001foreign like to call the meeting to order and welcome everyone uh good evening this meeting is being held in accordance with the schedule of meetings adopted at the organizational meeting held January 4th 2023 adequate notice of this regular meeting of the Kenwood board of education has been provided to the home News Tribune The Star Ledger the local Source on January 12 2023 the copy has been filed with account clerk posted in the board office Kenilworth Borough Hall Brewery and Harding schools as is provided by the open public meetings act thank you Mr Canal please join us as we salute to the flag with liberty and justice for all Mr Grinnell can we please have roll call ner David here Drogan Ferrari here hey bethur here madadi Dimitri here two years here Zimmerman we have Quorum
002thank you uh the receiving of the minutes at this time may please have a motion to accept the receiving of the minutes from August 14th and 18 2023 second okay motion made by Mr haberth are seconded by Mrs tears all those in favor of receiving the minutes August 14th and 18th 2023 please say aye aye opposed eyes have it motions carries Mr ganella do we have any monthly correspondence yes we're one piece of Correspondence we have a memo from the office of Athletics regarding Tony saragusa's Jersey retirement ceremony on 9 22 to uh 23 at 5 45 at Ward Field thank you Mr Canal can I please have a motion to accept the monthly correspondence cool second motion made by Mr habath are seconded by Mr byner all those in favor of accepting the public
003monthly correspondence please say aye opposed okay eyes have it motions carries we now will have it this time the superintendents reports and presentations Mr Arlington good evening honor those lives lost and the significance of today's date uh 9 11 I'd like to ask for a moment of silence thank you I'm going to start tonight introducing you to um the board's newest student liaison new school year means new student liaison so I'm happy to share a bit of background information that Mr Davies provided me with that's quite lovely uh mansha is a really senior and he will serve as this year's student liaison to the Board of Education that has been a brilli bear in the Scholars Academy since seventh grade he's an honorable student a member of the National Honor Society the founder and leader
004of the robotics club and was elected at the end of last year as student government's student body president at today's grade level assembly when Nan's name was announced as the school's student leader leader his peers erupted into Applause that's the kind of student he is one at the top of his class one at the top of the school and very much respected for it by all his peers and his hard-working studious humble a quiet leader the kind of person who everyone listens to when he speaks we look forward to hearing from him at each Board of Ed meeting as he presents the happenings of David Burley and provides us insight into the student experience so the floor is yours for your inaugural report foreign thank you very much Mr Arlington uh once again as Mr
005Arlington introduce my name is Nan Shaw and I'm really glad to be here today and the first thing I'd like to talk about is the first three days of school and they've been really really hot I mean the first floor hasn't been too bad but the second floor it's a doozy but one of the first pieces I have of news is the high school back to school night which will be held Thursday September 14th and the Middle School back to school night which will be held Thursday September 21st and the next piece of news is the activities Fair which is September 9th our school now has 17 clubs to offer and the robotics Club has just had their kickoff with their new challenge announced so I'm really excited for that and in terms of homecoming
006events this sorry the spirit week will be October 10th to 13th while the pep rally will be October 13th with a football game that following night and the dance will be October 20th and in terms of College Planning this Camp College from this Camp College this summer was a resounding success it had 45 seniors that graduated the college and our senior counselor meetings are coming up which students and parents will be in the counselor's office for one period and they will discuss colleges they'll discuss the list that students have made and any colleges that have gone and visited and follow that up is October 3rd students well sorry teachers and the guidance counselors will help students perfect their college essays for the comment and rounding out this part of the College Planning season is the
007SAT which will be October 7th thank you [Applause] thank you all right good evening everybody a lot of great work took place over this summer and I'm pleased to share some of it in this digest of some more updates that I put together Mr ganella is going to also assist with the sort of middle part of the presentation um I selected just a sampling of accomplishments and progress in these eight areas of School District Operations student programs curriculum teacher PD leadership teamwork buildings and grounds referendum progress personnel and Communications ahead of those updates I'd like to formally welcome this group of new teachers to our district they brought a lot of positive energy and fresh perspective to our new teacher orientation and I'm excited to see the ways I know they'll support our district work
008in addition to this group of the buildings throughout the summer for a variety of programs special ed students whose IEPs required extended school year participated in summer school we really implemented a Hands-On stem camp for the first time we continued with other long-standing programs like Harding's academic enrichment Title 1 program and a summer school option for students at Bradley High School who were in need of credit recovery for the third year in a row as Ben mentioned I've Burley also ran a very successful Camp college for students looking for extra support in the college admissions process including help with application work and college essay writing also as you can see from the picture included here they were strong attendance at our orientation programs too is a pick of some seemingly happy seventh graders curriculum while
009curriculum is revised on an ongoing basis the cni department recently increased expectations for the quality of curriculum guides by creating stronger alignment between student learning standards and essential questions on the horizon our director of cni is organizing several Outreach initiatives to parents and the community to increase our communication around curriculum specifically and strengthen the Home School connections while teacher PD in the summer is in compulsory obviously there are plenty of opportunities for teachers to continue learning if they were willing and able to this summer as a highlight as I shared last month 26 teachers I believe participated in the kickoff to our teacher Leadership Academy as part of our transition to a new evaluation system there were also opportunities for teachers to get involved in learning more about the system ahead of trading that we
010have planned for this year for example a session for strong ambassadors was held for teachers interested in helping with the transition there's also a chance for teachers to have a voice at the decision-making table through an evaluation work study group this summer we'll continue both of those structures this year our Tech facilitator offered Google certification training and kindergarten teachers had um professional learning around play-based learning small group instruction and literacy I continue to take an investment in the skills mindsets and capacity of the leadership team seriously as a group members of the instructional team participated in an internal Retreat where we spent some time setting goals for ourselves along with our schools and departments we also held two days ourselves of outside training in the new evaluation system the purpose of this was to ensure
011interrater reliability so when I'm going into the classroom am I seeing seeing the same things as Mr Davies let's say on the second day with the outside training group each of us participated in certification training where we're each tested and certified in order to ensure our understanding of both the system the evaluation model and best practices in teaching and learning we also suss through the results of last Spring's internal diversity equity and inclusion survey and our brainstorming like actionable Steps based on that survey the next two areas around buildings and grounds and the referendum Mr organello will speak to you good evening everyone uh we had a lot of activity this summer um first you all recall back in July July 4th actually we had some severe Damage Done to our terrazzo floors here at
012Brewery where they physically actually lifted up we did an emergency contract we got a contractor here some Engineers to assess what the situation was we immediately engaged those contractors to do the work and I'm pleased to say that everything is in shape they replaced the terrazzo and it's pretty hard to tell the difference you know this being a 60 something year old building obviously a little wear and tear but if you go down that area you probably wouldn't even realize it we did install new stairwells in three of the four stairwells in Braley the fourth will really be done will be actually eliminated during the renovation so we never thought that wasn't necessary to replace those doors but these are fire doors which allow which hopefully will prevent fires from coming down from one floor
013into the other floor we installed the Marley dance floor at brilli that was an internal operation our own staff did that that's the you'll see some pictures of all these items in a couple minutes but that's basically a floor that was put down with a subfloor and another subfloor and then the actual Marley surface on top of it we also removed some unit ventilators which are considered ghost or slave units in preparation for the HVAC work which is going to be starting very soon these were back holdovers from when we did the renovations in the HVAC Renovations at the turn of the last century and um there were two units in every classroom here at Burley one was a actual unit and one was considered a slave unit so when we retrofitted those the slave
014units kind of just stayed there because they didn't do anything so we took this as an opportunity to remove all those slave units close up the walls provide more interior classroom space and prepare for the actual work for the the other units that are going to be replaced finally we did they did some renovations to the really faculty rooms include encounters and cabinets new paints and ceiling tiles and then we did a significant amount of painting around 12 classrooms at Harding and five classrooms in Burley all the offices in the guidance Suite were also done as well as some reorganization of painting lines for the buses and new striping for those bus lines outside as well so here you can see the terrazzo first picture is you can see where it lifted up second is
015where they removed it and the third is the finished product the new stairwell doors you can see them being removed they were that they were a metal material now they are fire rated wood to match the rest of the doors similar to this door right here with all the proper fryer ratings and up to code this is the Marley Dance Floor you can see the subfloor being placed over the original tile you can see there's like I don't know if you can see right underneath the that subtile they're these little little pads I guess for the absorption so when you're dancing you bounce and then you can see the final product with the actual Marley floor on top of it which is basically a very thin coat of uh almost like a rubberizer rubberized surface
016here you can see where we're talking about the unit ventilators so imagine one of those units like you see right over here in the corner of the room that was there that was removed our staff came in they fixed the tile and they redid the walls blocked up first of all there were holes going out to the exterior of the room for the ventilation to come in those were blocked off from the front so so uh the block was added and then the uh plasterboard was added on top of that a little bit of an update on the referendum a lot of progress was made this summer The Field improvements will be awarded tonight which is package number one uh if hopefully the board will agree to that um that budget uh that project did
017come in um under budget so we didn't have a problem with awarding that this evening work will commence in December and hopefully be done by graduation so uh the graduates will be able to participate uh with their graduation ceremonies on the new field Turf surface package number two which is the mechanical HVAC project we awarded that last month as you recall we went out to bid twice for that and we had to negotiate a contract to uh um so we come in at or below our budget and that work is going to be starting very soon they actually have been doing a lot of investigative work on some the current units and some of where the wiring goes and then package number three is the of the big chunk of it the Middle School additions
018and alteration projects including the the two schools auditoriums uh that went out the bid last week and we're hoping that the contract will be awarded in October pending the legal review and the financial review and the area Personnel in addition to making sure all open positions were filled with high quality candidates a good deal of work took place behind the scenes we revised sick day and leave protocols and policies based on a new more expensive New Jersey Law we began our membership with CJ pride in an attempt to attract more diverse candidates to our school district and we're rolling out a Personnel Software System that will help us better onboard and house Personnel records electronically finally we continue to prioritize communication between home and school several updates were sent to families from various leaders this
019summer we tried to build some excitement about the launch of our school year through a back to school countdown and as I mentioned last month we're gearing up behind the scenes to launch a series of HIV prevention FAQ videos which will probably be ready to be released in October also just thinking about next month and our year together as a board next month we'll start up our student spotlights again and our director of curriculum and instruction and the principles will present last year's New Jersey student learning assessment uh standardized achievement data I was also thinking it might be a good idea for board members to for me to find out better what you're interested in learning more about so with that information I'm happy to schedule a slate of presentations across the year so I
020was thinking of maybe sending out a sort of inventory in the next few weeks just to better make sure that the board level presentations over the next nine months reflect like your wonderings and and what you want to hear updates about as you can see a lot of good work this Summer that I think sets a great tone for our school year ahead Madam president I'm happy to take questions from the board anyone have questions or commentary for Mr Arlington before we move on to report of committee thank you Mr Arlington thank you Mr goodella we will now move on to report of committee's review of resolutions and board discussion up first is finance facilities and negotiations Mr oligari before that can I just um just for the record note the HIV sure I'm sorry
021that's all good um it's gonna be quick because there was none um so the informal report you have is the data for August and later in the meeting you're voting to a firm deny or modify the cases from July does everyone need a minute to look over them okay all right thank you go ahead make sure we're done okay um Mr Gonella did a really nice job of um going out with um presenting what's going on with the facilities but um the buildings have opened to the students thanks to the help of the maintenance and custodial staff Transportation has started off smooth move smoothly with all routes secured the cafeteria operation is up and running uh Mr Gonella again just reviewed all the summer work earlier um in the status of the referendum and again
022you know good use of our custodial maintenance staff to save the district dollars which is really important to us that's been going on for years and it does a nice job with that um as for resolution some one two and three contain the superintendent's report which Mr Arlington just presented two and three are the financials and billing reports I reviewed each of those found no issues are concerned there were no line item transfers of that read star five thou 5000 threshold um fiber or the conferences and workshops um six of payment to the contractors and Architects for referendum work seven is the bid accepted for the field work which Mr Gonella just went over um it's nice that we came under our budgeted what we budgeted for that cost or that project um LBC Communications
023Mr Arlington explained that in his Friday report lunch prices are number nine they're found on page 13 of your packet if you're interested in the cost of those I do recommend that um that all the resolutions for the finance and Facilities um resolutions be adopted tonight as for negotiations I you know spoke to Mr Goodell Mr Arlington we're planning on just meeting with the committee at some point in October um there's some new members of the committee so we just want to go over the um the ground rules basically so get everybody familiar with the process and that's all I have you're referring to Committee of the board yes the the negotiations committees okay that's right of the board right sorry any questions from Australian clarifications no thank you Mr angotti okay up next person
024on management Mr Haverford thank you there are seven total resolutions and one policy update uh resolutions 10 and 11 approve the higher of custodial maintenance and kindergarten co-teacher resolution 12 is the approval edition of additional teaching sections for the 23-24 school year resolution 13 is the approval of change in eight hours resolution 14 approves a student teacher resolution 15 approves statement of insurance paraprofessional staff for the 23-24 school year resolution 16 approves 2324 athletic stipend positions and resolution 21 is a policy review it abolishes PNR 3432 sick leave and okay that's well yeah you know so it reads in accordance with the passing of the new law pl2023 c95 which expands the scope of use uses of sick leave and includes School District employees the new the new sick Leaf policy and regulation guides 1642
025uh 0.01 we're created as one policy regulation to cover all School Employees the adoption of PNR 1642.01 guides replaced the former sick leave policy and regulation guides 3432 and 4432 therefore PNR 3432 and PNR 4432 need to be abolished good thank you any questions anyone any questions about Mr Hayward no okay thank you so much okay next up curriculum restructure Mrs tears there's four resolutions tonight resolution 17 is for a distant learning plan um the state makes us have one in order in case of another public health related closure uh resolution 18 is District mentoring plan resolution 19 is the district professional development plan and resolution 20 is the that cut off I believe it's yes the head the acceptance of the hip from July foreign questions for Mrs tears with curriculum instruction no okay
026um at this time is there any old business we would like to remind everyone to please review the Friday folder for opportunities and support available for students and families regarding school events and updates and to please utilize the social media that we have any new business you have a question Arlington um I kind of asked this question every year at the start of the year um I'm always kind of leery or concerned over students registering at either the first day of school or within the first few days of the school starting you know do the residences you know our job is is to protect the taxpayers of the town so I just is there any been any issues with that Kyle or yeah so since August 15th there's been 29 new students enrolled district-wide 27
027are Kenilworth residents to our choice students of those 29 one has an IEP okay so we do check the residencies is that like a lot for at the end of the year was that kind of a normal amount or is it okay can we back up to Old business I just enjoyed this no no I just thought of this um maybe Mr Gonella knows or Mr Arlington do we know how the um Carnival went on the school grounds did it go smoothly were there any issues no issues well their perspective I don't know I mean you know I heard I I did speak to the police chief and he said everything seemed to go well but it's the fireman's Carnival so I did not get a chance to talk to Chief scadarian to see if
028they did financially well or what a while yeah and I was more concerned like incidents or property damage or anything like that no no do we know is that is this going to be an ongoing thing now or is it going to go back to this I would suspect they will keep it here okay thank you I'm not sure okay just curious we have uh we have a game plan for the future um so the board's not opposed to in the future we have the template we have the contract we have the insurance process all in place so can't see why we couldn't okay great thank you any other business okay new business we'd like to welcome everyone back for a new school year um we ask everyone not only to check the correspondence but
029also if you can to please support any of our fall teams clubs events and pto's so at this point um coming up in October is the New Jersey school boards Association Workshop a great opportunity for board members to attend and to participate in some really good professional development opportunities as well as some of your mandated trainings um Angela my secretary will be reaching out to everyone this week regarding that whether you are planning on attending which nights you plan on attending um and things like that so give us a um as to the best of your knowledge at this point and we can make sure that your accommodations are properly sent okay thank you questions Mr Grinnell no okay at this point we would like to open up the meeting to the public for comment
030can I please have a motion to open up the meeting to the public for common second okay motion made by Mr David seconded by Mrs tears all those in favor will open the meeting to the public a post I just have it motion carry yeah yes public comments now will now be accepted the Board of Education sets the limit for the public to speak at the Board of Education in five minutes per person unless prior permission has been granted by the Board of Education to extend time pursuant to kboe by law zero one six seven for the record please indicate your name and address prior to making your comments this time is there any yep hello everyone my name is Xenia left Chuck and uh ours address 79 Park Drive so I'll try to fit
031in in five minutes if I'm not can I please finish talking because um it's only five it's only five okay I'll try to do it quick I first time sorry I don't know how it's really works so um I've been in town for 17 years my husband been in town for around 19 years we're very active in this community I'm involved in PTO and being a class mom in elementary school since my kid's been involved there my husband he's a fireman in town for almost 20 years volunteer and situation happened this summer with our son he been on Paris football team for the flag for two years my husband been coaching for the two years and my daughter was in cheerleading and the summer I signed him up for next level of the football which
032is Taco he's a third grade he'll eligible everything went good we paid practice starts everything okay we got a text from Steve Banco asking if Victor still want to do a flag or he wants to still continue in a tackle which he wants to do tackle he'll grow the flag already and he's in the right age and you know we continue coming to practices so the one of the practices Steve bangko major him for the Jersey asked what number he would like to have for the football same night he we got a text that um Victor cannot play anymore Victor is our son he cannot play anymore for the team because he's too young um what happened I guess they didn't have enough people for the team they took more of the older kids sixth
033graders and uh he was it's two kids who was a third grade sign up but only Victor was playing so they just kicked him out of the team so for a week we was trying to reach out we've been asking who's the commissioner we find out Steve Bank was the commissioner for the town then we've been asking what can be done can we play somewhere else because our son really want to be on the taco team but um we didn't get any answer nothing was moving you know our son was devastated he was really sad for the whole week he was trying to figure out something again no answer from nobody you know we got a my husband call one of the coaches he tried to explain what happened and um in the beginning we
034never been told that could be a case that he could be too young and they say they're gonna um they're gonna claim out like it's called the hardship for him to be played in this age group and which seems to me like was a great plan so um we came for one of the practices it wasn't coming for a week because they told us we can um we came for one of the practices and I went to talk to Steve bangko and uh I I wanted to ask him maybe he can just practice for the town because he building his bears for two years he was dreaming to playing taco and um he didn't want to hear anything from me and um he simply started yelling and screaming at me which I didn't really like
035I didn't appreciate it but I had to have a talk because you know I want to stand for my son I want him to continue to do what he likes to do and um I was saying to him like maybe something we can do in this case you know any other options can you give me phone number of the main commissioner in New Jersey so we can call maybe they have a spot for him so he told me he's not giving his phone number because he doesn't want me to bother him so um my son he was on the site to let him on the side because I don't want him you know to to hear it um he ran to me he got very scared after Steve Bangkok was yelling at me he like
036was crying and terrified he was saying mommy let's go I don't want to do this I want to get hurt I don't want to be upset let's go please I don't want to do this anymore and I said to Steve Steve do you see what he's doing to this kid he's really sad he really want to do this nothing we can do but he said in front of my son he said um I don't care about him I care about him and I said really that's what he's saying to the kid you can't do this and then he said uh that's not me it's a leak I'm like oh it's a lick if you're the one who took the sign up papers everything was okay you measure him for the Jersey how can you just
037kick somebody out just because the five minutes is up we do you want to respond yeah the limit is five minutes yeah sorry I'm happy to connect with you afterwards but what I'm I think what I'm hearing is a concern with the New Jersey football movies it's a town it's not a school sponsored sport yeah it's not a school sponsored sport yeah so the school doesn't sponsor those Sports even though they may use our grounds so I'm happy to connect you with resources or try to help in some way but the New Jersey football league is I think that's what you're talking about is independent from the Kenilworth School District yeah I guess I didn't know I just got the email about that sure essential of the classrooms and everything should be the same and
038respect and everything and fair so that's why I came here because we got this email thinking somebody can help me because nobody else trying to help anyhow yeah that's a logical connection you made between the sports civility more of in the world Sports ability email and your concern but that's a little bit outside the jurisdiction of the school district but I I took your name I'm happy to give you a buzz and see how I can help I appreciate it thank you thank you anyone else any other public for our comment okay motion to close the meeting to public so move second okay motion made by Mr David seconded by Mr habath are all those in favor of closing the meeting to the publicly side all right okay opposed okay eyes have it motions carry
039the meeting is now closed to the public at this time Mr Canal can we have a roll call of resolutions please yes there are 21 resolutions on this evening's agenda do any of those need to be voted on separately no okay so this is for Resolutions 1 through 21 on the agenda byner yes David yes Ferrara yes hey with her yes with Dottie yes tears yes Peniche yes motions carry unanimously okay thank you Mr General do we have any need to go into closed executive session yes we do okay can I have a motion to go into closed executive sessions second second okay motion made by Mr David it's seconded by Mrs tears all those in favor of going into private session opposed okay eyes have it emotions uh be it resolved the Board of
040Education meet in private session from which the public shall be included to discuss the topic of personnel which the private discussion is being held pursuant to section 7B innated Zach matters on discussion will be disclosed to the public as soon as final decisions are made and voted upon a binder David yes Ferrara yes paper yes yes tears yes Kenichi yes motion carries action may be taken enter yes well yeah I was gonna say when burnout where when we uh we're gonna close the the public right now but we the board will be returning afterwards to take some action may take some action okay okay thank you thank you everyone for coming thank you guys tonight thank you very much right now foreign because I could be foreign okay is okay uh we're back in the
041public session uh the board uh discussed a matter regarding a Personnel matter in closed session and there's a resolution before the board this evening does is there a motion to move this resolution so move is there a second Bob Okay resolution made by Mr David seconded by Mr byner I will now read the resolution whereas employee number zero three seven five the employee recently has shown evidence of deviation from normal physical and mental health whereas the Administration has conveyed its concerns directly to the employee and whereas the employee should be examined and should receive a requisite treatment and whereas is the recommendation of the superintendent schools that the employee should undergo a complete mental health examination which will be which will determinate diagnosis and prognosis the results of which shall be reported to the board
042with the confidential confidentiality required by law and whereas the board of education has selected Dr Platt MD to perform the examination at no cost to the board of edu to the employee and whereas although the employee has notified of her right to be examined by the physician of her choice at her expense she has agreed to be examined by Dr Platt now therefore be it resolved that pursuant to njsa 18a colon 16-2 the employee shall be examined by Dr Platt whose report will be submitted directly to the board be it further resolved that in the interim the employee shall remain suspended with pay consistent with the law and be it further resolved that the superintendent school be authorized to reassign the doctor should the employee select a doctor that meets The District's criteria and be
043it further resolved that the superintendent school should bring this matter back to the Board of Education when it it when and if further action is deemed appropriate this motion was made by Mr David seconded by Mr byner I will now do roll call on this resolution Mr byner yes Mr David yes yes yes tears yes Kenichi yes motion carries unanimously okay thank you motion to adjourn absolute second okay motion made by Mr David seconded by Mr haveith are all those in favor too adjourn please aye aye opposed eyes have it motion carries meeting is adjourned thank you so much