001All right, Kev, we're back in session now, and we are going to go into changes and additions to the agenda. Jody, Nicole, changes, revisions, nothing, Kevin, no, okay. We're going to go into our first executive session, and then we will return for a student matter, and then we'll come back into open after. How long do we think we'll be there? Maybe 15 to 30 minutes we'll be in closed session, so motion and second to go in closed? Thank you. Well, I mean, we could start with letter H for the board's information. Just something that we, Dr. Santor put on the agenda. The Manalipans will be performing at Manalipan Day on June 15th, 2024, so if anybody's there, they will be able to see and support the Manalipans. Let's wait till Ryan gets back, and we'll
002move on here. D1, we don't vote on D1. I'll come back to it. I don't think we do. All right, Ryan, you're here, good. So can I get a motion and second on I1 and 2, please, Jamie and David Kane? Any questions, anybody? Just be generic tonight. Keep things moving. Okay, Kevin. Thank you. Mr. Ferber? Yes on I1, abstain on I2. Thank you. Mr. Graham? Yes. Mr. Green? Yes. Mrs. Herr? Yes. Mr. Kane? Yes. Mrs. Lucas? Yes on I1, abstain on I2. Mr. Santoro? Yes on I1, abstain on I2. Mr. DeCetti? Yes on I1, abstain on I2. Thank you. Motion carried. Okay, can I get a motion and second on J1 through J8, please? I'll move that. Mr. Green and Mr. Ferber? Any questions, anybody? J1 through J8? I have a question. Mr. Ferber? Item
003J5. J5. I was wondering if anybody had any information about it? Jodi, want to start with that, please? So I know Dr. Santoro had some correspondence, and I want to just pull that up to remain consistent with what she said, but I can talk to you about the fact that it's an excellent opportunity for networking with other human resources professionals on recruitment processes. It's a forum for questions that typically will arise, but let me just make sure I pull that up, because I think it's important to have that shared conversation. Can I make another quick comment while the assistant superintendent is doing that? Yes, sir. I just wanted to point out, Item J6 is the memorandum of agreement with the Menalpen English Town Education Association, the support staff unit that is custodians and maintenance workers
004in the district. Mr. Santoro and I were on that negotiations committee, and I just wanted to, I guess, acknowledge that unit and thank them. They were very pleasant to work with. We had two meetings and reached a settlement that I think is good for the district, and I think they found good for their membership, because I'm assuming they ratified it. So just want to thank them for making it an easy and productive process. Appreciate those comments. Okay. To go back to what was shared earlier, as I mentioned, it's a great networking opportunity. It's a forum where there are many districts throughout the state who come together with human resources questions. One of the benefits is the job fair that is hosted. While we haven't actually secured any tenure candidates, because we don't really have many
005of those positions, we have had substitutes that we've been able to procure. Just any way we can get out there and get our district known helps, because there is currently a teacher shortage. While we're not as impacted, having our district name out there does help us. We do have candidates who apply. It's just another way to network, gain support. Information comes regarding statute that's shared amongst the group. It's a nice group. I've sat through some of the different meetings that they've had, and it's typically questions, professional development, and it's a way to learn from one another. Is Shannon still going to be the point person? Shannon typically is the point person as our human resources manager. Thank you, Jody. You're welcome. Any other questions on J1 through J8, please? Kevin? Thank you. Mr. Graham? Yes.
006Mr. Green? Yes. Mrs. Herr? Yes. Mr. Cain? Yes. Mrs. Lucas? Yes. Mr. Santoro? Yes. Mr. Tossetti? Yes. Mr. Ferber? Yes. Motion carried. I'm actually going to jump back, please, if you don't mind, to item C, public input, on the agenda outside of items D. I don't know if anybody has anything to speak about. If you could come to the microphone, please, state your name and address, and you have three minutes to speak. Thank you. Dan Finn. I'm currently in Colts Neck. I just moved a couple months ago, and first I want to say that I appreciate this evening's celebration of teachers. My mother was a teacher, and I just love the profession. I'm actually a Sunday school teacher, and I just love these little kids. So again, I'm a father of five, grandfather of five,
007retired military officer. And everything the assistant superintendent said sounded great, but what is the purpose of this actually in the construct of what we're seeing in our public education system? The systematic liberalization of our system that undermines core education to emphasize government overreach and things that really don't represent preparing these kids for adult life. As a military officer, I saw what happened over the course of years where we had to lower the standards because young people couldn't follow instructions and meet the requirements for physical or academic success. Also I want to just comment that your board attorney did a great, fantastic job representing you in the case that the DEA brought against you for 5756. I happen to have the privilege of being in the courtroom. They put us in the smallest courtroom in the
008place, and I think deprived a lot of the public from witnessing the defense blow the attorney general's case out of the water and then some. And I just also want you to know that many school districts didn't even adopt 5756, and some adopted it two or three years later and revised it upon adopting it. So what in the world is going on is beyond me with that case. So back to this, DEI, during my military career, I was wondering what in the world it was all about, and somebody said, it's real simple, didn't earn it, DEI didn't earn it. We have all kinds of fancy acronyms and things that are trying to make things sound real nice, but they're distorting the words and the meaning of those words. Those words have meaning, and policies that
009are implemented using those words and statements have consequences. And in this particular example, we already have anti-discrimination, anti-bullying and these other things, and from my military experience, you're not creating a diverse workforce, you're creating a division and a basis for resentment. We are all created equal and have opportunities, and these kinds of programs are actually separating people, pulling people apart. So I would encourage you to not fall for the good sounding words. Look at what this, and paying, you're going to pay to have somebody come in and help you hire and discriminate against others, because what it really boils down to is just an average high school graduate with their teaching credentials that might be Caucasian need not apply. We're looking for what? What is it saying? Pride, diversity, what do those words become to
010mean? It's not right. It is discriminatory. All of us should be treated equal, all of the kids should be loved and treated equal. We don't need special rights and provisions like in 5756 that undermine parental authority, and we don't need to hire a staff that is an advocate for liberalism to liberalize the system even more. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you for your service as well. Any other public comments? I'm concerned about that policy of hiring diverse educators. I took a social justice class at Monmouth University, so I'm familiar with that. I'm just concerned that you guys came so far and, well, you didn't overturn 5756, but fighting for parental rights, and I believe it's an opportunity for the state to put their agenda into the schools by hiring people that have
011that on their agenda, and I do believe, as Mr. Finn said, that it is divisive. And just to be concerned about that, when you're hiring people that we are looking to teach reading, writing, and rhythm, not be so concerned about the social agenda. So I just feel like we're much easier issues that are in there, great for the job, but I just feel like we're much easier issues for more diversity. Thank you. And I do applaud and commend you for the fortitude and courage that this board has taken to protect children and defend parental rights, and I too was at that court case, and I too have been very actively interested in this because of our mission to protect children from exploitation. I also commend you for, and I also celebrate teachers. We also have
012a, where we teach, our foundation does teach children, in order to prevent poverty, we go to poor neighbourhoods and we tutor and we teach children healthy relationships. Our last program was in Barringer, one of the lowest graduation rates in the state, and as a result of the program, 100 kids were accepted into college. Anyway, but I'm here to just make a couple comments on the same issue that the two testified before me. I too encourage you to reject, or at least very seriously consider, the Central Jersey Program for the Improvement of Diverse Educators because it's actually unconstitutional. You may not be, or I'm sure you may be aware that affirmative action laws based upon racial considerations were struck down by the Supreme Court in the Students for Fair Admission versus the Harvard University, President Donald
013of Harvard University, and the same principle really applies here to gender, sex, gender identity, sexual preference, etc. In that case, the court recognized that separate cannot be lethal, and racial discrimination in public education is unconstitutional. Public education must be available to all on equal terms, and to discriminate against some in favour of others based solely on race, gender, etc., they found that the court recognized the guarantee of equal protection cannot mean one thing when applied to one individual and something else when applied to another. One more point I wanted to make on that equity and inclusion is that the state of Texas eliminated DEI and instead promotes a merit-based approach where individuals are judged on their qualifications, their skills, and contributions, as Martin Luther King would say, add, I mean character, and not necessarily the
014colour of their skin or sexual preference. Workers in the airline industry complain that DEI is compromising worker safety with its push to implement corporate diversity in its struggle to fill corporate diversity, equity, and inclusion. You go ahead, finish up. Okay, I just have two more. That's fine, go ahead. There's nobody behind you. And the staff claim that DEI hiring programs are risking people's lives for the sake of filling quotas based on race and gender identity, etc. So if you're looking for diverse workers for us, it's not necessarily a qualified one, and not necessarily a qualified one. You can jeopardize the quality of service. It's certainly one who, doctor, you would want one who's best qualified and not one that leads a social career. And then the last sentence here is mentioned for its devices. So
015when diversity, equity, and inclusion are meritorious when they're applied according to their meaning, but when diversity discriminates against one group over another, and equity denies equal treatment to certain individuals that are not in a protected cloud, and inclusion excludes anyone who just reads a particular ideology, then we undermine the computational rights to liberty and justice for all. So thank you for the opportunity to address that. Thank you. Any more public comment? Item D, I skipped over that one by mistake as well. So can I get a motion and second on D1, please? David Cain, Ryan Green. Any questions or comments on D1? Kevin? Thank you. Mr. Verber? Mr. Graham? Yes. Mr. Green? Yes. Mrs. Her? Yes. Mr. Cain? Yes. Mrs. Lucas? Yes. Mr. Santoro? Yes. Mr. Tussetti? Yes. Motion carried. Personnel K2 through K24, please.
016Mr. Tussetti? Mrs. Her? Any questions or comments on K2? I'm asking for clarification for four. Does that mean she's getting it or they're not getting it? Which number? Number four. The rescinding of the discretionary leave. She no longer needs the day unpaid. Okay. That's a yes. Good question. Any other questions in personnel, please? Okay, Kevin? Thank you. Mr. Green? Yes. Mrs. Her? Yes. Mr. Cain? Yes. Mrs. Lucas? Yes. Mr. Santoro? Yes. Mr. Tussetti? Yes. Mr. Verber? Yes. Mr. Green? Yes. Motion carried. L1, please. Motion to second. Kelly? Dave Ferber? Any questions? Anybody on K1? I'm sorry, L1? No. Kevin? Thank you. Mrs. Her? Yes. Mr. Cain? Yes. Mrs. Lucas? Yes. Mr. Santoro? Yes. Mr. Tussetti? Yes. Mr. Ferber? Mr. Green? Yes. Mr. Green? Yes. Motion carried. Old and new for the board. LRM, start with
017you, Mark? Just to echo what Ryan had spoke about earlier, the MENA negotiations were well, I'm sorry, not the MENA, the custodials went very well. Happy to be a part of it and a big shout out to the band today and all the retirees and honorees. Thank you. David? I was just going to say quick congrats to all the honorees and thought the band was really awesome. Kelly? I just want to say congratulations to everyone that was here tonight, the educators, the staff, everything that was said about them tonight was wonderful and I just want to congratulate them a second time. Jesse? Oh, everybody else's sentiment, I got nothing new. Congrats to the retirees. It is nice to see a name on there of someone who worked here when I was last a student in
018the district. Admittedly, it's someone who worked here more than 34 years, so it does make me feel a little older, but congratulations to all the retirees tonight. Well deserved. Amy? Ditto, everybody's, everyone else's sentiment. Congratulations to everyone this evening. The jazz band was amazing and please come out and support the Menalopans at Menalopan Day. I will be there, but it would be nice if others stopped by too. Mr. Ferber? Yeah, also really, I thought it was a great start to the evening and I want to congratulate again all the honorees and award recipients. Well deserved and definitely really shines a nice light on our district to see all the amazing staff we have here. I did want to touch on CJ Pride and what a couple of our attendees brought up and I was concerned
019about this myself as I was not really familiar with this, I guess, organization and when I inquired about it and maybe Dr. Centora can elaborate a little more on some of the feedback she provided to me earlier today, but it is a group that I know we've been connected to for a few years now and what was, being on the agenda tonight had nothing to do with policy. There was no policy passed or change related to CJ Pride, it just has to do with being associated with the organization and participating with their networking events and some of the resources that they provide. But Dr. Centora, if you don't mind, if you could speak to that. We've been a member of CJ Pride since 2020. If you go to their website, it looks like they changed
020their name to NJ Stride versus CJ Pride and Central Jersey. It did start almost as a homegrown, I think that's the right word, organization of HR supervisors meeting, working collaboratively, they gave themselves a name and then it developed, kind of reminds me a little bit of like the Garden State Coalition and when groups like that develop, they wind up making, I guess, having the ability to make more input at the state level. So for instance, CJ Pride was one of the organizations that talked about substituting and when the state wanted to change how long a substitute could be in a classroom, they spoke out against it as we need to be able to keep the substitutes longer, especially with the current job market and they were able to work with the state to get that
021longer time. It's an advocate for districts. They also deal with some of our HR vendors. You can see that if you're on their website and you click on a district that's a member, it goes immediately to their front line page, which shows our application process, our appletrack, which hopefully will bring in more applicants. We participated, I think, every year but one. I'm not looking at Rebecca because she usually participates in the job fair. It's a huge job fair. It's virtual. You have like a virtual stand and we have yet to hire a tenure teacher from the job fair but we have hired substitutes from the job fair. Not permanent but short-term subs. So it's really just a way to get information. I know very often we'll be talking about something and we just had it
022the other day and we're like, well, what do other districts do? And Shannon will be like, I'll email to the CJ Pride group and see what other districts are doing with this. And it's not necessarily something that is about diversity. Do you remember what the last... I do, actually. It was something regarding sick days and the new sick day law. Do you want me to share what the question was? No, I don't think we have to go into it but it was about the sick day law and how it's being interpreted in different districts. So Shannon reached out to the group and we had like what 10 other districts were doing. Of course we told them what we were doing was right and we didn't really care what they were doing. But we still got
023input very quickly from other districts. So primarily we use it as a networking with other districts. And if you look at the districts that our members, most are very high performing. It's a good group to be able to connect with. Did I miss anything, Dave? No, I don't think so. And thank you. But just to the people out of here from the public, I appreciate your concerns and comments and bringing, you know, raising the concern related to them. I know a few board members were concerned ourselves just as to what was sort of behind this group as a lot of us were not really familiar with it even though our district, as we said, has been participating with them for a few years already. And I can assure you that we will be keeping, you
024know, a close eye on making sure everything is on the up and up. And I do want to say that we have always and will always hire the best candidate. We don't discriminate against any candidate. We follow all state statutes and regulations as far as affirmative action. Yeah, I think, you know, in my email exchange with you earlier was, you know, both of us back and forth saying, you know, we hire the best candidates. We always have. That's why we're one of the best districts in the nation. As I said earlier, we hire the best candidates. Thank you. Thanks, Dave. Jody? Other than congratulating everybody and just saying job well done, it's one of my favorite nights of the entire year. I look forward to it. And just seeing the camaraderie and collegiality expressed by
025everybody is wonderful. So it was a lovely evening and thank you for the board's support as well. I just want to let you know we had, I have sent you emails. We talked a little bit in the past about that new state statute that the tax levy. We were waiting on updated information from the state to be able to present to you where we're headed. That being said, it came out at 2 17 this afternoon and it had some caveats that we weren't expecting. And Ms. Wolf and I spoke a few minutes after it came out and we had read it and we both decided that we will wait till the next board reading because we really want to analyze it and see what effects it has for the district and where we want to
026go moving forward. We didn't want to get something at 2 30 and quickly put something together and put it on an agenda just for the sake of getting it on an agenda. I believe we have till July 19th to make any action. So the time is there and we want to make sure we get this right. Again, you know, we all talked about it, how great of a district we are, the people here, retirees, teachers of the year, support staff of the year, the volunteers with all the different organizations within the school system. It's just tremendous to be a part of. And, you know, I know we're all honored to sit up here and represent this fine school district. Our next board meeting is June 18th here. Yes, it is the 18th. Is it here?
027It is here. Yes, 7 30 18th here. For the record, I saw Pinebrook was playing in their manalapans tonight. Pinebrook percussion was playing tonight. So I went to that school first. So I again, I didn't read ahead. I should have all the way across town as far as it could be from my house. That is not true. Mr. Graham takes his job very seriously and periodically drives by each school to make sure that it's up to his expectations. All right. We're going to go back into closed again for negotiations and a quick quick quick discussion on this maintenance evaluation. And we are not going to have any action after closed. Correct. Okay. How long do we anticipate? We anticipate being closed for maybe 15, sorry, 30 minutes. It's not it won't be 30 minutes. 30
028minutes. Famous last words. My colleague on the left. Motion to go with closed. Yes, sir. Oh, yeah, I think that's thank you. I think that's great to mention. So we had heard from a neighboring district about a grant to help municipalities and school districts improve improve their playground facilities. We applied. It was not an easy application. It was kind of awkward to maneuver, but we were granted $67,000. And right now Taylor Mills playground is in dire need of repairs. So that will go directly into Taylor Mills playground to offer a new facility for our children to learn and to have fun on. We are truly excited about this. The best news is that it looks like you can apply for this grant every year. So, you know, it's already on my calendar for next January
029to look it up so we can apply again. And hopefully we can periodically improve our playgrounds that need it. So thank you for bringing that up. We are so excited. Every bit helps. Playgrounds in the past were sometimes donated to us through the PTA and PTOs. And then the upkeep becomes difficult and then they age out. And when playgrounds can cost upwards of over $100,000, it's a hard amount of money for our PTAs and PTOs to raise. And it's hard for us to commit our funds to in a budget crisis. So this money is a godsend and we are so happy to have it. So thank you for reminding me of that. Okay. Motion to go to close. Everybody else?