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 paces the mailing and or hand delivery of said notice to the designated newspapers the Asbury Park Press and the Monalepin Patch and following with the clerk of Monalepin Township and the clerk of English Town Borough I'll call the roll mr. Bruno mr. Ferber yeah mr. Graham is absent this evening mr. Green here mr. McCain here mrs. Parisi here mrs. Pichero yeah mr. Tosetti and mr. Ergo is absent as well this evening we do have a quorum would you please rise for the flag salute pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic on which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty
002and justice for all. I know. But I don't think there is in your face though maybe maybe for you they are okay so Brian is out tonight so I'll be taking the reins for the evening we'll start with changes and revisions to the agenda we had an email earlier is there anything else nothing else okay so we are gonna go right into our presentation on the curriculum Jody will take over and I think the board is gonna move out to the reserved seats all right good evening everybody thank you for relocating so that we can more easily see so this evening I'm happy to present to you about curricular updates and anything else that was brought down that we needed to share to keep you well informed I will go through some slides rather quickly
003because a lot of that is procedural and our board is similar to last year so a lot of those steps you are aware of regarding the process first and foremost why were revisions needed we are ongoing we are constantly making and evaluating our curricula to make adjustments sometimes it's for support to what is needed from feedback to realign with vision and philosophy and sometimes it's for compliance and we are actually this year up for a New Jersey and I'll explain what that is audit for the 23-24 school year so what is QSAC the New Jersey quality single accountability continuum is the Department of Education's monitoring and district self-evaluation system that all public schools need to go through the system shifts the monitoring and evaluation focus from compliance to assisting it's meant to help the schools
004it is a single comprehensive accountability system that consolidates and incorporates the monitoring requirements of applicable state laws and program and complements federal requirements there are five key components they are instruction and program fiscal governance operations and personnel we're not going to go in depth with this but it's important that you understand that curriculum falls under instruction and program we will be audited this year in the early winter that's the timeline we were given which means we will work on a self-assessment probably towards the end of October and we will ask some board members to be a part of that committee but for the purpose of curriculum it's what guides some of these revisions the process we have gone over before it's not mrs. pepchinsky making all the decisions it's a collaborative effort we have our
005supervisors who work with the team of teachers and if it's simple updates such as a standard for interdisciplinary connections the supervisor may do that on their own again this goes over the process which you're well aware of so this year's guides when I went into this year's revisions I said oh we revised everything last year we should be good but when we did our self-audit to prepare for QSAC there were some adjustments we had to made that were just topical for the most part to almost every guide so in this instance all guides that are up for readoption rather than me listing this over and over I want you to be aware that all guides listed we did review the interdisciplinary connections those existed last year when you approved and adopted the curricula what we
006did was we made sure the standards were listed interdisciplinary wise as well additionally we reviewed assessments there's four types of assessments that need to be included in a curriculum guide per QSAC we have them it's what we were doing it's not new we just made sure they were added into each guide so that for compliance we truly meet that check mark it was getting done it was happening it wasn't anything we had the documents we just wanted to make sure it was included overall each guide list is where her revision was made our in general music we updated career standards not content it was literally checking off and making sure career standards were listed they were last year we made sure anything else relevant was included middle school cycles we call them art careers computer
007science music maker space we also updated the pacing charts to demonstrate that it's on a five Quinn master cycle we actually changed the name from computer literacy to now being called computer science it aligns with what we do and stem robotics was an eighth grade cycle we're moving it to seventh grade media studies we added a steam unit and we made sure again that the visual and performing arts media standards were integrated throughout various curricula other revisions physical education we've always integrated the dance curricula into the standards into PE so we updated that unit and for health there is one change I do want to be very clear there was no changes to anything that was adopted last year in regards to sex education or gender that is exactly identical to what was approved last
008year the only change comes in having something connected to climate change that is a requirement for every curricula how we went about this it's very simple discuss research health problems affected by the environment that can be something as simple as looking at wildfires it impacts breathing it impacts air quality something very relevant to what we just went through recently if we all think back to May other guides that have been revised stem K again adding those media arts standards technology adding those media arts standards and world language you know that world language is being revised throughout the district we had a presentation on that earlier in the spring we made sure that for grades six to eight that the pacing guide reflects that it's on a quid master schedule ELA this is new grades four
009and five have been updated to reflect the inclusion of the reading workshop model that aligns with where we've been heading for the last three to four years that was done in grades K through three we're just following through and our implement implementation is now complete also we are adopting the DRA 3 to replace the DRA 2 why you might ask because the DRA 2 will no longer be sold we did a complete pilot and this is what the teachers selected we also needed to make sure we were meeting statuary requirements including things related to Holocaust instruction that's integrated throughout primarily it's in fourth through eighth grade even though children do learn about other strategies and other subjects related to that concept more about anti-bullying strategies acceptance of others but it's very simplistic and it basically
010leads up about treating people with respect mathematics we updated the assessments and added any interdisciplinary standards were relevant social studies I have a lot here it looks like there's a lot but it's really just the description this is what the description now says not the content so the description for each course has been updated to indicate that students will participate in any in an inquiry process designed to shift from studying social studies to doing social studies the inquiry method begins with a compelling question which allows students to perform research view through the lenses of historians geographers economists political scientists in order to respond to the question and each unit has specific presentations which reflects student learning we also added the ELA interdisciplinary standards and we updated again just like with ELA any mandates related to
011the Holocaust and Amistad and other under represented groups this is something we've always done we just made it very clearly notated science was updated to reflect project lead the way in grade four teachers gave input throughout the course the year so grade three included the addition of a water cycle related activity and a related activity again we made sure the interdisciplinary standards were noted for ELA and anything related to that climate change requirement was also included dance and theater this is an interesting one we have done this it's always been integrated throughout our curricula particularly in PE and in ELA classes English language arts it is required to have a separate dance curricula and a separate theater curricula you're not required per se to have separate classes but the guides have to exist so we
012can still integrate what we're doing into PE or music class when it comes to dance and we can also integrate like we have been doing for theater into English language arts and social studies but now they just exist as separate guides so if somebody wanted to see what we were doing those guides are separate from ELA and separate from PE we've been doing it it's just new as a guide I had fun doing that it's interesting to come up with some of the different hands-on activities that I foresee students even doing his brain breaks English as a second language these also are completely new these are revised it did take a lot of time because we first needed all of our content area guides updated so this was a two-year process and what we have
013are guides that integrate curricula and are very focused on the five WIDA standards for our English language learners new key language uses are noted language expectations have been consolidated and proficiency level descriptors for interpretive and expressive modes of communication may be used it's a great guide for our ELL teachers our ESL teachers to support our ELL English language learners in their development talented this is not new we actually have talked about this over the course of the last two to three years but just a reminder that our self-contained program has officially been phased out in case any questions come up how do we support these students we absolutely do it is called gifted and talented we refer to it as academically talented programming it's provided to all students who are identified as eligible across all
014elementary schools including K through 5 and at the middle schools we have with distinction English language arts opportunities as well as advanced math classes as of the 22 I'm sorry as of the 2324 school year it's now inclusive within the buildings so Lafayette no longer houses separate classes just for 80 how do we service these students this is more of a review at the k-5 levels to district and Richmond teachers are assigned to three elementary schools each they provide support instruction and services two days of the six-day cycle to each school students can qualify for math and or English language arts enrichment activities include integrated STEAM science technology engineering art and math components and they typically receive this one to two days per week what we love about this model is that more students have
015the opportunity for enrichment services and because there's multiple cycles students can get it twice students may who never had it may be eligible all students have the opportunity if they meet the criteria including ELL and special education students which is great because students have all abilities and we recognize that and we don't want to limit it to one or two classes it's district-wide mem cycles just so you know for next year there are some small changes grade 7 will consist of art music skills for success stem robotics which is moving from eighth grade to seventh grade that eighth grade curricula is now for seventh grade and world language which you are aware of is now becoming a cycle for grade 8 art careers which has been for grade 8 computer science it's no more no
016longer called computer literacy music and world language again world language K through 5 a review of what we discussed earlier in the spring students and grades K through 5 will now receive live world language instruction with a teacher that is not remote it is not done through Rosetta Stone currently our plan is for the languages of Spanish and American Sign Language with that in-person teacher the language students receive will rotate so three schools this upcoming year and they are noted Clark Mills Taylor Mills and Wemrock will receive American Sign Language as their world language course of study the other three schools the ELC Lafayette and Milford will receive instruction in Spanish the next year that will rotate you may be asking yourself why it's very difficult to find world language teachers right now we were
017very fortunate to find teachers we were hoping to get to with the same language so that that was consistent we were not able to do so however this still provides an equitable experience every other years and I actually really like the fact that they will have exposure to multiple world languages over the course of their time in the MERS district what is also very nice is that they will have opportunities to study different cultures related to the implementation of language and when you think about American Sign Language you may not think of culture in the same manner that you would think of Spanish but this provides students the opportunity to learn why American Sign Language would be utilized in an ideal world we would have preferred two languages but this opens up more experiences which
018we like instruction will occur during the special subject encore subject unlike how it was done in the past once a month students would miss a core content subject to receive either a video recorded lesson or a Google meet lesson with one of our middle school teachers this will prevent them from missing instruction in a core instructional area field trips I am so excited to reintroduce field trips back for this school year we have spent a lot of time researching dr. Santora and mr. Duffy did a presentation earlier I believe it was January or February related to field trips for some context our district has never done with the exception of fifth grade grade level field trips typically a field trip was up to the teacher in a school not every school did field trips not
019every teacher did field trips not every grade level did field trips in our discussion which was a collaborative process we did determine that right now we will do grade level experiences to create an equitable opportunity for the children across the district with that said I do have to thank miss Margaret Scattery our social studies and science supervisor and mr. Maddock Reed the assistant principal here at MAMS who is also the social studies supervisor they did a lot of research to look for trips that were inexpensive local and by local meaning we can easily get there with our busing services and to make sure they were aligned clearly to the curriculum first grade we'll be going to insect tropolis all first grade classes in every school insect tropolis will motivate visitors to discover the little-known lives
020of insects and foster greater appreciation for bugs and their place in our world noted up here are the different curricular standards in which this trip correlates to it is based on and integrated into what we do curricular wise Sandy Hook now you may say isn't that what they used to do and I thought it didn't relate to the curriculum because we did say that and that was true in our research and since COVID Sandy Hook has actually redesigned all their field trips and now fortunately for us it does correlate to the curriculum for fifth grade we listened and the feedback we heard that everybody loved this trip and it was a special memory we heard that and we wanted to bring that back so fifth graders across the district will once again be going to
021Sandy Hook and it does it does relate to our curriculum as you can see such as noted above grade six will continue to go to biz town and grade eight will have a field trip to Monmouth Battlegrounds State Park which correlates to what they study study in social studies so there will be grade-level trips for first grade fifth grade sixth grade and eighth grade I know the question has come up why can't everybody go on a field trip scheduling a field trip is a challenge I know it may not seem that but it is we need to provide nurses to go on trips to to help students with medical concerns or allergies that is a requirement if a nurse can't come because that has happened let's say there's not enough nurses to cover the district
022and we have to pull the nurse from a trip or work something out trips have been canceled we don't want to do that we try to avoid that there's a letter that went out in the portal about that as well that's one reason it's hard to schedule with nurses the availability of bus drivers there are sometimes limitations when it comes to the actual field trips they only allow certain numbers of students to go per day a certain number of classes to go when we start to break down I believe on the agenda you'll see if you haven't looked at it all of these trips are listed there's about 30 dates just from these field trips that that collaboration and coordination had to occur we haven't even gotten into the weather because if it rains for
023Sandy Hook Sandy Hook does say it happens rain or shine so even if it rains children may go unless there are dangerous weather conditions that includes lightning or the potential thereof so it's very hard to try to get additional dates so we're gonna all do a rain dance when it comes to Sandy Hook trips and hope there's no rain I've been through that where you're sitting there the night before going it's June and it's supposed to rain and I don't think they have any more dates I don't want this class to miss out unfortunately that has happened insectropolis is inside Monmouth battlefield is outside so there's a lot that goes into this and then there's times we avoid September June is hard even though some of the trips occur in June and then there are
024vacations and days off the snow in the winter it's not a simple process but we are excited to have these field trips planned for next year and there are other field trips that come up with special opportunities last year there was a group of students who went to Princeton from the middle school for a special opportunity and those types of trips will continue to be embraced as are the trips that are planned with our special education students for life skills the trip we looked into actually our admin team went on a field trip this summer they went to Marl Pitt Hall and they deemed this trip appropriate for grade 5 or grade 7 it's something we would consider for a potential field trip down down the line and we wanted you to be aware of
025what that option potentially could be this year we are in year two of the nurtured heart approach implementation the nurtured heart approach for background is a philosophy developed by Howard Glasser that focuses on building positive relationships with children to encourage their sense of self-worth what it is not is a plan for consequences that's separate with classroom management this is a way of being able to speak to students and help to redirect away from negative attention this approach aligns with what the district has been discussing since as far back as 2016 when we went to model schools and adopted those principles with model schools we stress not only the importance of rigor and well relevance but also that of relationships this complements that process it's the importance of recognizing and praising children's positive behaviors and their
026traits rather than focusing on the negative everything we do builds upon and is a step up from what we have done previously and we are really excited about this approach how will we be turning this out staff will be trained continually throughout the year even our transportation department is included in this they were trained last year in 22 23 and new members will be trained in this new school year training kicks off at day one at our keynote presentation on September 1st the board we would love for you to attend if you're able to this training will focus on understanding what is meant by intentions and the language of the approach unpacking the three standards of the approach of the approach emphasizing strand one and strand two and then simple strategies that our staff can
027apply as of September 6th day one of school the goal is to put these ideas into practice immediately and then as is listed we'll have other trainings that will occur throughout the course of the year and our coach miss Jill legato will be available outside of contractual hours she does have a special stipend for that where she could help support staff with questions as well our goals everybody is using this beginning with day one of school we've we have champion teams that are also being developed that helps with school culture and climate we even want to create a champion team at Main Street so that we can recognize the good in everybody even within central office there will be monthly before and after sessions monthly building based coaching sessions and modeling newsletters a Google Drive
028we will be providing support to our staff if we don't provide that support this will not be successful I also know that miss legato will offer as she did last year additional parent workshops as well another thing I'm very excited about is this year's district vision and theme our board members you received your vision t-shirts today we thank the foundation actually for donating them to us this year so thank you to them our mantra and theme for this year every child deserves a champion be the champion that's what we're here for the children updates from the state I don't believe any of this is new but it does have an impact upon things we will be doing throughout the course of this year last year we may have referenced that the state was in the
029process of updating they convened a committee to review the English language arts and mathematics standards which have not been updated since I believe it was 2016 that committee convened not at the district level this has nothing to do with us until we're told you must implement them they collected feedback on their draft in throughout the course of the spring we are still waiting to hear if those standards have been updated and adopted by the state board of ed the initial plan we were told is that they would be implemented and approved around now and that we would be working throughout the course of this year to include them into a revised curricula for adoption next August I'm waiting but in my head I'm still planning to make those updates so just a reminder for next
030August once again every curriculum guide will need to be updated because English language arts is in every single guide so we'll have a very similar presentation next year explaining the why for reference I'm actually not going to go over this in depth but our English language arts supervisor Mr. Kurt Abel he did a breakdown of the new standards compare them to what currently is in place and actually did a comparison exactly noting what the differences are the biggest notations and takeaways are listed here and it's really an emphasis on the K5 foundational reading skills and writing skills decoding is emphasized over leveled reading in kindergarten and really in the middle school is almost the same so I don't foresee great changes having to occur in the curriculum except for the fact that we do have
031to look for a program to replace project read not by choice project read was sold and we can still use the strategies but we do have to find updated materials to replace that and that's something we'll be working on over the course of the next two years because we want to ensure that what we use to replace it with is what best fits our district same for mathematics these were miss Mary Jo McHale is our math supervisor she also did a side-by-side comparison and these were the notable takeaways very similar and not just to not read everything but grades K2 the addition of working with money has been implemented in kindergarten instead of second grade grades three through five there's the addition of new data literacy standards in grade eight and algebra there are new
032standards addressing evaluating and or simplifying numerical radicals there's less here as you will see from what was listed with ELA this is not new but this came out in January 2023 another bill was passed establishing the requirement of k-12 instruction on informational literacy and that there will be standards we do not have them yet so right now this is just an FYI for you and what's great about this is the requirement comes from the media specialists actually you have to have a media specialist work on the curriculum a lot of this is already what from what I anticipate what our media specialists are currently teaching in their curriculum guide they just weren't based on New Jersey standards but more national standards the literacy got information literacy guidelines will include at a minimum the research process
033and how information is created and produced critical thinking and using information resources research methods that's in many of our different subjects already the differences between fact points of view and opinions accessing peer-reviewed print and digital library resources and the economic legal and social issues surrounding the use of information and ethical production of information not anything off from what our media specialists currently do I think if you were to look at those standards you'd find a lot of similarities for your reference this these are the members of our curriculum department this information is accessible on the website for anybody looking to ever at any point in time review our district curriculum it is always available on the MERS website this information is here for you if you're going through your phones or just on a computer
034it's under departments curriculum and there's a section section just on curriculum guides these new adoptions have to be made live but the public does have access to every single guide on today's agenda with any revisions and we'll have the new guides live before the start of school that information will also be turned keyed out to our staff more links based upon what was referenced and that is the conclusion of tonight's curriculum presentation any questions from our board yes and I will put the screen off so how about I do that really quickly for you so Jody we'll ask for questions in a second I just want to say thank you that was great very thorough I think it's helpful for the board the public who is here and those who may be watching on video
035to see all of those changes laid out so thoroughly so thank you for taking the time to do that put it together and present it tonight and I think a lot of people are probably happy about the class trips as well so that's a great addition so thank you does anybody have any questions that they want to ask just to say I will send this out to the community tomorrow so they'll get the presentation and it will be posted on the district website is there a cost associated with the nurture health program nurture heart nurture so nurtured heart we actually received a grant two years ago that miss Samino presented it was the dreams grant and we received trading through that so at that point there was no cost so the costs we are incurring
036are all being funded through the ARP grant the American rescue plan and that's just paying for materials we have some workbooks we bought for the teachers and admin but in regards to a consultant no and the other piece is I'm using some of the professional development funding from ARP to pay for the stipend for miss so that we can provide support so after the ARP funds are extinguished is there gonna be an annual upkeep cost for that I don't I don't have it right now like it's maybe up books for new staff members or trading for new staff members where we would pay someone on staff to do so it would be really minimal and I would have title to funding that I or title for funding actually that would relate to that yes anybody
037else yeah well thank you for the presentation and and it was very thorough but I just really want to say it's great to see all those field trips coming back I think when I looked at the details of it was at least 30 or so across you know many different grades so and thank you for really clarifying why it's unfortunately difficult for every class to have that because you know had a bunch of parents reaching out concerned or maybe disappointed that certain kids will not have the opportunity at least maybe not this year but they will next year so it helps when we have a better understanding of you know why that is so thank you for that and a great job on the presentation thank you last call anybody else we're good okay next
038we're gonna jump into public input we're gonna take a slight detour kick it to our board attorney for a brief statement thank you and good evening to the board and the members of the public the district is in receipt of the honorable judge David F. Baumann's decision with respect to the district's enforcement and implementation of amended policy 5756 transgender students significantly the court made no ruling on the merits of the policy itself or on the state's position it simply maintains the status quo until underlying litigation before the New Jersey Division on Civil Rights is resolved the board firmly believes that the law and facts supports its position comments made this evening by board members on this topic are a reflection of their own opinion and not necessarily that of the entire board the board will
039be making a public statement later in the week regarding this matter with respect to public comment please be reminded that the rules governing public comment pursuant to board policy is that the portion is your opportunity to comment but it is not a form for the board to respond to your comments the board will certainly give all comments appropriate consideration and when permitted public participation shall be governed by district policy 0167 and with that the board opens public comment to the floor thank you anyone who wants to speak just come to the mic please state your name and your address good evening my name is Mark Santoro I live in 3 Winner's Circle in Manalapan firstly I would like to express my gratitude and thankfulness to the board and it was a very good positive thing
040that you guys did pursuing this as far can you can you raise the mic a little bit it's kind of hard to hear you sorry thank you better so what I was saying was I want to be very thankful to the board for pushing this as far as we did I'm very disappointed in judge Bowman's policy decision rather on that note I would like to take this opportunity to introduce myself to the board I am a candidate for a board position for the election coming up November 7th and it's all I really wanted to thank you guys again for doing everything you guys can hear me good evening everyone my name is Matt Borowski I'm a candidate for a board of education I wanted to thank everyone for your time tonight and also it's great
041the new slogan about our children that's why I'm here I live on champions Wayne Manalapan one of the busiest guys in the world but I still have time to for my children and I look forward to working with you soon thank you Kelly Lucas Chesapeake Road I'm also running this I can't hear you Kelly Lucas Chesapeake Road I'm also running with the two men that just spoke I hope to be a part of board also and I just wanted to also thank you for standing together and voting on the new policy and I hope that the judge reconsiderers or there is an appeal that we can move forward and I'll be on the same page thank you for everything you guys have done anybody else okay thank you very much with that we will close
042the public comment section we will move on to section E of our agenda which is for the board's information we have five items it's district regulations updates the assessment schedule letter the DLM results the concert schedule and the referendum committee minutes I know we're gonna get into that later in workshop but does anyone have any questions about any of those items yeah David on what are we on E E1 D control of communicable diseases so I'm looking at that there's certain I guess qualifiers as to determining for a teacher or another staff member maybe to feel that a student should be sent to the nurse for evaluation one of those being running a runny nose seemed a bit extreme I was curious if that is something being either suggested or possibly mandated from coming from
043the state or where that information came from and is that something that we we have to enforce because it just seems absolutely extreme that every kid with a runny nose is going to be sent to the nurse I don't think it's saying that every child with a runny nose I would think it would be an extreme example yes during allergy season people have runny noses everything with our policy I know that mr. Marco so consult it with the Department of Health guidelines but you also ran the regulations through our physician okay so I guess it'll just be open for interpretation interpretation whether it's significant enough runny nose yes a little sniffles not gonna send them down but if it's pouring out okay anything else from the board okay we will jump to section F the
044action items for administration can I have a motion and a second on f1 through f8 please Christine second right right no questions yes I have a couple of items regarding f6 which is the updated sick policy not that I want to change anything here but I do think it's worth sort of noting for for our purposes as the board and certainly for the public that this policy change is the result of a change in the law by the state made by the state legislature and in their infinite wisdom they have expanded the definition of sick leave to the point where I wish they would have just changed the name and called it paid time off PTO instead of sick leave because now I mean if your child has an appointment at school you can use
045a sick day so you know unfortunately we're at the mercy of the of the state on this one but I did ask Danielle prior to the meeting you know how does that align with what's in our contract because in our contract with the MEA the teachers association we have language in there regarding use of sick leave for critical illness of family members use of leave for bereavement and I was kind of curious as to how the law and the contract now have to align and you know basically if I'm trying to give a quick way to summarize it I guess whichever is better for the employee is what rules so I don't know Danielle if there's anything you'd want to add or if there's any further questions but I I do get the sense that
046over the next year you know the next two three years out next negotiation I do think we're gonna have to see how these two things you know the contract and the law you know what what problems may arise and what needs to get worked out I'm also hoping that our HR department will be monitoring the use of sick leave you know one of the challenges right now in the state of New Jersey in education is a staffing shortage luckily in Manalapan we're not hit too hard by it it seems but I know it is difficult difficult to get substitutes and I think one of the potential consequences of this new law is that people can use more time so that could impact our our day-to-day functioning so I mean I'm confident the administrative team is
047going to monitor that but I will be curious to know down the road you know maybe the board could be updated throughout the year you know to see how this is all panning out but really f6 we're at the mercy of the state here so I can comment on some of that the contract supersedes the law so if you have bereavement in your contract and you also have bereavement for the law you get both because the law doesn't take away anything that's in your contract but your contract doesn't replace what's in the law so that's how we're doing it right now I can say that we spent a lot of time this summer we reviewed a lot of our documents that we use on leaves themselves we've tightened up some of our language and a
048lot of different leaves such as critical illness leave such as discretionary leave critical illness since this policy allows for critical illness we have tightened up what our requirement is to use critical illness days which is in every contract but it doesn't specify what that looks like so we've done that the law also does some checks and balances that didn't exist before so for they existed before I take that back but the law specifies exactly what they are so for instance if you're going to be out more than five days then you we can require a note saying why you're out I believe it's five days correction for three for three but more than five days oh and then if you're out sick for more than five days we can require a note for you to
049come back I'm sorry that was the five days so at three days we can require a note while you're out at five days we can require a note while you're back now this also law allows you to take time to care for a sick family member it also gives us the provision to ask for that type of documentation as well so a lot of the things in this law that they're allowing for we can also require the documentation to support what it is as far as a document for extended leave what we've decided is we are going to wait a month or two to see how it plays out and if it looks like it was it's difficult to track using our current protocols we're going to revisit and probably around October we will then
050create a new leave specifically for any kind of extended leave based on the sick leave policy great thank you the other thing Dave that I wanted to mention in this section can I add one more thing we do have a letter going out tomorrow to the staff about this we will also include you as a copy but we didn't send a letter out so you would approve this tonight so and that explains a lot of this as well great I was also concerned about f7 the first reading of the dress policy I guess just so I'm clear on the timeline the there was a first reading done at the July meeting and I get the impression that based on some of the feedback that you received I guess from staff or from the association that
051the thought was to do a second first reading and kind of make a significant change to be honest I'm concerned about the change I feel like the pendulum has swung in the complete opposite direction in that the the first reading done in July was very prescriptive and very detailed in the dress code items and then now what's on the agenda tonight you know all those lines are crossed out and meaning all those items starting on the second page items one through seven are all proposed to be removed and I mean at the present time I'm not in favor of removing all those items I think what I'd like to do is is have the board work together and see if there's a middle ground you know with input from the Association input from the administrative
052team and maybe can we put some parameters in there because what I'm seeing on the agenda is basically just kind of use your judgment as to what's professional so our first policy that we had that we currently have was approved in 2001 and it basically said come to school dressed and so far we really haven't had a problem with staff being dressed inappropriately so when we did this revision based on the it was a drastic change from what we had from come to school dress to you should have blouses and skirts and pants some staff members thought we wanted expected them to go out and buy blouses so they fit the dress policy we also realized that the way it was written didn't take into account different positions if I'm a preschool instructional assistant I'm
053going to be dressed differently than an eighth grade math teacher and it didn't specifically lay that out in this policy and you know a physical education teachers dresses differently because of their position so we realized we didn't really have a problem to begin with when we just said come to school dressed we recognized the need to be a little more specific so we felt that this policy was we took the old and the new we try to combine it to make it a middle ground so when you look at certain things like genes we at the elementary level have a lot of spirit days we have a lot of spirit days and staff wear jeans on the spirit days so when a lot of staff read this and it says unless approved by the principal
054or designee they thought we were taking away spirit days which caused confusion this policy also has a counterpart for our non instructional staff so then we have our custodial staff our maintenance staff so then they got confused are they supposed to be wearing blouses to work as well so we decided to take out anything that was specific since we didn't really have a problem before but add some items like to make sure that your dress was respectful of what position you have because we thought that was important to recognize is that different positions will dress differently according to what they do what they're doing on that day but it's a board policy so it's up to you if you want to revise it because I mean the first question that came to mind for me
055was why do another first reading why not revise the language that was originally proposed and then do that on a second reading my feeling was there were significant changes and it would be a misrepresentation to you the board if I did it as a second reading looking so different than the first reading I mean look you know I was kind of like I didn't want to misrepresent what we were doing or look like you were trying to pull one over now and and I don't want to misrepresent either but and again I may be in the minority on this I don't know that's why I'm kind of raising it as a discussion point but I personally am not in favor of passing the first reading as it is because I think we should salvage some
056of this language and you know I mean I could get into specifics but you know I feel like if there's enough of if enough people on this board feel the same way then if we were to pass this first reading tonight and then add more significant language at the second reading would that you become our third first reading of this policy does that make sense well I think if you if that five five members of the board want to revise the policy we can administratively pull it and not have a first reading and then go back to our original policy from 2001 I mean look personally I'd make a motion to table it right now because I don't I mean you know if if there are five people who want to table this then we
057table it if I just have a question for clarification if this could have been 20 2001 look at this it's revised 22 August 2023 but it was adopted 15 May 2010 what happened in the 10 years like because you're saying 2001 this is 2010 on the document okay I'm sorry I might have said the wrong year okay I just I'm in agreement with Ryan I mean I understand like we didn't have a problem but then this opens us up to a teacher saying not that a teacher would please don't say that Jesse said a teacher is gonna do this because it's what the policy is but we have pajama days and teachers wear pajamas now if I was a teacher and had this blatant open policy I could walk in in a pair of Ugg
058slippers pajama pants and a shirt and technically I fit all the qualifications and there's nothing that you can do about it well I would argue that it doesn't say dressing a matter that reflects their assignment but you have an if you want I actually took note of the drastic change as well like it was something that struck me too I think the difference is I kind of came down in a slightly different place though in the sense that looking back at the first reading I actually think in retrospect that was like far too prescriptive I didn't like the idea that we were kind of calling out specific articles of clothing like that and I think for the same reason that Nicole cited that there are very like practical objections that staff can raise about why
059that doesn't make sense I guess when I looked at this it made more sense to me not from the vantage point that it was stripping away any you know parameters around the dress code I don't agree with that hypothetical I don't think that you could come to school in pajamas you know these details at all I think that by making this more principle-based the way that it is it gives more discretion to the judgment without getting stuck in like semantics arguments around like specific articles of clothing I also think that like like changes and evolves so this feels like something that's a little bit more evergreen because regardless fashion at a particular point in time or not in fashion it gives the administration the discretion to say you have to present yourself in a manner
060that is clean neat well-groomed dignified so like I actually and so you don't think that you could be those things with pajama pants on if we're talking about the change in fashion I mean you go to the mall you go to the grocery store ten years ago you can see people in pajama pants you're inside your opinion I'm inside of my opinion so I just feel like jeans and a t-shirt would be appropriate and I personally don't think jeans and a t-shirt is appropriate for a teacher yeah I don't like I'd like to see some language about jeans personally but I mean that's why I mean I'll put the motion right now to table it if there's a second then we find out if we're gonna table it would be my thought what is the
061downside of just introducing this one doesn't sound like the changes you're interested in are all that major you want to list out some types of clothing that you would want to exclude and why wouldn't we just introduce this one see if it's relatively minor changes and then do that as a second reason reading and if it was too much we would just reintroduce that next time as the first reading what would be the downside of that because this one wouldn't go into effect unless we approved it as is so right I'm not I know that's kind of what I was saying before we potentially be looking at a third first reading if the if the changes were determined to be too much or if we didn't do this tonight leave the first reading in place
062that was done in July edit that accordingly and make that the second reading like there's probably a whole different ways you could peel this onion but I don't love the idea of approving it tonight because now we're sending the message to the staff okay we had a few questions so we're chopping all this out and then we're coming back at the end for a second reading with potentially more changes like I feel like we should like put this on hold until we know where the board is and and go from there I guess I feel like we're automatically making it two more meetings then whereas if we did this one we'd have a chance of getting it done next time right at the beginning of the school year so that's it I'm just saying as
063a pragmatic option I think for me the sending the message that we've just chopped all this out is worth waiting another meeting yeah Nicole what was the genesis of this why did this happen um Strauss as night gives us a list every now of policies that have to be updated and we update accordingly and so on this one had to be or you just decided to the policy that hasn't been updated to 2010 and we try to keep up with the updates so no one from the buildings came to you and said I think our staff is unprofessional or that's not your personal opinion okay if I just may make a comment about this I'm comfortable with the policy with the revision for the first reading these are professionals and I don't feel comfortable micromanaging
064their wardrobe they are expected to dress a certain way it is part of their professionalism and if we have the occasional staff member who is underdressing that would be addressed by the building principal and these are professionals that we hire they are hired they are interviewed they know what the expectations are and to micromanage their ward wardrobe I don't feel is our position so I'm comfortable with it as is okay so where do we go David we have to go around Ronnie yeah actually it's a roll call I can have if I have a motion in a second on the table to table the item f7 f7 which is the first reading of policy 32 16 and 42 16 I will take a vote on that and we'll see where it goes right if we
065can before we do that Ronnie you want to just pull it administrative let's another option I think we should take the motion she got a question because it so we there's a an update to the policy 32 16 and then there's a new policy 42 16 why the need for the two separate policies in our policy there's always a policy for teaching staff and then a policy for support staff okay so all the fours I think are teaching and all the threes got it and and furthermore I do agree and also thought that it was vague the language was rather vague but to Christine's point as well you know I tend to agree and feel that you know these are professionals and and our administration that's hiring them hiring them for a reason with the
066belief that they understand what's expected of them so comfortable so just want to clarify vote not to table it we can still make some changes with Ryan we're just not we're not saying right to all change tabling it if you if I take a vote to table it it's basically being removed from the agenda and it's put over here on the table until it's brought off the table if we don't table it and we vote on the first reading then yes we can make changes between first and second so that is always an option as well it's not dead it's not a dead matter even if we did make changes we still have the right to change it again if the need arises it's that's it's just fluid okay yeah I have a motion by
067Ryan mr. Green and a second by mr. Tosetti so I'm just gonna take a roll call on that mr. Bruno I'm gonna abstain do it this way it's easier mr. Ferber I'm gonna yes yes to table yeah mr. Green yes lit keyboard I can't see my keys mr. Kane mrs. Parisi no mrs. Pichero now mr. Seti yes and mr. Ergo I'm gonna know okay the motion to table is two three one two three four is unsuccessful so basically we're back now to voting on the original motion f1 through f8 as it was originally brought forward and we can still make changes before next meeting so Ryan we can absolutely yeah I'll send some suggestions out for sure so I think we do Christine and Ryan does anyone else have any questions about half thank you're
068up Ronnie let me just make when you start adding motions I have to add columns and make sure that Melissa knows that was a motion within a motion I think but it's extra motions it's a motion and a table and then it's then it's a roll call and then it's another motion back to the original but it's all going to be done my computer not working tonight part of the problem with the lighting I can't see my keys so that's going to be mr. Bruno I'm gonna be yes on all I'm gonna abstain on though the one we just talked about which was I believe was it number mr. Ferber yes mr. Green I'm a no on f7 and a yes to everything else mr. Kane yes can I ask an administrative question sure Ryan
069votes no is he allowed to participate next time um that's a question I'd have to look into it should be I mean he's voting no it's usually when you when you vote to when you vote to move to move things from the table and you voted against it that there's different rules when it comes to things like that but box him out if he wants to be Bob that's all I'm not worried should be fine all right interrupt everybody mrs. Parisi yes mrs. Percaro yes mr. Tosetti Jesse mr. Tosetti he's in a conference with the attorney yeah so we come back Jesse you're up we're voting on the original motion one through seven yes on all except for the board policy number seven I'm a no on seven and mr. ergo yes yes so those
070are successful thank you that brings us to business yep we'll move to G we have a motion and a second on G one through David and second G 19 second by Christine thank you Dave no question let's move there anybody else Ronnie okay mr. Ferber yes mr. Green yes mr. Kane yes mrs. Parisi yes mrs. Percaro yes mr. Tosetti 14 mr. ergo yes and mr. Bruno yes thank you and that brings us to curriculum okay H curriculum can we have a motion and a second on H one through H seven please Ryan second mr. ergo thank you Ryan I have no questions and for me anybody else okay Ronnie mr. Green yes mr. Kane yes mrs. Parisi yes mrs. Percaro yes mr. Tosetti mr. ergo I'm a yes to all I'm gonna abstain on item
0717 letter Q H 7 Q okay thanks mr. Bruno yes to all I'm gonna abstain on item 7 letter B and letter C and mr. Ferber yes okay those motions are successful thank you okay we'll jump to item I personnel can we have a motion on I 2 through I 28 please large agenda for a change yeah I just scroll down motion please David second I thought David Ferber raised his hand oh sorry Dottie Dottie any questions no anyone else okay mr. Kane yes mrs. Parisi yes mrs. Percaro yes mr. Tosetti mr. ergo yes mr. Bruno yes mr. Ferber yes and mr. Green yes thank you those are successful okay our last action item is J student matters can we have a motion and a second please okay Jesse and David thank you questions anybody
072else mr. I'm sorry mrs. Parisi yes mrs. Percaro yes mr. Tosetti mr. ergo yes mr. Bruno yes mr. Ferber yes mr. Green yes and mr. Kane yes that's successful and that's the agenda okay thank you very much we will move into new and old now so we will start with Ryan Green tonight sure since we're on a policy kick tonight I'd like to make another policy suggestion that perhaps the board could consider at our next meeting a few months back I had emailed dr. Santora and Brian Graham our board president I'd like to recommend that we update policy 0151 which pertains to the organization meeting it's a pretty minor change but one that we sort of encountered an issue with this past January the current policy requires that the oath of office for new board
073members shall only be administered by the board secretary so I'd like to propose that we change that policy to say that the oath of office for new board members shall be administered by the board secretary or another person legally permitted to administer an oath of office in the state of New Jersey so I'm hoping that if there aren't any major objections to that we could consider it at a future meeting I'm good with that could you please send me that just that statement in writing so I have it sure yeah there's also the statute about that is very specific on how they word it yeah so I think it should reflect what the actual statute says because the statute has exactly who can do it and they word it a specific way so maybe you
074can just say those permitted by statute you know NJS yeah that's what I was trying to go for because as you said the statute is very particular I mean maybe Danielle's firm could give us a hand with that but I know it's you know it's New Jersey administrative code I think it's a the title 18 I believe we had we had found it it's easy to find we could yeah we can do that it's actually attached to the policy but it should be exactly how they do it I'm on it nothing thank you no no nothing for me thanks nothing thank you Jesse yeah thanks I just want to take a moment as the board attorney stated this is my own personal opinion I want to take a moment to reiterate what I said on
075the 20th of June I am and will continue to support the LGBTQI plus community as I stated that night at that meeting multiple times I'm willing to discuss this policy with anyone that has a question reach out to me please use my words accurately but in closing I simply want to put this out there there's been a lot of attempts to make the amended policy an issue for the LGBTQI plus community in my personal opinion it is not that it is to me and will always be to me about parental rights which have been established by the Supreme Court and how they are implemented to place with parental rights thank you Dottie nothing and I like the cup world's okay scoffer that's still better than me thank you yeah I'm just really okay yeah I
076do want to take the opportunity to also speak to our recent hearing and once again as miss our board attorney miss Penise he pointed out earlier my stick my following statement is really of my own opinion and not necessarily that of our board or other board members but as many of you are aware about a week ago on August 15th we had our hearing in the Freehold Superior Court before the judge regarding our amended policy which our board voted unanimously on to pass policy 5756 and while the judge did not rule on the merits of the policy he did grant the state an injunction which prevents us from enforcing our policy which includes parent parental notification in the event a student is seeking a public social accommodation related to a change in gender identity and
077you know while the Attorney General and some others have misrepresented our policy as being discriminatory and outing a student against their will it clearly does not do that for anyone who reads our policy in its entirety our board spent countless hours as well as consulted with our board attorneys as well as taking we took input from our administration in considering what we were doing and what we were changing it's a fact is recognized by countless studies and professionals in the mental health field that children have more success in education and life when their parents are involved and could provide guidance and nurturing to their adolescent children going through significant physical and emotional changes and as a matter of fact Monmouth University just conducted a poll that spoke to the feelings on this matter from the
078vast majority of people in our communities surrounding us as well as our own which the vast majority feel parents need to be involved our students health and safety is our number one priority that goes without saying we would never do anything to jeopardize that the 14th amendment protects the fundamental right of parents to direct the care upbringing and education of their children and I'll personally continue to fight for what we know is both right and legal and the state needs to stop playing politics with our kids thank you thank you ladies down there I just want to say thank you to everyone who helps us to get ready for a new school year that includes transportation working on busing routes HR getting all our new staff approved teachers who do take their own time to
079get ready for a new school year all the custodians all the secretaries I'm I don't mean to leave anybody about but everyone who works together to get the school ready as principal I would always get what do you do all summer a lot it takes a lot of hard work and now being in central office even more work to make sure we are ready to go for September 6th and we are excited to welcome all of our students back so have a great school year everyone because our next meeting isn't until after but you'll go over that Danielle do you want to say anything cool all right I'm gonna piggyback off of miss pepchinsky I want to share with you I shared with the board but I think it's important for the public to know
080some of the items that were worked on over the summer one of the items we decide to do we always reflect on what are doing our current practices and how we can make it better we often do parent meetings on an odd night usually in here we get limited attendance such as for HIV when we had the person come from the state police talking to us about computer safety so what we decided to do is to change those presentations to the night of the board meeting perhaps starting at 630 or 7 depending on how long the presentation needs this way if manalapin television would like to come and videotape it they're already here it makes it easier that's easier for the board they don't have to possibly go out another night they just have to
081come a little earlier so that's one change that we're looking to start for next year the next is my computer is doing something wonky let's see if it'll just let me X out okay so the next is therapy dogs I'm excited to share that we did pilot therapy dogs this summer at the ESY program at the ELC students visited and read to the dog it was absolutely wonderful it was a wonderful experience for them the dog liked it the children liked it children had parents can be filled out permission slips some students didn't want to pet the dog some students didn't want to read to the dog they sat in the same room though it was up to them another interesting thing that our principal started this year and I give them a lot of
082credit for thinking about all of our all of our parents and different ways that they can support them today it was actually the day they opened up two locations and they had staff members there to help and they helped any of our multi-language learner parents fill out any of the parent paperwork that comes through the portal because that can be excessive as many of you know so they were just there on staff to to support anyone that needed that support so I thank them for thinking about all of our parents and ways to look outside the box to provide that support we updated our attendance letter regarding students it was in the portal our attendance policy was often confusing to parents with the terminology we're using and what everything meant and the initial letter read
083more like a policy than a letter to parents so we updated it to truly reflect what we're doing and make it a little clearer for parents to understand so that was in the portal based on feedback we received to about our HIV process and our letters we updated our letters to the alleged victim and the alleged offender we also updated how we informed the board so it's only informed on the same night in which they're voted that you guys obviously know you get them in a folder ahead of time but it's not presented at one meeting and then presented again when it was presented twice we had to send two letters home for two parents and they often didn't understand why they were getting two letters about the same matter so this makes streamlines it
084to one letter and the letter is a little more I think clearer of what it states and more representative of what we do the next we got some of you obviously are aware of this some you may not be the state required that we have a behavioral threat assessment team that was approved I believe on the July meeting the behavioral threat assessment team does that it does behavioral threat assessments in preparation because we knew this was coming as a district we started last year doing behavioral threat assessments that doesn't mean that we threat assess every child that arrives in our district that means that something extreme has happened and we conduct a behavioral threat assessment when we conduct a behavioral threat assessment our parents are notified right away and they are part of the whole
085process we are using the Sigma approach which is recommended we also have miss Petillo who is master trained by Homeland Security on the approach mr. heckle I believe is working on his master certification correct correct so we will have two people that are master certified in the district miss but miss Petillo will be coming all these peas miss Petillo will be coming to our October meeting to do a presentation to the board of the community on that topic and provide some more information if you're interested again this affects a very very very small population of students that something extreme has happened discipline we've talked about this a lot at various meetings that we often will not often is very very actually on often but we do occasionally have repeat disciplinary offenders so we looked at
086our discipline record and what was in Genesis we analyzed the data what we found was that there were 11 students in the district that were involved in 238 incidences we had 29 students that were involved in 340 incidences so we looked at that and we said okay what can we do about that because I think just like the attendance policy that there's layers we felt that there should also be layers for the discipline policy as well so after five incidences we will be sending a letter home to parents we will be doing a phone conference after ten incidences the parent will have to meet with a the school counselor and the administrator and there'll be a referral to our counselors or case manager and then after 15 incidences the parent will also have to meet
087with me based on this year it was probably be about five parents but we think it's important to try to work together with the community with our parents to try to find a solution we updated a number of our HR forms people don't really care about that out there in the community but we did we talked about the Chromebook fees we updated that and that letter was shared with parents as well and as you know we're in Cusack, Ms. Pipchinsky talked a lot about that and currently we're in a pretty good place with staffing but staffing as you know is fluid and tomorrow that could all change but right now we're pretty comfortable for the opening of the school year so I had shared that with you in a memo but I thought it was
088important to also share with the community and that's just some of the items that we worked on this summer nowhere near everything that we did I would like to echo Ms. Pipchinsky I thank everyone who worked so diligently in the summer I think all of us have this anticipation that we're going to take days off and rest but they don't ever seem to happen so I think all all of our staff that were here this summer with the thought process that they were gonna have all these days off and vacations and we're here every day instead working so thank you without you we don't get the buildings up and running okay thank you can I ask question Dr. Santora I read on Facebook when the portal must be true right okay I skimmed through Facebook
089and I happened to see that there was a group of parents and their chief complaint was I guess they kind of feel like the hostage they have to fill out all the 63 pages electronic signature whatever and then they get their child's bus and teacher yes is just something to think about maybe putting the paperwork out one week and because what they were kind of saying which made sense is they have to go through these 63 pages and some people have three kids we didn't know that that was an ability that we had we just found out that someone shared with us that that's what freehold regional does so we were reaching out to them to see how they do it and we are looking at doing that in the future but we didn't know
090we could do it to put out the paperwork a week earlier because what the parents were really what they were really complaining about was not the 63 pieces of paper that they don't have that they can sign electronically was the fact that the kid is sitting there sign sign sign when are you getting to my class yes we I forgot someone shared with us the freehold regional letter so we're looking into how we can do the same okay thank you Nicole while you're looking into Genesis issues I don't know if this happened to any of the of the other parents well here's the issue I'm having okay we did the forms didn't know we had any well maybe I'm curious how they are the board members experience this we did the forms to find out
091the teacher we're all waiting patiently as Dottie just said yet I keep getting emails telling me there's a new form so I stopped counting after 15 notifications and I even went back into the system and double-checked every form for my daughter says complete I mean as we're sitting here I got one a new form has been added so if you can maybe check the Genesis blast emails because if I maybe it's just happening to me and this is my problem but I'm I'm hearing other nods here like it seems like we are compulsively emailing forms that have already been completed yes so we're getting yeses from the audience as well yes so all the forms that tell me about right all the forms are filled out but we keep getting email notifications a new form
092has been added a new form has been added keep adding new forms no but it's already I checked that it's completed they're completed and yes doing if you could make those forms available a week before this the students get their their assignments would be very beneficial because I'm sure many parents are just skimming through as fast as they can to get to the teacher and the class schedule two more this afternoon feeding the whole purpose so that would be helpful absolutely now we'll look into that okay before we finish new and old are you emailing Jodi or am I tack on to what Brian emailed earlier for the board members who haven't completed the self-evaluation to get that done and then we should probably know I don't think anyone said it that the next board
093meeting is actually on Wednesday the 6th right the next on the Tuesday exploring is on Wednesday the 6th because Maryann Friedman is coming from school boards to finalize your board goals and do your self-evaluation that's the time that was the day she was available when and where 730 I believe when rock 730 when rock on Wednesday yes okay we're going home okay so we will jump into workshop we're gonna start with the safe return plan and Jodi will be our fearless leader on that all right and I am hoping and I will confirm with the state that this might be our our last refresher on this it's not the first time we've had this workshop we do have to do this every six months we add in the August workshop because quite frankly we like
094to review everything prior to the start of school and if we make changes we always notify you and involve you in that process you all received a copy a copy is also on the actual board agenda anything that has been changed is in red and I hope from what you can observe that there are very few changes and just as a refresher as to why we have to go over this we receive American Rescue Plan funding that funding comes to a conclusion September 2024 but according to the document that was given to us initially from the state and from recent memos it states that districts must periodically but no less than frequently than every six months through September 30th 20 23 review and as appropriate revise so again I'm hoping this is our last review
095but if it needs to be done one more time I will certainly let you know when that time comes and just to quickly summarize the change the biggest change there's two really that are noticeable and highlighted for you is when necessitated item B on the back of page on page 2 we kept it very vague because we're past a lot of the protocols so if something were to occur we always say when necessitated and if needed for signage in particular particularly with social distancing right now we don't need to social distance but in the event we had to we're left open to that and as you notice the communicable communicable disease regulation was updated that was on this agenda and I think many will be happy to hear that we are not requiring five days
096with the diagnosis of COVID basically we were following our communicable disease policy so if somebody has COVID maybe they'll need five days because they're symptomatic but as long as they're not symptomatic and showing signs of sickness they can return to school per the policy on communicable disease and those are the changes any questions Jody I don't know if it really if it relates but it sort of does I just saw something drop that I I don't know if it's brand new about funding for high-impact tutoring I have been studying that ask Nicole I go down daily and I say can we talk about the tutoring grant again so I attempted I say that facetiously but it's a lot of money we have the potential to be granted if approved the allocation that we potentially it's
097not a definite if any is up to four hundred and sixty thousand dollars for this district many other districts can only receive possibly 38,000 or within a range as high as almost 700,000 we fall on that four hundred sixty thousand dollar range because of the number of students we have in grades three and four we are applying for it it's a pretty intensive application so I've been doing a little bit each day we have a lot of data that we need to provide with it there's pros and cons to it to be quite frank our envision what we envision is using possible potential funding our proposal is going to consist of supplementing what we do with beyond the school day programming what they recommend it's not a must but is an outside contractor providing services
098our staff can quite frankly do it better and we are more comfortable with the safety and security that comes with our own staff providing that so our vision which is what we're working on this to be able to provide more intensive beyond the school day programming one of the requirements is that groups cannot be larger than four some of our beyond the school day programs have up to eight students even nine or ten so we can split that in half it's nice because it would provide stipends to teachers to work with their own students teachers cannot tutor outside of the school day their own children but with this they could work with their own children as well a group can consist of one-to-one tutoring and our other activity we will be building in if approved
099is to also help support our summer program some of our summer program classes can have eight to twelve students so I envision it and again it's still in the works and I will finalize because you'll have to approve the application on the September 6th press to move forward submitting it on the September 6th agenda is that let's say there's a group of twelve at a summer school class if I can put three teachers in one class to pull small groups how much better it is for those children I can't guarantee and I know for a fact we wouldn't have the money after the summer it's a one-year grant four hundred and sixty thousand dollars is a lot for this type of programming but we will find ways to use for materials professional development and we
100need teachers to want to apply and I because the stipends being that they can run up to 30 weeks which is what we envisioned for the course of a school year are a nice support so I just want to clarify two things we also looked at the potential of hiring a staff member but it looks like in the grant it says you can't add staff but we're trying to figure that out because with that type of money we could hire one or two staff members just to clarify what Miss Pipchinski said any type of reimbursement that a staff member would get would have to be for work outside their contractual hours staff members don't get a reimbursement if they're working within their contractual hours so I don't want you to think oh they're gonna work
101with small groups during their win period and then get extra money that that can never happen that would be double-dipping so it has to be beyond the school day and it sounds like they're really promoting like an Edmentum I'm just different types or like I'm go tutor there's all these different contracts that exist that you could potentially buddy up with and contract up with but again it would be somebody virtually who are coming in from an outside company and I don't think that's where what we need you could do a hybrid of that but based on our many conversations Nicole loves my conversations about this we do talk frequently because we want to do what's best for the children of Menelope and yet having a teacher float would be wonderful because you can share and
102that was something we wanted to further look into but it doesn't sound like that's where that grant is allowing I continue to ask lots of questions just to follow up on mr. Green's question from earlier there was so many forms that were added that it overloaded the server the server couldn't keep up so that's why the emails keep coming we did kill off the eat that's a terrible phrase I will rephrase that we did stop the email tasks so they should stop today and we've added it for next year to turn it off at that time and then we'll turn it back on once the school year starts because you do need the notifications that there's a new letter but for the beginning of the years will your data will turn it off and then
103we'll put it back on again problem solved yeah thank you are the internet okay any other questions that related to the safe return plan then we are gonna move into topic two for the workshop which is the referendum committee update turn it over to Ryan Green to lead that and do you want to remind everyone who is on the committee with you sure so we have created a referendum subcommittee that's been meeting for the last eight months it's been primarily myself mr. Ferber mr. Tosetti mr. ergo I think you made it to a couple of meetings as well so we've been meeting with the superintendent our business administrator director of physical plant our maintenance supervisor and talking about a potential referendum to address maintenance projects in the district as I think the board has done
104a nice job publicizing over the years our drastic reductions in state aid have led to our focus on maintaining instructional programs as we look at each budget year and as a result of that decision while good for the kids not as good for the buildings so for the last eight months we've been discussing a potential referendum to bring in additional monies for maintenance projects and we felt it was important to go on the agenda tonight just for discussion to at least you know open it to the full board for questions or any points that might want to be discussed because we're at the point now where you know as a subcommittee as a board we've kind of gone as far as we can go without some additional professional services so the specific professional services are
105the pre-referendum architectural services and we received a proposal from our architectural firm the proposals for $25,000 which is below the threshold required to go out for an RFP a request for proposal Ronnie could probably speak to this better than I but long story short we can proceed with the architectural services now with the firm that we have and the committee the subcommittee definitely feels or recommends that we do that because we really need the architects to come in now and start getting into the details and the specifics of potential projects so when we're in a room we're talking about a project well you know we need to potentially upgrade a you know our HVAC all right well what specifically do we need to upgrade how much is that going to cost you know what are
106what qualifies for referendum funding what doesn't there's there's there's more to this that you can imagine and the architects come in to help with that process so you know moving forward the architects really help us come up with a specific proposal that of course comes to the full board and if the full board decides to proceed with the with the referendum then the architects also help submit all that documentation to the State Department of Ed and as you can imagine that is a very lengthy and involved process that takes months so there is a need for professional assistance from the architect to prepare those documents submit those documents kind of navigate the approval process so you know overall tonight the recommendation is to proceed with those pre-referendum architectural services and that'll help us to bring
107even more specific information about potential projects to the board in the future let me ask a clarifying question what do we have specific things that these architects are going to be looking at yeah you have a list of things it's not well if you remember about a year and a half ago we did that comprehensive study so that was basically what we've looked at as kind of a jumping-off point some of the work has already been done we've taken on a few of the projects some of it with that um comprehensive maintenance project grant money that we've gotten over the last two years we've taken a few things off of that some things that become a little more urgent so we've actually put them in this year's budget we've taken care of that so it's
108basically and 18 months ago two years ago the prices are vastly different so it's really just kind of narrowed down the scope keeping it more towards health and safety was the predominant you know viewpoint and getting their input as to what updated costs are what is eligible for you know fully eligible what's partially eligible where to focus on on in that respect and with the cost also I wanted to point out that should we move forward with a full referendum the $25,000 is fully credited back towards the fees that they would get as you know referendum and post referendum this is all pre-referendum work getting us to the point of the election they'll attend meetings they'll attend they'll do renderings you know kind of schematic type things that we can use at presentations they'll be
109available for public presentations think they'll come before the board and do presentations so that's all inclusive of that as well as developing the project applications and the cost estimates so then basically there's like a sub list based on that report or sort of yeah we've kind of narrowed down we kind of have like a definitely and then a possibility some of the things that we looked into there are some other funding options too we're going to take a look at I mean I could share right now what was sort of prioritized so far was a network upgrade paving of parking lots it repairs the sidewalks stairs and ramps some ADA compliance issues in three of our buildings classroom doors and hardware and really the the big one was HVAC electric and plumbing so I mean
110that's a huge umbrella and that's why we really need to kind of narrow that down to be much more specific make sense anybody else want to chime in so question the HVAC upgrade for electric and plumbing is that going to be compliant so hopefully in the future when we aired AC into the buildings the electrical and the whole system will be able to accommodate that I hope that's one of the goals of the upgrade that it could sustain air conditioning in all of our buildings potentially I mean one of the big focuses right now and we talk about HVAC is sort of the safety component and the air quality component having gone through kovat having gone through the Canadian wildfires and whatever other air quality issues may arise that definitely ties into HVAC and electric
111but so does the potential air conditioning issue right so my recommendation would be to include that to make sure that it's included to sustain an AC system in the buildings so we don't have to go back and then upgrade it even further to accommodate air conditioning in our buildings part of part of the process too that will undergo is once we narrow down projects is to whether to include to have one or more questions sometimes you can have questions that are question one is base and question two is completely standalone or question two is an anon provided question one passes I mean there's different ways of structuring the referendum there's there's options there so that's something we'll have to decide to you know how we want to make if we want to make splits how
112we want to make splits one question multiple questions some of our buildings are already set up for the ability to have air conditioning I believe and Ronnie can correct me if I'm wrong so that is something that we're taking into consideration because remember we used I don't want to call it the coven money but the coven money one of the Essers one of the Essers to put those window units in yes but window units are not energy efficient and window units have a short lifespan so we have to be prepared when they start to run their lifespan mm-hmm yeah I'm not sure if it was mentioned but I think the boys I'm sure is aware but for people of the public just in case this referendum we're discussing is on the table would be on
113the table for late 2024 in the November 24 election but obviously there's a lot of groundwork that needs to be laid out to get to that point so it's a very lengthy process and I want to thank Ryan for keeping the ball rolling on it within the committee he's done a really good job at that and staying on topic and it's gonna really be a concerted effort by everyone on our board and then of course the public to make this happen and obviously to benefit our kids more than anyone else thank you I agree you know some of the items on here that we're discussing we're on a referendum a few years ago and we still haven't been able to afford that like the paving so here's something that we wanted to pave maybe it
114was 2017 so five or six years ago we still haven't been able to afford the paving so it's still there it's only getting worse it's only getting more and more expensive right and that's what it is it's gonna come it comes down to the fact that it's not a matter of does the work have to be done it's it's when and how much are we gonna allow the cost to escalate before we finally tackle it okay anybody else all right I think we are moving into our executive session next we need a motion Ronnie yes I need a motion Jesse second by Ryan to go into executive session for the purpose of discussing a current litigation matter the board attorney will provide a an update to the Board of Education at that time we will
115be entering closed session at 9 16 p.m. and there will be no action afterwards correct okay can I have yeah we think of short recess but um all in favor of going to closed session aye anyone opposed none noted we are enclosed we are going to relocate to the other room across the hall