Mahwah Township Public Schools - Board of Education Meetings June 30 2021

001again okay good evening this meeting of the mob board of education is hoping 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 stream for viewing purposes only anyone wishing to view the meeting may do so via zoom the webinar id for this meeting is 869-1984-5662 and the required password is 676-288 to allow for adequate distancing this meeting the meeting location has been changed to mala high school auditorium 50 ridge road maowa new jersey roll call mr bleaker mr coplin here mr de silva here mr denise here mr gallow here miss conaco here dr morty here

002dr park here mrs cohen and mr kizmarski here adequate notice of the agenda of this meeting has been provided to the ridgewood news and the record specifying the model board of education will meet on june 30th 2021 in the mau high school auditorium 50 ridge road in mauwa new jersey a copy was filed with the township clerk please rise for a salute to the flag dr fitz would you please lead us to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all um with with that we actually will go into closed session for approximately five minutes um i don't believe any longer so can i please get a motion to go into executive closed session uh dr morty

003seconded by ms conaco for personnel and confidential student matters thank you we will really be back in five minutes maybe seven [Music] okay [Music] okay [Music] uh [Music] uh so [Music] now my channel [Music] i know where the rest of my board went oh here [Music] now you're outnumbered that's what happens with this okay [Music] everyone back all right can i please get a motion to reconvene to public action meeting mr da silva second by mr denise all right we're back thank you very much for your patience okay agenda questions please limit your questions at this time to resolutions under new business on this agenda as a matter of fairness you're asked to limit your questions to no more than one and your remarks to no longer than three minutes if you were here representing

004a group please identify yourself the group and 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 are referring to in your question can i please get a motion to open the meeting of the public mr da silva seconded by mr coplin we are open to the public for agenda questions my last name is goltz i'm a mawa resident i have a few questions actually okay and i would like anybody to be very specific please uh come september the mass mandates murphy's already stated that it's up to the individual school districts just real quick ma'am i'm sorry this is for the agenda questions okay agenda questions yeah there'll be another public

005section for general comments okay we'll be another section soon hello allison theodore one error now please my question is about item k is this a new plan or is this the plan we've already been using in our school it's kr comprehensive equity plan yeah i mean is this what we've already been using yes we've been using there's nothing different we've been using it since 2019 nothing different no it's a three-year plan awesome any other questions for agenda okay can i get a motion to close this portion of the publishing uh miss conoco seconded by mr coplan uh interim superintendent report dr fitz your last report please thank you very much let me give my report in two parts i would like to make my report in two parts i want to tell you that it's

006been a real distinct pleasure to serve as your interim superintendent of schools for the past 12 months i've met many thoughtful students parents caregivers educational and community partners it has been most gratifying to serve with some of the amazing talented teachers in this school district so okay thank you i would like to tell you that i have met many thoughtful students parents caregivers educators and community partners it has been gratifying to serve with some of the amazing talented teachers support staff maintenance workers as well as board members that i've ever seen and who is so committed to children i have found our parents our community members and business leaders to be extremely supportive they're quite engaged in the school and they're willing to help us to achieve our mission and maintain our core values so

007it's been my distinct pleasure to be a part of this community and to be a part of this district the second phase of my report i am delighted to inform you that the university of arkansas claimed dr dennis faire as their new academic child they have awarded him the doctrine in education with specialization in human resources including teacher feedback and feedback of teacher practice he's joining a constellation of 100 graduates at this graduation ceremony but he's a part of over 27 000 students that's in attendance at the university of arkansas the university of arkansas is a great university it's research based they have over 60 specialization in doctoral and phd programs there at in arkansas so the university is pleased to watch this degree but they have high expectations of dr fair he's to come

008to this district and to make a difference they have branded him by giving him this degree and this community is looking to him to make a significant contribution to this district because they've invested in him and they are rewarding him with a great job and a great opportunity to do great things so with that i'd like to say congratulations [Applause] well done thank you thank you report sir yes sir all right uh mr bleacher um no business report this evening but i do want to also extend congratulations to dennis on his doctorate and to dr fitz uh thank you very much for everything this past year and wish you best of luck in the next district that you will be serving interim superintendent in thank you i would like to point out the typo on

009the next section it would be dr dennis not not mister thank you and congratulations dennis and uh the full resource so we'll start with our strategic plan [Music] update me too okay um for for all those in the audience and for the for the board members this is a really important presentation for us this is a opportunity for us to provide some clarity on where we are with the strategic plan it was something that we committed to two years ago and it was something that we're really it is something that we're very proud of because there's a lot of voice in this in this uh district vision when we came into developing this strategic plan our goal is really voice clarity direction and growth and when we look at this plan is in its entirety

010there are some lofty goals that asks for our district to come together and work towards some some high level educational experiences as well as community connections how about that for technology there you go so i came across this uh one of my colleagues uh brian corey sent this to me and i thought it was very apropos for uh starting this presentation daniel pink uh talked about something called the pixar pitch anytime you go into a presentation you want to make sure that you have clarity you want it to be concise you want to get to the point and you want to make sure that the end is very clear so he has a very specific formula for this pixar pitch it starts with once upon a time then it goes to every day then it

011goes to one day because of that and because of that until finally so i sat back and i really tried to understand or try to create something that was able to springboard us into this work and allow me to read this once upon a time we had a district that worked tirelessly to provide an educational experience for our students but realized it lacked consistent direction and focus at the k-12 level every day they would create learning experiences that challenge students but again not truly connected one day a decision was made to align the k-12 model because of that all the stakeholders were engaged to identify collective commitments because of that the model blueprint was developed until finally a plan was in place to ensure that we are all paddling in the same direction this high

012quality and consistent plan was in place to move our district from great to exceptional what's happening right now you're in charge of the clicker all right so the way that this presentation is is created if you're familiar with the strategic plans but broken out into four frames there's a curriculum frame a social emotional learning frame a facilities frame and a community connections frame i asked the team to come up and present specific to their area of expertise so i guess dr ravino to come up and talk specifically to elementary curriculum and instruction so at our level we're really excited about the work we've been doing and what is about to happen in the next couple years coming up but something that we did work on this year obviously with with covid and and the electronic

013forum that we were in um all of our teachers were highly trained in online tools for collaboration and communication um and that was in-house pd that was also bringing in outside sources to provide pd as well but we did implement this year so all of our kids were using different things like see saw and google classroom and jamboard and edpuzzle so all things like that we also are in the midst of updating a lot of our standards based off the state requirements but also um we also do a cycle right we always replace and and update our curriculum so we're working on our reading curriculum right now touching on our writing units and then also we're we're excited about this one we're working on right now a pbl climate change which is a problem-based learning

014experience for our children in k-5 and the other piece that we're also really excited about is that we started to work on monthly themes that focused on empathy and inclusion and we are also looking at all of our literature that we use at the lower level for read alouds and mentor texts to make sure that we really have the voice of our public and our students in what we're reading and while the highlight here says elementary certainly with social emotional learning as all of our students and parents know this has been a focus of the district for many years now brought primarily by dr de toro back in the day and certainly reinforced through our children's experiences and the professional development that our staff has certainly we focused a lot on sel during our re-entry

015making sure everybody was comfortable upon the return having been away from the district for some time we have surveyed throughout the course of the year not only our faculty but our staff and later you'll see other areas in which we surveyed our school safety team meetings which is the genesis of culture and climate relative particularly to harassment intimidation and bullying took on a new meaning this year in which we looked at with emphasis the culture and climate relative to sel for all of our students and were part of our collaborative plan through the parent academy brought to you by the department of curriculum and instruction we had opportunities for parents to be trained through the same entities that have been exposing our staff to the knowledge and expertise of sel good evening for facilities um

016within this goal statement there are several different areas and the main focus on it is to take a look to see what we have right now uh get a good understanding of the status of our schools and then create a plan for moving forward to address each of the different goal statements the heart of this we began a little bit over a year ago with the land facility audit land engineering is a professional services company that we had come out and do a very detailed audit of all of our buildings to see areas of uh that we potentially may address we've gone through over the past year taking a look at that plan and we're continuing to do so with facilities committee as well going forward into next year but one of the areas that

017we did um really focus on the first it was taking a look at some of our roofing systems so in doing so we took a look at our roofs um used that order to create an audit specifically for the roofing to help develop a plan of how we might address those areas and better maintain them over the next several years some other items that we addressed within the facility side of the strategic plan was take a look at some of our outdated and or underutilized spaces throughout the district in the 2021 year we were able to take a look at the betsy ross library and update that with some new furniture the addition of the outdoor classroom betsy ross school as well as some handicap accessible equipment in the playground over at joyce kilmer school

018one of the things we did was we took a look at the former computer lab to create that an innovative makerspace lab for the students and innovation lab and we're continuing to do the evaluation at our other schools as well on the technology side of things there were two major completions at the in the 2021 year one was the introduction of a one-to-one model at joyce kilmer school and then also throughout the district we took a look at the wi-fi wireless access point utilization we took a look at the agent system and again similar with the roofing audit created a plan to address that system to make sure that the network technology was best suited for the user technology the devices that were being purchased for the students and for the staff and for this

019year we we kept a lot of things intact from previous years like our work with the msf and and our hsos um what we took from this unique school year is we created the parent advisory council originally to garner input related to what re-entry would look like from a variety of stakeholders perspectives what we learned is that is something that's going to we're going to be using moving forward beyond this past school year so we've been able to survey our community by gathering feedback through surveys as previously mentioned we piloted thought exchange which is a program we're looking into we had school-based community events and we also created opportunities for students who are transitioning to new buildings to get tours and also those unique experiences like the t-bird home challengers where our math honor society

020students create family adventure kits that were steam related for elementary kids we felt as though it was important to not only just use the words but also see it in action a number of these pictures we're taking the sheer the top right and the top left picture our previous pictures but they showcase the work that's being done currently if you look at the top left it's our makerspace as we shared in previous uh board meetings a makerspace is our point of pride in our district uh that we're really trying to create that engineering and design process for our students not just for our high school students but really trying to build from from kindergarten all the way up along the lines of the top right we were fortunate enough to bring down our high school

021robotics students and have them showcase their work i believe that's in betsy ross or lenape meadows um so they came down and they showed our students who are already working on projects what really our ultimate goal is and i think that's something that's going to motivate and inspire them to continue to do more then the picture in the middle is uh our famous rocketry unit in joyce kilmer that's where our fifth grade math and science teachers talk to our students about rocketry and that students are able to build and then eventually launch down on the left-hand side we have our alumni chris wragge that came in and worked with our gw students our third grade students they had a fantastic opportunity to be news broadcasters with milk and cereal but also the third graders were

022able to do the current events and news uh newscasts that were then played uh for the gw community uh down on the bottom there's our mindful model we spoke about this at previous board meetings we have a website developed with all sorts of sel uh strategies that can be utilized not only by our staff but our students and our parents this is a continuation of the work that's being done but just spotlighting some things our outdoor classroom on the left at betsy ross not only do they have places to learn they also have places that they can garden and really see that learning in action top right is a more community service project that the the school collected cereal for the center for food action really that community outreach of understanding the impact of our

023students and how we can make a positive impact on the community around us down on the bottom it talks more about the salmon model not to get too technical it's a really how our technology is delivered in a meaningful way so our students are able to enjoy rich learning experiences in the top whereas women history month that is one of the many months that we tried to spotlight and educate students on and appreciate other other cultures or genders and and so on along the lines of our secondary model i'll try to be as brief as possible but i i would be remiss not to talk about the the deep work that's happening at secondary level specific to curriculum and instruction a lot of people can talk about the negative that this pandemic has happened and

024that's a very very real but what we would like to talk about is the positive learning that took place specific to our teachers practice our teachers were challenged to step outside of what they know and understand what they can do with technology along the lines of [Music] instructional experiences educational experiences collaborative experiences there are a laundry list of programs that they utilized ranging from google classroom up to tinkercad to to different osmos and other instructional experiences that took the students to a whole different level another piece that we talked about and i know dr bavino talked about is that the initiative to understand what are we doing specific to diversity equity and inclusivity and how are we allowing our students to see themselves in the book how are we allowing our students to appreciate and

025understand the differences around us and be respectful and understand that another piece is that the state up until about a month ago explained to us that we were going to have to update our standards we engaged a team from k-12 and we updated a number of standards across the district those standards range from world language to visual and performing arts to career readiness standards something that we're very proud of is our articulation opportunities we want to make sure as we talked about in the beginning they're all paddling in the same direction and that's important for us to not only across the grade level but up and down through the schools to make sure that we're handing off students that are ready and we're also continuing the work that's being done so those are some things

026that we've done at the secondary level and more will more will will come social emotional learning yeah on the secondary level relative to sel certainly we have the continuation of all the programs as we've mentioned earlier and a positive outcome of the pandemic was the opportunity for our staff to participate in zoom professional development in which they didn't have to leave the district they could log on and many of our mental health providers throughout the community offered free or significantly reduced cost training in the area of social emotional learning in which our therapists our child study team members our guidance counselors and certainly our teachers were able to participate we did provide surveys to secondary students in which they could report any emotional concerns they had about themselves to their guidance counselors and they were

027followed up and addressed accordingly but again as dr de toro um grazed upon the the mindful mawa website is a highlight relative to sel it is an opportunity for parents and students to go on and see what is being executed within our school and certainly all resources that are available additionally on that site there is a teacher-only location in which there is information for our faculty as particular as them and then lastly um we continue to find ways to engage parents in educating them regarding their child's development their development in this process and uh the whole encompassing sel package of family to school back to family again okay at the secondary level speaking again to facility items uh from our strategic plan many of the items that i discussed earlier in the elementary do carry

028over here as well again many of the items here are grounded in the land facility audit that we had completed also the work that we had spoke to earlier regarding the roof audit and wi-fi survey to address those needs are at the secondary level as well at rampo ridge a couple of examples of things we're looking at there as part of the strategic plan is to reimagine some of campus spaces an area that we want to highlight here is outside the school where the outdoor basketball area is kind of trying to reimagine that space how can be better incorporated into the overall school and strategic plan that we have for that um for those students and for that area argan course rooms as well are getting an update this coming summer and at the high

029school we're looking to again update some spaces there the high school media center is getting some renovations this summer as well as through the um some transfers from our capital reserve account that was approved as part of the budget process looking to identify some outdoor spaces and athletic spaces to address as well specifically the track at our turf field as well as the grand stand to update that for the coming years and for community connections at the secondary level what our teachers have been able to do is invite guest speakers in a variety of classroom settings whether that's in person or through virtual means we're really excited about expanding our workplace opportunities for our students in our structured learning experience program we're looking to continue to expand offerings provided by the mawa high school to

030inform parents about the college process along with our pathways program and beyond and we've engaged with surrounding businesses like stryker and we're looking at dual enrollment programs and we're looking in the future to really make that a robust listing for our students in terms of providing them with opportunities for internships and externships as i shared in the previous slide along the lines of can is it okay along lines of curriculum instruction there are a number of different uh online resources if you see the top left and something that allows our students to create uh digitally whatever they're looking to do whether it's a structure like a house or whether it's some sort of picture this is something that maybe our focus is going to be on audiovisual the next piece is going to be away

031from the tinkercad if you notice there's robots there in the center the robots and also if you look to the right of that there's a piece of paper but there's also something called an osmo on that paper those two pieces are specific to coding it's not just something that we have a robot and it's great that we have a robot it's something that the t the students and the teachers the students and the teachers create code that allows those objects to move in a certain direction top right is specific to dna and other biotech courses so we're really trying to create high level experiences for our secondary students and that's all on the back of our elementary creating those problem solvers and developing the formula to move objects and create from kindergarten all the way

032up to 12th grade bottom left is our high school media center miss miss miller has been working with with miss davis on really reimagining that space really keeping the essence of the library intact and making students really want to be there and be there and do work and collaborate and and enjoy their time there so she has worked with surrounding districts to create a vision of what that space is going to look like so we're in a process of building a new media center for miss miller that really meets her expectations and her needs to deliver her um to deliver her program this is something that we're extremely proud of and this is something that we're currently building if you guys can just click on that website something that we have been committed to since

033the beginning of this process is transparency and clarity it can't just be something that we're reporting at the board meeting and hoping that people listen this is something that is going to be down on our website and people are going to be able to view and see exactly where we are specific to our strategic plan and more importantly all the different frames within our strategic plan so if you guys can click on curriculum and instruction when you click on whatever frame you're looking at if you scroll down there are the different goals now i want everyone to understand the progress bars are not complete right now we're still developing it so those numbers mean nothing right now this should be complete by the start of the school year but we wanted to show you what

034is to come this is still in a beta stage if you look at goal three that is our third objective for curriculum and instruction if you click on the progress bar that's 60 yep what that's going to do and if you open it up it's going to talk about what progress is being done in 2020 and 2021 but more importantly what is our next step in 21 and 22 so what we're hoping to do is really unpack all the work that we're doing at the district level in a school level so people can see the work in progress from year to year now please understand as much as we are extremely proud of where we are status wise in this strategic plan process even though we did have the pandemic we never lost sight of

035this is our number one priority of making sure obviously the students are safe and they're learning but we're moving our district forward we also understand that this is not going to be done in one year this is a five year plan and we are very happy with as we stated in the beginning of the year this year was really auditing and starting to identify what are our opportunities we not only are auditing but we're also creating programs and moving forward so that's just one of the many different objectives that we have we wanted just to show you that this will be launched we will send this to the entire district also explaining how to how to navigate it so you don't have to memorize it right now but understand that it's broken out into the

036four frames of our strategic plan and then within those frames we have all of our objectives and how we are progressing to our final year of 2025. you can go back to the perfect now where do we go from here as we said we did a ton of work this year but the work is no is far from done next year our elementary team is positioned to continue to embed authentic learning opportunities what are authentic learning opportunities we want to step outside of just the work in the book we want to continue to look for opportunities to create problem-based learning and really have the students create investigate and explore those are the terms that our community was asking for and as well as our staff and our students of what does good instruction look like

037sound like and feel like we also are positioned to create ambassadors in our schools because we want to make sure that our doors are open and people feel welcome we want to breathe life into the expert directory this is something that we rolled out last year prior to pandemic and something that we want to revisit this year of engaging our community we are very fortunate to be in a community rich with experience and expertise we want to bring that learning in and that expertise in uh to our classrooms and as mr rizzo said sel is at the forefront to make sure that our students are in a position and in the mindset to learn our secondary program i know dr fair spoke at length about the different partnerships that we're looking to to build and

038we will continue to build over our next five years we want to continue to look at what our space is utilized for and what opportunities we have in place we also wanted to make sure that we're sustaining that parent advisory group to understand are we providing a product that our community is proud of and and we're able to really support the needs that are that are out there along the lines of where do we go from here all of this was work in progress what the last two slides of what is next the formalized experience of what is next will happen in september the board the administrative team are going to meet over the summer we're going to develop goals not only for the district but we'll also identify goals specific to our schools our

039administrators our superintendent everything should be in lockstep to make sure that we are all moving in the same direction so by september and one of the meetings in september we'll come back and we'll share with you our 21 22 school year goals will be the following and that will allow you to continue to track our progress understand clearly where we are going and what we would like to accomplish so we know that this is a little bit lengthy but it was very important for us to sound off on where we are on such an important plan that sets our district in the right direction so thank you for your time thank you thank you thank you i have two remaining items okay so thank you so we have a recommendation for hire this evening miss

040natasha carrera she is 18 d item 18d so i wanted to first introduce natasha formally to the board natasha can you just wave to the board of ed that's natasha um so our interview process proved to be a competitive and thorough one for our supervisor of elementary instruction k through five where we interviewed many candidates approximately 40 via zoom video conferencing for preliminary reviews of candidates leadership philosophies from here eight candidates came in for in-person interviews three finalists were asked to come back to complete a presentation that allowed for finalists to showcase their work with data specific to mawa and to demonstrate how this mower how this data would uniquely be communicated and worked through with our instructional coaches and our staff through their position as supervisor from this presentation our interview panel selected mrs

041carrera as a recommendation for this position mrs carrera has served as 1st grade and 3rd grade teacher for patterson public schools mrs carrera earned her bachelor's of science degree in elementary ed from the college of new jersey and her master's degree in educational leadership from william paterson university through her presentation mrs carrera demonstrated a care for student achievement and understanding and thoughtfully working with data a leadership presence and an instructional vision that would contribute to our district's leadership team mrs carrera's reference cited her observation of a unique quality in mrs carrera from very early on in her teaching becoming a teacher leader on her team even upon the onset of her educational career we are excited to recommend mrs carrera to our board of ed to join our administrative team and lastly dr fitz yes

042we're going to miss you this is this is your last official day right and what a way to end it right with a board meeting dr fitz he leaves our administrative team with three key pieces he he reminded us to take this work seriously but to also find the time to not take this work so seriously he always valued the importance of being human and thirdly he found a way to remind each of us of our strengths just when we needed to hear it the most so uh we wish you the very best in in your future uh thank you for spending your time with us for the last year and we wanted to give you a little something so you remember us just like we'll remember you i think it deserves a round of

043applause okay that's my report thank you very much thank you very much [Music] i will pick it up right from there dr fitz i want to thank you very much um for your leadership this year um your very calming presence in this district at the time i think when i needed it very focused and certainly helped the administrative team and work well together uh through this pandemic um so good luck i know i believe you're probably starting your next job tomorrow morning because you just you guys you have more energy than me but i thank you enough on behalf of the board i'm sure they'll they'll have their own comments but but thank you so much uh dr ferris and congratulations once again um talk about you know 24 7 work i i you know

044especially in the middle of everything you were going through this year with the pandemic i'm still continuing to pull that off and has very hard work and congratulations and the district is is better for it um in other notes i just wanted to say how great it was that uh you know the end of the year uh happened as it did in terms of the ceremonies we got to enjoy moving up ceremonies clap outs the eighth grade dance good job brett and the entire team at the ramble ridge for getting that together the graduation and the high school graduation which came down to a last-minute call and wound up outside a beautiful night it was 62 degrees and to think if it was a week later we'd all be out there in 100 degree heat

045but it was really nice especially for the kids just to be outside to be together with all their family members in attendance it was it was a beautiful night and it was great ceremony so with that that is my report move on to board committee reports anyone mr gallup tonight is the last day of our calendar for the school year so tomorrow is the beginning of the 21-22 school year and it's been certainly a busy year for everyone in the school community i just wanted to highlight a few items from the finance committee from negotiations kyle has ably manage the finances of the district for the year we have a very healthy balance sheet we have a long list of capital projects that are all underway and all are funded on the negotiation side we

046completed two successor agreements one with our supervisors and one with our administrators which will be in place for the next three years so we're in a good spot from considering that we were in a worldwide pandemic we still continue to run the district in an excellent uh way both for our students and for our community that's my report for now thank you very much any other reports dr morty on behalf of instruction and curriculum is this working is that better first of all congrats to our 2021 mahwah high school graduating class and best wishes as they move on in the next stages of their life also congrats to the eighth graders fifth graders third graders kindergartners as they transition into the next school building and let's hope that there's a more normal experience for them

047next year thank you to dr detouro dr bovino dr fair now and miss rizzo on your strategic plan update thank you very much and kind of what our future holds very optimistic we look forward to working together on instruction curriculum on aspects of that particular goals and statements dr fitz i wanted to just say something to you as well um let me see since i'm here so um dr fitz bought brock calmness stability and a sense of zen to a district that was reeling from losing a long-serving superintendent during a pandemic of epic proportions during our interview process i had actually reached out to one of your references dr fitz and they highlighted your ability to handle specific crisis situation in their school and how you maintained your composure despite the circumstances i think we

048saw handling of several crises this year and we saw that as an example we thank you very much for being there in the public eye being visible in the schools and offering us your unique and mature perspective we wish you well back home we know that your wife is going to be happy to have you closer and you don't have to commute all the way up to mawa it's been our pleasure to have you this year and we're glad to have learned lessons about educating our children and just about general life lessons so thank you very much dr fitz congratulations dr fair on your achievement and accomplishment i know how difficult that is and i'm trying to figure out how you did that um and completed a doctoral dissertation and worked a full-time job during

049a pandemic so um you're like a superstar and good luck to dr detouro and dr bovino as you begin bright and early tomorrow morning in your new administrative positions uh we look forward to working with you thank you all thank you very much thank you any other committed reports mr kaufman i'll make this one quick um just on behalf of the community relations committee want to congratulate dr fair publicly we had a nice little meeting this morning um also want to thank dr fitz dr fitzmalwa is a better place because you were here so thank you very much for your time and and everything you taught us i also want to wish everyone a very happy fourth of july have a happy and safe long weekend that's it all right thank you very much board

050member remarks additional comments on agenda items mr gallon um [Music] i'm not doing this any particular order but first i'd like to congratulate dennis on the achievement of his uh doctorate um this is the only night that we're going to call you dr fair you'll remain dennis for the remainder of our terms um but congratulations nonetheless and more importantly one of the key jobs that dennis has is sort of our like executive vice president for human resources and this has been a bountiful hiring year i think through dennis's efforts not only did we fill very important positions in the district we filled them with high quality individuals which is really the mark of his service and through his efforts no doubt the unemployment rate in new jersey has probably been reduced a couple of notches

051um but that's also a team effort and that's a team that consists of our administrators and supervisors teachers so that we get a family of folks working in our district who are all focused on our students and the people he's been able to find recruit and get into our classrooms have a passion for our students and they stay with us and they do good work and we congratulate him for his effort thank you um dr fitz when we first saw you last summer about a year ago you were a little bit late to the interview which was okay we had already been a long night for us but there were two characteristics that i think we all sensed immediately one was the sense of calm that you had why would you be interviewing for a

052superintendent job in the midst of a worldwide pandemic he was unafraid and the second thing was his inner dynamism his sense of action and moving forward and i think uh those characteristics played out marvelously for us in the middle of our pandemic and it has been to benefit our students our staff our leaders that dr pitts was with us this year he he will be the first to acknowledge that it wasn't all his effort but a team effort and we did remarkably well and and just to echo what brett said you left the district in a better spot than when you got when you got here and we are great we are grateful and appreciative of your efforts and we wish you the best of luck and as i said before today is the last

053day of the school year tomorrow dr fitz begins his new job there's no rest for the weary and dr fitz is an exemplar of that of that statement um and finally i want to just welcome dr dettoro dr bravino and mrs carreras to their new positions which i don't know this question are you starting tomorrow as well no but soon we welcome you and we certainly um welcome our veteran leaders and dr bovino dr detour to their new positions and we look forward to a bright uh and successful future with you thank you thank you he he's actually getting to sleep an extra hour now anyone else down here for four member remarks mr silva sure i'll be real quick so um dr fitz just to you know extend our gratitude you know like like

054has been said um you were a late addition to our interview uh schedule and you know it was one of those things where packaged with the resume and everything else and and we opened up your package and your resume was like 50 pages or something like that and you all you learned in high school you know you really put together a resume keep it as concise as you can and only put things that are truly like of value and every page as i keep on turning was it was experience of value but i gotta say with everything that happened this year i would have thought that it could happen i'm pretty sure going through this year you might have added a page of experience everything happened here so when when we're going through the interviews

055you know i kind of just to put in my mind for when we have discussion later on um you know kind of who's who one and yours i wrote the jedi master and you were certainly that for us this year um we certainly appreciate your you know your guidance and and your you know imparting your your just in in the educational world but you know in life generally and you definitely added value this year and you were the right person at the right time for us and dr fair dr pair love it so going through your the presentation of your dissertation uh you know sometimes we look at it so okay yeah you know it's another degree yeah that's that that's great well the stuff that i saw i see things that are actually going

056to improve what we're doing here a lot of stuff that you've you've been doing for a long time that you're taken to the next level and i'm really excited to see where we go from there so congratulations on that and you know like like has been said you know congratulations moving into new office welcome uh we're looking forward to uh to beginning uh beginning september fresh you any other remarks mr denise i'd also like to congratulate dr fair for his tremendous accomplishment and dr fitz if there was ever the right person for the right job at the right place in the right time it was you as our interim superintendent here in mawa in the middle of a pandemic so thank you for on behalf of a very grateful community thank you for taking that

057job and for being the calming influence that we needed at the time and also thank you to mrs fair for sharing her sharing you with us i know that you guys had a long distance to go and we really appreciate that thank you thank you very much any other board members okay oh that's the cone [Music] well a lot has been said about how very capable our administrative team is one person that was not acknowledged that i would like to acknowledge is our business administrator mr bleaker he passed a an exam and kyle forgive me because i can't recall the title of the exam but a very difficult exam that a small percentage of business administrators passed so i'd like to congratulate him on that achievement and of course congratulations to dr fair dr dettoro

058dr bovino to all we that our district is in very capable hands very capable hands all right thank you very much anyone all right seeing none number 16 old business uh can i please get a motion to approve the minutes of the june 16th public work session action meeting uh mr gallows seconded by mr denise mr bleaker role please mr coppola yes mr dasilva yes mr denise yes mr gallo yes miss conaco yes dr morty yes dr park yes mr cohen and mr kasmarski yes all right number 17 new business um i have resolutions a through z can i please get a motion who knows dr morty seconded by miss conaco any discussion okay mr bleacher mr coplan yes and all by abstain on 17z thank you this is the silva yes mr denise yes

059mr gallo yes except uh in 17 amb i'm sure there's a check that i need to abstain from and so i stipulate that i abstain from any checkpoint thank you mr gal miss conoko yes dr morty yes dr park yes mr cohen and mr good morning yes great team new business uh we have yes dr morphy can i just um just comment on also the eagles [Music] thank you um the work of our boy staff who've done several projects among our school district and um congratulations and good luck on the eagle scout project thank you thank you very much all right 18 we have uh resolutions a through w can i please get a motion hold on what we took look at 17 18 a through w can i please get a motion to look

060us up uh mr kaplan second bye miss conoco roll call please messing me up kyle mr coughlin yes mr de silva yes mr denise yes mr gallo yes miss conaco dr morty yes dr park yes mr cohen and mr kuzmarski yes all right number 19 public questions or comment public participation at board meetings is in accordance with bylaws at this time members of the public may ask questions or make comment on educational issues or school matters of community interest as a matter of fairness you are asked to limit your questions to no more than one and your remarks to no longer than three minutes if you are here representing a group please identify yourself the group and your position in the group if you are here as an individual please give us your name and

061address note this section of public participation will be limited to 15 minutes can i please get a motion to open the meeting of the public mr da silva is seconded by dr morty we are open to the public if you can please state your name and address for the record hi uh last name is gold samawa resident um i would appreciate if we could get a definitive answer on the mass mandates for september uh is it going forward is the answer yes or no for our for our children so miss goals the the biggest struggle here is i know that at our last meeting we shared that we would be communicating our plan for september and august governor murphy made an announcement at his press conference that i believe that masks would be up to

062the school district and then he followed with the road forward plan which states that the recommendations that he will be sharing are based on updated cdc guidance on masking in the setting which is expected prior to the start of the 21 22 school year and we'll factor into the final recommendations from the state for masking this fall this guidance will be updated following that release so we will have an answer in august when we present everything for september we are a little frustrated because we had believed that the road forward would be a little bit more clear in terms of what that would look like so we're going to see what the summer brings us we're hoping that the transmission continues to decrease as it has been and we will have a full day of

063instruction a full day of school just as it was pre-pandemic but masks we will have a decision made in august and we will have that communicate to everyone especially at our meeting when we present our plan for september and also in the strategic planning blueprint we all saw the terminology diversion equity and inclusion quite a few times and what does that entail exactly dr rotoro can can add on to this but essentially it is children accepting one another for their differences um being kind i'm being good to one another but that's something we parents all teach our kids so can you be a little bit more specific because the lgbtq issue is that something that's also included as well as the critical race theory where is mawa stand on that on [Applause] i i think

064we need to clear something up and we spoke about this at at the last board meeting there's a lot out there about critical race theory and there's a lot that's in the news about critical race theory and what i shared yesterday at the last meeting is we are not putting critical race theory in our curriculum what we're putting in our curriculum is aligned to what our community asks for our teachers ask for and our students ask for and what that's grounded in is that we're being respectful we understand that we have differences we we accept each other's differences and we're and we understand that there's not just one singular identity in this district that being said what does that look like we're creating opportunities for the student we're cr we're creating opportunities for our students

065to learn about each other we're creating opportunities for our students to be respectful of one another and we're creating opportunities for our students to see who they are in books on what basis or what is the basis excuse me let him answer there's a number of characteristics that are represented in our district so whether it's race whether it's creed whether it's sexual orientation that being said that is done in a way that's age-appropriate when is that ever appropriate when is what appropriate is speaking to kids about race we are obligated by the state of new jersey to teach whether it's the amistad mandate the holocaust mandate or the lgbtq parents if this is appropriate if they would like ma'am i'm not going to go back and forth about this i'm just sharing with you what

066the state's telling us to do excuse me excuse me we're going to do this in a respectful manner i i'm trying to be respectful okay but we pay taxes yes we do we pay taxes to the state of new jersey who mandates what is required then then i got to be honest with you where you need to be is down in trenton these mandates come from trend lgbtq matters of equity matters of race matter of everything by grade okay no no your state legislators represent you with regards to what is required for the department of education in the state of new jersey we are then mandated by the state of new jersey to teach those things whatever they may be so you have absolutely no say in this at all your educators administrators you have

067no say in this at all no it's state law that needs to be followed yeah it's state law this isn't something that we made up this is still saying that okay have any of you stood up and said listen i have children in this school district also and this is inappropriate and i do not want these things in the classroom for my children excuse me i i have two children in the school district and i want them to learn all of that well that's yours that's right they are no no no i'm sorry state no we don't state law mandates that we teach issues of diversity equity excuse me we have the right to withhold our taxes if you're teaching things that are not appropriate to our children i would advise you i would advise

068you [Applause] i i would advise you to not report the tests thank you so much for your comments along the lines of the curriculum that's being taught i am more than happy to meet with anyone to sit down to talk about the extent to which whatever content you have questions about is being taught there's stuff that's on the new jersey department of ed website but i understand that there's a lack of clarity along the lines of what's in the news and what's being discussed on social media i'm more than happy to sit with you and we can talk about what to what extent this content is being discussed yeah name and record one aaron out please i'm just gonna follow up a little bit having been a teacher myself i do understand that there's some

069state legality issues however there's also the extent to which a district embraces it and how much they do of it i think it might be helpful to actually see what the curriculum entails is there a way or a place we can get that published i think probably the best way like dr deturo just said is to if you have specific questions he said he's happy to answer him for for us to put for us to put together for us to put together a meeting with the entire current no no no i'm not saying that i know having been a teacher i've sat on curriculum committees i taught for 12 years there's a curriculum correct there's not a curriculum on diversity there's nothing so please understand that when we're talking about diversity we're talking about excuse

070me no that is incorrect ma'am that's not excuse me ma'am ma'am ma'am someone else is saying again i'm not that's not that's not what that's not the case at all so what we're we're planning on doing is making sure whether it's through our novel sets along the lines of the characters that are in the novels that are representing of our population whether it's in whatever subject matter we woven in along the lines of diversity inclusivity this is not a standalone curriculum okay this is not something that that is new good answer so please understand one thing this is something that is ongoing this is something that is on the backs of what we discussed along the lines of our strategic plan and what our community asks for we do not have a diversity course we

071do not have anything that is stand alone like that what we are trying to do is embed a respect and understanding of our students of the students who are sitting next to them and that is it so please understand there's a lot that's out and that's why i started this way there's a lot that's out in the news there's a lot that's out in the media there's a lot of out in social media and please understand that this is not the same thing that we're talking about right now there's a lot that we're doing and we're moving forward with but we're just getting started there are no courses no more plans for courses that are specifically with this information but this is important work that we we're raising students and i appreciate the information from

072the from the mother that this is something that we want to partner with our parents with this is not this is our only work this is a portion of what we're doing that's all can i can i just speak to that for a second going back to my point of some of it being statement and suddenly not i would love to see what exactly is state mandated dr toro if there's no curriculum is there something you have from the state that you could pass out or post somewhere where parents could read it there are three mandates there's the holocaust okay those were previously in there correctly [Music] okay so now as you said it's part of our strategic plan now i'm going to go back to that i didn't notice like math or science well

073scheme i did notice but math or language arts in that plan is there a reason why if you look if you look at the strategic plan all of our subjects are representative but not in specificity there's things when you're talking about problem-based learning when there's things when you're talking about creating extraordinary types of experiences they cross over all continents it's not subject specific we're looking to create rich educational experiences in every single subject matter starting with ela and going all the way to history so it really spans the entire school but my other comment and i think i've spoken with you about it before i know i've spoken with dr uh mr corey about it sle is is an all-encompassing thing i know mindfulness is one way you need sel but as a former teacher

074and a parent you have to have a big toolbox and if we're just going to keep going back to the mindfulness i think we're going to lose whatever can be garnished from that to help our children because it's going to be an over abundance of the same thing over and over again and they're going to tune it out and i feel like lately in mawa we've been kind of beating a dead horse with the mindfulness and perhaps we can explore expanding our toolbox to other things that might also incorporate sel because to me getting back to normal is one of those things and it's great to see things like the dance that came back to normal but the fact that our kids never went back to school this year is a huge negative when towns

075like wyckoff you know right down the road in franklin lakes and oakland went back to school full time this year so as much as you want to that pat yourselves are moments we're never going to get back for our children that's education permanently lost so be mindful of that and explore our toolbox and our other options that we have to help our children with social emotional development like getting them back to things being normal thank you so much [Applause] [Music] hello my name is michael pollam i'm our resident as well i never actually something on a follow-up but this i think this is the loader you are referring to this is the assembly bill number 44454 which was signed to law in march first and one thing that is stated here it says the commission

076of education should provide school districts with simple learning activities and resources designed to promote diversity and inclusion did we receive anything like that for them we do not those those types of samples if you go they're already in existence if you go onto the website of the those two websites that i was referring to but along lines of formal sharing they did not do synthetic sharing thing that's new everything is up on that website so did we receive anything from them every yes everything is housed as a library on that website and then share it out from there so on the njtoe website okay there is specific categories that you can go to that sample resources that you can utilize in there so there was nothing explicitly sent to us we have to go and

077look for it and then yeah well i'm like that a lot of things are shared that way along the lines of it said that it's there so you have to go and look but that that's an example of it can you provide example of some of the resources that you are actually able to download and use for the curriculum i'm sorry can you provide example of some of the resources that you were able to actually download phil ross one man a road mama uh as i have made quite clear i believe that these issues of diversity religion and so forth be handled as a whole and that's where it all starts the question i have now it looks like you're going forward with this training and you know i've been through some of this how

078exactly are we going to address equity can someone explain to me the notion of equity and how it's going to be presented to our children please address the notion of equity is this is equity of outcome and how are you going to have equity of outcome without someone being shortchanged [Music] equity equity is not about someone being shortchanged equity is specific to making sure that everyone is given what they're entitled to that being said we are not sources phil let him answer you asked the question here comes an answer along the lines of new things that are going to be shared with our students we're not at that place right now right now we're working with our administrative team and our teachers to position ourselves to make sure that we're putting out a product that

079really attends to what we envision this all this work looks like we are not at a place to share with the community of what that final product is and i know that just like the mask mandate and other things there's this sense of now and i need clarity that being said there's this is a work in progress and something that we're not at a place that we can have a formalized presentation on this is what the work is going to be you shared with us your work last time along the lines of what you did in the college courses and things like that and i understand the feedback that you that you got and also the the the feeling you have about that training and i respect where you're coming from along the lines of

080you feel that it should be different but that being said that's not where we're at right now we're not even at a place of putting out a finalized product so when we're talking about a strategic plan you're talking about starting the plan out for our future we're not there okay okay so if we're if we're going to go i'm just going to stick with equity right now because it's equity of outcome okay it is equity of outcome and and that's and that's really the bottom line it's equity of outcome and whenever you have equity of outcome you're taking something from someone and giving it to someone else and that's what it is so how are we going to go and say we're going to take a pick a direction here and yet we haven't fully

081researched what we're going to put forth why are we making announcements on something that we haven't that we haven't researched for and we don't have a plan when i'm gonna when i'm going to execute a plan i have done all my research i said this is what i'm going to do now i make my announcement and then i move forward see that's that's why everyone's questioning because there's no data say oh we're going to do diversity inclusion equity uh training well okay so then what is the curriculum what are we putting forth here those that's not been provided so of course you're gonna have questions and equity i've been through the training i know what equity is but that doesn't mean mr ross that we're dealing the same training that you dealt with so i

082understand that you have negative feelings about your training that does not mean that our training is going to align with what you were taught what is it hold on someone's at the microphone please hold on but now this is this is this is that's a that's a very a joy question because now this is about our community okay it's about our communities we said that this is you're answering you're doing this stuff in response to our community so if our community is asking these questions why don't we have the data on it why don't we have the information of how this is going to be presented to our children that's important when we're in a position to put forward a product we will share that with the community so the community just like i shared

083with you on this on the website all of our work will be shared there's nothing to hide and all of the work will be shared with our community but why are we making announcements without having the plan it goes over the strategic plan we plan out and with a strategic plan the community the teachers and the pr and the administrative team said that this was a point of priority and with that we're planning moving forward and and this was this this type of training was um was asked for by our community i'm still confused on this type of training what was asked for by the community was the concept of diversity was the concept of equity and inclusion was at the strategic plan meetings i don't know if you were there there were hundreds of

084people there and these are things that came up at the different tables at the different places and was made part of this plan which by the way was presented to the community well over a year ago so as opposed to putting on a product that we're not prepared to do we want to make sure that we're doing it the right way if we don't then we have a number of different people splintering off and doing different things so to ensure that all of the the work is aligned to what where the district wants to go the training needs to occur that's why training is necessary wait the training mr ross you and i can sit down and we can have a long conversation about curriculum equity but i have no other information for you i'm

085not trying to be disrespectful but i'm not at a place now to have any more information for where we are going because we're not there yet well i'm not sure what you're looking knocked out in but when i say that hold on hold on no no no no no no no no no no no no we're we're at the microphone but we're at the because parents have to go back to work in september we need answers we need answers as to what a plan is going to be i can't tell my my employer well i don't know what's going on that's not acceptable and it's not acceptable for anybody to tell us that you don't know can we opt out of this that's my question you know nobody knows that well you are more than

086welcome other schools are an option private schools are not you can opt out yes that's how you've been opt-out i understand and i unders [Music] is so can i can i please say this i've been trying to say this for five minutes so equity is not taking from someone to give to someone else that is not what equity is so no no it's not i'm sorry it's not can i let me know when i'm gonna please let me use an analogy here that's not what equity is here's what equity is all right so no no listen you're not letting me speak you're not letting me speak can you let me speak thank you i'm trying to every time i talk i get interrupted excuse me here's what equity actually is okay equity is not taking

087from one person to give to another all right imagine that there's a big pizza pie right and yeah no no listen i'm this is how i explain things i explain through metaphor so bear with me all right i'm trying to explain what equity is because what was stated is not correct all right and it's giving an impression that something is going to be taken away from your kids to give to someone else's kids and that's not what's happening that's not what equity is no one up here wants to do that no one up here is planning to take away from some students to give to others that's not what equity is no one here is talking about that it's not going to happen here's what actually equity actually is okay it's not like there's a

088scarcity of pizza and in order for that child over there to get pizza it's gonna have to be taken away from another kid here's what's actually happening there's an abundance of pizza but there are a lot of kids who are afraid to come and take their seat and take the slice that is already theirs because they are because they are lgbtq and they are not they do not feel wealthy and you're still not letting me finish but thank you all right mr park thank you dr park thank you very much to another topic we're going to go back to the public section um i want to go back to our strategic planning thing because i did sit on several of those meetings i know i couldn't go to all of them so i'm just wondering

089if there's um data that i could see where we got from the original meetings to what the points that came out for the strategic planning are it's all on the district website yeah i believe there's all the backup booth there right i saw a lot of compilation things posted up but statistics that say you know overarchingly you know this had so many percent yeah so everything's on the district website that was done by the outside consultant mr lee from the new jersey school board so if you go to the website on the left-hand side it shows the disaggregated breakdown it doesn't have numbers it shows that the thematic units that you see and the trends within them so there's no numbers okay and and how do we i know we actually actually there are numbers

090that it triggers themes and responses but there's no formula specific so if you go to the website and take a look no but i couldn't get a number that said like 86 of people wanted yeah they're they're a response response reported not percentages so it's just like a list okay and the list is not multi-generated like if someone responded and someone else responded the same thing you would see it twice or no the the list is there in its entirety first but then there's also a female breakdown thank you hi michelle salzman 10 stonewall court two quick questions can you speak of i'm sorry i can't say michelle salesman 10 stonewall court um for next year do we confirm that we're going back full day with lunch until three o'clock full day of school okay

091great and the second question i had um i know dr detour said we can't plan out because there's no plan because this is kind of a work in progress are you able to give us a snapshot of what the 2021-22 school year will look like can you plan that far ahead so that we can anticipate what to look for in our classrooms because what i'm hearing is that this is going to be embedded so it's going to kind of be a theme that's being taught everywhere and the diversity inclusion and equity and that it's it's still in the work so you can't you don't have a presentation to give because it's an evolving process but do you have any idea what came down from the state and what you're saying the community wants for this

092immediate school year okay so there's nothing new this year there was no new standards this is what we've been doing all along i guess that's what my confusion is coming from i think someone's talking about critical race here i'm not talking about critical race there i understand that was mentioned several times this season we talked about equity in schools in classrooms this isn't the first time so this has been a new jersey mandate for a long time okay maybe it's the lgbtq that's new i believe there was something new for the 2021 school year but maybe i'm wrong that's been around for a couple years now yeah i thought there was something new for this school year new law so in terms of giving you a snapshot of the year in terms of equity that's

093been a part of the conversation in a lot of different content areas across the board so i don't know how to exactly answer that okay no i apologize i thought that there were new curriculum changes for this school year honestly that's why i'm very confused okay well i'm confused because i'm hearing that so nothing came from the state or anything this year years ago so when i first started teaching in 2004 that was i guess it's just more pervasive now than it was a few years ago well i've been in the district i guess almost 11 years now and i can tell you it's much different now than it was 11 years ago so i guess pervasive is maybe not the correct word it's more um infiltrated into systemic into all those words into all

094the classes so i'm just kind of wondering so like if you're taking a french class or you're taking a math class if it's going to be if these themes are going to be incorporated into individual classes or if it's going to be strictly contained to the health classes are there changes to health education that's what i'm trying to figure out is what what the changes are going to look like for the school year next year and if they're and if everything's going to look exactly the same as it did this year then i guess i don't have a question i just thought that there were going to be some changes made to the health classes and that there was going to be more information on those more sensitive topics integrated into the curriculum coursewide which

095is why you can't opt out so to speak because it's not one class it's you know in french they're going to mention something in spanish they're going to mention something in language arts they're going to mention something so if your child is in school unless you're going to pull them out every 10 minutes it's not feasible that's what i'm trying to to figure out is how it's going to be integrated into their daily instruction that's all i really want to know only for the school year because i know you guys can't plan ahead [Music] are they required to teach certain things in all classes well i believe please let's forget those terms because they become buzzwords for the night all i all i all i wanted to know is if there's going to be a

096difference in what the the children are going to be require or the teachers are going to be required to teach as part of new curriculum standards [Music] thank you very much [Music] excuse me name and address and if you can please speak up okay so this law was actually signed in march uh this year i think this is the assembly and bill number i have here it's a copy and it says that in the beginning of the year 2021-22 school year each school district should incorporate instructions on diversity inclusion in appropriate place in curriculum for students in grades kindergarten to 12 right then it goes on so this basically you're saying this has nothing there's nothing new this is not going to have any effect on our curriculum so that's that's gonna that's the new

097thing that it's gonna be i'm sorry so this is gonna have effects these mandates these mandates are standing mandates what he shared was was something that's that's been in existence for years these are not demanding no i understand there was a focus for some years but my question is going to be something new that mandate is not changing hardcore it's not changing in direction that doesn't intensify it doesn't culture it continues you know please name and address for the record please 44 on the road um two things what is the difference between sel and pbis like how is it incorporated in classroom it's it's they're all under the same umbrella pbis stl mindfulness uh responsive classroom they're all under the same umbrella of student health and emotional growth there's there's there's no significant changes when

098you're talking about building a student that is confident secure and socially productive okay all right i've got definitely in our district we use pbis and in my previous district we yeah well okay um the next question is when do you start incorporating sex ed in this district if you're trying to find out what's what a child is is he straight bi gay whatever when is it going to be standard just starting from eighth grade in this district are we going to start at a young age we're not when you're talking about uh sexual orientation those standards are not elementary specific those standards are secondary specific and they're they're not something that you teach at the elementary level or at all they're exposed at all at the elementary level i believe it's fifth grade that they

099do their uh miscarriage does for uh sex ed it's more specific to puberty and that is shared with the parents and also the video is there very good all right good thank you very much all right sure thing name and address for the reference feature morales resonance 778 like up avenue uh in september is vaccine going to be mandated our students i mean i know you guys don't have any answer right now but waiting until august is going to be way too late for us to prepare well unfortunately with the state of new jersey that's that's kind of where we're at it is a concern that we have so i appreciate that concern i i would simply say being in an election year um the science to follow on that is political science and i

100don't believe the governor would do that going into a school year in election year but that's not going to be a district mandate that'll be a statement uh stacy merriman 20 south railroad um have you reached out to the other districts that are have already made their decisions there's quite a few i could probably get a list that have already said no more masks in september they will not mandate vaccines have you reached out to them have you are you advocating as last time for our kids um but this was at the last meeting too and i believe the meeting before that was your word is that yeah governor again expressed an impressively a press conference but i i know i heard that i'm asking you have you have you found out how other districts

101are already made their decision you're waiting for planning or florida plan part of our plan for december preparation is for us to invent as many districts as we can to talk through where they're at who they're consulting with and what their final decision is along the lines of us being having the discussions in previous meetings our goal was to finish the year successfully for this year and make sure that we had all the engineer ceremonies in place for our students now that we report in our first week of the summer we're engaging the other districts and we're going to try to get down a consortium of superintendents curriculum directors directors industrial services and work with our local health department to make sure that we're making the right decision for our district so as of right

102now we do not have a final decision for september we are going to follow exactly what the governor and the cdc has helped us to do and we are going to make sure that we have everything thoroughly presented to you guys in august again that's a little late but that's that is really late but here's my other question um since there's been and again i know there's going to be no answer but when you're the meeting of the minds come together can you think about um if you are going to have masks now i believe there's a law in the books federally that since a mask is under emergency use that you actually have to opt in to wear a mask and that you can say no now i've heard nothing about quarantine there's going

103to be no remote so is quarantine out the window and is there no option for moat because i can't have my kids go to school all day in a mask not not the whole day [Applause] and so how is my kids my three kids going to be accommodated so just you know i know you can't answer that now but if you could you know and you know and so i have time to maybe pull them out and go someplace else thank you so much thank you one last one allison theodore again what districts are in our consortium that we can sort with to make our re-entry plan for september we have we're part of some called region one um the districts that we work with in the past are glenrock ramsey um oakland but there

104are a number of districts in that region and i know kyle probably of falls believe it's uh ramsay ridgewood glenrock uh saddle river co-focus so all up 17 north yeah they fall in line with the department of health that governs us as well there's different sections of the department i know that's why i asked into that but not only one but so like a ridgewood and a paramus right have their own department so so you don't all go to the same person well i remember because we were talking to people from upper saddle river and they were a different department of health even than malwa which seemed so silly because we're so close to each other so upper saddle river wouldn't be in your consortium then upper side they are okay all right any other

105ones franklin leagues that's all i got yeah i have those yeah okay please one last each mine's a one-liner michelle salism attends stonewall court um if the governor says no masks but the cdc recommends masking which one do you follow [Music] well murphy just said no he said he's going to lead up to the district okay so the cdc is going to be final word pretty much over the governor if they differ i mean we're going to talk about all different types of things before september yeah it's just difficult like they said children have to be pulled out and parents who have to go back to work and kids who can't master seven hours finding out three days before school starts makes things a little challenging 44 um it goes back to the mass a

106couple years ago this district was hit by the float pretty bad where you had over 30 percent of the high school population out i remember i believe was dr jones sending out an email and nothing was said about masks nothing was said about going zoom or anything kid was sick and something just kept them home so if we just can't come up with an explanation if your kid's sick send them home i'm not saying i'll keep them all excuse me i don't understand what the you know and there was nothing back then about masks i'm sure i don't know if your son was in high school at that time it was a couple of years back i remember and i remember the flu my kids both my kids had to float and it was one

107kid after another one at the ridge one at the high school every time you do this touch your face you the mask doesn't work so thank you right there i hate to say [Music] all right name and address please chris salesman 10 stonewall court uh i think i reiterated this in the last you know a couple of meetings but cdc guidelines not requirements not laws so something you have to pay attention to for that also we're not saying that if you if we don't wear masks that kids don't have the option to wear masks if they're comfortable for it i think what we're looking for is the option okay equity of opportunity to say that you can do something if you want to if you don't then that's okay too all right otherwise again you're

108putting us in a corner where kids where we want to opt out of public school that we pay taxes so we can pay taxes twice so that's that's not fair either so we're looking for a reasonable answer on the plan not before you know before august before september come on people i know you were working hard congratulations to all of you dr fitz i'm going through a year a very successful but again parents here and online on the camera have been waiting for answers for over a year [Music] and if you can tell i'm frustrated that's because i am all of us are that's why we're here we care about our kids we care about the school district we hear about the town without you guys giving us answers then again it's not helpful any

109any thoughts i believe i believe you're going to get your answer in august that's stated i mean that's so helpful but why not give us an answer now why not say our plans based on july we can give it in july why can't we say based on what the governor has given as of this point in time that we are going forward the statement of wait until august pretty much that's what the governor has given us you're right because we don't have the this will this 15 page row back that we're referring to and also just just one thing i'm wondering about this where where's where's the enforcement arm of this i know that there's mandates and recommendations but if this is self-imposed and the parents are telling you we don't want our kids to

110go through this then why are we doing it there's not going to be any state police militia coming in here so what's the purpose anyone thank you for your comments helpful is always nice have a good night [Applause] how you doing folks i live at 145 3rd street um you know you do a lot of good things here with the schools but the vagueness not answering the most important questions that we have throws all of it right out the window you have a whole bunch of people here for each one of us there's probably at least another 20 to 50 okay with these same types of important issues that you won't answer uh it's as appropriate by grade level or yes it's mandated and it's it's that but there's no curriculum so it's mandated but

111there's no curriculum we've done it for years but you don't have any example to give us right now and that seems like a crock to be quite honest with you all right and it's over and over and over again here tonight with every important issue that we're asking and thank you for diminishing our opinion as as as town people here about you know equity all right because some of us know a little bit more about that than others i worked for the center for health equity in new york city for five years and i know where a lot of that two billion dollars in the thrive program went making up stories like pizza pies in the sky [Applause] and i'm not lying to you because i got stacks of confidential papers at home that can

112show it i know exactly what's in this stuff and you embed it into everything that you have so you don't have to show us exactly what's going on and i want answers these people want answers a lot of people want answers a lot of people on that video what they'll want answers and listen we know that you have a hard job i was going to be an educator at one point in time too instead i went to public health and healthcare and i know a lot about a little bit more that other stuff too and if you want to talk about it we can definitely talk about it but we're going to videotape every bit of it if you don't mind yeah anytime let's talk but it's going to be online or will you not

113talk with me now listen we want this to be a good place start working with us no there's a couple avenues that you are taking believe me because i worked it i was a community coordinator and i did this stuff for five years okay i was a systems partnership specialist you don't have to tell me and you don't even know what you're bringing in i do you really want to go through it we can we'll do it all online we'll talk about it together i got plenty of paperwork to prove but it's a trojan horse and you cannot and you can't even give us one definitive answer about any of the most important stuff we're asking so please start working with us on these issues [Applause] with that can i get a motion to close

114please dr park second oh please no one was standing up so that's when usually when we close okay then motion to close please mr gallows thinking about dr park thank you all right can i please get a motion to adjourn miss conoko the second bye mr gallow thank you so much thanks everyone have a good night