001Statement is hereby made that adequate notice of this meeting was given by the prominent posting of said notice in all district schools and other public places, the mailing and or hand delivery of said notice to the designated newspapers, the Esmé Park Press, News Transcript and the Manalepin Patch. No, that's not right. It's old. Following with the clerk of Manalepin Township and the clerk of Englishown Borough. Tonight is a little different. We don't immediately call the roll. What we're going to do is we're going to do the flag salute at this point in time. So if you would rise so we can do the flag salute, please. I pledge allegiance 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
002for all. Okay. At this time, I'm going to read the certified results of the annual election, which was held on November 4th, 2025 and was certified by the County Board of Canvassers on November 17th. Christine Parisi was elected to the Board of Education with 7,658 votes. David Cain was elected to the Board of Education with 9,919 votes. Eric Singer was elected to the Board of Education with 9,575 votes. And Hans Menos received 3,105 votes. The combined statement of results from the election will become part of the official minutes. We have the annual, this list of board members, Christine Parisi, David Cain and Eric Singer are all serving until 2028. David Ferber, Jesse Tosetti, will be serving until 2027. Jamie Herr, Kelly Lucas, Merced Capric, and Janae Campa will be serving through 2026. It should be
003noted that Merced Capric was appointed to replace Serena Wallace, and Janae Campa was appointed to replace Mark Santoro due to vacancies on the Board of Education earlier, at an earlier board meeting. I'm going to administer the oaths of office now. So I'd like to call up to the dais. I, Christine Parisi, do solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of New Jersey, and that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same and to the governments established in the United States and this state under the authority of the people. So help me God. I, Christine Parisi, do solemnly swear that I possess the qualifications prescribed by law by the Office of Member of the now-convict English County Regional Board of Education, and am
004not disqualified as a voter pursuant to RS-19-4-1, and am not disqualified due to conviction of a crime or offense listed in NJSA 18A-12-1, and that I will faithfully and partially and justly perform all the duties of that office according to the best of my ability. So help me God. I, David King, do solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of New Jersey, and that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same and to the governments established in the United States and this state under the authority of the people. So help me God. I, David King, do solemnly swear that I possess the qualifications prescribed by law by the Office of Member of the now-convict English County Regional Board of Education, and am
005not disqualified as a voter pursuant to RS-19-4-1, and am not disqualified due to conviction of a crime or offense listed in NJSA 18A-12-1, and that I will faithfully and partially and justly perform all the duties of that office according to the best of my ability. So help me God. I, Eric Sigurd, do solemnly swear, oh, I'm sorry, I affirm that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of New Jersey, and that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same and to the governments established in the United States and this state under the authority of the people. So help me God. I, Eric Sigurd, do solemnly affirm that I possess the qualifications prescribed by law by the Office of Member of the now-convict English County Regional
006Board of Education. I am not disqualified as a voter pursuant to RS-19-4-1, and am not disqualified due to conviction of a crime or offense listed in NJSA 18A-12-1, and that I will faithfully and partially and justly perform all the duties of the office according to the best of my ability. So help me God. Let's just watch the courts, please. Good job, girl. Good job. I, Jenny Campbell, do solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of New Jersey, and that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same and the governments established in the United States and this state under the authority of the people. So help me God. I, Jenny Campbell, do solemnly swear that I possess the qualifications prescribed by law by
007the Office of Member of the now-convict English County Regional Board of Education. I am not disqualified as a voter pursuant to RS-19-4-1, and am not disqualified due to conviction of a crime or offense listed in NJSA 18A-12-1, and I will faithfully and partially and justly perform all the duties of that office according to the best of my ability. So help me God. Let's just watch the courts. And the new board members have come. So cute. Okay, now we will call the roll. Jess, if you'd like to call the roll, please. That's okay. Mrs. Campo. Mr. Capric. Here. Mr. Ferber. Here. Mrs. Herr. Here. Mr. Cain. Here. Mrs. Lucas. Here. Mrs. Parisi. Here. Mr. Singer. Here. And Mr. Tessetti. Here. We have a quorum. We already did the flag salute, so my next thing would be
008normally to do that, but that's already out of the way. So that brings us to nominations, an election for the board president for the ensuing school year. With the way the policy reads is that we're going to open the floor for nominations. Anyone can nominate someone on the board for the position of president. It does not require a second, and there can be multiple nominations. They will be voted on in the order in which they are received if there are more than one. So can I please have a motion for president of the board of education? Mr. Tessetti. Make a motion to nominate David Ferber. Are there any other nominations for the office of president? Seeing none, I'm going to close the nominations. Can we please have a roll call on Mr. Ferber for president
009of the board? Mrs. Campo. Mr. Capric. Yes. Mr. Ferber. Yes. Mrs. Herr. Yes. Mr. Cain. Yes. Mrs. Lucas. Yes. Mrs. Parisi. Yes. Mr. Singer. Yes. And Mr. Tessetti. Yes. Next, I'm going to call for nominations for the office of vice president. Again, same rules apply. I see Mrs. Lucas with her hand up already. I'd like to nominate David Cain. Okay. Mrs. Lucas nominates Mr. Cain. Are there any other nominations for the office of vice president? Seeing none at this time, I'm going to close the nominations. Please call the roll. Mr. Capric. Yes. Mr. Ferber. Yes. Mrs. Herr. Yes. Mr. Cain. Yes. Mrs. Lucas. Yes. Mrs. Parisi. Yes. Mr. Singer. Yes. Mr. Tessetti. Yes. Mrs. Campo. Yes. Okay. Now we have a vice president. Hey, Mr. President. I'd like to make a motion to have a
010recess for five minutes so that the people who got sworn in can say good night to their families and the little ones can go home and go to bed. We don't need a motion. We could just take a brief recess. Good call, Jess. There's just a few more items on the reorg portion of the agenda that I'd like to get squared away. So there's items B8 through B14, which compromise the code of ethics, adopting all existing board policies and regulations, adopting the organization chart, the rest of the remaining board meeting calendar, and let's see, curriculum adoptions, the doctrine of necessity, and the five-year textbook adoption schedule. So can I please have a motion and a second on those items B8 through B14? Mrs. Parisi and Mr. Ferber. Any discussion? Questions? No questions. Jess, please call
011the roll. Mr. Ferber. Yes. Mrs. Herr. Yes. Mr. Cade. Yes. Mrs. Lucas. Yes. Mrs. Parisi. Yes. Mr. Singer. Yes. Mr. Tosetti. Yes. Mrs. Campo. Yes. Mr. Capric. Yes. Motion passes. Okay. Now I'm going to turn the meeting over to our new president, Mr. Ferber. I'm imagining we're going to go into the presentation. Or actually, do you have, let's see, was there a presentation? The statement you already made. Or is it the same statement to the public? Statement to the public comment, okay. No, that's statement to the public. Yeah, and then we've got workshop and then changes and revisions and then public comment. That's okay. This is always a little out of sync with normal meetings. We get in a rhythm and we kind of have to fumble through this one. All right. We are going
012to jump into our workshop. Our field rep, Mr. Tim Tien from the NJ School Boards Association is here tonight and is going to take us through a little board training. Ethics training, which is pretty standard for, you know, all new board members and at the beginning of the year at the reorganization meeting. So, Mr. Tien, welcome. Thank you. Can you hear it or no? Testing, testing. Good. Well, before we, before it displays, congratulations to all the reappointed board members and new board members. Our reappointment of our president and vice president. I guess you guys are gluttons for punishment. So, congratulations to all of you. You know, the one thing that's really important to keep in mind as a board member, especially for our new ones, is that, you know, you're here for all your students.
013And so keep that in central focus of everything that you do. And when it comes to ethics, that will help guide you as well. So we're going to start. And so just as a disclaimer, I am not an attorney. The information that I'm providing you is legal information. It's not legal advice. You only get that from your board attorney. And that's who you should go to when you need that. So the School Ethics Act was put in place, not by New Jersey school boards, but it was put in place to make sure that your communities know and you as board members know what you can and can't do. And so it's to maintain that confidence that you're going to do the right things all the time. So who enforces the act? Once again, it is
014not New Jersey school boards. A lot of people think that we are the ethics police. We are not. It is a group from the School Ethics Commission that are appointed. And these are supposed to be nine members. Five are non-school officials, two are school board members, and two are school administrators. Currently, there are two vacant seats for the school board members and one vacant seat for the school administrator, meaning that there's only six seats that are filled. That's going to be very important when we talk about advisory opinions. So these are appointed by the governor. So now that we're going to be getting a new governor, hopefully they will fill these positions. So what are the things that are encompassed within the School Ethics Commission? Well, the two on the left are for board members,
015which are mandatory training and code of ethics. And then for all school officials, which include board members, but also includes your superintendent, your business administrator, anyone that holds an administrator certification within your district. They also are required to abide by the disclosure statements and the prohibited acts. So you guys are so special, you get four and the rest of them get two. So mandatory training, this does not meet the requirements for governance one. So for those board members that are brand new, you still have to take governance one. And so you have to do that within your first 90 days of being appointed. So 90 days from today since you just were sworn in. You can do these, all these trainings, whether it's governance one, two, three, or four, you can do that in person.
016There's sessions that are offered for that. There are also virtual sessions that are live. So it's being broadcast, you're logging in and it's going live. And then there's also virtual self-paced. So you can do it at your own pace, at your own time. If you want to do it two in the morning, you can do that too. And you can start and stop it. Also for governance one, we do offer new board member orientation weekends. There's two of those, one in January and one in February. If you're interested in that, that's a Friday night, a Saturday, and a Sunday morning. So when you look at these, governance one has to be done within the first 90 days. Governance two, three, and four have to be done any time during that year. Second year of your
017first term for governance two. Third year of your first term for governance three. Every time you're re-elected, you have to take governance four. And when you look at what's included in all of these, one builds upon the other. So when you're governance one, that is a basic foundational information to get you up and running. And then it goes from there for governance two for finance student achievement. And then governance three is policy and labor relations. And that's important because at some point in those three years, you're probably going to be involved in negotiations. So it's a way to give you that information. And then the legal updates are governance four. And because the law does change, we do have new cases that occur all the time. So it's important to do those. As a board
018member, you can do all of these if you want one year. But you still have to do it each time it falls within your year. So governance two, you still have to do that second year. Governance four, if you want to do that every single year, you're welcome to. But every time you're re-appointed, you have to take governance four. Okay, some people like to do governance four often. So your financial and personal relative disclosure statements, this is important. For new board members, you have 30 days from the date that you're sworn in. To actually get these completed, you'll receive an email usually from your business administrator. And it will ask you to fill this information out. It used to be paper. It's no longer paper. It's digital. So when you fill it out, you have
019to submit it back. If you do not do something correctly on it, your business administrator will kick it back to you to make the corrections, and that's okay. You're not in trouble. And then this gets forwarded then to the school ethics commission. For all other board members, you have until April 30th of every year to complete this. And this is important because there's been more cases now for the SEC that they've been finding that people haven't been adhering to this and they've been having findings for it. So that's one of the examples of the case that was brought forth for this. And this is important when you're looking at this presentation because you're going to have a PDF of it because I'm not going to go into every single case that's there. But know that
020on the left-hand side when you see that letter C85-24, those are ethics cases. Those are ethics complaints. Those are hyperlinks. So you can read the more detailed multi-page version of it. The same thing with the advisory opinions. You'll see an AO to begin with. That means it's an advisory opinion. And you can click on that and it will bring you to the full case. So just keep that in mind. So there are tenets of the code of ethics, and these are the things that you're expected to abide by. In the set of packet that I gave you, there was three papers that were in it. One of them is the code of ethics. And you can keep that with you, especially at board meetings, so that you remember what you can and can't do. When
021you look at this, once again, this is not done by New Jersey school boards. The top part comes from 18A, which is statute. The bottom part comes from 6A, which is code. And so the top part tells you what you have to do. The bottom part says if you don't do this and somebody wants to file an ethics complaint, those are the factual evidence that they need to submit in order to support whatever their position is and why you allegedly violated the code of ethics. So look at those two. But the first one is that you're going to uphold and enforce all laws, rules, and regulations. You have to follow them. Even if you don't like them, you have to follow them. The second one is that you have to make the decisions that you
022make as a board member to meet the individual needs of all children, not just the ones you like. It has to be for every single student within the district. The third one is that you have to confine your work to policymaking, planning, and appraisal. And policymaking is that part which is really important because it provides guidance for your superintendent, administrative team, your parents, your students. It lets everyone know what the expectations are and what will be expected when things happen within the district. So you focus on that. Planning is something that you're doing all the time. When you do strategic planning, that's planning. When you set your district goals or board goals, that's planning. When you're during budget time and you're looking at your finances, that's part of planning. So there's planning all around you
023and that you're involved in as a board member. And then appraisal, there's only one person that you evaluate within the school district, and that's the superintendent. You don't evaluate teachers. You don't evaluate administrators. You steer clear of that. You stay only with the superintendent. Your job is not to administer the schools. It's to let the superintendent run it, and your job is to be oversight. So it's that balcony perspective of looking down, not getting into the day-to-day nitty-gritty. As a board member, you cannot make personal promises nor take any private action, meaning you do not do anything as an individual. Everything you do is as a team. And you only take action when you're at a legally advertised board meeting and you have a quorum. That's when there's an agenda item before you that you
024can take action on something. So when you're in your community and people come up to you, and they will, and they say, hey, can you make sure this happens? You can't say, yeah, yeah, I'll take care of that. That would be an ethics violation. So steer clear of that. Your job as a board member, you do not have to surrender your independent judgment to special interest or political groups. And as we know that politics and special interest groups are trying to make their way more and more into public education, keep in mind that your focus, once again, is on the students. And there's a place for politics and a place for special interest. They have a different focus. And it may involve students, but it may not. So keep your focus where it's supposed to
025be. Keep the other things out of the school districts. This is probably one of the most important code of ethics, which is confidentiality. As board members, you're privy to a lot of different information that the community is not. And that's why you have an executive session, because there's certain items that you will discuss that are not public. And so you have to make sure that you're maintaining confidentiality all the time. There's a couple reasons for that. Protect the district from lawsuits, because if you don't maintain that confidentiality and you break it, then you could potentially open up the district to lawsuits. But it also is a means of making sure that this team functions well. And the way that it functions best is when you can trust each other. So the superintendent has to have
026trust in the board that what she tells you isn't going to get out there. And you as board members have to have the trust that when you share something with each other or there's a discussion in an executive session, that that information doesn't get out into the public. So maintain confidentiality. Your job is to appoint the best qualified personnel. So your superintendent will make recommendations to you as board members for personnel matters. And so your job is to make sure that that person has the qualifications for whatever that position is and then appoint them. Your job is to support and protect school personnel. And so that means that you cannot be bad mouthing your school personnel, whether you like them or not. Your job is to support them. And part of that support and protection
027is also not trying to direct them to do anything because you put them in a very awkward position because technically you're their boss. And so if you start to say, hey, I want you to do this, you not only are starting to actually run the district and you're overstepping in that area, but you're also not protecting your school personnel. Your job is to refer all complaints to the chief school administrator, also known as the superintendent. And yes, as board members, especially the new ones, know that people will seek you out, they will find you, and they will share their concerns with you. When they do, your job is to redirect them on the chain of command to say, hey, most nine times out of 10, it's generally the classroom teacher, redirect them back to the
028classroom teacher and then reach out to the superintendent and say, hey, just want to let you know so-and-so came up to me with this complaint, I redirected them to whoever you redirected them to, and I'm just looping you in. Once you do that, your job is done. You don't have to fix the problem. That's not your job. That's running the district. The superintendent takes it from there. So ethics complaints can be filed by anybody. They can be filed by anybody within your community or even outside of your community. They can be filed by other board members. They can be filed by your superintendent. They can be filed by a staff member in the district. They do have a 180-day window, though, to file it. So from the date of when the alleged violation occurred, there's
029only a 180-day window where they can do that. So if they wait till day 181, the SEC is not going to look at that case. They have to, as I said before, when you look at each one of those code of ethics, they actually have to provide the factual evidence for each one of the tenants that they believe that you violated. So they can't just simply say, I think so-and-so violated tenant A, B, and C. No, they have to actually provide the evidence. When it is filed, you will find out that it was filed, and you will have your opportunity to share your perspective on it. So the SEC actually gets both sides of the story before they make a decision. There's usually a time frame where they'll say you have to get your answer
030back to us within 30 days, and so these things do not happen tomorrow. They take a little while. There can be a $500 fine to somebody who's filing frivolous filings, and that, once again, is determined by the SEC. So what happens if somebody does file an ethics complaint? Well, there's four different things that can happen. They can have a reprimand, a censure, a suspension, or a removal. A reprimand is like a slap on the wrist, and they say, hey, what you did was wrong. Don't do it again. A censure is more public. That means that at a board meeting, a public board meeting, you have to actually identify the name of the person and what codes of ethics they violated, and you have to pass a resolution for that. A suspension means that the SEC
031will give you a time frame for where you cannot be on the board. It may be a week, maybe a month, maybe six months. It's whatever they determine based upon the case. And then removal is the SEC will say, you can no longer be a board member, and you're now removed from that. Some board members, when they're hit with a code of ethics violation, they'll say, no, no, no, no, I followed the advice of my board counsel. Well, there's a four-pronged test that's used. And so when you look at this one, you see number one, two, three, and four. They have to follow all of these. In order to be able to use that defense and say, it's not my fault, it's my counselor's fault, they have to take the approval advice received prior to
032the action, meaning they can't do something wrong and then go to the board attorney and say, hey, if I do this, is it wrong? So they have to be proactive. The individual who offered the advice or approval relied upon possessed authority or responsibility. So they can't just go to any attorney. It has to be the board attorney. And so some people say, well, I talked to an attorney and they told me it doesn't matter. It has to be your board attorney. All pertinent facts and circumstances were fully disclosed. Often, when somebody goes to the attorney and they give them information, they don't give them the whole story. They only give them bits and pieces of it. So this advice of counsel defense would not work if you did not give the full story to your
033attorney. And then the individual complied with the advice received. So you may seek the advice of the attorney, the attorney might tell you what to do, and you decide not to do it. And you say, yeah, but I talked to the attorney. You actually have to follow the advice of the attorney. Seems common sense, but it doesn't happen all the time. So as I said, each one of these cases, I'm not going to go into all of them. I enjoy reading these cases. I think they're very interesting. Sometimes when I read them, I don't understand how they came up with the decisions that they did. But when you start to read the more of the details and multi pages, it sometimes makes more sense. So once again, you can click on the link to it
034or bring you to the full case. These are important to keep in mind, though, and keep handy because you may not when you look through these, you may say, yeah, that's not something that impacts us right now. It might not impact you right now. But something may happen in a month for now or six months for now. And this is a handy little tool for you to go back to and look at those cases and say, huh, what happened in a case that was similar to what we're experiencing? When you look at these cases, you'll see some say recommend it, whatever it is, censure, whatever it might be. Others just simply say censure, bless you, or reprimand or whatever it is. What that means is when it's recommended, it means it's gone through the SEC
035only. When it simply says censure or reprimand, it means it's gone through the SEC and has gone through the Commissioner of Education. So there's two levels that every ethics complaint has to go through. And so when you see these, you may see these cases pop up again when you're reading through cases because it's gone through that second level. When it gets to the Commissioner of Education, he or she, depending on who's in the seat, may decide to change that recommendation to something different than what was recommended. And they usually give a reason why. These are more code of ethics cases. And I just want to point out that when you look at the second one, it says a 15 plus year board member. So these violations of the code of ethics don't occur just simply
036by the brand new board members. They're occurring by all board members of all different levels and years of experience. So don't think just because you've been a board member for a while that, you know, you're doing everything right. You may still miss that. So there's recusal and abstention. And in most districts, you know, when you have an agenda item and you don't want to vote on it, you say, I abstain. And that's an appropriate thing to do when you don't have enough information. A recusal is different. A recusal means that you're conflicted and therefore you cannot vote on it. So there is a difference between the two. It has a different message to your community. So just know that you, you know, you can recuse or abstain based upon the situation. Relationships, I always say
037your family, you love them, but they're also the same people that will get you into trouble when you become a board member because they create conflicts for you. So if you have you and you're welcome to have family members or relatives that work within the district, if you do, though, that will create a conflict for you. If you're in a certain profession, like if you're a teacher in another district, that may create a conflict for you here. If you have a certain job that is linked to something that the district uses, maybe a service or a product, it may create a conflict for you. So all of those conflicts and most of them will be relationship, create a situation where you may not be able to be involved in voting on an agenda item, discussion
038of an agenda item, or being on a committee that has to do with it. So for example, if I have a family member that works in the district and you have a personnel committee, you cannot be involved in the personnel committee. And so what you're going to do is if you have a family situation, relationships or work situations, you're going to want to share that information with your board attorney so that they can give you the proper guidance on what you can and can't be involved in. So that once again, you don't misstep and vote on something you shouldn't vote on or be involved in the discussion you shouldn't be involved in. So the advisory opinions are proactive where ethics complaints are reactive. An ethics complaint is somebody is claiming that you've already done something
039wrong, you violated the code of ethics. An advisory opinion is something that a school official, and you are all school officials, they can seek out before they misstep. So they see a situation coming up and they say, hmm, I wonder if I do this, is it wrong? So you can write an advisory to seek an advisory opinion from the SEC and they can make a ruling on it so they can tell you before you do anything whether you can or can't do that. When I was I retired as a superintendent, but when I was a central office person, I actually submitted for an advisory opinion. I was going to be thinking of doing something with a company that we did business with as a district. And so I wanted to make sure if I did
040that it didn't create an ethics issue for me. And so I sought that advisory opinion out and I got my answer back. In order for an advisory opinion, you will always get an answer from them. Sometimes, though, when somebody submits in for an advisory opinion, the SEC feels that it's not just very specific to you that this may be something that comes up and it could impact in other districts across the state. So they make those advisory opinions public. But the only way they can make them public is if they get six votes of the nine people that are supposed to be on the school ethics commission. So as you can imagine, if there's only six, that means that all the people have to show up. And as we know, not every board meeting, everyone
041shows people miss. The SEC is no different. They don't always have six. So this year, like many other the last couple years, we had I think it was December 20th. All of a sudden, all the advisory opinions for the entire year came out. So they had been hearing cases all year, but they finally had six people. So they were able to vote and make certain ones public. So these are all linked in the presentation. So you can click on them if you're interested in all those different cases. Advisory opinions, even though they say advisory, you are actually required to follow them. So it's basically the SEC giving you a heads up and telling you that if this situation arises and your sounds like it, then you should be following what their guidance was in that
042advisory opinion. So saying, well, I didn't know, isn't going to be a defense that you can use. So your job is to be knowledgeable about these advisory opinions. If you're not sure, once again, it's always a good idea to reach out to your board attorney or have someone reach out to your board attorney and ask them. We did have a board member once ask us, well, it says advisory, so I really need to follow it. And so that's why you see the policeman up there. That's a guidance for you that if a policeman gives you a warning for speeding, and they say to you, if you do it again, I'm going to give you a ticket. Well, that's their advice to you. And if you do it again, what do you think is going to
043happen? So you actually do have to follow these advisory opinions. So this is an example of the cases that all got passed and made public within the, like I said, December 20th. All of these came out. So there's a short question that was posed. So for example, can the board invoke the doctrine of necessity? Some boards will do that. I think it's even on your agenda tonight for something about doctrine of necessity, approving something with it. So there's an advisory opinion that was on whatever the specifics of that case was. So you can look at each one of these and say, oh, yeah, I might want to click on that and see more details of it. So when you look at these, this is A-22 and it starts at A-01. So you can see all
044of these were the ones that were just released at the end of December. There's another part of the ethics which is important to understand is that benefit. If you're doing something that has the possibility of giving you a personal benefit, that will create an ethics violation for you. So for example, let's say, like I said before, you may have a company and that company may do business with the district and you vote on it. That's an ethics violation because you're actually receiving a benefit from it. I've had board members ask about if they want to volunteer or volunteer their services of their company for free to the district. Can they do that? And they've sought out the advisory opinions on it and they've been told no. And the reason why is technically it's free advertisement.
045So it does technically benefit them or has the impression of benefiting. So it's not whether you believe you're getting a benefit. It's also whether there's that impression within your community that you're benefiting somehow. So this is a case that was connected to that as well. This is a list of the prohibited acts. So if you fall in any one of these situations, this is an example of when you should recuse yourself from that agenda item. These are a couple of cases on prohibited acts. If you're interested in these, like I said, I wasn't going to kill you with cases tonight. And then these are conflict and benefit cases. We have another one and another one. And then these are two more. So you can kind of see that there's a lot of conflict and benefit
046cases. So when we talk about benefits, they do come up a lot. So you're going to want to be aware of it. Hiring personnel. This is an important area to be aware of if you have relatives. If you have relatives already working in the district, you're not hiring them. And it's okay that you're on the board now because they were already in the district. However, once you become a board member, you cannot hire your relatives into any position within the district, okay? If somebody was to come for a position and your board was going to hire them, then you would have to step down as a board member. There is a limited exception to that where if a position is really difficult to fill, and the only person that applied happens to be one of
047your relatives, then your superintendent can seek out an exemption, a one-time exemption, from the executive county superintendent. It doesn't happen often. It does happen, though. So just keep that in mind. And if that were the case and you may not have been conflicted before, that may now create a conflict for you. So when your life situation changes, where you weren't conflicted before, you may become conflicted. The same thing is if you're conflicted now and your life situation changes, you may no longer be conflicted. So be aware of those conflicts that you have or potential conflicts. And this was an impact on committee assignments. If you have a relative working in the district, it can also impact your roles. So in this particular district, that case that you see at the top, there's two people in
048the same district. This is also a district that has nine board members. Seven of them are conflicted. Only two of them can be involved in the evaluation of the superintendent. And so you can kind of get an idea of how extensive this can be in certain districts. So in this district, the board president was conflicted because their child was an instructional assistant. And as a result, they could not be involved in any of the committees for personnel, negotiations, instructional, which is curriculum and instruction, or finance. As another part of that, your board president is also the one that appoints everyone on the board to the different committees. She wasn't able to do that either. So it really took away a lot of the things that she could do. And then the second board member in
049the same district had a relative that was in the technology department that also excluded that person from being on a number of committees. So just realize that your relatives can cause you not to be even on committees, okay? And this is just a handy chart, so to speak, for if you have a relative that's working in education, not necessarily in this district, or it could be in this district, or if you yourself are working in education in another district. So when you look at this, if you have an immediate family member or relative that's currently working in this district, you will be considered conflicted, and you will not be able to be involved in negotiations, or you will not be able to vote to ratify the contract, because that contract could potentially benefit your relative,
050okay? You'll see in the third column, it says no no, because there was an advisory opinion that was sought by a board member, because their relative was in what's called a non-aligned position, meaning that they are not necessarily in a union within the district, they're in a non-union position. However, the SEC made the determination that unless they could prove that there was no connection between that person's salary and benefits, then they couldn't be involved in negotiations either. The reality is that most non-aligned positions are and do have some connection to other contracts that are within the district. So if you can prove that they're not, then you may still be able to be involved in negotiations. The second row is self or your immediate family member, you work in another district, not this district, but
051another district, you may not participate in negotiations, however, you may be able to vote to ratify the contract at the end. And the reason why you can do it at the end is because all the terms and conditions of that contract were already determined, and therefore, you're not impacting it in any way. And then the last one are those people that do not have any relatives working in this district or outside of this district, they're not in any of the statewide public teachers unions. And when we say teachers unions, also principal supervisor unions, they can participate in negotiations and they can vote to ratify the contract. These are the people that generally will be on your negotiations team. Maybe not all of you, but some of you. For campaigns and collective bargaining, some cases have
052popped up where there's been questions about whether there's a conflict arises if a local union endorses you. And it's been determined that no, just because you're endorsed by a local union doesn't necessarily create a conflict for you. However, if you receive financial contributions from that local, then that may create a conflict for you. And then volunteering in school, are you allowed to volunteer in school? You absolutely as a board member are allowed to volunteer in school. You just have to be careful about how involved you are. And if you're in any kind of position of authority, meaning that you're directing staff, if you're directing staff, that could create a conflict for you and could result in an ethics violation because that would give the impression that you're running the district and you don't want to
053do that. And involvement means like if you're here like once a week or once a month, that's fine. If you're here three days a week, you might be a little too involved. And once again, you're given the impression that you're running the district. So this is a suggestion when you're visiting a school and your superintendent can give you some guidance on this. But when you're visiting a school, you really should be letting the superintendent know that you're visiting the school so that she's aware that a board member is in that building and that she can give the heads up to the administration there. When you're coming in, if you're coming in as a parent, you know, for like a meeting for your child, once again, you're absolutely able to do those things. But just give
054the heads up just so that the superintendent knows. And then when you come to the building, whatever building it may be, just stay focused on whatever the purpose is. If I'm going in to talk to my child's teacher, don't then veer off and start to walk through the building to look at how instruction is going because then you've just stepped over the line. And social media, this gets a lot of board members into trouble. So when you think about if you're posting anything on social media that has to do with the school district or school or board business, think about the content that you're posting, the substance, and the context. So what is it that you're saying and what are you saying about it? You cannot say something about board business, especially if you're not
055the board president because the board president is a spokesperson for the board. If you are as an individual board member talking about board business, you're giving the impression to your community that the whole board feels that way. So you have to be careful about it. So my best advice I can give is do not post anything about school business and this way you won't get into hot water. If you are posting, then the SEC came up with a disclaimer that's on the left there and it basically is saying that what I'm posting is my own personal opinion. I'm not speaking as a board member. And these are just some social media cases. And once again, these are not all the cases. Everything I've put in here is not all the cases that are out there.
056There's a lot more, but these are a sampling of them to give you an idea of some of the things that have gone on. And this is just important information to keep in mind. When you're sitting at that dais, we're seeing more and more in school districts where people are on cell phones, community members are watching. And so when they see one board member texting and another one on their phone too, they're sometimes under the impression, especially if it's a contentious district, they're under the impression that the board members are talking to each other. And so they can actually request, do an Oprah request for your cell phone records. So you've got to be careful about that kind of stuff. So the best recommendation is that keep your cell phones off. If you're expecting a
057call or expecting a text about something important, keep it on vibrate. And if you receive it, simply get up from the board table and step out for a minute and take care of whatever you have to take care of. Okay, this way you avoid all of that. And then we always say in the third one, you're your child's advocate first. So as a parent or a grandparent, you absolutely should always be there for your child. Just because you're a board member doesn't mean that all of a sudden you can't come to the schools. You are your child's advocate first. Don't ever let this position impact that. And these are just simply hyperlinked resources that you can absolutely use at any point and click on. Any questions? If you have any, by all means at any
058time you can reach out to me. It's totally confidential for those new board members. You can email me, you can text me, you can call me, all of it works. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Tehan. And we'll see you again, I think, next month. Thank you. And yeah, I just want to repeat that, especially for the newer board members, if you haven't already connected with Mr. Tehan, he's a great resource for any questions, anything you may have related to, you know, how to conduct yourself on the board or, you know, if you have an idea that you want to bring to the table, but you're not sure how to approach it. He's always a great resource to go to. I know I have in the past, so don't be shy about reaching out to him.
059He'd be happy to hear from you. Yes, and I just want to reiterate, in a lot of Dr. Tehan's presentation, it said about contacting the board attorney, only myself, the board president, and Ronnie are allowed to contact the board attorney directly as there's always a cost associated with that. So if you do have a question for the board attorney, please reach out to one of us first. All right, we're going to move forward. Item E on the agenda, changes and revisions. Is there anything to change? None other than what went out this afternoon. Right. All right. All right, then we are moving into public comment. This is the portion of the meeting. Anyone from the public has the opportunity to come to the microphone and speak for three minutes about anything they would like, being
060that our audience is not very engaged right now. We're going to close public comments and move on. All right, items G. Action items. Can I have a motion and a second for administrative items one through two, please? Mr. Capric and Mr. Cain, any questions on anything? Mrs. Herr? Yes, are we voting? Yes. Okay, I'm sorry, yes. On admin. Mr. Cain? Yes. Mrs. Lucas? Yes. Mrs. Parisi? Yes. Mr. Singer? I'm going to abstain. Mr. Tosetti? Yes. Mrs. Campo? I'm going to abstain as well. Mr. Capric? Yes. And Mr. Ferber? Yes. Motion passes. Thank you. Can I have a motion and a second on business items H1, please? Mrs. Herr and Mrs. Parisi? Questions? Anything? No questions. Mr. Cain? Yes. Mrs. Lucas? Yes. Mrs. Parisi? Yes. Mr. Singer? Abstain. Mr. Tosetti? Yes. Yes. Mrs. Campo? Abstain. Mr.
061Capric? Yes. Mr. Ferber? Yes. And Mrs. Herr? Yes. Motion passes. Thank you. Can I have a motion and a second please on personnel items I1 through 16? Mrs. Lucas and Mr. Cain? Any questions? No questions. Just say thank you and congratulations to our four retirees with 15 to 26 years of employment with us. Mrs. Lucas? Yes. Mrs. Parisi? Yes. Mr. Singer? Abstain. Mr. Tosetti? Yes. Mrs. Campo? Abstain. Mr. Capric? Yes. Mr. Ferber? I mean yes and also would like to thank you and recognize the retirees for their service to our district. Mrs. Herr? Yes. And Mr. Cain? Yes. Motion passes. And that concludes the action portion of our meeting. We will now move into other business. For any of the new board members that may not be familiar with this process, it's an opportunity for
062any board member to speak on any topic you would like related to the district. Again, any topic you'd like, whether you want to bring up an idea or a suggestion, you know it's an opportunity to do so or if you would just like to make a shout out to your family. We'll share something from the community. I mean sometimes if you have knowledge of an event going on in the community, you'd like to share it too. That's something that's been discussed. That's a great point. Thank you, Ernie. So I'll start with Mrs. Campo. Anything you'd like to bring up tonight? I just want to say thank you to you all for your warm welcome and I look forward to working with you all and I'm excited. Mr. Capric? Yeah, a couple things. Welcome back to
063student and staff. Hope everybody had a great break off and I hope they're enjoying the new year so far. I want to congratulate Mr. Ferber and Mr. Kane on their appointment. Have great confidence in your continued leadership of the board and the district. Congratulations to Ms. Parisi as well for another term on the board. Great respect for those who volunteer their time and expertise and really appreciate your continual commitment to the community. And then of course welcoming Mrs. Campo and Coach Singer to the board. Have again a lot of confidence in terms of your experience and your new perspectives coming to the board and the value that you both will contribute and looking forward to partnering with you as well. Just one event in terms of the community. The foundation for MERS has a sneaker
064ball coming on February 1st. It's a great event for parents or grandparents to bring their son to that event. All the proceeds go back to the foundation for MERS which are then granted of course to the district. So a great fun event that benefits the district as a whole. So tickets are still on sale. If you haven't gotten them, go ahead and go grab them. Thank you. Thank you. Mrs. Lucas? Well, Marissa took one of mine so I can cross off my list. I just have a message from Ricardo, just an update. Everyone will be receiving an invite. But for Saturday, January 24th, there is going to be a collaborative open session with board of ed members, PTA presidents, principals with the keynote speaker Art Taylor. So everyone will be getting an invite to that.
065Again, it's January 24th from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. And then he also wanted me to mention that the Harlem Wizards are going to be back March 14th. And he's looking for some board members to possibly play. I think I heard we have a coach at the dais, Coach Singer. And a tall board member. All right, thank you. I'll jump over to Mrs. Herr. I want to also welcome all the students and faculty back. I hope everyone had a restful break. I know this time of year is very needed to be rejuvenated for getting back into the classroom. I want to also congratulate our new board members. Welcome. I'm looking forward to working collaboratively with everybody. I think it's going to be a really great year. And to Christine and David, welcome back. I'm glad
066to have you. And to David and Dave, I'm glad to have you leading the charge. So looking forward to another productive year. Mr. Singer. Yeah, Rhonda. I have something too before you get around to me. Sure. Thank you. First and foremost, thank my family, even though they left, for being by my side and supporting me through my campaign. I'm happy to be here. Also to have my parents here. Deep, they run real deep in volunteering and supporting things that go on within the community. And it's a really proud moment for me to be here, to have both my parents here to see that. So I'm very appreciative for that. As far as the new members, Mirsaad, you included, and Janae, you know, congratulations. I'm happy to be working with both of you and everybody on
067this board. To Christine and Dave, obviously, congratulations on your reelection. Obviously, Dave and Dave, your appointment as president and vice president, I look forward to working with you and everybody here. I'm very excited to be here. I'm very excited to be part of this board. I'm happy to see that we have a full compliment now after some departures. And I'm really looking forward to doing some great things here and building on what we have here in this district. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Tessetti. Yes. First of all, welcome to Eric and Janae. Congratulations, David and Christine, on your reelection. Just like everybody else has said, congratulations again to both Davids on your assumption of president and vice president for another year. With that, I also want to wish a happy 50th birthday to Eric Singer.
068I'm glad I went after him. And then I know that there's a lot of sports going on right now at MIMS. I just want to highlight that the MIMS wrestling team beat Kingsburg today 76 to 28. Luca DiGenerro had a pin in 30 seconds and Hunter Tossetti had a pin in 12 seconds. But the highlight of the event wasn't the wrestling. There was a young eighth grader over there, Ada Anad. I want to make sure I say her name right. She played the national anthem before the match started on an electric guitar. And it was one of the most phenomenal things I've seen in this district, not only as a parent, but starting my fifth year as a board member here. So to all the staff over there, they're doing amazing things. I know that
069everybody is glad, especially the parents, to have the kids back in school. And I look forward to the start of this. And just to answer some of the things from social media. I'm sure Nicole might mention it. But there is not a determined date yet. It's got to be through the winter for the graduation. I know it's been a big thing in the public forums for the eighth grade graduations. So that date will be formalized a few months from now. That's all I got. Thank you, Jess. Mrs. Parisi. Yes, I also would like to congratulate our new board members, Eric Singer and Janae Campos. Welcome aboard. Looking forward to working with both of you. I'd also like to congratulate David Kane, our incumbent. I'd also like to congratulate Mr. Faber and Mr. Kane. Looking forward
070to your strong leadership once again this year. Standing strong and doing the right thing for our children. And welcome back. Happy New Year. Hope everyone. I know the super flu is out there. I know a lot of us have gotten it. Let's stay safe and healthy. Thank you. Mr. Kane. Thank you. I also want to congratulate and welcome aboard Eric and Janae. Eric, obviously known you for a while. Looking forward to working with you closely on the board. Janae, looking forward to getting to know you a little bit better. It's great to be back to nine people here. I was a little empty for a while. So it's nice to have everybody here today. Second, I do want to quickly thank all. Oh, sorry. And congratulations and welcome back to Christine. I had that note
071here and I forgot it. So glad to have you back here. Second, I do want to thank all the residents for my own reelection. I greatly appreciate it. I love being up here. Love being part of the decision making. Love working with all my fellow board members. So I'm really grateful for this. And I take it as something very serious in my life. And I always say that election is not something we should be celebrating, but something we should be trying to earn over the course of our terms. So that is certainly what I will try to do. And then lastly, I want to thank everyone for the appointment to vice president. I really appreciate it. Looking forward to working with Dave again. I think we worked together well this past year, and I'm sure
072that will continue this year. I also want to congratulate him on appointment as president. Thank you. That's it. Thank you. Thank you. I got a few things. Starting off, welcome back to everybody. All our staff and our students. I really hope everyone enjoyed their time off and had some great relaxation and fun times with their families. Congratulations again to our newest board members and our re-elected board members. I really got to say, with complete honesty, I really feel good about this group that we have up here right now. It's a really great mix of people that I know are just dedicated and going to really put forth all the best effort towards just helping to not just keep the district doing great things, but even take it to another step and make it even better.
073So it's really exciting to see. It's funny because it's a little bit full circle for me, having Eric sitting up here. When I first met Eric, it was sitting in the audience at board meetings several years back, and he was one of the people that nudged me to run for the board initially, and now he's sitting up here with us. So that's pretty cool and just an interesting full circle. So good to see you here, Eric. Outside of that, a couple of things I wanted to bring up. For one, we're still hiring for bus drivers. So anyone know anyone, please share the word. We could use some good bus drivers in the district. Nicole, I may be jumping the gun on you, but registration for kindergarten is open, so it can't be repeated enough. Make
074sure people know for kindergarten and new first graders. It's open now through March 1st. So get your registration done early. Don't wait till the last minute. John Halligan will be coming back to the district, and it's just a phenomenal presentation. It's an important presentation related to bullying and suicide that's really impactful. So I really encourage parents in the district to sign up and be there. It's February 4th. You could find information for it, I assume, on our website? Yes. It's on Facebook. We sent an email, and it's from 6 to 7 at Pinebrook. I have that on my list, too. Great. More board-related, one thing I wanted to bring up, and this is something that we're not going to come to a conclusion on right now, I don't believe, but I'd like the board to
075consider, and I'm going to share more information via email with the group related to our board governance and the structure of our board, right? We operate as a committee of the whole, and that's how this board has operated for as far back as I know, and I'd like everyone to take the time to familiarize themselves with a standing committee board structure and consider that as an option as well, and compare the two, and I'll share a lot of information. Do your own research and speak to, certainly, Nicole is probably a good resource, as you can find, to give some feedback on that, but ultimately, it's the board's decision for how we want to run this board, so everyone should weigh in on that and consider what you think moving forward, and the last thing I
076have is regarding the recording of our meetings, right? So prior to the end of the school year, we were back and forth with the township just trying to come to a very mutual understanding in terms of how the recordings are being done and and just a little bit of language that helps govern that. We haven't really finalized that at this point, but I'd like, as of right now, that we're continuing with how we operated in the past until we do come up with some more formalized agreement, if we do, and that our meetings as of today should be broadcast as they have been in the past, so I'd like the board to welcome to weigh in on that. It's something that we can have further discussions on, but as of right now, we have not
077been posting the recordings of our meetings for the last couple of months, and I think we should get back to that. That's all I got. You want feedback on your last point? Sure. Absolutely. I tend to agree with you in large regard to the posting of the videos. However, when it comes to safety, there needs to be a safety net because the parents' concerns during their open comments was safety issues, this, that, and they spoke and gave advantages to people that could find that online and put our kids at risk, and until we've got some kind of agreement in place, then there's got to be something where us as a board says this is a safety issue, don't post this, and the town has to agree with that, or we go back to they have
078the right to videotape, but they don't have the access with the plugins and the cords and everything else. We've got to be able to have something to protect our kids with, especially when the parents are violating safety issues and profanity and un-colloquial behavior. That's my take. Thank you, Jesse. Anyone else? I'll say I agree with posting the videos again, particularly in a meeting like this where there's absolutely nothing controversial happening. I don't see a reason. If there's something that's happening that we have a reason to withhold it and we don't have agreement, but with the town on how to handle that, then yes, we can hold it back, I believe, but I think something like this that's reorg, I don't really see a reason to hold that back at this point or in a future
079meeting. It doesn't have anything else controversial again in it, so agreed. Right, I agree as well. Our meetings should be videotaped and made available to the community. If there is a safety concern for staff or students or our district, we should have the authority to not have that shown on video, so as long as we are able to do that, I don't see why we cannot move forward and have our videos posted like they've always been. Very rarely do we have an incident that jeopardizes the safety and security of the district, but if there does come a meeting where that happens, we should have the right and the authority to remove that and not post it. Thank you. I agree. I think as long as we have that ability to make that determination, I think
080they should for transparency's sake, and you know there's a lot of people who maybe can't get out to a meeting because they have child care issues and being able to, you know, they're not live streamed, so at least being able to log on the next day or within the next two days and be able to see what happened and stay in touch with what's going on, I think it's important, but I think the safety of the students and the safety of our staff has to be paramount, so as long as we have that ability to say either this cannot be posted at all, you cannot post the public section, but you can post everything else if we do have an issue where safety becomes a problem, then I think they should be posted as well.
081Thank you, Jane. Anyone else like to weigh in at all? I do want to say that I did create a contract. I'm waiting on the attorney to reach out to their attorney, so I've been trying to move forward with this as well, but I just keep sending emails. Yeah, no, I know there were efforts made on our part, and it just seems like we're at a standstill, right, but to David's point earlier, especially, you know, starting off the new year and especially a meeting like tonight, right, it would be a shame for those that couldn't be here that may want to watch the meeting not be able to do so, so, but again, I think we'll continue that effort. I'll, you know, I'm happy to jump in and speak to Jan and whoever else we
082may need to to try to move that forward. All right, I think that's it. I'm going to jump to Ronnie. I know she had something she wanted to bring. Yeah, the new board members, I gave you your Chromebook inside the front pocket. You'll find information on your login credentials and your password, and we do use a multi-factor authentication, which is Duo, so if you need to have any issues with that, the IT department, either Mike Vaccarino or Marybeth Feliciano-Cruz will help you with that. I gave you their email addresses as well. As Tim mentioned, we will be sending out information regarding your ethics and financial disclosure, and please, please, please try to get your mandated training done. That's something that, you know, the sooner you get it done, the more you benefit from it, especially
083as a new board member, but that goes to all board members that have mandated training requirements to please, when Melissa sends out the information, please try to address it as quickly as possible because it just kind of, we keep getting reminders and it just lags and drags on. Something else, but I don't remember what it is. It'll come to me, but welcome aboard, and any questions, you know, as we said, we're here to help. Ronnie, Melissa's going to send out the financial forms? Yes, Melissa sends all that. Only, I believe, yes, she'll send out everybody with the email, the login information. She handles all that through the department of Cool. Thank you. Cool. I, too, want to wish everyone a happy new year. I'd like to welcome the new board members. Congratulations, Dave and David,
084on becoming president and vice president again. I do want to let you know that we heard from the state that we have been randomly selected to participate in a special ed parent survey. More information about that will be forthcoming, so parents will send out some information pertaining to that, and then they'll get the survey from the state. I do want to let you know that today we had a random surprise inspection from the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Department. They did a random check on our quarterly maintenance, our driver's license, our DOE clearance, as well as drug testing, and I'm happy to say that we passed, and we're told that we're doing an excellent job. So that, and then I just wanted to share some of the events. We have nurtured heart training on January 21st
085from 6 to 7 30 here at Wembrock. We have Ryan's story with John Halligan, which Dave spoke about on February 4th from 6 to 7 with Pinebrook. I will tell you, nurtured heart, every time I listen to Ms. Legato speak, there's something that, there's always a great takeaway, and I think it's a really great training and session for parents to attend. As far as John Halligan's story, no one ever thinks they need that, to know that information until they do, and it's so critical to hear what he went through as a parent and to hear his story and be able to really reflect on that and bring that home. I do want to share that we were approved to have the Revolution New Jersey Traveling Museum, which will be here from April 10th to the
08624th, and we just got the email today that New Jersey School Boards, they have their eighth grade dialogue where an eighth grader from each school goes and speaks. That will be Tuesday, March 10th at six o'clock at Wolf Elementary School in Oceanport, so we'll be looking for a student to represent us there as well. And that's it. Nicole, is that one eighth grader or multiple? One. And then, as you mentioned, registration. The earlier you register, the better we can staff our building, so please, please register, and then we always have instances where some of our schools do not hold every child that would be their home school, and then we have people upset. You know, I registered in August, and now my child can't go to Taylor Mills because Taylor Mills is full, and that's
087what happens, so you want to be on first on the list. That's it. All right. That's all we got. All right, can I have a motion to adjourn? Mr. Singer and Mrs. Parisi. Thank you. For the record, I think the new people should stay another three hours like I did. I have to. So you guys can close up when you have to leave. I also heard from a bird next to me that someone else has a birthday tomorrow, so happy 50th birthday, Jesse. Happy birthday. All in favor of adjourning at 9 p.m.? Aye. Say aye. Anyone opposed? None noted. We're adjourned. Thank you. See you on the 20th.