors on on the board so we all have I would say areas that we can you know contribute and that we do contribute do have questions I mean we have parents on the board right so we're hyper aware of things

110right and we kind of each of us bring a special te to the table right and I think that's where we kind of come through together through committees and then voting on on things and whatnot I I meant to share this earlier um but since two weeks ago was such a big Fiasco with the author's presentation I did receive great feedback um I saw that we had a special guest on Wednesday with Mr Chad cell thank you for coming um and with that I received a bunch of letter from the children thank you cards for the PTA saying thank you very much for hosting such a lovely event um and I heard from Mr mangle he said that this was the first year that he received a thank you from the children of all the

111author presentations which that was great and I received a personal email from one of the teachers it said good evening Mrs Harrison our class and the entire fourth grade um absolutely enjoyed every minute of the author's visits event the kids were 100% engaged in chadell presentation from start to finish Chad was so gracious to take the time to meet every child they were really inspired by his illustration and were so excited to and proud to share their creative drawings with everyone we want to thank you from the bottom of our hearts and our class is sending thank you cards to you the PTA Mr mangle and Chad cell we cannot express enough how grateful we are to have you as part of the amazing PTA who takes the time to set up such phenomenal events

112for our school thank you for your hard work you put together and create a memorable experience for the children thank you um I will be sending out the thank you cards to Mr cell this Friday um but yes it was a lovely event for all three um authors all three authors were great and the children were engaged from kindergarten through sixth grade so it was a good turnout great to hear sorry last one I promise follow up on and and it's not a m Darion I know more about buildings and grounds than anything else in this building because you actually give a full report of everything at your meeting it's not an individual criticism of any board member and I did vote for many of you sitting here because I do trust you it's a

113to me it's a structures and systems issue I don't understand why something isn't presented at a board meeting before it's voted on at a following board meeting where the public actually then can comment on it I don't find any level of transparency and engagement when you've had the internal dialogue you've shared your minutes with one another and you vote an agenda open to the public for agenda items only I don't even know what you're talking about when you're voting on these you all have that information so where is the level of Engagement and transparency to the public in the system I work in where there are votes it a resolution has has to be presented it cannot be voted on at the same meeting so anything a committee meeting that's presented is presented at one

114meeting discussion is had the following meeting it's open to the public the public can then comment on curriculum the budget Personnel whatever it might be buildings and grounds to hear the voice voice of the public before a board votes on it I is there any like that in a I think she's talking about work a work session so some some districts will have one regular meeting where they take action one meeting that where it's a work session it's just discussion that so that the public can have a level of Engagement you say all the time you want people to come and engage but then you sit here and tell us that you've already talked about it so you don't need to spend hours here and I appreciate that and respect that I do but then

115why would anyone come you say they don't care or they don't show up or they don't get involved they didn't come to strategic planning like where you've got to give the opportunity and you're not because it happens behind closed doors and again I trust that it is happening I do trust that you're putting in the time and that the expertise is here however there's expertise out here too and your kids are sitting here some of you don't have kids sitting here we all have kids that are sitting here here so if you want the level of investment and commitment we need to know what's going on again not a book issue a large issue and to me it's not people it's systems and structures I promise I'll be anyone else before we move forward um

116okay so we're going to move to the superintendent report if you don't want to stay for the rest meeting it's fine whatever you want to do then uh Mr aell is going to do the presentation for uh it's a tenative budget it's just the presentation to the board and then after that I'm going to open up for agenda items only unless someone really needs to leave now wants to comment on an agenda item okay so we'll move forward to superintendent report it feels weird to say good evening been here for a while so good evening I'd like to begin by congratulating Miss sham and our Odyssey of the mine team on placing first at the regional tournament their performance was phenomenal and they placed first in both the spontaneous and the long-term term portion of

117the competition what's really impressive about that and I know that that some members of the board have heard this in the past is that as a k6 school we often get pushed to have to compete in the Middle School Division so our fifth graders and I don't think we have a fourth grader on the team this year are actually competing against sixth seventh and eighth graders and if you know anything about education there's a really big difference between a fifth grader and an eighth grader in terms of their presence but they were rock stars um in it and you know I do invite the board you know we're very cautious about what we share publicly about Odyssey because there is a belief that other teams are watching our board meetings and might actually steal some

118of our our props so we don't share until after worlds but I do invite um the board to stop downstairs because there are like automatons that were made that I not going to lie I mean I'm a Reading Writing gal I don't even understand how they work but this fifth grader can explain it like it's amazing so um congratulations on the team and we wish them luck in the state tournament in April um today was a really exciting day at Ops as our teachers Prof participated in professional development this afternoon focused on technology sessions included using AI as a tool for teaching learning and efficiency formative as an assessment tool linkit data manager platform canva using interactive panels in the classroom Robotics and both the read naturally and Bookshare platforms and today was one of

119our combination um assigned PD sessions and choice PD sessions and that's really important to us every single person just like students need differentiation our staff need differentiation so all staff went to an hour on AI because there's so much constantly changing we felt all staff would benefit from that the second session staff actually chose um what would help move their teaching and learning uh forward um and finally we are in the middle of March into reading we have had um some of our Police Department coming in I know I have um some board members coming to read read and it the month will end with a camp in In This Very Auditorium with no food or drink yes because I don't know how many times we can clean the rug and no and that concludes

120my report thank you okay Mr I iell budget presentation yes thank you uh for those of you who don't know I'm also a resident of orell and I'm I've never met another business administrator who taught first grade so I've also a former teacher so I do understand needs of the class room um my job I like to say with this developing a budget is for those who know the book is not to make the mixed up chameleon try to keep the budget balanced meeting the needs of the students allocating scarce resources among limited revenues um so this is a tentative budget this budget is still in uh flux it's still being developed this is just the state mandate to adopt a tentative budget that is submitted to the county uh executive the budget can be

121worked on until our public hearing which is going to be in May so this is really just a look at the budget from a 50,000 foot level um it's not going to be extraordinary ly detailed because this is where we're still at with the process so the budget process starts you know when I finish one budget start one school year we're already looking at the next one uh so looking at revenues uh you'll see the state our revenues were cut from the state 3% but 3% in Oradell doesn't mean much because it's only $31,000 we don't receive a lot of money from the state um so dialogue principal supervisors finance committee we meet many times they delve into the budget in detail asking very detailed questions they are engaged um so we have to have

122a balanced budget budget can't be out of balance simple you will see in the revenues most of our budget like most of Northern Bergen County is Levy based it's the tax Levy and it's going to be our revenues that are from various Reserve accounts I just want to address this idea that we have this Surplus by Statute the board has to have a 2% adjusted Surplus from our 2324 general fund expenditures so we do have a $289,800 which you would call a surplus that money cannot not be used without the express permission from the commissioner of education so there are funds that the board even if they wanted to use them cannot use them that's why statute it's 2% um I just wanted to bring that up because I heard we have a surplus and

123there is a surplus but it's a surplus that can't be used without permission these are our tentative revenues so right there you see our Levy of 14, 233 670 that may change may not change depending on we have still some uh decisions that need to be made we have unrestricted miscellaneous revenues that we receive our state aid as I said is about down about $31,000 and then you will see these other funds so this is when you say you know what does the district do if we don't spend all the money at the end of the year it goes into the various funds to be used for future years so we have a budgeted fund balance of $200,000 that's to use uh to help reduce tax levy if we didn't have that $200,000 there from

124the budget the money would have to come from somewhere it's either going to have to increase the levy or you're going to have to reduce costs expenses uh capital projects that $500,000 is coming from our capital reserve fund which at the end of the year if money is available the board chooses to deposit money into those funds to fund future projects same thing with the maintenance Reserve maintenance Reserve by Statute we could only hold $643 $643,000 have uh but it's prudent on the board's behalf at the end of the year to put funds away for future use and these are tentative Appropriations the Appropriations will meet the revenues they equal you will see total Capital outlay so in this budget as of now there's a $500,000 Capital outlay to put rooftop units on uh different

125parts of the Ops building we are also exploring though grants from the state regarding from psng direct install programs so maybe we can get more units on the roof and also get some of that funded via psg's direct install program but that's something that's just come out and we won't have numbers until May you know the state doesn't give us our Revenue numbers to the end of February uh so so we don't get some of these numbers until right when they're saying all the budgets due we also have costs that special education cost an out of District placement is $90,000 tuition a oneon-one a is $65,000 transportation's $40,000 that's one student what if we get three of those students next year and they're not in the budget what what does the board do so you

126have to start trying to anticipate who could be coming into the district and having conversations about that just a pie chart to see where are money this is all aggregated just Tred to what of our top cost centers and the tenative budget resolution as you can see we only receive for this budget $231,000 in Revenue that's revenue from the state and the federal government that's all that's anticipated as of now we may get additional grants those are grants we may get additional funds we may not um but that's what we think is a conservative number to help balance the budget so well over if you think about it you add the reserves you add the levy or well well over 90% of the budget is locally funded and there is no extra money coming from

127the state we are considered to be whether people believe it or not a very wealthy District free and reduced lunch drives how much money you receive from the state from the federal government if you don't have high free and reduced lunch students you don't receive money um so our money will always just be based on formulaic principles that the state decides Next Step we're going to adopt this budget hopefully the board uh does then we will after the county executive can now hold that budget to review until April 21st then the board has to publicly advertise that we're going to hold the public hearing ours is tentatively set it looks like for May 7th and that's when the final bud budget will be actually delivered and you'll be able to see it in more detail

128here we're still at like the 50,000 foot level getting a general idea meeting the state mandate to submitting a budget but is this the final budget is this the budget that we're going to use for 2526 not necessarily and that concludes my budget presentation Mr Rell do you want to um talk a little bit when we were speaking today about how um Miss Boos I know has part in this also how you have to show how your budget supports state standards and they will not approve your budget if you can't prove that you're supporting State Standards Etc yeah this was one of the big learning lessons for me as superintendent I always just thought that this like big Excel document went to the county and that was what was submitted for the budget but there's

129actually a narrative that has to be included um I do it in conjunction with the director of curriculum so for example next year's budget must include details on how we are meeting the new math standards so we actually um began our transition in math resource and math standards this past year but students in grades K through three will have a new math resource next year so that is a part of our budget that will also meet this state mandate there are other areas like for example lots of districts try to get away with not having a library media specialist which is actually um a mandate that every district has one and we have to show that in the budget so there are certain things that um we have to show um curricularly and also it

130will ask us like what are some of your District goals it will ask us to reflect on this past year and how did we use this past Year's data to inform the future and I I'll apologize too if I go a little too fast because I live with these numbers every day this budget every day all day um so sometimes in my head I've already think oh I've spoken about that or we're ahead and not realizing well some people may have no idea what I'm talking about so I have no problems if you have questions uh feel free ask them uh because I may have just glossed over something that you felt was very important but I've in my head I've talked about it many times already I'm going to open to the board for

131the budget I'm going to open to the board after be when it's open to the public for agenda items but um we've heard you speak enough about it okay Finance is good um I do want to make a comment I know there's been a lot online about um the assess the new assess values on homes in orell and you have to remember everybody sitting up here all the board members are we're in your same exact position we opened it and you know dropped dead came back but I just want to um remind everyone that it all goes by on town Factor so let's say your um assess value went up 25% our budget is our budget you know like we have we have um restrictions on how we how high we can go so just

132because they're raising your ta your tax value 25% we can only go up 2% plus a few other things like the budgets are set the budgets are just going to be you know divided by over a new tax base you could have an issue obviously if you are way above the average and you may have a good side if you're below but like same with the town like they have to stay within certain um restricted guidelines so our budgets are the budg so just because like you know if you went up 25% our budget's not going up 25% so like everyone should realize that and I just wanted to make one more and another comment on the valuation the greater the homes are valued as those increase as the incomes of community members increase if

133enrollment doesn't increase that will eventually impact state aid we'll actually get less money because the state sees it as you're wealthier this year than you were the prior year so therefore you should be paying more so increased home values those are now factors in determining state aid uh there the income piece of it now has really become a large part of this identifying who gets state aid and who doesn't so as our values increase in town as incomes increase and if we don't have a lot of enrollment changes i' say in the future money will be going from state aid will be dropping and we'll be asking for the board will be asking for taxpayers to either decide to increase Levy within caps so you're trying to figure out the state said this year well

134you can increase your budget but we're expecting health benefits to go up 14% we're expecting electricity uh to go up 15% you know there's there's numbers to balance here how do you figure that out well they said you get 2% and a little bit you know 85% of this budget salaries and benefits it's people and their benefits there's really nothing that you could say tangible you know there is no we don't have a fleet of vehicles we don't have you know High operating overhead our attorney fees are below 130% and we were talking about I budgeted this year and it's pretty consistent we're looking at 50 to 57,000 a year within the budget of how many millions so it's not an exorbitant amount of money it's the money that's prudently needed to meet the needs

135of those potential uh litigation questions that need to be answered advice that needs to beeped preped when we left the finance meeting last week I think we were about $800,000 out of balance with things we need here so it took a week Mr iell brought it down we're going to be looking at it again but like we are tight and I know there was things mentioned about Surplus at year end but most of that Surplus I won't say most I said a lot of it like we always budget um special ed we don't know if kids are going to be coming in going out a district so we always have like one or two placeholders if they come we really don't have budget but at year end with that budget that's not that's not money

136that we can say hey we had a 100 grand left over let's hire I don't know I'm GNA make something another teacher or whatever we can't because we may not have that next year that is just sheer luck that someone didn't come in the district and have to get bust out so we use it a lot of times for technology we buy our laptops with it like we always meet January February to see how we're running and we start getting a list together I know they go to the staff and like what are things that we can buy this year that we didn't have to spend from our budget as opposed to putting it in next year's budget so we can pull it forward and get it done I probably shouldn't say this next part

137but I'm going to since we're all taxpayers here the one area I think that and correct me if I'm wrong if I have this understanding wrong but like I said you know orell's budget is their budget we can only go up a certain amount the town's budget riverdale's budget can only go up a certain amount where I think the concern is I think with towns is with riverdell because they spread it over no I'm just saying like they spread it over the combined I think assessed base of both towns so if one town is much higher assessed than the other it's a problem now I do think River has been keeping up but that is somewhere maybe we could have an issue I'm not probably shouldn't be talking about this but it's true like we're

138all taxpayers so that's where we could have an issue if one town doesn't is that the truth is that how it goes it gets spread over the thing so if one town continuously UPS their you know assess values and another one doesn't that's where we're going to see a difference and some years they go higher and it helps us but that's where the issue could be do any board members have a question on the budget I mean this is just the ten and0 we're going to be making changes Mr Darion yeah I have a comment first Mr I that was the best presentation I've seen in 14 years so you know in terms of the budget you really hit the nail on the head and you hit all the key points so I'd like to

139thank you for that um the other thing is uh in terms of the assessments that been sending out uh I I view it as the tide is rising and The Tide Rises all boats equally what you have to worry about is if your assessment is more than other people in the community because the way that the tax is sent to you uh there's a total which includes the municipality and the two districts school districts and there's a total number and they take that number and they divide it between the businesses and the residents and unfortunately we're losing some businesses so more goes towards the residents this year versus per prior years and then it goes to your individual uh taxpayer based on percent the total so if your percent the total is the same as

140it was last year because everyone else raised equally the percent of total is the same so they you'll get basically whatever the percent of total is of that number that's what you'll get so it's not necessarily tied to the valuation the reason why they adjust valuations is because of the exceptions people will file a lawsuit against the municipality and they'll say oh this is wrong this is way off it's not calculated correctly and and and then they go in front of a judge and they they get a a waiver a tax waiver and and the municipality can't fight all those so they end up getting huge uh shortfalls at the end of the year because and it's unanticipated because they don't know who's going to fight against these appraisals and so what they do is

141they do it every year and then when it goes in front of a judge the judge says well it was just recently appraised why is this wrong and now all of a sudden the argument has changed and most of them don't go through so that's the reason why we get these repeated annual appraisals but at the end of the day it's it's it's the same it the percent of total is what matters so it's like rising of all boats and I think the other part which is depressing is that inflation our money isn't going as far so now you have to pay more for the same thing so you know some of it is just inflation and also you have to realize we have a 2% cap plus a few other things right so when

142salaries go up more than 2% you heard our benefits are budgeted at 14% well the 14% on that two almost $3 million the other than 2% it has to come off of something else so 85% of our budget is going up way more than 2% our heat and everything so there's very little wiggle room to really I know people think like you know hiding money we're not hiding money we're we're trying to get through with the best education we can on the money we have wanted to clarify that one if if the anticipated students do not arrive we make purchases that instead of using for the next school year we will make that purchase in the current school year and use it within so if we anticipate that maybe a student will not arrive uh

143for this 24 25 we will instead of spending that money next year we will absorb and use those funds and buy materials that we can use this year so it's not that we're buying ahead necessarily we're buying it and then implementing it within this budget reallocating the funds instead of towards maybe tuitions we reallocate it towards technology and we could buy additional Ben Q boards and have them in the in the building now as opposed to maybe waiting so that's I just wanted to clarify that money isn't used in advance for the other year it doesn't like we don't buy them and they just sit here correct we're buying using them in the current school year right that's true I should not have said that we are doing things yeah but if we are doing

144things that we have we need in this year school year but we're buying an exra but now we're going to use them in the school year correct so any other questions from the board Mrs Walker um Mr iell you said that we're considered an affluent School District then how many students do not get subsidized lunch I don't know of any free or reduced but if I look at it what the state uh put in our budget we did the semi waiver so Medicaid waiver we were asking well how much money would that Medicaid waiver be the state said there maybe is p possibly eight students out there and those eight students if we were to use that money was $798 so we are well below any number we would need 20 40% of our students

145before we would see real increases in Aid so that semi- waver because to get that $798 which been $5,000 at a minimum just to get that so that's the state assumption um so and if anyone wants to meet to go over values it goes out to the 10,000th place in the decimals so and calculating the rate so if anybody wants to do to 10,000th place an actual um I'll meet can show you that how your tax rate is calculated any other questions from the board thank you Mr iell appreciate it okay so we are now going to go back in our agenda where it says open to the public for agenda item so this is where you can comment on anything that we're going to vote on and one of them is the budget so

146if you do have questions you can comment so and then just to go back to what we're saying at the end we always have an open to the public for anything you want to talk about hi my name is k poser I live at 469 Hasbrook Boulevard can everyone hear me in the back okay that is always a challenge with this microphone um so my questions are specific to the budget and I'm glad that some of our board members already raised them um one of them was going to be what percentage of our students are free and reduced price lunch um before I get into my questions though I do want to thank you all for your service and for your dedication to the public school um that we have in our town and I

147apologize if um my comments come across as short um I am an administrator so I get straight to the point and I appreciate details we appreciate and data um so my questions specifically about the budget come down to um can you direct to me and then I'll open it to who else sure sure sure my questions specific to the budget are um what portion do we and if we know this we may or may not since our budget has not been finalized of our income from the state is federal flow through money so what portion of that funding is um perhaps going to be impacted by changes at the federal level Mr r p do you know that I have budgeted $230,000 okay from the state but what well that's that's including the Ida flow

148through okay and what portion of that I'm not we're talking we're talk $170,000 okay out of the entire budget so if that was and that's I used uh 75% of what we received previously okay um reason reasonable and and the county won't let you say go even lower okay and um you mentioned also seeking grants um to support or to backfill some of the income and I'm curious about what the source of those grants would be potentially well the one we're pursuing now is called uh through PS it's called direct install program they will fund we don't know how much they say up to 80% but we don't know if that's 80% of one unit seven units so we're in the early stages the program just came out but we have already had our audits

149done and our units inspected um so the more money that we could get from PSG is the less money that we would use from capital reserve we're budgeting 500,000 but hopefully we get funds from PSG and then that would reduce that amount uh but again all grants are tied all I'll say 99% of Grants are tied to free and reduced lunch so without free and reduced lunch you may you may read something that says there's this Grand opportunity I know we don't qualify so so just I'm an administrator in Grants okay at a institution of higher education so talking about people in the audience who have expertise that overlaps I I just want I just want to piggy back on what Mr iell said so um if you've been listening or watching any of our

150prior boarders you've been hearing Mr Daran who was chair of building ground for a year now we've been talking about hbac units on the roof and I think we have seven so one is in very bad condition one's and we're trying to put together a plan because they're not cheap so every year when you see that we have a little bit of surplus left we use part of it to buy things for the school but then part of it every year we do have to put away because if we don't have this money it's the roof goes we're screw done like one day I don't know how many years ago we came in and the parking lot there was a pipe bu burst underneath and we had to rip up the parking lot so every

151year we're doing that but back to the grant that Mr Elli was something I just want to say some something about Mr Elli we are the first we were the first in the state to learn about the grant because of Mr relli and the first to apply so thank you Mr Rell that we were the first ones people didn't even know about it so we've already had them here they've done their audit we're waiting for the thing so again though it's based on are demographic so we're waiting to see what happens so keep going sorry so my other question since we're talking about cost rising and cost of living rising and um our health insurance which all of our cost of health insurance is increasing over time increasing potentially 14% um and the cost of

152um Fuel and energy Rising as well um I'd like to and I'm hoping that as we go through the details of the budget over the next coming months you will also be addressing how the board is taking some of those Capital reserves and looking at Future proofing our school in terms of improving efficiency improving um you know ways that we can reduce energy and things of that nature we've already done that we did a huge EIP uh how many years ago with the state we've already done it 2017 before then I think no it was finished in 2017 so if it was 2017 that's eight years ago yeah but we have all new univent for all the classrooms we have LED lights throughout the building we uh oh boy we we come on and off

153automatically we don't have solar panels on the roof we do have solar panels we have variable speed pumps for our boilers we have brand new Transformers throughout the entire building so what additional steps are we looking at to Future proof well one of the things is tonight we have on our agenda the replacement of our aale units those are isolated they're not connected to the rest of the building each classroom has a separate unit uh device those unfortunately are made in the UK and so it took a little while for us to get those lined up in terms of the funds and and to get to those but those are the last of the units um you know there really isn't you know the Silver Bullet anymore unfortunately when it comes to you know reducing

154our utilities or uh you know um you know Green initiatives um you know I mean I'm we're all ears so I mean we we kicked around the idea maybe expanding ing our Sol solar panels to have more but you know there's really not a lot of money for that right now and the srex that we get are not all that beneficial so it it would be basically we'd be doing it spending a lot of money and then the outlay the return on investment would be very long and and and that's not something we want to you know we have other pressing issues right now like what we're taking care of so um well even our HVAC units going in is going to be much more efficient than the ones that were put in 18 years

155ago go right but I will tell you when we did the esip you had to go through the state and they came to audit and the way it worked was that um they gave you a certain amount of money we did this without going to the taxpayers with a referendum for more money we did a we did $2.4 million in this we never asked the taxpayers for another dime what we did was to the state was that our Energy savings from becoming so energy efficient was paying for our loan from the state which is still being paid so we did go through that and uh but they're like I said like the hvac's now are getting old they will be much more efficient but we had the state in we did it and just one

156other thing you know the school operates weekends you know think about the gym the auditorium there are lot the school is used so the utilities I mean you know even though students aren't here you know we could charge and we try to get that money back but then again you know basketball is using that I mean the wreck it's just another that's taxpayer money too right so it's this balance of keep the building open have the building utilized by the community but that comes with additional costs and the for instance even our boilers are Rel are are new I mean compared to boilers I mean boilers will last 50 years so to take the boilers that we had that are 12 years old or 13 years old and you want to replace those for more

157energy efficient well that's an 80-year payback so we have as far as we could go the Big Ticket items have really been addressed we have a Cod generator which uh takes energy from the boilers and preheats water uh you know in addition to our generator backup so there's a lot of things that we have um like I said you know we're we're pressed for I'm asking these questions in the name of transparency and I really appreciate the answers for we're glad you're asking thank you thank you for coming we're boring more people any other questions on anything on the agenda or the budget I'm signed in already right um just a quick question I know until this past year um looking at the calendar it's a calendar question till the past year um there was

158a February break this year there were two days off for feruary I see in the the uh Cal the draft calendar that we're down to one I was just curious if that was uh what the rationale was behind that we love our February break but I'm let Miss Boos talk about this because we do have issues this year with the calendar um when we put together the calendar there's a couple factors that kind of lead the way one of them is we do have parents that have children both at orell public school and Riverdale and it if we had a full full week in February what we would have had to do is extend school one more week that would have meant that we had off which most of us would have been very happy

159about but River doll only has one day off and then we would have finished a whole week after them now you'll see a big push across um schools to end school a little bit earlier in June the truth is operationally for us it allows us to start our Explorations at our extended school year program sooner which gets everyone out of the building for us to do the true cleaning and maintenance work over the summer so whenever we can have a February break we put it in the calendar because we do believe that it gets everyone healthy and happy um but we just couldn't do it this year we also did talk um at the committee level about actually bringing the teachers in before Labor Day in August you know we' have to talk to them

160about it which would maybe have given us a day at February but this year we have other issues one of the reasons we need to get done earlier is because we need to get Explorations done because we have this huge airdale project coming I think $800,000 we're gon to have crens here I believe all kinds of things so we need to get that done before um school starts so we couldn't really bring in we didn't want to bring in the teachers in August because if we're not done you know we don't know so yeah the calendar is always a discussion but we love our February break thank you anyone else okay not seeing any we are going to move we're going to fly through we're going to move to minutes we have a review of

161February 26 if there's any questions or comments from the board please email Mr aell or myself we have approval of February 12th do I have a motion I make a motion second second by Mr Daran any questions or comments call a question on the roll Mr delre yes Mr Daran yes Mrs Moran yes Mr nutlin yes Mrs Walker yes Mrs noran I abstain Mrs Nichols yes moving to committee reports uh Mrs noran would you take administrative certainly uh under administrative I'd like to present items A1 A2 and A3 have a second second second by Mrs Walker any questions call the question on the role Mr Del Greco yes Mr Daren yes Mrs Moran yes Mr nutland yes Mrs Walker yes Mrs noran yes Mrs Nichols yes uh buildings and grounds Mr Del Greco thank you

162I'd like to bring up items B1 I guess just building facilities use do I have a second I'll second it any questions call the question on the rooll Mr delgreco yes Mr Daran yes Mrs Moran yes Mr nutland yes Mrs Walker yes Mrs noran yes Mrs Nichols yes curriculum Mrs noran uh yes we have not had our meeting but we are looking looking forward to having a meeting next week um and uh we'll be double-checking with our committee members to make certain that everyone's available for it um but I would like to present um item C1 approval of a field trip which is for ay of their mind do I have a second a second second by Miss Moran any questions call the question on the role Mr Del Greco yes Mr Daran yes Mrs

163Moran yes Mr nutland yes Mrs Walker yes Mrs noran yes Mrs Nichols yes Finance uh Mr Darion uh yes um I'd like to First recognize the PTA for the many grants that we have here tonight to approve it's around 5,300 bucks in total uh we're very appreciative for that and also um item D2 you know this is taking money from our capital reserve our maintenance Reserve um you know for those HVAC improvements and um uh Mr iell can you uh just give us a I know it's late so I apologize to everyone a little quick walk through on the um the enrollment adjustments uh for 383 and 209 so the enrollment adjustment is based on a five-year weighted average that the state uh gave us and that enrollment adjustment means that your not additional money

164it means the tax levy could go up an additional $383,000 if the board sees fit and the healthc care adjustment is uh pretty much that they know healthc care benefits are rising so as of now they said there's $29,000 that you can increase your Levy by but I need to uh Supply documentation to see if we can could actually get that adjustment so right now we are asking for these adjustments but it's not guaranteed and it only means that your Levy can increase that much there's no additional there's no money tied to it from the state it's just more money from or they taxpayers so if I could also add so these numbers are uh if we approved this um agenda item these numbers are the numbers that they can go to not exceed that

165but they could be less that is correct okay want to make your motion sorry and with that I'd like to make a motion to introduce items D1 and D2 I'll second second by Mr nutland any questions call the question on the roll Mr Del Greco yes Mr Daren yes Mrs Moran yes Mr nutland yes Mrs Walker yes Mrs noran yes Mrs Nichols yes um Mr Walsh is not here do you know if any meetings are coming back up Mrs noran I think so I haven't seen any but that doesn't mean anything because I've been a little tied up with personal issues uh Mrs Walker Personnel uh yes thank you um I'd like to present F1 um I do have a question let me get a second first any do you have a second second Miss

166second norian what's your question um on um B uh F FB um the teach it's a trip a field trip to the high BL Art Museum um that's a new one on here how does that have an extended day what what number are you on I'm on B um let's see a five b it's on the back side oh it's backwards so let let's go back to this let's stick with Personnel first and then we'll go backwards to the curriculum is that okay or is that are you just asking about that oh because how are we paying them extra oh because it's leaving at 7:30 in the morning I believe no go ahead so that is a field trip done for our art Club students so they go after school oh after school that's why

167um we pay the teacher the contractual rate for a field trip outside the school day okay that wasn't I didn't see that so I'm thinking why a local Museum would be extended sorry I misunderstood you sorry any other questions on Personnel I guess I'll ask my question that I ask every time since our attorneys here Mr did you did you go through the leave thank you any other questions call a question on the role Mr Del Greco yes Mr Daran yes Mrs Moran yes Mr nutlin yes Mrs Walker yes Mrs noran yes Mrs Nichols yes see Mr nutland yes we're working on uh getting everyone scheduled lined up for our next meeting maybe next week Poss well we may be doing C definitely in the next two weeks I oh okay uh public relations Miss

168Downey isn't here I know you were trying to get people together so hopefully again in the next because where are we with the website I was actually just looking at it um nice yeah you guys are going to like it and actually I spoke to them and the app is almost also done so that actually if we do have a meeting next week we should be able to review both okay great great that'd be better okay if anyone has anything less to say about anything it's open to the public I give you credit for setting through all of this any old or new business from the board yeah I have some business hold on a little new business uh the bordell uh Emerson rotary is presenting the Wizards along with the PTA so it got

169sold out very fast it got sold out in like 40 minutes or whatever but um we had a report this morning from the members who were involved in organizing it and they said that the the kids were fantastic they had a preview by a couple of the members here in the school and they said the kids were great everything looks really terrific so if you don't have a ticket we really sorry Mr Darion uh yes so I'm I'm laughing because our attorney's here and I'm G to say something that you probably want to say the mic social media Jeff so um I just wanted to say that uh you know Facebook is uh you know always been a and social media has always been a hot topic for board members you know it's kind of

170like the third rail when you say something sometimes it uh you have unintended consequences but I was uh re-accepted to a private Facebook group that's pretty sizable here in the community and um and I I you know I I uh I just wanted to reemphasize that the point of uh participating on this Facebook group is just to help provide Clarity and transferring information and I'm you know trying not to get drawn into any of the you know discussions and if if someone um starts bullying me I'm going to you know just withdraw comments and and you know it's unfortunate that sometimes this happens but uh I think it's important uh because uh you know it it pains me to see how you know people sometimes don't know what they're talking about and no one says

171anything and it seems like uh you know the phone tag you know things start to Blossom out of control and and you feel like oh man if I could only just say what I know but you know sometimes I can't because you know it's confidential but there are things that you know uh that are pretty factual that if you just state it publicly it would help so I'm just stating this uh publicly now at this meeting you know just to kind of uh I'm playing with fire and I'm reaching for that third rail right Jeff you are playing with fire so to clarify um the board's means of communication is our meeting this is how we communicate um um if there's ever going to be an official statement from the board it will always come

172from the board president whoever that may be I know there's a lot of groups going out there whatnot I used to be an ell residence I never comment if information is going to be put in a group like that it's going to be information that is already public there is no going to be ever you know and Mr Darion knows this there's never going to be information that we're going to be able to share in one group that is not being shared with the entire Community because we cannot do that so this so like our our means of communication is are these what did you want to comment on yeah we're really not allowed to even though it makes people crazy here just turn that on I was going to say the same thing so

173anything that you post has got to be already posted or already talked about in a public board meeting so just be careful with that and and the there's an exception it's if you speak as a community member and you preface it and you have a a disclaimer um that you're speaking on behalf of yourself and your family and not on behalf of the Board of Education yeah I've already put the disclaimer out there but um that that is true and I'm glad you reemphasized that and I will keep that in mind and I'll keep my comments as brief as possible thank you legally we are not allowed to there are a lot of guardrails placed on board members also so we are really not allowed to talk as a group unless we are at the

174table and we are like one of nine so um but you know if you ever any questions we are more than happy to um hear you answer you there are things we cannot talk about but we're happy when people come to our meetings any other old or new business Mr Delco just on that topic and if you can correct me if I'm wrong right some people might comment on like you know at Mr Dar and Mr Del Greco like they might ask for multiple comments for multiple of us is it true that if we have more than five comments on the same thread it's considered violation of sunshine you you have to be careful of that so there's there's you're allowed one way communication so if you provide information out that's that's accurate and that's

175the it's it's the board position um five of them five people can say yes and and send it out but it when it's with a two-way conversation where now it looks like you're having a discussion and taking action um you can't do that if there's a quorum of the board because it has to be noticed and it has to be here as as a public board meeting thank you for that CL which is what I spoke about at the beginning of the meeting like we cannot take action without a quorum our Quorum is five so if we have four people here we can't take a vote on anything we can talk about things so we it really doesn't mean anything if there are if I send out an email like or the superintendent we will

176send out maybe an information email to the entire board um that says maybe you know close session this week There's no information you know if I'm going to send something out I will say confidential do not reply to all because no one can have a conversation behind without the public with more than five members there and we are very careful with that so we're just very careful Mrs norian did you want to comment I just wanted to ask um because I'm Facebook uh there I think there has been a post that's asking from particular members to respond um but um do we need to cover that in policy because in our policy we have always said that the person who speaks for the board is the president and only the president and so that's kind

177of what I've lived by um so I'm going to clarify try not to respond so I was contacted today that someone would was asking questions aboard but I'm not in this group so Mr Darion had said something and I asked Mr Darion to just give the factual thing there was a question I think with all question answers and I just said please just state factually that we went further into school I wanted to keep at the board but board and attorney board level attorney questions will be answered that was already out in the public and I just asked him to do it for me because I'm not in there but we could we should have this discuss board position that's not just repeating what has the action that's already taken board position can only come

178from the board president or the superintendent um but if you already if the board's already taking action you're just kind of repeating it and just providing that report to the public that you can comment on unless you do a disclaimer say this is just my opinion but but you did say the board position and no individual board member should represent the board position you could represent your position as an individual as a community member as a parent and you can talk about facts that are not confidential that is in a public eye that that particular person may not be aware of so as an example but make us sure there's a disclaimer on that though so you need to to make it clear that this is my opinion or my my perception and that you

179don't represent the board what you put out there but like if someone had questions about the budget I could say oh by the way the budget is located here and give them direction to the website any other older new business okay okay so okay I'll allow it technically after we open the public apologies and people don't like this but going forward we will follow our we're pretty open but yes please ask us so is it um do we have to be um social media like part of these groups where you feel like you have to respect right so to avoid that I and since you guys get a lot of heat from concerned parents I mean not at all right absolutely not I to and since we should direct them to the board via email

180so that it could get you know addressed properly maybe a suggestion would be not to participate in these um social media groups so I I I'd like to draw an analogy so I I like um skiing and I'm at the bottom of the ski slope and you know I was told not to play in the snow so I can't make the snowball at the top of the mountain but I see the snowball coming and and sometimes I have have to do something to try to avoid it from crashing into my location at the bottom of the hill and so you know I agree that we shouldn't get involved and I agree that the conversation shouldn't be there but but if I don't do anything if I don't push the snowball left or right or try

181to do whatever it is it's going to come crashing and it's going to be my problem and and and that's what you know people at the community are saying like well we don't know what's going on and and you guys don't say anything and and and okay now you know why but but the problem though is that we get we we we get these exaggerated events right so I also think maybe because of your previous comment saying that you don't have to respond if you don't want to I believe that was a little bit earlier you said we don't have to bring up you know whatever we don't want to so maybe that's why the community is coming down because of a specific comment that you made so I let me get answer that sure

182so that's how public board meetings run right in the entire state by Roberts rules it is a public common sens it is from state level to Federal this is how it works you go to many board members they have their attorney every time people come up the attorney says sorry we're not answering so this is how it works I know the public doesn't like it parents like it but if any of you come on here this is how you're going to be like this is how it works in public but like I said before this board is pretty open when we get questions like if we do try to answer and if we don't know we ask our admin to figure it out and get back to the parents so we are open to it

183we do but we do like to say like when people come up like we cuz some people have never been to a board they have no they think they're going to come and they're going to ask us so what's in this budget line it doesn't work that way so I like to put out there that you know you have three minutes to speak and it is a public common session only if we choose to respond we will most of the time we do but a lot of boards don't but like that is just how public boards work again agree yeah but to you know you if in you're feeling that you're getting bullied then my suggestion would be don't push the snowball just you know leave it as snowflakes so so uh just just as

184full disclosure I have a higher risk tolerance than most and this and and and most rational people would not get involved um and you know I I I'm always I'm going to give you two minutes because here's another thing with public BS you can only direct your comments to me so I'm going to let you answer and then we're going to shut this part down so so I I tend to you know not push the envelope but you know understand that there's risks and I'm willing to take those risks but I'm not saying or suggesting that it's it's the uh advised path here at the board but I just see that you know there is an opportunity to help clear the air and you know wherever I I sometimes I think it's worth the risk

185and sometimes the risk is you know uh you know I get criticized for it okay go ahead it's only 10 o'clock go ahead sorry sorry um so so I am actually one of the admins of um the idel um uh residents and parents advocacy group um I got involved in advocacy in 2014 when I lost my first daughter to still birth um social media and support groups um have brought great healing um in that perspective to me and I wanted to have a page where we could come together everybody so I would like to really thank Mr Darion for stepping up to the plate we would love for everybody to to be there and I understand that there are legal things we cannot that's fine but once maybe something public is finally out there it'

186be great to have somebody respond and say this is the minutes they're out there take a look if you have questions you know maybe if somebody has a question that they could be answered appropriately and then we wouldn't have to worry about all of the the talk um this is really meant to empower families to get involved because right look it I mean nobody ever comes to these meetings so that's the whole purpose of that was to join our community together there's nothing on there that you guys can't see we've we've let board members into it again there's going to be a few people who are going to be naysayers there's going to be bullies there always are um so you know we try to manage it to make sure those things don't happen but

187we also don't want to stifle freedom of speech um as well as you know have the real questions and concerns out there um it's a public forum um it is private there are answers that people have to answer in order to come into it um it would be great to get a statement from the Board of Ed every so often updating the group about things that have been passed or things that have been publicly done because not all parents can come to these meetings to be honest with you I left a crying child a hungry child to come here tonight and it's like you said 10 o'clock not all parents have that luxury we can't do these meetings on Zoom you know the the videotapes sometimes are impossible to hear um and again taking time

188to do that so sometimes communication is evolving right we don't just want emails anymore we don't just want letters we don't want to have to attend meetings we want a quick fix and sometimes that's using social media and I think that we need to kind of update ourselves a little bit um and make sure that you know like I said once in a while somebody pops on and says here's some information you know from the Board of Ed that would be wonderful to hear so really I don't think we can do that we would do it either through through like the school or we would have to tell the whole Community we cannot just be reporting to a small group it would have to be to everybody okay just so that even if it's something

189that has already been publicly like let's just say the minutes of last minute you of last week's meeting or you know two weeks ago meeting has been published everybody has it at that point could you then say you know something about whatever it is that has been already discussed Katherine what did School Board say about this I I've heard different things about uh what to do uh at school board Schoolboard very opposed to a lot of this yeah um because you have to be really really careful you can make the disclaimer but not everyone accepts that that's the disclaimer um they still hold you liable for everything that you put down in print and um they think that okay no and and you'll find this everywhere as parents on the board everywhere you walk you

190are no longer a parent you're a board member um you've you've taken a different leap and and so New Jersey school boards is really asking everyone to be very careful about um being involved with other groups I happen to um like to participate in groups and at least my kids would call me the stalker but um but I listen to what is going going on so that um it makes me think um I may not respond to it but at least I know about it it's kind of like a parent saying something to me on the ball field and if I don't know anything about it and they don't want to go through the chain of command I'll share the information because that's what we do as board members is if there's something Brewing we

191let the administration know about it so that they are prepared for anything that comes down the pike and so that's kind of of what what school boards has said to do not to jump in okay yeah no again you know this was that's exactly why this was meant for transparency for collaboration um unfortunately again like I said there's always the naysayers there's always the ones that cause problems um we try to keep that to a minimum um but you're right there's a lot of information out there that is incorrect um and not all of us have that expertise not all of us know about budgets and and school boards and things like that so um as much solid information that we can get and that we can provide to this community um it's actually very

192helpful in communication I would like just just say one thing I think um sometimes people send me things from the group I'm usually working I'm just like oh my god um I think what I would ask of the community you and your group whatever is to not assume the worst all the time cuz that's that's what happens in these closed groups it's always I think the Assumption has to be from the top the board has your children's best interests at heart always okay moving to the superintendent and the admins they are professionals they are legally trained they have gone through all the state mandated things because you may not see something don't I I would ask the community to say always assume the best and until you have proof of you know something different don't

193assume the worst now if you get proof of the worst that's different I'd I'd rather people just assume the best know that people are working for you I don't know if anybody else wants to comment on this I'm going to open it up to the board but there look we're human we always tend to go to look I do it with the Town Council I'm like what are they doing but there's always I know there's always more information behind the scenes that they have that I'm not going to get so I would just ask people not to assume the worst Mr delgreco did you yeah and just remember like we're your neighbors right we have kids that are classmates right we've been here since five o'clock right so it's been a long day I've been

194here before then but I mean I do feel that that the page celebrates some of that stuff as well and we try to I'm say we tried to negate some of the negative with positive you know we made sure that all of the parents knew about the teacher of the year um applications and we made sure that when Mrs hook won that we celebrate ated her um so we are trying to definitely make more positive and I think the more positive things that come the easier it is for us to comment on those and a lot of this negativity and assuming that things are bad are coming from the transparency issues so um but it's good that you see again still that doesn't mean that it's bad and I just I am one to always

195you have how many years have you been in education 28 28 2 27 TW who 26 27 28 look at that I could have bet on that if that happened like we have professionals here like and they are Rak over the coals they will tell you like they are raked over the coals by us so like I just want people to have trust in our admins that they are professionals they are trained and just to try to always assume it and if you have a question then come ask us and if we screw up we will tell you because it happens I just don't want the group to be looked at as something so negative because like I said social social media is a amazing way to communicate with each other it's a great way

196to join forces and like I I said in one of my worst times of my life after losing a child absolutely I found peace and rery in using a group like that so that's the purpose and if everybody can kind of remember that it's not going to be a wreaking although I'm sure that some people will do that the main um Community isn't doing that and we appreciate you coming tonight and representing your group thanks for coming is anyone else from the board can I just say something I I know we we celebrate our administrators and all the years and our and our uh staff and all the years that they've been on the board and and I think that we need to acknowledge that that we're committed board members as well some of us

197have been around for a period of time some not quite so long but everybody has the interest of the children of idell as their top priority that's why we're here that's why we keep coming here is for the kids anyone else from the board from the board I'm G to start calling you 26 27 28 from now on that's it I didn't even know this I'll be like hey 27 how you doing you'll have to change it every year oh yeah that's true Miss BOS I think the one piece that I'm taking from this is um many people know that the reason I chose to become superintendent uh apply to become superintendent of orell public is because while I was the principal I worked with seven superintendant and I felt that while being superintendent wasn't

198initially in my game plan my goal was to bring whatever strengths I had to make this community better and so I said well I can't do it as principal with the rotating door of superintendence that happens in small districts because people go to a small District to be a superintendent and then they say let me parlay that into a big job with a big salary somewhere else and that's not me um my superintendent mentors tell me it should be me they tell me I'd love it I would miss children I hear children I see children it's incredibly important to me now the flaw of that I'm hearing tonight is that I have been here for 13 years and so when Mrs Bart brought up the Energy savings I sat through so many meetings where we

199talked about that that when you're somewhere a long time it becomes the assumed and you don't know so if people in the community have questions about things like that if you ask me it it lets me know that that's something we need to be more transparent on because sometimes it's not that we're not trying to be transparent we don't realize that that's the information the community um is looking for so even with that one the reason I opened up our new website is sometimes on a website people have a section about things to know about the district and I was like well that might be something to add to this website that is just base level information that I know because I've even before I was superintendent I sat through a lot of board meetings

200and I'm not going to know what that information is from the community unless you tell me this is the information um it's what the benefit of the conversation I had about the the um crisis protocols was we have a lot of that we can do a better job of sharing some of that and honestly that part's not so hard I just need help sometimes from the community um with regards to hey this is this is the issue because what I know about this board is that they are always driven to get better even sometimes when that drives me crazy um because they push um the most offensive comment I've ever had sitting here is that this board rubber stamps my decisions because I will tell you I wish they would rubber stamp one of my

201decisions there is no rubber stamping ever going on here but the thing I know is that they are committed to making this District the best it can be and so is my administrative team as so as every teacher here if there's something missing help us to get better okay I'm assuming no more old or new business okay I hate to do this to the board but we do need to go back into Clos session quick we are going into close session um we will not be coming out and taking any action so um thank you for coming we very much appreciate it I make a motion that we go into close session I'll second second by Mr Del Greco roll call on the roll Mr Del Greco yes Mr Daren yes Mrs Moran yes Mr

202nutland yes yes Mrs Walker yes Mrs noran yes Mrs nickel yes e