001i'd like to call this meaning to order if everyone will please stand and join me in the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one before we get started i'd like us to take a moment of silence for the victims of the uvalde school shooting their families and all those who were affected by this violence thank you our meeting notice adequate notice of this meeting of the long-held township board of education was given as required by the open public's meeting act as follows notice was sent to the echo sentinel and the daily record on september 21st 2021 notice was posted on the bulletin board in the first floor entrance of the school district administration building gillette new jersey notices
002were filed with the township clerk and notices were mailed to all persons who have requested individual notance notice pursuant to the open public's meeting act roll call please mrs butler here mrs daley here mr duchess here mr giorgio is absent mr grosskopf here mrs mclennan here miss nyquist here mr rival is absent miss case is absent six members present thank you and at this moment i'd like to turn the presentation over to dr mucci for our faculty milestone presentations thank you good evening and a special welcome to our honored guests this evening tonight the board is considering motions to recognize you some of our outstanding professionals who have reached milestones of service as well as two individuals who are retiring this year a district is only as strong as the faculty and staff who choose
003to make their careers here in the case of long hill we are fortunate to have a team of all-stars teaching and learning has never been more challenging developing critical thinking skills compassion and empathy among our students has never been known as more necessary and we are so fortunate to have the individuals who are with us today to represent the best of long hill and their continued dedication to our students it is such a pleasure to see you here we thank you for being our guests we thank you for your service and at this time i would like dr jones to lead off the recognition of our honorees i'll stand in the middle i will begin with danielle bauer i remember miss bauer's first interview with me a very long time ago i knew at that
004moment during the interview she was a perfect candidate for the job miss bauer used to teach first grade kindergarten and now she's teaching preschool she comes to school each morning with a smile her enthusiasm and is always ready to help out anyone she has a wonderful way about her which makes her students love being in her classroom at the conclusion of every year i received numerous parent emails expressing to me what a wonderful year their child had happy 10 years miss bauer julie evans as a former kindergarten teacher myself i can say mrs evans is the ideal kindergarten teacher she is always happy no matter what her positive energy spirit and enthusiasm is contagious in the hallways and in her classroom she's a problem solver and is always coming up with new and innovative ideas
005for her team and for her students to the board members and anybody listening if you're ever in a bad mood stop in to see mrs evans and watch how quickly your mood will change happy 25 years mrs evans tracy pierce i hired mrs pierce as a paraprofessional at gillette school many years ago i watched how she interacted with students with teachers with parents and i was waiting for an opportunity to come to her but only if it was at gillette school and when the time came she interviewed and truly impressed the committee as i knew she would she is a highly requested teacher each year and continues to make me proud she is always thinking of ways to inspire her team and her students she is a team player and a true advocate for children
006happy five years mrs pierce michelle wyco mrs wyco has been at gillette school my whole career so far and i'm sure her whole career teaching preschool she is extremely experienced educator who truly understands what our youngest children child population needs emotionally academically and socially she is an advocate for all of her students she is high energy and a positive role model at gillette school her happiness spreads through the building and i very much appreciate that as a little happiness in a small place can go a very long way happy 20 years mrs waco and kathy cunningham i was joking with mrs cunningham today in the office on things that i may say if this was not broadcasted however since it is mrs cunningham has been one of my go-to people for a very long time
007she has taught special education her entire time at gillette school she is a team player and constantly provides authentic feedback to her team the teachers and always has solutions to any problems that may arise she understands the needs of her students at all of their varying levels she is very easy going and works very well with everybody you always see smiling children and teachers when they're around her happy 10 years mrs cunningham i will now turn this over to mrs colon director of special services hi everybody i'd first like to recognize miss jessica alon ms salon has been an occupational therapist for the district for the past 15 years she works with students in all three schools so she wears roller skates sometimes she demonstrates an excellent report with students our families and our teachers
008when you watch her work with students you can see the joy that she brings to therapy every day ms salon is a true expert within the field of special education i tell her often she's one of the best ots i've ever worked with and works collaboratively with our special ed team in order to best meet to develop plans to best meet student needs she's described as a team player it has excellent communication skills and has solid instincts when it comes to the developmental problems with students ms salon sees kern with all of her best practices within the field and is a true asset to the long hill community miss julie hirsch hush julie has been a speech and language therapist for 20 years at the long hill school district um and works predominantly at gillette
009and i challenge her this year she's at central school also she demonstrates an excellent rapport with students families and teachers when you watch her work with students you can see the excitement that both in both her and her students i need glasses she makes speech therapy fun for the students she's a true expert within the field of speech and language therapy and works collaboratively with our special ed team in order to develop supports to meet students needs ms hirsch is described as a collaborative member who has much to offer the students a long hill and is a resource to our teachers and staff she's a team player and works hard to assure that she's using best practices within the field of special of speech and language therapy the long hill community is lucky to have
010had mrs hurst for the past 20 years and the sharon buckle mrs buckle has been a professional for the long hill school district for the past 10 years for the first nine years she worked at gillette school how to do some homework today and most recently she has been working at the warren middle school so we haven't gotten to spend a lot of time with mrs buckle because she's been over there she's described as a hard working country conscientious student driven paraprofessional who has a very positive disposition she is helpful with classroom management and students and student support as it is apparent as you watch her work that she truly loves to help children she always develops an excellent rapport with staff that she's assigned to work with as well as the students she has
011been an asset to many students and the classrooms that she's assigned the long hill district is very lucky to have mrs buckvault and i'm gonna i'm gonna hand over the microphone to mrs backer the district vice principal assistant principal thank you good evening i'm speaking on behalf of myself and mrs dawson for miss carolyn emilio mrs emilio has served our district for 10 years she began at gillette school as a kindergarten teacher as a student teacher and then started her teaching career as a kindergarten teacher she moved on to become a teacher at millington school where she is currently teaching third grade carolyn takes pride in creating a loving and nurturing environment for her students her classroom is warm and her students are excited to learn mrs emilio is organized hard working and prides herself
012as a role model for her students it is not uncommon to see mrs emilio being a part of new initiatives in her classroom to directly benefit her students she continues to have a nice rapport with the parents of her students and her colleagues thank you mrs emilio for your dedication to the long hill township school district for the past 10 years the students staff sorry administration and families of long hill look forward to having you as part of our team of educators for many more years to come and now mr vitarella will speak okay first i have danielle tarquinio who is a five-year recipient so she's worked for five years as a paraprofessional in longhill township school district and danielle has worked at central gillette and millington school so all three she's had the opportunity
013to she i would describe her as a very dedicated professional that's always focused on doing the best job possible for the students when you work with her she's very attentive to the students needs she's always proactive always wants to think ahead look ahead to do the best for them she has a caring and compassionate disposition and she also has an excellent rapport not only with the students that she works with but with all our students we are very proud of your service thus far and thankful for all that you do for our students thank you for your service and next i have marcy scrobotch who is retiring this june so she is a basic skills teacher at central middle school marcy is a quality educator that has always kept the focus on teaching instruction with
014a strong emphasis on the importance of reinforcing the basics always with the kids having a strong foundation so some quick facts and information about marcy at one time marcy worked as a substitute nurse and a teacher in the district she has proudly worked and dedicated 15 years of service to the long hill school district she attended long hill schools and graduated from central middle school so she works in the very classrooms that she was once a student i recently had an opportunity to sit down and talk with marcie about her career and her upcoming retirement marcy shared that she will always remember working with one specific student a few years back a student she received was really struggling with math and had some low recent assessment scores while connecting with the student marcy learned that
015the student's ultimate goal and dream was to go into the field of nursing and healthcare when they were older mostly quickly learned that the student that she was working with was very dedicated open and receptive to teacher guidance and feedback and willing to work really hard over time marcy saw the student flourish and before leaving central middle school the student had moved into advanced math classes at central and then ultimately continued their progress into high school and obtained a full scholarship to the nursing program at fairleigh dickinson university that's something that she remembered and shared with me i will always remember your dedication to the students your willingness to grow and your emphasis on remembering to focus on doing the basics right we are so proud of marcy's achievements and accomplishments that you have made
016with your students and we're and she's also extremely dedicated to her own family and we love to hear stories about how they are doing and especially your new grandkids we wish you you and your family all the best in the future enjoy your time with them and thank you again for your service [Applause] we'd like to take a moment the board of education has a small token of appreciation for you okay now i'll call melissa backer back up so on behalf of the entire administrative team we would like to thank mrs lillian roston for her service to the students staff and families of longhail township for over 40 years [Applause] i think that alone is enough lillian has worked in all three buildings and has established herself as a pillar in the community lillian began
017her career when typewriters and lists were in binders the idea of having a school database for attendance scheduling and reports was not even a thought as technology advanced the role of the office administrative staff changed regardless of these updates mrs ralston brought the same energy to the job she was a friendly face to students and staff mrs roston was an active member of the lhea and even served as the president throughout the year she established friendly connections to the teachers and staff that she worked with she would often tell such wonderful stories of students and families as she knew the history of longhill better than anybody else little lil has always made us laugh with her dry humor i'll follow dr jones and say that there are many stories that if we were not broadcasted
018i would love to share she was always impeccably dressed and whatever for whatever ready for whatever task was thrown at her i always gave her the ever so daunting task of labeling and stuffing my standardized test scores the last one was a doozy it was a big project and it took her days to complete yet she persevered and even prepared a template of labels for the next lucky recipient of this test we also are lucky we have the prepaid envelopes or else we could have a seinfeld situation potentially on our hands we wish you nothing but happiness and relaxation in your retirement and you will certainly be missed you already are missed and i just have some thoughts coming from directly from mrs dawson i will miss our yankee and mets debates we had every
019spring i'm sorry that the mets never came through in all of our years working together this is why she's probably not here this however would have been a good year for us to have lively banter on managers decisions which players needed to go etc one day she taped the office and said it was a yankee free zone and i was not allowed to cross it i always loved her stories of the large thanksgiving dinner she would host with her family and her family's gingerbread competition she was always so proud of her grandchildren and shared their stories through the years i wish her all the best in her retirement and making memories at home the lake in canada and wherever her travels take her let's go yankees thank you lillian [Applause] the board of education also
020has a token of appreciation for you and um we have three very special movements uh to uh begin our meeting with uh so if karen if you could move in agenda items one through three for us um which celebrate our educators who are gathered here you want one two three one through three whereas the long hilltown board of longhail board of education is proud of the outstanding educators who serve the children of our community and the manner in which they support disney our beliefs the education the education is a growth process by which people learn to think and act more effectively that we must provide a safe pleasant environment for learning that respect for the policies of a democratic government is desirable students should acquire an understanding of and their respect for traditions customs and
021heritage of the country that students should be encouraged to use leisure time wisely that students should be taught that education is a broadened sense can become a lifelong pursuit for everyone whereas the board wishes to acknowledge the service and dedication of educators who have demonstrated continued exceptional delivery of instruction to our students and whereas the following individuals have had a lasting impact on the students and the community of long hill five years service jennifer bellagio excuse me and i apologize for this i may get some of the names wrong a lot of you are new to me bonnie [Music] anita dalio bridget hartman megan knott tracy pierce danielle quinoa darquinio sorry ala vinas michael vitarella ten year service stephanie albert daniel bauer sharon buckle kathy cunningham emily dinunzio carol emilio suzanne parker 15 years service
022jessica alain christine byrd camilla camellia gramalia fifth 20-year service jennifer dawson julie hirsch peter hochmeier michelle vico 25-year service julie evans michael lisbona and colleen pepe and miss nyquist let's stop and do the first one first so um we'll make that first motion do we have a second second all right discussion please only discussion is like i said i don't know a lot of you but uh the thing that i do know is and i can tell that from the reports that we get via scores or what comes out of the student achievement committee or you know just in general discussions um and especially after the past year and a half two years you guys have had thank you very much for what you've done mrs ralston you and i have been around for a
023long time i remember you and i can't mr lisbon has been around i know him and colleen um i i it really is exceptional this is a really exceptional route and we're to miss you boston and we're going to miss scrogaz i think you know you know me i think mrs scrub has right so thank you again very very much hi um i'm looking across these faces and i know a lot of you and you've all but you've all entertained with hurricane mclennan and i very much appreciate all that you have all done for my children in particular but all of the children of longhill and if you haven't met hurricane mclennan yet just wait [Laughter] so thank you all and congratulations and thank you to our retirees i wish you the best thank you
024all right thank you chair i wanted to thank all of you for either whether it's five or 25 years of service it's tremendous amount of dedication and effort that you all put into your jobs daily we're so grateful as as parents and members of this community for how much you contributed for yourselves and to our children so thank you and as a personal note to miss evans thank you so much um she i i have younger kids but miss evans was my daughter's kindergarten teacher my only regret is the fact that the pandemic cut that year short for her but um still to this day you know alyssa raves about how a wonderful a teacher she had and i and i know that's reflective of all of your efforts and um and i look forward
025to the many years ahead thank you so much all i would like to thank you all as well you don't know me i barely know you but i would like to say thank you thank you for your dedication especially during this pandemic and could you please do me a favor please take my word of thanks back to all of your co-workers and and share with them that my my thanks and i'm sure the board will back me on this one thank you for all of your dedication you've been wonderful thank you of course i would just like to say as i was reading through all the names i was like wow i've been in contact with at least nine or ten of you guys and and it's it's amazing um and everybody is just so
026special to to longhill and personally to my family so i want to thank everyone for their service and dedication to our district it's it's i think it's overwhelming actually the talent and the love that we have in the room um i can say as a parent of a middle schooler that i still remember you know the apprehension i had as a kindergarten parent and i do have a kindergarten teacher for my first year in the room who who you do so much for the parents and and for the families as well as the students your faces smile actually my daughter's preschool teacher in the room as well and and you you hold our hands as we enter this uh school district i also think that you teach us how to let our children grow you
027know and and i took many cues from you in the room so i appreciate that i also know that um our students they see your smiles they see your encouragement they learn from you uh it's it's wonderful i think especially this time of the year to just give you recognition for all that you've done so thank you so much i think we'll give a big round of applause [Laughter] sorry we um and just to add you heard mr vitarello speaking but you also see his name on the list tonight it is truly hard to find that real middle school person the person who can understand appreciate and enjoy probably the most difficult years of a child's life so when they can come into the building each day and they can meet a smiling face who
028is at every corner every event cheering on all students and all teachers we are to consider ourselves especially fortunate not only is mr vitarello visible not only is he an exceptional leader but his enthusiasm and his enthusiasm seems to know no bounds through the last two years and every single day we see mr vitarello bring enthusiasm and a passion for his job and who else would look forward to getting on a bus with a hundred eighth graders to go to great adventure or go into an 8th grade dance mr vitarello makes sometimes what people would think the most challenging parts of the job the most fun and acceptable exciting for our students we're pleased to have him as a leader we're thrilled with the progress that he has offered us at central school and we're
029so delighted that he has been in long hill for for five years so congratulations mr vidarello i will quickly jump in with my favorite story of mr vitorello when i first met him i was working on the box tops for the pto and trying to summon up some interest in central middle school and i was i was kind of eagerly i think suggesting some ideas that might interest the kids and asking if we could perhaps have the winners cut off his tie you know we'll buy a tie you know and mr vitorill was great he said you know what i think if you let them slime slimey you might win more money and we'll make it a competition and i thought i mean it just really it really impressed me it made me smile and
030i i don't remember if they did slime you did they slimey that year i think twice and that is that is it right there all right uh and um i will also uh we have two more special movements on our agenda for this uh evening um motions number two and three which are retirements which i know we've discussed in detail danielle will you move in motions two and three for me please sure so moved [Laughter] second and is there discussion let's go mets and we had to amend that closing statement that mrs dawson left us with we were getting some groans from that congratulations to both of you and thank you for your years of service with the district um roll call please mrs butler yes mrs daley yes mr de jamos yes mr groskoff
031yes this is mclennan yes miss nyquist all right um at this moment the board will enter uh into a short recess to celebrate uh our educators present here uh i think we anticipate it'll be about 10 or 15 minutes and we have coffee and no coffee too hot we have water and cookies so help yourselves in the back of the room and we can take some photos and enjoy wishing you a congratulations in person yes that was a big issue this year that's how it works amazing so is you give me the thumbs up i believe we're back on the air um so if we continue with our agenda we are going to move to communications um dr mucci have you had any communications we had a number of communications regarding school safety and security
032and i included a response for those in the superintendent update thank you board committee and liaison reports i'm karen do you have a report for us morris county and services commission a couple of things uh the last meeting excuse me we completed the superintendent evaluation similar to what we've done here the sale of park lake school was closed on may 17th so now they can retire the debt that they had incurred from the original purchase as well as uh actually i guess decrease the red that the other school is running in also based upon the fact that by covid they had passed several laws or acts that enabled schools to handle students beyond the 21 years so several students are staying at at the central so their their enrollment is basically the same the next
033meeting is this wednesday it's june uh by law that's when they have their reorganization meetings because believe it or not there are some districts that still have the elections in april and uh last but not least they handle you know they're a purchasing and contract agent for transportation for many many districts i mean thousands of students and unfortunately what they're finding out especially with uh bus routes that or the use of buses that have the 54 to 56 students literally double or triple for the pricing so they're encouraging their districts to look more closely like we've already done at and consider subscription requirement so i mean that's it's it's it's it's everywhere with respect to policy the actions of the policy committee are evidenced in the agenda you can see that with respect to governance
034um i did provide uh some updates to the code of governance dr mucci we have to talk over some of the changes and then it'll get out to you guys um as i previously requested we're putting out that every committee it's i know it's june already but every committee should have goals established for the year and you should report them so please by the next meeting have them and in fact email them to me and then i can put them all together and we can get them up on the website we have uh as you know our self-evaluation going on so please get on the bandwagon with that um and one of the things that was brought out with respect to retreat uh kim had requested that we have tried to keeping it making it
035very effective to have a little bit of an agenda so in my correspondence with charlene we came up with the following uh the elements that we'll follow in the in the retreat our review and evaluation we're going to highlight the strengths and weaknesses that we identified in our evaluation we're going to identify an initial set of new goals we're going to document the results of against last year's goals and adjust in case like a goal was not achieved or it can be part of another of a new goal and then we're going to identify the obstacles aids strengths and weaknesses that helped or hindered us from getting to our point of achieving the goals and hopefully working through that now typically what we've done is taken what you know we have the meeting and then
036charlene puts together you know all our thoughts and you know writes it up for us and we take it and we accept it what we're going to do this time is we're going to take what she had written up but we're actually going to sit down and look at it is it really what we said we wanted and this is not against charlene but if you've been through this before you know there's kind of like a lot of talking back and forth and you know things can get lost you know with the back and forth so we're gonna we're gonna do that subsequent to the retreat and um that's about it thank you um danielle do you have a report for the board no i'm tom my report is i have no report thank you
037uh alex i'm going to try to make this quick bear with me one second the uh buildings and grounds committee had a meeting on friday june 3rd all were in attendance mr priscina um reviewed a number of projects providing updates on the same phase three of the window repair project is as he defined coming along they've defined the scope of the work there's about four different manufacturers involved in the various window systems within the within the district so they're basically doing site visits to identify what needs to be replaced and they're planning on starting in mid-july central school's multi-purpose room was re-lit and uh he described the changes as night and day what we're looking forward to is um the repair uh and refinishing of the flooring for that and it's really going to everything's
038really going to look great there the door replacements for the men's locker room at central school finally arrived and should be installed soon there was a heat wave that came through and really put the new hvac upgrades and repairs to the test uh what i was very happy to hear was that in anticipation of this they put core mechanical on on alert there were five complaints that came in over the course of that day i forgot what date it is i apologize um relating to malfunctions but it was pretty quickly diagnosed as a software glitch issue and uh something that can probably be remedied um should we do like a battery backup or some other kind of backup for the hvac computer system let's call it for lack of a better phrase uh there's one
039or two rooms at gillette that still might need some sort of separate uh you know window unit because the system is reaching those currently right now so we're looking into kind of those those short-term fixes for a longer term repair later on and all that being said by noon all the issues that you know we experienced had been addressed so that i think is a vast improvement over some of the other hvac issues that we've had in the past that were really more dramatically affected our school and educational environment so i i applaud our team for doing a great job through that one and it was like 95 degrees so there's ongoing discussions and work with the shade tree commission on tree pruning and removal um there uh are some locksmith works that um that
040need to be done in trying to create a standard key that's available for uh for edu you know for the administrators and teaching staff um on i believe on number 27 on our resolution tonight is the recommendation to um to award the contract for custodial maintenance services to pritchard and there is uh i don't want to you know report on something that dan or dr moocher are going to cover but essentially there's a lot of work that's been done to try to um establish greater supervision and accountability with respect to that contract um the uh they're still working on that jim flooring thing that i mentioned sorry i'm trying to run through this a lot of different items quickly um the building re-lighting there's a fixture of the lighting fixture delivery coming soon um and
041you know we talked briefly about wasp and bee complaints at central school that you know the threats were evaluated but nothing too serious uh nothing that required any sort of real intervention um on on a prospectively speaking for the 2020 223 capital projects we've talked about these before but basically the millington fire alarm upgrades are going to be done millington and central school staff laboratory renovations are going to be done there's been pre-construction meetings held gillette millington school brick exterior pointing and waterproofing is all set to go um millington parking lot project has been slightly revised that should also include the sidewalk redoing because when we kind of revamp the entrance way to make it a wider and more accessible driveway it's going to affect the sidewalk and the belgian blocks that are there so
042that's been included in the project um and um i'm happy to report that we had a submission from our architect for the five-year capital improvement plan which is the lfrp long-range facilities plan while it's an improvement from the last one we had seen many months ago there's still a lot more work that needs to be done this is a working draft we're going to go back to the architect and press them for more specific and detailed and useful information on this so hopefully there's more to come within like the next 60 to 90 days on that um and um i think that kind of captures the the essence of the meeting as quickly as i could thank you guys any questions okay okay um the community relations uh committee met on may 31st 2pm everyone
043was in attendance um we discussed um some some communications with the town about the recording of the meetings um with equipment tvd there's there'll be more information when appropriate um we discussed um an update on our social media posts if you are on twitter or um and you look at hashtag longhill pride you will see a lot of really great photographs and activities that are going on in the schools and we hope to extend that in the new year with uh in the new school year with talking about um you know more curricular activities as well so it should be some good stuff there um we just saw the benefit of one of the things we discussed at the meeting which i have to say i'm really proud of um dr mucci really organized this
044um discussions and um you know appreciation for the retirees and our our teachers and i think it's one of the nicest meetings i've been to so that was really wonderful to be able to do tonight we also discussed some of the um the school security debriefs and some of the future actions and communications with the with the public regarding that and there'll be more information forthcoming it's still in the works but it's a really positive conversation and i think the community will be really happy with with some adjustments and things that are coming down the pike um and then finally we discussed um the ongoing busting issues and how you know we can communicate with that with the public unfortunately a lot of that falls on things being told to us at the last minute
045so um i will say that the addition of yes moyer has been fantastic and i think she's really been a positive um you know she's all those emails all those voicemails and the notifications have been as timely as they could be and um i know it's been very helpful to my family and hopefully to everyone else's um and that's all for the community relations committee and then i'm going to keep it brief with um with force of long hill education foundation um i have an update from the world competition for our um force robotics team so the spellbots which comprised of fifth graders ella bailly shri priya shilish and sri lakshmi shilish placed 36 in their teamwork division which is elementary arts of the 50 so 36 of 57 teens with a score of 73
046and they were 227th overall out of 451 excuse me 454 elementary teams in this skills competition they placed at a 482 um elementary teams and um the team dj ii which comprised seventh and eighth graders jason zhang justin lee and dev patel they placed 42nd in their teamwork division which is middle school science out of 79 teams with a score of 109 and they were 311th overall out of seven 784 middle school teams in the skills competition they placed 110th out of 691 middle school teams so this is the worlds it took place in dallas um last month and we're incredibly proud of the the great work they did and we are extremely appreciative of all the parent volunteers that worked with the students and and two out of the three teams that we submitted
047to states actually qualified for worlds which was really exciting yeah um and that's all i have for today thank you um karen i believe has an addition to her report i apologize for this i forgot um the mr rideout had approached dr mucci uh he is the alcoholic the chair of the diversity equity and inclusion um uh plc and he thought of having me as chair of the policy committee and kim as president of the board to come to the committee and talk to them about well it worked out to be more very operational about how policies come to be uh where where where can they raise questions where can they raise concerns um and so on so we basically had we had a pre-meeting and then we had an ultimate meeting and they were
048about i would say 20 20 or so dr mooji was present and i started off with just uh going through these are the kinds of policies that mandated monitored etc and all of the the various processes how they get approved and all and uh we had a backup a little bit back and forth about um the idea of uh the diversity and how that's identified in our policies how we work with that but again it was really more operational and the the really good thing was and hopefully they came away with it uh they seemed like surprised that they could question or like uh you know maybe make a suggestion or express a concern so hopefully they learn that you know you have a different you have different channels whether it be the union or
049the administration et cetera you know bring your questions bring your concerns and it can get to the board you know we're not like we kind of thought we were untouchable you know and then i hopefully they have that different view um mr right out actually watches the meetings on tv and uh it was mentioned to the teachers that were there they don't have to listen to the whole meeting but if they listen to the committee reports they can learn a lot about what's going on and the questions or concerns or ideas that they may have doesn't only have to be about policy they might have something associated with student achievement or uh you know community relations or something so um hopefully uh i don't know maybe something will start with that that's all it was
050it was it was very good it was a very very good afternoon all right thank you um it's actually a nice transition to the student achievement report because uh dr muchi has been bringing in various personnel in the district as we come to certain topics that relate to the area of expertise that they're working in so we had a meeting it was on may 25th i was unable to attend but the rest of the committee was able to attend and miss taylor from the sage thrive program which is a recent addition to central middle school it's a therapy-based program she came and spoke with the committee and she spoke to the committee about um you know that the caseload that she's interacting with at central uh how she's seeing some students with anxiety stress and
051bullying concerns and she is an added support in the district in addition to the guidance counselor to cst and to mr vitarello himself um you know and and that was i think a very informative uh person to have come to the committee particularly since that's a new program at central and we discussed the two policies their mission statement and how they should mirror other policies uh the policy numbers were uh 6142-6 which was for bsi and 6142.9 which is for the arts and there's going to be a continued discussion on the art policy um and then we set our goals so i will be emailing them to karen i think they're on another page let me find them oh i i'm so excited um just on the next page okay so um three of the
052goals were based off of either the strategic plan goals for the district and or um the district goals for this year and then one goal came out of commun uh committee discussion uh so uh goal number two is actually the one that's not directly based on on those goals it's to monitor existing programs that support students social and emotional needs and explore opportunities to further develop the supportive and nurturing environments of our schools and then the other three goals are um are based off of those goals that we have existing for the district so how can we as a committee support that work so um to explore training tools and opportunities for both students and teachers to encourage original thinking and innovation and then the next one to monitor the development implementation and progress of
053learning targets for students that aim to increase their proficiency levels and ensure that each student is challenged and the last goal is to monitor the development implementation and progress of programming to address covert relating learning loss and provide opportunities for learning acceleration including programs in the area of basic skills english language learners and the new jersey consortium for gifted and talented programs and i will forward them to you karen for the compilation of the information i have a pto report for tonight so the pta was wrapping up their school year with very few remaining grade level events and i think they've been getting great weather for the events that they have been holding over the last few weeks they are beginning to plan for next year in next year's activities so anyone in the district
054who is interested in volunteering um particularly to run or become like one of the integral members of those school related events um please reach out to the pto exec executive board anybody on the executive board and their information and contact is on the district website under the pto section um the last pto for this year is going to be an in-person meeting on wednesday may 11 at 7 30 in the millington school library um it will be nice to return to in person uh june june 11th sorry typo june 11th i was it was it was a minute no uh and the agendas posted uh will be posted on the pto page on the district website um you want me to check the date it's a saturday i wrote it down because i thought my
055phone was gonna die but i can check my phone has held up for the meeting the 11th would be a saturday because today's the 6th well it actually says wednesday may 11th um so i did write it down correctly but that that's obviously not the date i believe it's this wednesday what's this wednesday's date and i'm going to text the 8th and let's see if we can get a response back this is a play-by-play episode yes sorry okay and um it is going to be in person there will it will be listed uh on the pto page in the district website and we'll make sure that we get that clarification june 8th june she just texted back so wednesday june 8th and she also said sorry for the typo uh and we are um there's
056registration for the pto uh sponsored band summer program and that is still open so interested musicians please see the information uh for registration in the friday flyers and a special thank you to the pto for the five teacher requests that they are funding that are on the agenda tonight for board approval uh and i also have a finance report from matt uh so if you bear with me um the finance committee met on six one uh to review um you know all the checks and uh and also uh just what's been happening the last month uh in the world of finance in the district uh we did settle on our finance committee goals so goal number one is to explore additional revenue sources for the district goal number two is to explore additional shared services
057and goal number three is to review district options to minimize costs to the district and to its employees and underneath each goal we had some ideas uh you know on how that could be achieved as alex had mentioned we discussed a warning of the contract for pritchett i believe it'll be in dan's report so we will defer to him but in brief the contract includes the additional addition of a general manager which we believe is instrumental to maintain the buildings it was something that we had had and then we had moved away from and now we're moving back to we're using a company a third-party organization called advocate which is monitoring pritchard and creating reports for the district and that is you know helping us uh on a quarterly basis just have another set of
058eyes looking at the schools so that we talked about the extension of the ba and the maintenance and the technology personnel who are interims and that all three are working above and beyond and the finance committee recommends extending their current contracts we had an estimated year-end surplus for this year which i believe will also be in dan's report so it's in some parts because of money that was saved through the use of the esser grants and it's larger than what we've had in past years uh the expected surplus is one three maybe 100 1.3 million 1.3 million uh and an app approximately six hundred thousand to seven hundred thousands from the esr grants and we recommend transferring the surplus to the capital maintenance accounts for the upcoming years um we're starting the bidding process for
059the transportation this will be updated frequently i suggest over the summer you know we'll start the bidding with first student who we do in conjunction with wachong hills we cheer with them and then in july we will reach out to mercy to look at the additional routes that we do on our own we had a large discussion of how the esser funds had been utilized and um there was a document that was provided to the full board for you to look at just like every basically penny that has been used for esser and what program so that it's a large document but if you look over it you're going to see how the district has i think very thoroughly really examined how to use that money in in ways that are productive the grants have
060often been used for one time up front cost so that we're not going to find ourselves in a pitfall next year how are we going to fund this i know it's something we discussed before but the chart is super informative and that is the end of the finance report um so if there's any questions for anyone on any committee report i'd skipped over that part no well then we will move to the superintendents report thank you very much every day keeping our students and faculty safe is in the forefront of our minds when tragedy strikes as it did in uvalde last week we enact our emergency response protocols these included increased access to our mental health team faculty and administrative debriefs and meetings with our local police department to share observations and ideas that we
061have to enhance our school safety and security plans we appreciate all the feedback and suggestions from the faculty and community on school safety measures as a result i'd like to outline some general things that we're going to be working on in the coming weeks next week we will be meeting with all summer program leaders to review all school safety plans and schedule appropriate school security drills for all summer programs so we did have some questions from folks who have children in recreation or in the summer institute about don't do the same rules in school carry over to those plans so mrs scanlon myself representatives from the police the administration we're all going to sit down and solidify those plans together we had a wonderful meeting with our administrative team and the long hill township police
062we discussed with them various different ways that we could increase security surveillance with the assistance of police in our buildings during the school day we have the start of some wonderful ideas and thoughts on how to work towards that we did receive a number of email communications asking about that everything from class to officers to armed security guards so we're looking at those different possibilities and we all believe that partnering with our local police is the best way to achieve this the police know our students they know our buildings they're here with us they've been present at all of our outdoor events and they're just an unbelievable group of people to work with and they uh we respect their expertise so we collaboratively want to come up with a response um to these questions we
063are investigating more detailed sign-in protocols for visible visitors so for example you may have been to a school or a public building where you have to produce your license and then an automatic sticky single day id with your photograph is available that's something that we're looking into to increase the additional protocols for visitors one of the things that came up that was interesting was during the threat that we had to respond to that was occurring at the high school last week which thankfully was unfounded it happened to be on a day that we had many parent volunteers in the building and we received a lot of feedback from parents that stated you know it was something for us to really be able to be there and to see what happens from the other side and
064from that we also had some discussions about we often have similar volunteers that come in or you know more than just coming in for a one-time event they might staff food days or they may participate as a pto volunteer so what we're going to work to add to our volunteer training is some school security training so that when people are in the building we can take advantage of having all of those extra adults with us and everybody can clearly understand what their role is these improvements reflect our path for continual improvement and just always looking at things and saying how can we do it better what do we learn from this what conversations can we have to make sure that this is what i observed and here's something that i think we could do differently
065the next time mr persina as our buildings and ground supervisor and mr borgo have been a part of all of these conversations they clearly understand school code what you can do with school doors what you can't but all of our doors are up to code and expectation with the school security plan they all automatically lock you know one of the things that came up was there obviously must have been some type of sensor issue with the door that closed in uvaldi i can assure you um that even though we know those sensors work you know we went around and tried different ways to block a sensor and see you know the police were asking us questions about if the power goes out what's the default the default is lock you know these are important things
066for us to talk about and to explore and while we can't share specific details that would compromise the safety and of our faculty and staff and most importantly our students we are going to have a joint public meeting with the long hill police and the school administration and our mental health team just prior to the kickoff of school so we're yet to select the date but it might be towards that very end of august or beginning of september but basically at the start of the school year to try and rededicate ourselves and keep the conversation about school safety and security going we imagine that at this presentation we will update you on some of the things that i've outlined as well as additional things that we may come up with as a group we'll also
067talk about communications that we send uh what type of communications do we send in the evidence in the case of a threat and why why is there certain information that you can't share so it might be student privacy issues it might be an ongoing police investigation but by just providing people with more information about the typical reasons why things are written in a certain way rest assured unless it's something general about education when we get into communications such as these that the administration sends out they've all been reviewed by our board attorney so we can have perhaps a perspective from board attorneys sharing why certain communications have to be written in particular ways we also want to support parents and talk to them about what they should expect and do to support their children following
068a security drill and in the event of a crisis i also want to draw attention to the fact that our last update on the long range strategic plan is virtual tomorrow night at seven pm as the board well knows school safety mental health these are essential components of our long-range education plan so i encourage people to attend that virtual meeting tomorrow night an email reminder with the link went out and we will have more detailed conversations about these as always please pick up the phone reach out to an administrator call me send me an email if you have any suggestions that you would like to add or items that you would like to have addressed it's also been interesting um to have some folks from our community whose line of work is school is security
069and they've talked to us about different options that have been interesting for us to explore and we're thankful to them as well on tonight's agenda there are a number of personnel motions for summer school and the 2022 school year you can expect that you may have a small handful of additional personnel appointments in july but at this point i can tell you that we have no reason to believe that we'll have any staffing shortages any positions unfilled and that's it for me thank you thank you um and the interim uh oh any questions for dr moochie yes you spoke of the default being locked for the for the doors that's lock as then they can't get open from the outside but if the children need to leave that that's accommodated right yes so panic bars
070are what we call them and all of the doors in the district are up to code with the appropriate panic bars thank you okay um the interim business administrators update good evening on tonight's agenda we have a monthly approval of our financial reports award of approved contractors for the district which is the laundry list of vendors that we have which is resolution number nine annual deposit into our capital reserve and maintenance reserve and statutorily this must be done in the month of june prior to the year end closing uh from experience it's better to be more conservative because the number that you put in the resolution cannot be exceeded so the numbers we put there are very very very conservative numbers we anticipate our number to probably be about 1 2 to 1 4 depending
071on how we close out our year and depending on what items that we may push into this year as opposed to next year to get things done and a big component of that surplus is the use of our esser funds we received uh 662 thousand dollars investor money so what esser money has done for us it's taking one-time expenditures that we would use tax levy money for and we earmarked those expenditures for these esser funds keeping our money so to speak the funds into our surplus or to do other projects so it's not as if we missed the mark by 1.3 million we missed the mark by 650 on a 20 million dollar project about a 20 million budget it's maybe 97 98 of spending so we had three percent of those extra dollars the
072essa grants are being done for specific projects which is also good and as we stated in our finance committee we are putting a motion on tonight that shows where all the funds for the essa monies are being spent and that makes it more accountable better tracking for at the end of the year if we ever received a federal audit or a state audit just on esser funds we could say okay the june meeting here's where it's at our financials the way we set it up is delineates each esser fund and sub fund and what dollars were spent to get each of those and then we have the actual amended application for us or funds stapled to our cover sheet so it's really well done and it's a tribute to the staff in the business office
073so that's a a good thing our preacher contract is being awarded this evening uh we've opened it a couple of the bids a couple of rfp a couple of months ago and it's been through two finance committees of which uh we're looking for a best practice to really implement to make our schools a little healthier a little cleaner a little healthier and set some processes in place and procedures in place so regardless of who the ba is and the director of billings and grounds are you can move forward with a good finite plan that has checks and balances in place that you could just move into and hit the ground running so uh advocate is used in many a school district it's a thousand dollars a month of which they check all our overtime check
074all our time sheets help in the hiring of replacements which we're still waiting for a maintenance ban for now over six weeks uh they interpret all of uh the contract language because they actually wrote the rfp for us they reconcile all of your payroll records to make sure if dan is our custodian and he was out a day with no pay that that's not hitting our our sheets of payment and they reconcile all of uh demanding sheets and all of the personnel on an annual basis so uh again we used esser monies to fund a portion of that we didn't want to use all of it so if we lose esther monies in future years we have some money in our current budget and some money in the esser funds to fund the the total
075project uh i'm quite sure that we'll learn or we'll save probably 2x on what we're paying him so if we're paying him 12 000 i'm assuming we're going to see twelve thousand to twenty four thousand dollars in savings just from doing due diligence and looking at everything that goes through his office uh some procedures that we've already put in places close out procedures in a classroom couldn't get him couldn't get them couldn't get them when the class is done you lock the door you check the windows everything should be locked you lock the door behind you and seven classrooms in your area shouldn't be open at the same time so we're instituting again with conjunction with security issues and procedures that should be matter-of-factly as opposed to reinventing how you shut down a classroom uh
076we're really excited about that um again resolution 10 is showing all of the backup to our esther monies uh and and just it's it's been a great year i mean i feel reinvigorated having been on the sidelines coming back but it's a good team and i think that's what really makes it important you know from from liz the superintendent's secretary to more in transportation to adele my assistant to robin my assistant to dr mucci to jack and tec and technology to nate to mr priscina you know we're all pushing the same way if we go we have an issue we're not reinventing the wheel i mean someone out there does it and does it a little bit better and we're not embarrassed to say how do you do it and we'll pick up the phone
077and get the answers so it's really a good team all pushing in the same direction to really move the district forward and i think we have a lot of nice projects over the summer i hear mr brazilian in my ear we'll have 18 but different vendors in the schools this summer 18 different vendors and we joke because we sit in the same office we share the same area which is again part of teamwork that he could hear anything that we're doing on the finance side and i hear what he's doing on the business side then dr mucci walks in and we have a little caucus and it it really works well so i'm very happy to be here i'm very happy to help you guys again for another year with mr brazina and our current
078team and uh everything tonight is really i consider it just the course of doing business there's really nothing out there that's special uh pritchard is on high alert that we're not happy we looked at the other vendors we looked at the difference in money and we've come to a conclusion that with another layer of of supervision with myself mr presina the general manager who comes to visit us every day for 20 minutes for a daily up update you know mill and all of our millington's courtyards should be cut i get aggravated just thinking about it i can't even get it out you know if it's on thursday and get some rain on friday by tuesday you're gonna have to cut it again and we're trying to get that process in place that it should be
079an automatic not that we're in crisis management where you know the grass is six inches eight inches high it's unacceptable so moving forward excited to be here another year i know i speak for mr christina nate and you know it's a great team we've been doing this for a while we get what we have to do we understand what we have to do and thank you for the opportunity thank you so glad you're saying i just want to say i am really appreciative of the documentation of the esser funds i think it's a substantial amount of money and for taxpayers to be able to look at what i mean it's it's not our local tax money but it is our federal tax money and to see how how responsible we have been where you have
080been and the district has been with those funds um i i think and the transparency i think it's very important and i think it's a very positive thing so thank you thank you any other comments or questions dan i have a question for you sure um you say we're unhappy with richard and they know that we're watching them and in fact we're dedicating a person to do so correct is there an out clause because we have a five year contract coming up with them yes there i think it's 30 a 30 day out and there's a an immediate uh amendment to the contract so if we decide to bring some people on board internally those numbers that are currently identified in the contract for those positions would reduce our contract and we would move forward
081with x or y or z on a plan that we're looking to do in the future we were up front with them of what we're looking to do on the maintenance side so they are fully aware of those numbers would fall off their budget if we have to bring some people in house and manage them through the long hill board of education thank you other questions all right comments from the public on agenda items okay uh then we will move to resolutions um katie will you move in minutes um number four please so moved second big discussion seeing none roll call please mrs butler yes mrs daley yes mr duchess yes mr grosskopf yes mrs mclennan yes miss nyquist yes okay um alex would you please move in financials number five to 27. so moved
082second discussion no um roll call please mrs butler yes mrs daley yes mr duchess yes mr kroskov yes mrs mclennan yes miss nyquist yes okay um tom could you please move in special services numbers 28 to 37. so move second discussion um i just wanted to point something out for the public um i think it's important to understand our budgeting and how crucial you know we have very tight budgets and i think one of the more illuminating things that happened in our last meeting was when mr borgo und explained what we have fixed costs and and what our ability is and how close we are to something you know being a scary bell and um if you look at number 37 and i want to preface this with these are our most vulnerable and and
083precious children and they deserve and and have every right to have this service where they are children that require out-of-district placements this isn't a complaint this is just a factual statement that this is a little over a million dollars of a 19 or 20 million dollar budget that's a lot and so um we work hard to make sure that we can keep as many students in-house and it's very important that we these children are given the services that they deserve and need but this is one of the things that the lack of wiggle room in our budgets this is a substantial contributor to that and again that's not a complaint it's just a fact and i think it's important for the community to understand that you know we could have one kid come in um
084that needs the services and it's 95 000 um so i just wanted to point that out because it is in our agenda and i think it's an important thing that that the public is aware of and these are all budgeted just the point of information esy is extended school year right paris is regular school year so it's your regular 180 days plus a 30 day esy program so it's in essence a 210 day program and it they've all been budgeted through mrs colon so it's been a smooth transition you know we do have an anticipated placement just in case as similar you said that we could have dollars if someone moves into the district in november it won't create stress on our budget we could have those dollars and pay for that private private school
085placement i just want to make it clear okay these kids deserve it is this the same number that we had last year or i think plus one plus one and this is tuition only it's not transportation absolutely correct and and if i'm if i understand it correctly what you did before there were some parents that we contracted with correct parental parental contracts were very aggressively seeking those which mom and dad are much happier to do they can provide a better service than some of the transportation and we negotiate a price up to a maximum of 21 000 annually which is still very competitive in the transportation industry yeah very competitive because it's got only that transportation this coming year is going to be ugly correct like you said at that we're seeing numbers 60 to
08670 percent higher than before okay roll call please mrs butler yes mrs daley yes mr de jamos yes mr grosskopf yes mrs mclennan yes miss nyquist yes now i believe we have an amendment to number 51 on the agenda in the next section um so that the hourly rate uh for mora met should be 66.48 cents correct and um for tara estepanyan it would be 65 and 48 cents that is correct okay so um danielle could you please move in personnel numbers 37 to 38 to 57 with number 51 as amended yes so moved second discussion only saying that mr rhinod is getting closer and closer to his doctor dr ryan um roll call please mrs butler yes mrs daley yes mr de jamos yes mr kroskoff yes mrs mclennan yes miss nyquist i'm karen
087could you please move in curriculum number 58 and 59 second discussion roll call please mrs butler yes mrs daley yes mr dejamos yes mr grosskopf yes this is mclennan miss nyquist yes um katie can you please move in policy number 60 to 63. still moved second discussion roll call please this is butler yes mrs daley yes mr tejamos yes mr kroskov yes mr mclennan yes miss nyquist yes okay alex could you please move in 64 uh other 64-66 on let me just look at them real quick [Applause] so moved second discussion roll call please mrs butler yes mrs daley yes mr tejamos yes mr krauskopf yes mrs mclennan yes miss nyquist yes and then we have our add-ons for tonight on the addendum um if everyone has that in front of them it was an
088additional sheet we received a1 to a1 to a3 yes a1 to a3 uh so danielle if you could please move in um other a1 and personnel a2 and a3 so moved second sorry discussion roll call please mrs butler yes this is daily yes mr dejamos yes mr grosskoff yes this is mclennan yes this is my question yes okay any items for discussion uh old business new business comments from the public seeing none um karen could you please move us into executive session the board shall enter into executive session for the purpose of discussing a confidential student matter and the superintendent's evaluation second second yeah we need a second second can i say all in favor good everyone thank you lauren