001for board members just a reminder all the microphones are turned off please turn them on when you are ready to speak and uh seven o'clock right now just uh give us another few moments or the zoom to begin and then we'll start our meeting just a few minutes thank you this meeting of the model board of education is open to members of the public to be physically present members of the public that attend will be asked to follow the same procedures as all other visitors to our schools those procedures can be found on the agenda page of our website Additionally the board meeting will be live streamed for viewing purposes only anyone wishing to view the meeting May do so via Zoom the webinar ID for this meeting is 844-4630-7253 and the required password is
002385-830 while this meeting to order is seven o'clock news Mr kismarski here Dr Parker here Mr cone here Mr avenero Mr Denise here Mr Gallon here Mr Hughes here Dr Morton student representative Max ingerman here and Mr desola here adequate notice of agenda this meeting has been provided to the Ridgewood news and the record specifying that the Maha Board of Education will meet on September 27 22 2023 in the administrative offices 60 Ridge Road Mahwah New Jersey a copy was filed at the Township Clerk please flag of the United States of America and into the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and contestants for all if we do not need the executive session at the beginning we'll do that at the end uh agenda questions please leave me your
003questions at this time to resolutions under new business on this agenda as a matter of fairness you asked to limit tell me your questions to know more than one and your remarks can go longer than three minutes if you're here representing a group please identify yourself the group your position in the group if you're here as an individual please give us your name and address this section of public participation will be limited to 15 minutes please specify the resolution you're referring to in your question you have a motion to open to the public Mr kuzmarski's second by Chris and Mr Hughes open at 702 see no one may have a motion to enclose Mr Chris Marshall news we are closed at superintendents report Dr votero take it away yes thank you so um for my
004report we're going to follow suit of what we've done in the past and celebrate our students now that we have so many people here allow me a moment to set this next experience up at the last board meeting I spoke about our opening day and what I shared at the last boarding I said that this year's opening day was by far the best that I've ever been a part of and the reason why I felt that way is because there was just a wonderful energy um that I left with and that energy really was grounded in the passion for our position the impact that we have and the opportunities that we have to really develop our students into being successful in any way that they want to go so a major part of that opening
005day has to do with some individuals in the crowd and we invited them here uh to to to say thank you and to celebrate them so Dr fair is going to share a little bit about the experience and the gratitude that we have so um or six students we've invited we have Mason we have Ethan we have Lauren you can say that Mason I know you want to then Lauren Lauren Marsha Bobby and vermar the oldest stand so everyone from art come on you're good just so everyone knows who we're talking about all right so um you can have a seat all right so um in preparation for the opening day convocation Dr Otoro and I sat down and we came up with this theme whatever it takes and that was all we had at
006the moment so then we thought about what could make this opening day ceremony special so as we know our opening day ceremony is an opportunity to inspire and re-inspire our staff as we come together for the first time and after some brainstorming Dr Otoro and I thought that some of our own students could certainly do it better than we could principals worked with us to put to put a student panel who would be able to share how our Mawa staff have impacted their lives for the better we ask those students to come in briefly to talk through this task before opening day and then arrive on opening day for our staff and they were each able to articulate their unique experiences in malwa our teachers applauded they cried literally and one staff member even was
007so touched that she ran onto the stage to hug one of our kids we've asked those six students to be here tonight so that we could more formally acknowledge their participation and thank them for being honest heartfelt and positive we are so lucky to have the six of you here in our district your participation was not only inspiring to our teachers but was particularly meaningful to our leadership team as well you've reminded us of why we do this in the first place the following uh is some so what we did was we prepared some Mawa swag I know in our in our prep Ethan had shared he's newer to the district he's here that he didn't even have a Mahwah shirt yet so um we wanted to get everyone Mawa swag to thank you for
008your your kindness your thoughtfulness and to express our gratitude so we'll call each of you up one by one we'll start with Mason and little Piccolo he's one of our sixth graders [Applause] is in eighth grade [Applause] foreign [Applause] ers and another one of our seniors varsha narayana [Applause] so that's my part of Dr otoro's report we want to thank everyone for being here um certainly you are more than welcome to to exit just because the rest of the meeting might not be as riveting [Music] thank you for anyone who was here last meeting this is the second part as I share the student seek the data system collects two types of information from schools to the district uh the this information ranges from incidents of violence vandalism harassment intonation or bullying weapons offenses substance
009offenses and other incidences leading to student removal also part of this is the training and the programs that we have in our district um to offset these incidences the information is collected to fulfill the state and federal reporting requirements so as I shared before the the first reporting session this is now reporting session two this is January 1 2023 to June 30th three as you can see the table is very similar to the last one it's broken down by schools and then it's broken out by the different incidences that I shared previously so the very top table is the other reporting period two the bottom table is our totals for the year 2022-2023 so I'll give you a second to take a look the next portion of the presentation is specific to the types of
010trainings and programs that we have within the district I don't want to sound like a broken record but it's worth repeating the trainings that we have range from HIV policy intervention and prevention conflict resolution peer relationships cyber bullying and school culture and climate we also have programs embedded in our district that range but not limited to student safety team meetings character education assemblies spirit week and student council week of respect social media awareness words of wisdom Field Day violence awareness week and restorative practices questions the training we did were hit during our board retreat last year would that count as district-wise um the the training that's specific to the board I believe we could possibly get that to to to qualify but we have a number of different HIV trainings uh at the school level
011whether it's teacher specific or anti-going Specialists no I appreciate it um but they're also and I know that Miss Rizzo shared at maybe two meetings ago when she started to show the scores for each school um those trainings are included as well okay um my the last piece of my report is just an update on the equity audit I know there's been a lot of questions specific to the presentation um as we shared we are planning on presenting the findings to the community this fall um we most recently found out that we have to present our NJ SLA data at our next meeting just to fall within the time requirements for reporting set forth by the state that's going to take place at October October meeting uh we plan to share the equity audit findings
012at November 15th meeting again we're going to be sharing the findings at the November 15th meeting that's all I have foreign yes thank you um just two items that I have uh first I mentioned him during our um roll call Mr Max Anchorman we welcome him to the Deus this evening for those that were called from last year we started having a student representative from the high school at our meetings two students rotated that back and forth this year we're going to have Max adber memes as well as Gabby Marquette we welcome both them and similar to last year they will be rotating responsibilities for each meeting and giving some reports on activities and things going on at the school also for all the board members I share with you in the board packet over
013the weekend a budget calendar for the development of the 24-25 school year budget that is a requirement that I share it with you and um distribute it at a board meeting and have it recorded and memorialized to be a qsap requirement so that is part of the important if there are any questions regarding it please feel free to connect with me at lays out a calendar and an approach for the development process of the 24-25 high school club that's my report thank you thank you president's report I do have the brief report I am pleased to announce that to the model community that the Board of Education and Dr duturo have come two terms on a new five-year contract with Dr duturo's current contract expiring at the end of this school year the board decided
014that it was recruited to proactively engage in this process in order to ensure that we retain our values superintendent specifically at our October 18 2023 board meeting we will vote to rescind Dr detero's current contract which expires on June 30th 2023 and vote to replace it with a new five-year contract for the term retroactive to July 1st 2023 through June 30th 2028. this is a common practice with school districts throughout the state whether superintendents reached the final year of their contract the board will vote on the new contract after the legally required public hearing which will also occur during that evening the proposed contract will be available to the public prior to that board meeting we believe that this new contract is good for both the board Dr duturo and mawa's taxpayers the board retains
015our highly regarded and respected superintendent and ensures the stability in central office leadership Dr duturo's new compensation will be fair and competitive with relative to his peers and the Mawa taxpayers are getting a very good return on their investment in Dr datura's leadership we look forward to having Dr tutorro locked in for another five years word committee reports I'd like to start with our student representative and welcome back senior hello um max ingerman I'm the s GA rep I am the corresponding secretary so for upcoming weeks we have the pep rally and spirit week so so that's a whole week of spear themes so each grade has their own theme so this themes this year is um cities so for the freshmen they're New York sophomores or Hollywood Juniors Las Vegas seniors are Nashville and
016that will all start on October 13th with the student versus teachers soccer game at 2 30 on the turf that'll go all the way through October 20th um we add back to school night the other night that went very well we had a lot of the SGA reps and National Honors um Society leaders volunteer their time tell parents come out tell parents with their way around the school the fall sports are going very well so far boys and girls soccer's have their caddies coming up they're both doing very well tennis girls tennis is very solid the football team is finally doing well after a rough two years but we're back on track and then we'd also like to thank Board of Ed central office and Mr Pelletier for completing our new stance they are awesome
017thank you very much thank you thanks Max you are more than welcome to hang out for the remainder of the meeting if you'd like but if you got homework any suggestions to the cities if you want to Spotlight Philadelphia speaking of winning Sports it's Philadelphia I'll stop now that's hard well do you have any other committee reports Mr Gallup so per the board of president's instruction I finally was diligent about taking notes at our financing facility committee meeting and Kyle and I worked to put it all together and Kyle distributed it to you last week or so and I just wanted to highlight a few things so one of the things we looked at was how we're doing financially so far this year and so far Trends are looking good for our expenses we're wrapping
018up the GW HVAC project there was a little glitch with um times for some electrical equipment which is forcing us to do a change order which is on this board agenda 17 Z but that will guarantee that we have heat in the building at the appropriate time um and the cooling part of the project will be complete once the electrical is complete um we're going to be doing a very similar project to this at Betsy Ross next year so hopefully some of the things we learned with this project will help us over at Betsy Ross um another thing is we're doing very well in terms of our cash management we're doing much better on interest rate earnings because interest rates are higher now their banks are willing to pay us more so that's a good
019Tailwind for the district to have um we were also we successfully completed the Payton project with partnership with the town that project worked out from uh both from a relationship standpoint from a financial standpoint very well for the district and for the township um and those are the highlights of what we discussed things coming up include uh renewing one of the scholarships uh CDs that we have that will be in board action in November or so so we'll see that coming up but um all in all we're in good shape and we continue to move in a good direction thank you anyone else thank God you're back um thank you Mr Express key for doing my report for me um couple quick things for me tonight in the access for all world I just wanted
020to highlight the work that they are doing and the growth that they're having inside of their Conway committee that they have right now they have four events planned for October which is amazing um they have the attendance and they have the funding they have the donations and it's really wonderful to see the work that they're doing with some of our most vulnerable community members um I wanted to say a special thank you again to Dr Trout um Dr bear for that partnership that we have um helping us with getting the information out on our community website on our community updates so that we could touch more people here specifically in town and also a very special thanks to miss Rizzo who is helping me make sure that all the information is getting to the appropriate
021case managers and that information is getting decimated out to their families their most important event that's coming up on October 4th is a fire safety presentation that they do in conjunction with the Mountain Fire Department this is a very important night that they do not only for students and children and adults but also parents understanding what to do in emergency situations giving um especially kids that first hand access to Firefighters and police officers and fire trucks that they're not you know scared the first time that they see it and they have that understanding of these people are here to help you I was able to attend it last year and I think it was really if we're even for myself and my own children so I definitely recommend if you have the opportunity to attend
022to do so I apologize a quick update from Transportation so we know that we're doing a lot of work within Transportation this year my agreement um with Mrs Spindler was to let her get through the first month of school get through buses and new routes and ridership counts and everything else that we do over the first four weeks we know that it's an adjustment I'm happy to report that there were really very little hiccups this year it was a very smooth start to school um there were you know the the normal like the first couple D's this bus to sleep but by the first or second week of school everything was really ironed out the new routes that were identified for this year especially at Joyce Gilmore have made a difference um we're not having
023that issue where kids are getting homely or kids are getting to school late because the route was too long or was taking too many stops um so we really appreciate the work that her and her team did to make sure that we were alleviating that going into this year going into October now we are going to start with the work that we were planning where it'll be surveys out to parents and to really understand where we want to take transportation within this year um we started our ridership counts the first one was done last week it was not an anomaly at all it was really where we were expecting to see where that ridership was last year maybe a little bit higher than average which I think is common at the beginning of the school
024year but we will continue to do it three times a month just to make sure that we have the accurate data to plan off of um I spoke with Mr weaker the bus that we ordered last year is finally arriving next month I believe um so we're very excited about that after a Whitney of supply chain and whatever else it may be that bus will be arriving next year next month I hate that I said that out loud by accident um and then you know we just wrapped up we have a tradition here where we have power professionals ride buses with our K through three students for the first two to three weeks of school that wrote up last week just to make sure that everyone was comfortable especially our youngest and newest writers um
025and we're looking forward to a really great year in the transportation world um just from a community update I think the biggest thing that we can talk about is model day being postponed I feel like um Mr Chris Rice he feels that personally inside of his soul absolutely so we will see everybody on 1021 which is the new date it's going to be just as exciting and just as fun we will all be there please come out and support the community that day a special thank you to everyone here on the board that joined us at back to school dates over the last three weeks I think it's very important for all of us to be out and about in schools and to really understand I enjoy doing Rambo Bridge with Mr Silva Mr Gallo
026I knew my daughter loved being represented by three of us that night and it's just a good opportunity to be in and I think we all left back to school and it's feeling very comfortable and very excited for the upcoming year oh that's all I appreciate it's interesting you're lucky if you have any board member remarks on non-agenda items uh old business and I have a motion On A and B please and the cones [Music] Mr kizmos yeah Dr Park yes Mr cone yes Mr stephanero yes but I'm standing on B thank you yes Mr Gallo yes Mr Hughes yes abstain on B thank you and Mr DeSoto yes I'm also correct thank you okay can I have a motion on new business 17 a through a a these group Mr kizmarski yes Dr Park
027yes Mr Cohen yes Miss Tavernier Denise yes Mr Calla Yes except on 17A I am standing from one one two eight seven one thank you Mr Hughes yes and Mr DeSoto yes may I have a motion on 18a through oh please Mr kasmorski I just like to thank Michael Wong for continuing the volunteers high for the Robotics and what they do he enjoys it but we love Africans thank you Dr Park yes but abstain on M abanero Mr Denise yes Mr Gallup yes Mr Hughes yes yeah Mr DeSoto yes and I'd like to thank the parent volunteers that brings us to public comments or questions public participation at board meetings is in accordance with bylaw at this time members of the public may ask questions or make comment on educational issues or School matters or
028Community interests as a matter of fairness you're asked to limit your questions to know more than one and your remarks to no longer than three minutes if you're here representing a group please identify yourself the group and your physician in the group if you hear as an individual please give us your name and address this section of public participation will be limited to 15 minutes I have a motion to open to the public we're open at 7 27. good evening everyone Lou theodoro one hour no place I have a question about policy 5756 for you with the details but it's been in the news lately because there was a lawsuit against the districts that refused to comply with it and in that Discovery process it came out that the recommendation by the governor's office was
029not mandatory would have instead was a suggestion and since then dozens of districts hasn't decided um to rescind it um including a couple of districts around here I'm wondering an update on that to me gets back to parental rights and um it would not allow the school um certain circumstances to communicate a gender crisis that a child might be going through to the Chong to the student's parents which is to me is silly some Wonder there's any update on that where is concerning any action um I do understand that there have been districts that have abolished the policy I also know that there's current litigation involving the state some School District that is taking place what I can say at this time I do understand the parents concern specific to the section that speaks to
030no affirmative Duty for any District Personnel to notify a student's parent or guardian of students gender identity or expression we understand the importance of parents being a part of that communication Loop when their children need support we actually pride ourselves on working with our parents in this language insinuates otherwise I completely understand that this is a sensitive topic but one that schools and parents should partner in I can say that with a number of students that we have come across we have been able to partner with the families to navigate the process in a manner that supports the students and respects the parents there's more to discuss but I wanted to share this information with you please know that there are parts of the policy that is driven by law statute and code as we
031gather more information we'll meet with our policy committee to discuss any possible adjustments to this policy thank you um just a follow-up question more of his broad thing because this came up a lot during covet and I came up here asking a lot what is the state mandating you and what are you choosing to do this this kind of finding this kind of thing out in a lawsuit is not fair to you guys as a district um because you think at one at some point that this is mandatory and then the discovery process you find out it's not kind of throws you under the bus a little bit and I'm wondering if there's other areas um where you've seen that it's just I mean the covid policies you got a lot of um guidance there
032a lot of bad Valentine guidance from a lot of so-called experts um but you were forced you were forced to follow through and it almost seems like back going behind your back to suddenly it comes out that it's not an Android have you seen this happen in other policy areas recently I can't think of any other policy that that um that would align to that um the along the lines of our our current policies to be quite honest with you they've been extremely helpful in a striving decision making things like that I do understand the concern specific to this policy and the parent piece of the policy um but like I said there are other portions of this policy that um are absolutely helpful along the lines of supporting students um and I don't have
033the policy in front of me but specifically the piece along the lines of harassment and intimidation and bullying um so there are aspects of advanced policy that have been extremely helpful but I do and I I'm just to go back to what I shared there have been plenty of times that we have talked with the board with our district attorney about our concerns specific to that part along lines of engaging the parents and what I can tell you and I said I said earlier with our with the different events that has taken place at least in the two years I've been here I'm really proud that we have been able to engage the parents and make sure that we're walking through this as a group as opposed to in isolation without any anyone from home
034understanding what's going on thank you and congratulations thank you foreign a little shorter hi everyone Janine Jansen 129 East Millbrook I just wanted to speak on behalf of many parents who are supportive of 5756 I know that it gets the core of how we support our students I understand it there are room for improvements and any improvements I would hope would be open conversation of parents who want to be assured that we're doing all that we can for our kids so I understand that we'd have to go to a committee I understand there would be additional fees and requirements that come with that so as it stands I support the policy I ask them we continue to support the spirit of the policy and have those conversations with with the policy committees as you do
035all of your good work so I'm here to say I support it I thank you for supporting our kids and it is a very sensitive topic so any transparency and open communication we can have a parent so that they can have a better Foundation of what it actually means what's actually necessary and that will be at risk um you know from State funding and I'm sure you all know very well so that that concerns me and I just I ask that you continue to support it in line of all the students who are at risk mentally and who this is a very at-risk population that would be impacted with any fact tracking of it thank you um hi I'm Regina Tumi Bueno uh 253 Miller Road um so I just wanted to comment on 5756
036also I do think it's really important that you all develop very clear guidance on that and I can certainly be you know parent myself concerned about how you know communication with parents would be included and stuff like and so on but I do think it's really important that the kids who are have transgender issues or or you know who are in the lgbtq population are really at risk for a lot of things like suicide and bullying and all that so I really would want to make sure that we're protecting those children as well that's a very important thing that we want to do in our community as an inclusive community and as people that care about our children so I look forward to hearing more updates from you thank you thank you thank you excuse
037me let me ask your name again I didn't catch you for the record thank you Susan Steinberg 96 Armor Road thank you all for the job you're doing and volunteering your time to sit here and make a policies and listen to everybody and try to do what's best for our kids ma was fortunate to have a fabulous school system and a lot of that starts with the fact that you guys are providing support so the Educators and people in place can do the job they need to do so that keeps our schools strong our kids doing well and our property values High um that said I'm the director of the Mawa Pride coalition and our lgbtq kids have special needs and it's a small it's not necessarily A large group but I'm not sure I'm
038sure you're familiar with some of the research but I want to make sure that everybody listening has some of the statistics the Trevor group does research every year on youth ages 13 to 24. and in their 2023 um which is the current most recent data that's out there 41 of lgbtq Youth have seriously considered suicide with 14 actually attempting it um as far as it goes 56 percent of them wanted mental health care or needed access to services and couldn't get them in the past those people who kids who are transgender and non-binary they report that their lives are so much better at lower rates of suicide if people respect their pronouns you know what my name is Susan people call me Sue and Susie my name is Susan I answer to sue but I
039P it's just a matter of respect you call people what they want to be called that's all that is um now this is something which is very true in malware we've had instances that we've recognized one of the things that's coming up about parents have to be involved with their children but less than 40 percent of lgbtq young people found their home to be lgbtq affirming last year when we had our event from Allah day and the kids from the high school were getting involved I got the saddest email I had seen it was a child from our high school who said I want to come help what time can I be there in the morning I really want to be a part of this but my mom can't find out we also I thought
040that was so sad another another instance we had of that was where a boy was wandering of the the fairgrounds with his father and we have little flags for different flags for different of the letters and the the kid came up to the booth who's like and his father was looking the aisles I really want that flag but my father can't know so one of our group made a point of saying Flags we've got flags for everybody here's a flood for you and a flag for you and we saw his father still questioning why do you have that when he got back there back to the statistics the schools find the kids find having a roughly half of transgender non-binary young people found their school to be gender affirming and those who did reported lower
041rates of attempting suicide we need to protect these kids these kids are out there and a majority of these kids report being verbally harassed at school because people thought they were lgbtq and nearly one this all this discussion nearly one in three LGBT young people said their mental health was poor most of the time are always due to anti-lgbtq policies and legislations and nearly two and three said that hearing about potential state or local laws Banning people from discussing lgbtq people in school made their mental health a lot worse we need to do stuff for the kids the parents need to be involved in their kids education kids are testing things out School needs to be a safe place for them in all aspects and so it is so important and I applaud Mala for
042standing up for these kids and respecting them to be who they want to be a lot of these kids that letter Q queer sometimes is determined to be questioning these kids don't know what they are they're figuring things out like all other aspects of their lives let school be a safe place for them but school be a Haven away from whatever else is going on in the world thank you I have a motion to close the closed at 7 40. we are going to uh recess to get a different session and we'll do a little uh adjournal meeting from there until further action will be taken so thank you everyone for coming tonight may I have a motion to go to Executive second book Mr Hill