001tonight. It may not always be possible or appropriate for the board to directly answer questions during the public comment period. Each speaker is allotted a maximum of three minutes to make their statement. No one may speak more than once on the same topic. You're required to give your name and address before speaking. Please keep your comments respectful and non-deamatory and maintain the level of decorum appropriate for a public meeting for minors meeting in the audience. Would anyone like to speak? Okay, seeing none, we move on to correspondence. >> I'd like go ahead on agenda item. Uh, it's not on agenda item. >> Okay. You'll have a chance at the end of the meeting. There's another public comment. >> Okay. >> All right. Thank you very much. >> All right. Moving on to correspondence items. Any
002questions? [Music] Mr. Cole's here. I did have a question on the uh the cover that it's coming in or have we received it? The cover for the playground. It's received. Okay. was the long size. Okay, thank you. All right, committee reports that is I'm up next. We have policy. We met for policy about two hours and we discussed the policies that are on for revision regulations and the policies that are on your agenda for revisions. Are there any questions? Some were mandated, some were not. Okay. And we have finance. John, speak briefly about that. >> Yeah. Every uh everybody has received an email uh which corresponds as far as how that meeting went and all the items that we discussed. Um if you have any questions, further questions as far as that goes, you can
003let Laura know Christine or myself via email. Um and we appreciate all the hard work and the countless hours that have been dedicated to strengthening the financial uh position of our school district. Um I personally look forward tonight to the transportation uh transportation presentation. >> Okay. Thank you, John. And now we have superintendent report. >> Thank you. So the school year has begun. We are in. Everybody's here. School began Thursday, September 4th. and the excitement was palpable between and among faculty, staff, and students. There were a few tears, many excited smiles, and at this point, everyone has is beginning to settle into the routine, and we're well on our way to a school year of learning, growth, and fun. So, thank you to everybody who made that happen. Transportation continues to be to to get
004tweaked and refined with routes and timings, etc., But we want to remind parents to be at the bus stop at least 10 minutes prior to the bus stop time. Also remember that the school bus is an extension of our classroom. Therefore, rules of conduct apply. It's truly essential that our students follow proper bus safety protocols at all times while riding the school school bus. We are witnessing behaviors that will not be tolerated this year as it has a severe impact on the health and safety of all of our students. So parents, please speak with your children about remaining in their assigned bus seats, buckling their seat belts, and behaving appropriately while riding the school bus. Additionally, parents are encouraged to have an alternate plan in place in the event your children is suspended, your child
005is suspended from the bus for any length of time. We also want to remind parents to be good neighbors when you're picking up or dropping off your students with the people who live on these roads. This month is attendance awareness month. The New Jersey Department of Education is joining other states in recognizing September as the attendance awareness month, focusing on activities for reducing student absenteeism and encouraging consistent school attendance. The Department of Ed points out that for students to learn and achieve their fullest potential, it's critical that they're in school and engaged in the learning process, which is a great segue into a presentation that I'm going to do on chronic absenteeism in a few moments. Chronic absenteeism remains a concern for our school district. What chronic absenteeism translates to is a student being absent
006from school for 10% of the school year, which is 18 days, and may result in truency mediation, truency court, and possible retention. 18 days is a lot of time to be out of school and will absolutely have a negative impact on academic progression. So, we're going to be presenting on that this evening. And finally, back to school nights. I was in attendance at Mitchell's back to school night last week. It was great to see and welcome uh parents and students to to visit with their children's teachers. The night was a success and we're looking forward to tomorrow's back to school night here at FRACON. And October 2nd is uh the scheduled appointment the scheduled back to school night for ECC. That's my superintendent report. Thank you. >> And now we'll move on to presentations. Dr.
007Antunes, chronic absenteeism, [Music] I'll come up here for that. Okay. Okay. Good evening. So, we are addressing chronic absenteeism in our schools and we do have chronic absenteeism and I'm going to share the the how we compare with the state. So, it's something that needs to be addressed and it's something that our principles both Mitchell and Frog Pon need to have a corrective action plan for. So, what is chronic absenteeism? I just explained what chronic absenteeism was. Missing 10% or more of days in school for any reason, excused or unexcused. It can occur when a student misses as few as two days of school per month over the course of the year. I sent a letter out to the community about the importance of attendance at the beginning of the school year. We're going to
008be doing a couple of presentations like this throughout the year and then there'll be a couple more letters through the year as well. That's how important this this issue is, not just in Little Way, but in New Jersey and across the country. There are significant long-term effects of chronic absenteeism. There is an impact to reading levels, especially in the early grades where kindergarten and first grade students are chronically absent, have an 81% chance of reading below grade level by the time they get to third grade. There are lower graduation rates. Even when an absenteeism occurs at the younger grades, it ultimately results in the single strongest predictor of dropping out before graduation. And chronic absenteeism is certainly linked to suspensions, teen substance abuse, and poor health as adults. There are causes of chronic absenteeism and
009there's a ton of reasons for them, but they can generally be broken down into three main categories. It's those who cannot attend school, those who will not attend school, and those who do not attend school. So, according to the state reporting, students who live in communities with higher levels of poverty are four times more likely to be chronically absent than others. It's probably not a a surprising statistic for you. However, students who cannot attend because there's family issues, there's illness, there's housing instability, there's the need to work because they're taking care of their families. That's they cannot attend. That's a different problem that has to be addressed differently. Then we have students who won't attend whether to avoid bullying, they feel they're unsafe, the conditions are unsafe, or they're embarrassed for some reason. And then
010we have students who don't attend because they or their parents don't see the value of being in school. So they rather do anything else except come to school. These aren't students with whom we have to work. We have to work with all these students, but the way to get to them is very different. So what about some of the impacts of chronic absenteeism in the early school years? It can start as early as kindergarten. Absolutely. And that is way beyond this child's control, right? That's all about parents, guardians, that sort of thing. But the long-term effects last forever. When you are chronically absent early on, you're more likely to experience lower school readiness in math, letter recognition, and social emotional skills. challenges meeting reading milestones and continued attendance issues for social emotional development and behavior
011problems through adulthood. Some statewide stats on chronic absenteeism. Overall, New Jersey has had a decrease in absenteeism from about 16% to 14%. So, the trajectory is going the right way. However, we there were 193,000 students chronically absent in the 23 24 school year in New Jersey. If you take a look at the district, Little Red Harbor School District, the light blue is the district, the dark blue is the state, you can see just across the board that we are way above the state average in chronic absenteeism. Okay, so that's the district as a whole. When we look at Frog Pond now, it's 157 students, but again, look at those grade levels. We are the light blue. The state is the dark blue. So, at every grade level, our chronic absenteeism is higher than the state
012average. And Mitchell, same thing. What this means is that we need to have each school on a corrective action plan that is addressing chronic absenteeism for these students. the district doesn't have to go on a plan just the two schools. Now, early childhood, so the ECC, they are also high in chronic absenteeism, but the preschool is held to a different standard than our elementary schools and the K6. So, what are some strategies to tackle chronic absenteeism? Well, of course, we want to look at increasing monitoring and measuring student absenteeism. Why are students absent? It's often the same students. So, there's got to be something going on. So, let's help the parents or the guardian address what's actually going on if we can do that. We want to look at the data and we want to
013understand why students are missing. Are they won't, can't, or don't. We want to problem solve to address the reasons and we want to inform engage with guardians or parents to figure out what's going on. How can we help? We want to create and develop a plan to work with community groups to promote school attendance, including PTO's, uh, Elks Club, Rotary, everything like that. And we want to recognize and reward and incentivize good attendance throughout the district, which we have done in my time here and before that. So, we will continue to do that. Attendance truly is the key to success. We see it in our work life. We see it in our school life. So in order for us to address it, we have to we have to come up with a collaborative approach to
014do so. It can't just be one person. There are many districts, large districts, who actually have attendance officers. We do not have that in Little A. That's that is what it is. That's okay. We just have to come up with other ways to address it. And that's our first chronic absenteeism presentation of the year. Thank you. >> Yes. Um so currently we track was it like a robocall goes home if a student isn't um in class for safety reasons. Do we follow up on that though just to determine whether illness or personal each school will follow up sometimes they will also follow up with a call to the parent if the parent doesn't call. If the parent calls the child out for whatever which we encourage we want the parents to call us to let
015us know why the child is out. That's helpful because then the robocall won't go out because we know, but it also lets us talk to the parent to figure out what's going on and if we can help in any way. >> And and who does those follow-up calls? Is it the health? >> It depends why the person's out. It could be the health person. It could be the nurse. It could be the vice principal, the principal. It depends upon the situation. Could be a child study team member. Could be an elementary supervisor. Could be a director. So it really just depends where they are in that continuum of absenteeism. >> Okay. And one more question, the PTO's, the Elks, Rotary, how how would you engage those? >> So for example, the PTO perhaps what we
016might do is offer work with them to offer any class with um uh full attendance for a month get something. So, we would work with them. Or maybe maybe if you if you are chronically absent and your and your attendance has improved, you get a $5 mobile card or something like that. You know, I don't know. We have to talk to them about it. We have to collaborate about that. >> Thank you. Anybody else? >> Okay. Thank you. >> I think we have another one, right? >> Transportation on next. >> Okay. Okay. And I think I'm going to have some uh helpers with me for transportation that's coming up. Okay. So, this is very exciting. We're very happy to be here to present this transportation plan to you. And this did go through finance committee
017because finance is Mr. Morelli. Mr. Melli is a business administrator. Transportation falls under the business administrator. And of course, Mr. Coper as our transportation supervisor. So we did take this to finance, brought it to the full board, and now we're here presenting to the public. So we developed a little harbor school district transportation plan. Since I've been here, I've been hearing all the issues going on with transportation and we've been doing our best to manage them, navigate through them. In the 21-25 strategic plan, the district actually had a goal about transportation to provide a safe, efficient, and fiscally responsible transportation service to all students. And you may agree that we did or didn't do that, but there was a plan. And some of our initial goals in creating this plan include continuously trying to improve
018our service through any creative solution we could think of. Outside the box, what can we do? or eliminating the need for outside for outside transportation, out of district placements, homeless students. If we have a student who DCP says is homeless, lives in Spring Lake, we need to go pick that child up and drive the child an hour to Little Lake Harbor, that one route costs upwards of $60,000. So, if we can bring that in half somehow, that would be helpful. improving our current system of transportation, both pickup and drop off, including taking back some of that instructional time from parents picking students up earlier in the day and ultimately have some less parent pickup and drop off. Do we believe it's going to eliminate all parent pickup and drop off? Absolutely not. Do we think
019it will help to improve it? Yes, we do. And then our ultimate goal is separate fleets for seamless transportation. separate fleets, meaning Frog Bond has a fleet and and Mitchell has a fleet. Okay, so there are some organizational concerns that we have to consider when developing a plan. And we believe we've thought of just about everything, but if we miss something, the board will let us know. We want to make sure that obviously when we're going to move to doing something like this that the constant increase in cost of utilizing a contractor is something that we said we this district can't afford to continue doing that. We we have very little organizational and logistical control when you're tiered with other districts when we're paired up with other districts. So our calendar can't really be our
020calendar. Our calendar has to be our calendar paired with other districts. We have ratify costs. and no assets to show for it. And we talked about decreased instructional time. We're always concerned about parent pickup and drop off procedures, excessive ride times for students. Some of our students are on the bus for an hour and increased cost student time sheets from the association because they're staying to help students get on buses safely. So, what are some non-negotiables? We have to have buses on site. In this case, we're talking about mini buses and minivans. Okay, mini buses. They have to be ready to go before we can change anything. We don't have we can't provide a service if we don't have the the means to provide it. We cannot cancel routes until the mini buses are on
021site and we have drivers. We will be employing drivers. We need the number the appropriate number of drivers and we have to ensure that we've got enough people to help us respond to any problems that come along. So when we look operationally, we want to make sure that we're timing this out and we do have a timeline here that you will see. We want to make sure that we can work within the least purchase because we don't have money to put out. Okay. We need to worry about managing the fleet that we get, maintaining the buses, upgrading, making sure that the buses are always in good condition. We have this implementation plan, including transitional time. And we have to work again increasing our district employed staff. We have mini bus and van maintenance costs. We
022want to make sure we can park them securely so that they're safe at all times. And we want to make sure that we purchase whatever car seats or harnesses we need, any maintenance of of purchase installation, maintenance of video counters for the buses. And the motor vehicle commission uh mandates that anybody with a CDL gets randomly drug tested. So Durham does it for their drivers. All bus companies do it for their drivers, and we do it for ours as well. You'll see that in minibus and minivan we tried to include all the costs that we would have to worry about. Okay, I don't know that there's anything huge here that you guys can go back to, but these are some of the costs that we were considering in developing the plan because we wanted the
023board and the finance committee to understand we thought of everything. This is many many minutes and you guys can go back to that. I just moment some considerations for employment including the fact that we would be increasing our district employed drivers. We're seeking six drivers and four to six subs. We would um have some type of payroll option just dedicated drivers. If somebody comes to us with the CDL, it may be different than somebody who we're going to help get their CDL. uh we will train them and of course we talked about the increase in mandatory random drug testing. When we were looking at the salary considerations we looked around what are other people paying the drivers and this is what we were able to come up with as Mr. Mel will say this is
024not new money this is a real reallocation from the savings that they're going to talk about I'm going to let you guys talk about this stuff um and then I can Well, you guys can talk about that other stuff, but you guys can talk about this stuff now because this is your deal. >> Long story short, transportation is one of the large line items in our budget and we have to do everything as a district to try to reallocate money within our budget. That being said, we're spending a tremendous amount of money on routes. So to give you an example, we have routes that range anywhere from $45,000 to $60,000 per route. We are currently spending upwards of $60,000 to drive from here to Spring Lake and back from Mon each day. Tomorrow that student
025will be in a minivan that we're paying $60,000 for the year to transport. And we can go on and on and on with all the routes and all the buses. you're much more familiar with all the routs because you live here and it's your kids on the buses. It's my job to look at this and say, "What can we do to change it?" And basically, we're going back into in-house transportation just like many other school districts do in owning their own vehicles and not subbing it out to a bus company. Basically, we're going to take the profit that the bus companies are making, bring it back inhouse into our district. We've covered all the expenses which is no different than the vehicles you own for your own house. It's everything from insurance, the gas, the
026tires, repairs, maintenance. The story here basically is with tonight's approval uh with the board of the agenda items, we will be leasing to own five mini buses and two minivans. There's a zerocost outlay to the district in doing this. It's on a lease, a 5year lease. We own the vehicles at the end of the 5 years. That being said, the cost of the lease, the cost of the driver on top of it, the cost of the maintenance, etc., etc., you're still saving a tremendous amount of money. Our one slide, which is at the end, shows a cost savings of about $230,000 for the first year. This also includes adding five new large buses through Durham to sell them out right now because we don't own our own large buses to separate your fleets which I've
027learned is a very big problem that you have in the district. So the end goal here is a savings of almost a quart million dollars. the separation of the fleets. We would own a total of eight minivans, two uh excuse me, eight mini buses, two minivans in the district. They become district assets. At the end of the fifth year, the district owns the assets. The mini bus cost that you receive of $125,000 for lease payments would disappear. So, this bottom number just continually will increase year after year. This would be what I consider the first phase of bringing transportation back into your district in house, which I've learned is what you actually had years ago before it was outsourced. Being in house will give you more control over it, more control over school calendars. And
028since we will be running our own fleet, we don't occupy every single seat on the bus. That being said, the empty seats will be solicited to other school districts to increase our revenue. Basically, we're going to charge other districts to jump on our buses just like we're paying right now. We're currently in talks with Pinelands their routes that go with Durham. We would be taking over the Pineland routes with our mini buses. So when you see revenue from other school districts right now of $120,000 that would be from the other school districts because we have the seats. So again the way Greyon started with their transportation uh company and selling seats we're doing the same thing. It doesn't increase our insurance costs at all. We're paying the drivers anyway. The new drivers that are coming
029on will be full-time employees. the hours that they're not driving during the day, in the middle of the day, they will be helping us in the district for any other tasks that we need, whether it be maintenance, custodial, cafeteria support, whatever we need in the district, we need help because we have, you know, let go of a lot of staff what I've learned over the past two years. So, we need help in operations just to keep everything functioning smoothly for our students. So these new drivers will be full-time employees. They come to us working the hours. It will also allow our district through the mini buses to increase field trips because the biggest cost of field trips is transportation, not the ticket to go into an event. Having our own fleet of mini buses, we
030can do in-house field trips. We can do after school activities. And once again, if other districts need our transportation, we will be happy to service them. Any questions? >> Board members at this point. >> Just have one about the hours, the full-time hours. >> 29 and a half hours. >> Okay. >> Yes. When I when I say full-time, it's it's our new part-time drivers. Um, you know, we're calling full-time bus drivers. It's 29 and 12 hours. Yes. >> Anyone else? >> Yes. >> Yeah. You mentioned uh that we're transporting one a single student from Spring Lake at the cost of $60,000 a year. Why are we busing a student from a town 50 miles away to Little Lake Harbor at the cost of $60,000 a year? I mean, that's like an entire teacher salary. >>
031Yes, it is. So that is the McKini mental law. Um it's not something that we do because we want to. It's by law we have to. So any student who attends Arbor School District, if for any reason they get put out of town, no matter how far it is, we have to transport them back to our district. Unless the state comes in and says that student is not going to go to Spring Lake Elementary, then we no longer have to transport. >> Is that in perpetuity or is that for >> Sorry, I'm sorry. >> It's not public comment, Tommy. So, we have to keep it with the board and then you can ask at public comment time. Sorry. >> Okay. >> Thank you. Mike, did you want to continue? >> Unless you guys have me.
032>> I have a general question. Um, I don't know if you can address it. You mentioned about how to shorten a parent pickup line. Have you ever done a survey of like the 60 cars that are lined up there every day to see maybe there's a common denominator of why people pick up and drop off that you know just so you have the information of that population? I'm one of them by the way drop off my kids every day. But I'd be interested just to see what everybody else's reason is. So, prior to the separation or the combination of K to6 on one bus, the parent drop off pickup is not nearly what it is right now. Um, I just had this conversation shortly after they decided to put all K to6 on one bus
033is when the parent drop off got to be what it is today. Uh, so I truly believe that once we get all of our Kada to second on one bus and all three to six and they're pulling out of one school and going directly to their bus stops, the average ride time should be cut in half by 20 to 25 minutes for for the students, some faster and some around 25. So, it wouldn't make sense for a parent to sit here at 2:00 in the afternoon for a 3:00 dismissal because the buses will pull out your child within a reasonable time, 15 to 25 minutes, give or take. >> Yeah. But do you have any plans of doing any kind of survey, get feedback? >> I mean, I could walk car to car. Most parents
034when they talk about it, it's the two biggest topics they tell us is having their 5-year-old on the bus with a 13-year-old and how long the ride time takes. You know, by the time they leave here, leave Mitchell, come down here, grab the next set of students, and then go out, these kids have already been on the buses for 15, 20 minutes before even making their way to their houses. >> Can you share the timeline with us because I think that's important. Yeah, it's >> kind of exciting too to think that >> okay post on the website. Okay, >> so with the board approval, uh I will immediately get started with acquiring the mini buses that we've been talking about. Um, and then we give notice to our contractor that we're changing things up a
035little bit and continue to work with them so that we can get uh more big buses uh start using more big buses in our current fleet contract that we have. So right now we operate 29 54 passenger buses. We need more than that to have K to second and 3 to six on on the buses. So by taking our mini buses in house, it allows us to then reallocate and have them provide more buses for us so that we can do the separation of fleets. So we notify them. As the buses come in, we'll get them on the road once we have our drivers all set and ready to go. And then our goal is for September of the 26 27th school year to have go back to normal what we used to have a
036second on one, three to six on the other. Thank you. >> I think there's one more one more presentation is going to talk about board goals and district goals. Okay. Thank you. Okay. So, these are prop proposed board goals that the board have discussed a bit in retreat worked together to come up with. So, Little Life Order does have a mission statement. I I don't have to read it to you. It is there. It's also on our website, but I wanted to obviously it's a board goal, so we wanted to make sure that the mission statement was front and center there. What's what's the point of goal setting? Well, effective boards want to define clear goals for themselves for student achievement, for classroom instruction, but also for organizational development, right? So, it's about shared beliefs
037and values and what's possible for all students. There is a goal development process. It starts with board goals which typically includes governance, oversight, PD and communications. Then it goes to district goals and then building teacher and student outcomes. That's typically the process for goal development. For board goals, they are set they are set to improve the process of tasks owned by the board. So these goals are the goals that the board owns and they're evaluated. but they evaluate themselves on the board goals in the board self-evaluation. Everyone owns the district goals. So while I'm responsible as a superintendent for the completion, the board supplies the resources necessary for me and my team to ensure that the goals are are implemented and hopefully met. And then my goals are derived from the district goals. Board goals
038are the foundation for improved governance. That that is their job. continuous improvement, effective communication, accountability, and a cohesive team. So, there are three proposed board goals. One of them, again, this will be on the website. One of them, the first one is essentially that the board will work with myself, Mr. Morelli, via the finance committee to review and analyze transportation operations, safety, and cost effectiveness. And you will, the board will receive a minimum of three status updates throughout the school year and will identify and support at least two actionable improvements in transportation services such as route optimization, safety enhancements, or fleet management. Each of these goals will have action items, but the action items will be developed once the board approves the goals. The second one, the second goal is that the board will work
039with the school business administrator to enhance the financial transparency and efficiency by reviewing quarterly a budget to actual reports. So finance, we we're in we know that our finances have been concerning to us and so we want to make sure that we put everything out there early and often and we will identify a minimum of one area of potential cost savings either via grant funding or shared service by the end of May. And then the third goal is that each member of the board of ed will strengthen their own professional development in governance, communications, longrange facilities planning by attending a minimum of one workshop, training or retreat throughout the year. From those board goals, I will develop district goals with the team with my administrative team. However, some of these we've already talked about and
040developed, which includes increasing student growth in ELA as measured by the state assessment. We will increase our student math stretch growth K6 by 20% as based on the IR diagnostics and we will increase our community engagement opportunities that I will I will work for. We are going to add another goal to this that will include the transportation that the board has as their first goal. We'll add something to that effect as well. So that we will have four four district goals. That is the that is the presentation on goals. If the board has any questions, I'd just like to say that uh we're off to a good start for that first goal. In terms of the transportation, I'm very happy with the plan so far. I don't know if I can speak for everybody, but
041I think we're off to a good start with that and I look forward to working with the board on the other goals. Thank you. I have a motion to approve the finance items A through F. >> Motion to approve. >> Second. >> Any questions? A F. >> Mr. Shion, >> yes. >> Mr. Fichello, >> yes. >> Miss Lawrence, >> yes. >> Mr. Lee, >> yes. >> Miss, >> yes. Motion passes. >> Okay, we have a motion to approve facilities item A, please. >> Motion to approve. >> I have a second. >> Second. Any questions? >> No questions, but just a comment that um the basketball association uh my sons are a part of it. You can actually start at uh first grade as young as first grade. So that's another activity that the community has
042for students if you're looking for something to do in the winter. >> And at both schools right from Georgia, please >> Mr. Chion. >> Yes. >> Mr. Philello. >> Yes. >> Miss Lawrence. >> Yes. >> Mr. Lee. >> Yes. >> Mer. >> Yes. >> Motion carries. I recommend a motion to approve school business administrators non-personnel items A through G. >> Motion ahead. >> Motion to approve. >> Okay. Can I have a second? >> Second. Are there any questions? >> No questions, but huge thank you to everyone who made donations on here. 340 backpacks from Costco, 22 filled backpacks from Atlantic Medical Imaging, uh, Family Promise, uh, we have, um, Anthony, I'm not going to be able to say the last name right, LBI school district for $8,000, and CJ Davis. I mean, that was just
043beyond fantastic. Thank you everybody on this list. >> Yes. >> Okay. Roll call, please. Mr. Chion, >> yes. >> Mr. Fanchella, >> yes. >> Miss Lawrence, >> yes. >> Mr. Lee, >> yes. Mr. >> Yes. >> Motion carries. >> Recommend a motion to approve personnel items A through G. Can I have a motion? >> Motion to approve. >> Second. >> Are there any questions? A through G. [Music] So, I just wanted to point out we're on superintendent items. Is that right? >> Sorry. Action items. Yeah. A through G all the way to page nine. >> So, um you know, Clarence came up last month talking about the student government adviser and the safety control advisor. We obviously heard them and they are back on the agenda tonight. So, I look forward to approving that and
044getting those programs back up and running. >> Okay. Roll call, please. >> Mr. Chó, >> yes. >> Mr. Fichella, >> yes. >> M Lawrence, >> yes. >> Mr. Lee, >> yes. >> Mr. >> Yes. >> Motion carries. >> Recommend a motion to approve superintendent of schools non-personnel items A through C. >> Motion to approve. >> Second. Are there any questions? [Music] It's a first reading of regulations and policies. [Music] >> Roll call, please. >> Mr. Chief, >> yes. Mr. Fichello, >> yes. >> Miss Lawrence, >> yes. >> Mr. Oga, >> yes. >> Mr. Server, >> yes. >> Motion carries. >> Okay. New business. Any new business for us tonight? We have enough on the roster. Okay. Okay. We are at the public comment portion. The floor is now open to members of the public. The
045board of education recognizes the value of public comment on educational issues. The board requests that each statement made by a participant is limited to three minutes as cited in policy 0167. There's a sign-in sheet located at the podium. Please sign in before you speak. Thank you. >> Good evening. >> My name is Matthew Smith. My son is Ron Smith goes here. I got a couple uh issues and concerns about a teacher in the district and her posts that have come up on all over social media is absolutely disgusting. I've uh went to the administrative building. Still waiting on a phone call back on that as well. Um, shortly after Charlie Kirk's uh, assassination, Angela Randall post a just going to caution you to avoid making any sort of defamatory comments or anything relative to that.
046>> Let's not protect her. Okay. >> I'm doing my job, sir, and it's the law. >> Yeah. And I'm doing my job as a parent. >> Yes, sir. >> Okay. So following Charlie Ker's assassination, she decides to post up their thoughts and prayers like yeah with it emoji question marks. One of her family members, extended family members says shortly after the post she was unfriended on there and says this isn't even the worst of the worst of what she believes in terms of issues like this. That's horrible. An hour after that post, Angela Land post, "The biggest danger of taking your child to a drag show is that a Christian could show up with a gun. Are you kidding me? What are we doing about this?" So, we emailed the superintendent. We get a lot
047of smoke loan. We ignore our policies. We know we got to do this. that we had to do that. No answers to what's happened. None. Mr. Nazarak was also uh emailed on this. His solution, you can come take your child out of that class for the time and then bring them back again. Why were we protecting this type of behavior in this district? That is absolutely disgusting. Not only did Angela Wrangle put a target on this whole entire district and this >> again I'm going to caution you for making defamatory statements. >> What about that is defamatory? These are facts. >> It's a lot of opinion in this. >> There is no opinion in this at all. This is all posted on here and I I guarantee you all these parents in here are going
048to say the same exact thing. There's nothing defamatory in here. So stop protecting this disgusting behavior. You have your time, sir. Go ahead. >> Thank you, ma'am. So, not only did she put a target on this school, on this district, I am now very concerned about my son attending a full day in this school. Yes, he still comes here. No, we are not going to allow him to go to that class. But, >> you can please wrap up your comments. He my my son is now put in danger the full day not only from these lunatics that support her but any lunatic that would come down here to try to defend their own children. This is absolutely ridiculous and I think the community in a whole demands answers from the board. We have been emailing
049we have been emailing the board and everybody else the superintendent with no response. What is the action? What are you guys going to do to fix this problem? >> Thank you. We're here to listen to [Applause] [Music] Nope. Uh, good evening ladies and gentlemen. Uh my name is Chris Mhler and I run a local uh parents page in the area and I was asked by parents of this school to come in here and speak on their behalf uh because a lot of them are in fear of retaliation of speaking their minds towards Angela Stella Randall. Um, you know, she speaks of love is love, hate has no place here, and all these other great things. But as soon as something like tragedy affects our country, the world really, she posts something vile and disgusting like
050she did. This isn't the first time that she's done things like this. And I had the receipts, you know, posting comments, ignorant comments or thoughts and prayers with maybe I give him thoughts and prayers or does he deserve thoughts and prayers? You can look at it that way. That's her freedom of speech. But that doesn't give you freedom of consequences. Okay? She works for us. We pay her salary and she is shaping young minds. and for her to go publicly and speak the way she did and post the things that she does regarding religion and someone being assassinated, which a lot of these kids have seen. Okay, this is the first one I've seen live and I'm sure it's the first one many of us have seen live. She was slandered many people many different
051times publicly and privately. And as a parent of someone of the LGBTQ community and a Christian, it's very hard for me to speak on this because I'm a bit torn between what she supports and what I support. But I can tell you what, right now, I don't support someone being murdered and a teacher joking about it. I've let a lot slide. No more. a man was murdered and her first reaction was to make a post questioning thoughts and prayers. And then she's also posted anti-Christian propaganda in the past with no recourse. It's like she thinks she's untouchable. Well, I can tell you right now there's a lot of people pissed off and enough is enough. Something needs to be done. And if it's not, I will be going along with many other parents that we've
052accumulated to Ocean County POE. Teachers are held to a higher standard, >> especially when they're pushing in their class. >> Sir, the floor is not yours >> or yours. >> She kept their page open after this post was made. And guess what? People went digging and found more things and more things and they sent them to me just because I run these pages for parents. after she posted she didn't apologize. >> You can please wrap up sir >> in saying like I said you have the freedom of speech in this country but that doesn't give you the freedom of consequences. I'm sure there's a social media clause in all teacher contracts and all your contracts cuz I know I have one in my job and if I said anything like that I'd be terminated immediately.
053So we're demanding your termination and if not I will go to every news outlet that I have at my disposal and I have a lot. >> Please wrap up your comments sir. >> I heard you the first time >> statement stance. >> I have one person >> okay >> that the audacity to post such a vile disgusting thing. >> Okay you have defamatory statements the next person. Thank you. >> She needs to stop posting defamatory stuff. Sir, the floor is not yours. You had an opportunity. >> It's not yours either. >> Once everyone is finished, if you'd like to make another comment, you may, sir. >> Thank you. I will. >> Hi. >> Hello. Um, I'm Kate Revolt. Uh my sons are in the school district and I also saw all of the posts that
054um this teacher has posted and I just want to say I found it wonderful that she continued to defend the right of the students and to talk about the shooting in Evergreen, Colorado that occurred the same day at school. Um she also spoke about the fact that everyone is so concerned about this political figure but no one's talking to him. So that same this same incident occurred within two schools and Angela's talking about that and she's also talking about how not much has changed since other tragedies like Sandy Hook. She's bringing a valid points as educators that you should be concerned about the safety of guns in schools and that as parents we should be concerned about and worried about and not the glorification of some personality as part of a political movement. Of course,
055what happened is tragic and it's sad and everyone has a right to mourn and what happened to him is absolutely terrible. No one should see it. No one should record it. I condemn it completely, but what Angela is saying is not wrong. She is trying to focus back on the students. And I'm happy to hear that educators are out here doing that and keeping the focus on our community, on our students, and not glorifying the news and what's popular. Thank you. It should be on. >> Yeah. Push it up. Push it up. Push. >> Can you hear? Okay, there we go. That's not far three minutes. Uh my name is Cindy Castaldo. Last year I stood before you fighting for our teachers, our students, and our community between against budget cuts, layoffs, and raising taxes.
056Unfortunately, I'm here tonight to express a deep concern regarding a social media post made by a staff member within our district and the response received. While I absolutely respect every individual's right to personal opinion and freedom of speech, I also believe that with with the responsibility of educating children comes a higher expectation of professionalism and emotional integrity, especially when addressing the matters involving human laws. The post in question mocked and minimized the passing of Charlie Kirk. As a parent and a member of this community, I found the tone of of that message extremely disappointing and misaligned with the values I expect to see reflected in our schools. This is not about agreeing disagreeing with someone. This is about basic human decency. It's about the example we are setting not just through our curriculum and our
057testing, but through our behaviors and attitudes modeled by those entrusted with our children every day. District policy 3282 detailed the expectations for teachers and the quote use of social networking sites publicly sharing quote the biggest danger of taking your child to a drag show is that a Christian could show up with a gun end quote promotes hate and violates that policy. If we hold students accountable for their words, mocking others, whether it be in school or online, why aren't we holding our teachers to the same standards and expectations? What's most troubling to me is the way the district has responded. The only resolution offered when asked to have my children removed from their instruction was to have the affected students picked up during that portion of the day. That is not a solution. That is
058avoidance. Other schools and businesses across the country have taken public thoughtful and compassionate action when similar situations have come up not only now but in the past decade no matter which way the pendulum is swinging. So I stand here tonight and I ask Miss Lisa Aunes, what is your response to this matter? Can you please get off your phone and pay attention? What is your response to this matter? Board members, what are your responses to this matter? How is the district addressing this beyond asking parents to simply remove their children during this class? And lastly, how are we ensuring that our schools are placed with sympathy and accountability matter just as much as academic success? I truly hope this is taken seriously not just for my family, but for the culture that we are building
059in this district as a whole. Just to close this as well, we teach our students from kindergarten that we can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. I'm doing that. We cannot put the toothpaste back in the tube once something is said. So, in this instance, it's the same thing. Thank you. Anyone else like to speak? Hello. >> Hello. >> My name is Timothy Bale. Um, first of all, thank you for all the work you do. Um, it seems as though over the last decade there has been more violence on the rise at an alarming rate. Maybe it's always been like this. Um, it's just reported more. It seems like we have the school shooting almost every single month almost every single week. It seems like uh we've had the train stabbing uh with Ukrainian
060girl, Charlie's assassination. It just seems like violence is on the rise. My question is about safety and security. Are we as a uh school district uh are we as school locations uh Far Pond and uh George Mitchell, are we doing all we can with security or is there possibly a way with the limited budget we have that maybe we could steward the budget a little bit better to make security a little bit better, a little bit tighter for the safety of the staff, the students, uh volunteers, vendors, parents uh for the safety of their like is is there something else we could do with that? >> Well, we can't answer questions right now, but we're taking all the comments and we're writing them down. Trust me, you'll get you'll get answers to your questions. >>
061Okay. Thank you. >> Thank you. [Music] >> Anyone else like to speak? How you doing? Okay. I just want to cut touch base on a couple different things here. Um my son has come home said there's inappropriate things that have been said. He doesn't know if they're inappropriate. That's grooming in this particular teacher's classroom. So yes, that is grooming. Also touch other statements about an individual. >> These are facts. Um so one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. The last nine shootings that have happened. Let's see. The Denver school shooter was trans. The Denver school shooter number two trans. >> Sir again cautioning you from making shooter trans. Nashville shooter trans. Colorado spring shooter non-binary. Don't you see a trend here? Don't Don't you see what's going on here? And when this is being
062pushed in a classroom and being them kids are being groomed at 9 years old, are you kidding me? They won't know what's going on. They don't know if it's a a bad comment. They're being groomed. >> We have to talk about Little Lake Harbor. What's going on here? >> Right. But but I'm I'm saying that these little these little kids are being groomed. Again, you're continuing to make potentially defamatory comments. Thank you. >> It's all facts. We can do it. >> Would anyone else like to speak? >> Okay. So, what the board wants to say, we we wanted to make a statement about this with the tragic incident of Charlie Kirk's death, and we wanted to respond to the public as we've gotten numerous numerous emails um on this issue on both sides. I have
063to be honest. Um but this is our expectation of the district and this is how we feel. I'll read a short statement that was approved by the board. We expect everyone in our school district community to treat each other with kindness and respect and to uphold the policies and procedures that speak to professionalism and whether in person or via uh social media platforms. Any actions that threaten the well-being or dignity of others will be addressed promptly and appropriately in accordance with school policies and New Jersey law. Please keep in mind the board does not administer uh discipline. We do not have a say in that. All we can do is look at the policies that were violated. And if anyone wants to know the policies that are applicable here, I have those. You can talk
064to me after the meeting. [Music] >> Yeah. I think everybody knows that we can't address personnel items specifically in public. Um but this the public is free to do that. The board is not. >> When will you address it? >> Public has freedom of speech. >> When will it be addressed? >> Okay. So, the public comment was closed. That was our comment. I I invite the board to make any other comments they would like. >> Is this board forum? >> This is board forum. >> All right. I want to take this in a little bit of a different direction. Um, you know, I didn't really know who Mr. Charlie Quirk was. I knew he was a conservative speaker, a commentator who was a big supporter of the president and I only skimmed the surface of
065what he was about. Um, basically just assuming that he was another social media personality with 15 minutes of fame, but I was wrong. Only after he passed away did I start watching some of his videos and pay attention to what he was saying, but more importantly, how he was saying it. I won't try to argue his political or religious beliefs one way or another tonight in this forum. However, I do want to share some observations. If you ever watch even one minute of his videos, you would see that he did have incredible political and religious convictions. But he also wanted to be known as an entrepreneur because he built an organization from scratch called Turning Point USA. Uh started in 2012 in his parents' garage. Uh, in fact, he started by putting a card table
066out in the middle of a campus and just asking anybody to come up to that table to debate him with words and facts. And for the first 10 years of his organization, he traveled 330 days out of the year. And now he's having an even bigger impact on the entire world. He grew JourneyPoint USA from nothing to a $150 million nonprofit organization with over a,000 employees, $400,000 individual donors, and an amazing 1.4 billion views of his videos on Tik Tok last year. Simply from an achievement perspective, he accomplished a lot in his 31 short years. But most of all, he wanted to be known for his courage. His courage for proclaiming his faith, his courage to speak truth no matter what, and his courage for standing in front of thousands of college students who vehemently
067disagreed with him, armed with nothing but a stool and a microphone so that he could openly debate them. He went straight into college campuses where his views were not very popular, but he asked anyone to come up to the microphone for a respectful debate. And he traveled all over the world doing that. In fact, he asked those who disagreed with him to come to the front of the line, and he always challenged people to fact check him. But unfortunately, of all places, what happened to him that day happened on an educational campus. And the very place where opposing views are supposed to be respectfully discussed, dissected, and debated. A place where you should feel free from fear for harm for doing so. A place where many of us once walked as students ourselves. or maybe
068you hope to send your children one day. I say all that because as leaders in this district, it is our responsibility to create a safe and healthy environment for our students here in Little Lake Arbor. As we sit here today, we are at the beginning of that journey. Literally from the ages of 3 years old with preK 3 all the way up through sixth grade. We are charged, us up here in the board and and teachers and administration charged with preparing our students for becoming caring, responsible young adults so that one day they too can change the world. And that is a charge none of us up here take lightly. So what can we do about it? Now there's an old saying, love your neighbor as yourself. We've seen so much hate. We've seen so
069much violence. But let's go back to the basics. love and respect. And since this is a school district, let's focus on mastering the basics, the academics. That's what the elementary school is here for. And that is our charge as a board is to prepare our kids for the future and to master the basics because we do have a lot of work to do. But that is something that we collectively as a group are focused on. We want to treat everybody with love and respect and we want to make sure that our students are prepared to change the world. Thank you. >> Thanks, Chris. That's very good. >> Would you like to say anything? >> Um, so I would like to start with uh I am can't tell you guys how excited I am about the
070uh uh the new transportation policy and then the um the grant writing. Uh, ever since the beginning, I've been beating the drum of uh, fiscal responsibility. Um, during the budget season, uh, transportation is over a $2 million line item. It's massive. And then we weren't bringing in any additional income. So, these are the two charges I was mainly focused on myself. It is great to see the sense of urgency that the district has taken to really break the ship, uh, getting us more prepared for the next budget season. What's even more exciting is that not only do we reap a savings now, those savings compound in 5 years when those assets are paid off and then we own them. Uh grant rating, I can't wait to see how much additional funding that we're going to
071get into the district and hopefully help us when the next budget season comes um because we can't go through what we went through the last go around. While we're on the the topic of uh uh budget, um one of the questions that was brought up was safety and security. Um we take it as a board very very serious. Um dur during those budget discussions um we fought tirelessly uh to figure out how to keep our two SRO's. Um most of us have children in this uh in these schools. Uh and it it's just safety is imperative uh to each and every one of us. Um last week I got to go to the uh GJM uh back to school night. It was fantastic uh meeting my son's uh teacher, Miss Morgan, who was absolutely incredible.
072Um I think he's going to have a fantastic year um this year. Uh in closing, uh I am very concerned at some of the comments that I've heard, especially that we're asking parents to pick up their children. Um I just hope we can find a different way uh to work with these uh concerned parents um as this is such a uh a hot topic that's front and center. Thanks, Greg. John, thank you. >> Yeah, I'm I'm gonna pretty much agree with Greg on most of that stuff that he said because it's all pretty much true with everything that's going on right now. Um I'm very excited about transportation. I'm very excited about the savings um that the school is uh getting right now, well, moving forward into the future here. And um I'm happy about
073the school busing, especially for the separation for the kids. I think it's going to be really good for the parents to see the kids all grouped up like that on the bus, so we don't have different age brackets mixed. And I think it's going to be a lot better. We're not going to see a lot of uh riff raff or anything like that. Um I'm also excited about the rod grants that are taking place for the new uh RTU HBAC upgrades. That's phenomenal. It's uh it's a great thing that we're pushing forward and utilizing these grants and looking for and looking into the future for more grants that are coming. Um and uh I have to say that's pretty much it. It's all positive for me. >> Thanks, John. [Music] >> First of all, I
074just want to say thank you very much for coming out, expressing your concerns. They certainly are not going unheard on my part. Um, and just secondly, I'm really looking forward to see seeing what this school year brings. I hope you girls and guys and teachers and admin had a great uh first couple of days start. I know we're around that. It was just so nice to see kids back in school um getting involved in classes and all the exciting things that they do. I am very much looking forward to when we have the principles here doing presentations with students in the month and talking about all the wonderful things that go on within the four the buildings which are Little Harbor School District. [Music] >> Okay. And I'll go last. Um I also want to
075say that thanks for all the parents that came out tonight and expressing your views. You've been heard. Thank you for standing up for your kids in this district. We are your elected officials. So I I hope you continue to hold us accountable. We want to hold the district accountable to follow policy and I'm sure Dr. Antunes will follow through with that. Um as I said before, there are four different policies that pertain to an issue like this. And if you want to know any more about that, they're on the website or I can let you know after the meeting. Uh but I take this very seriously. I don't know if I can speak for the whole board, but this is this is me telling you we are taking this very seriously. Thank you. I don't
076think we need another executive session. [Music] >> Motion to adjourn, please. >> Motion second. meeting is closed. Thank you.