001statement is hereby made that adequate notice of this meeting was given by the prominent posting of said notice in all district schools and other public places the mailing and or hand delivery of said notice to the designated newspapers Ezra Park Press the news transcript and the manalapan patch filing with the clerk of an alpha township and the clerk of English town borough Mike please call the roll mr. Bruno here mr. D'Amato mr. Graham here mr. Kane here mrs. Parisi here this is percaro yeah yeah mrs. Schechter yeah mrs. Semmel is absent at this time mr. ergo here we have a quorum please rise for the flag salute oh okay we're up to it oh so we were going to start this meeting with a presentation on what September 2021 looks like for those of you
002who are here our last meeting it was very similar we were going to go into a little bit more specifics on what's required of visitors what different events are going to look like as many of you know the CDC a few hours ago released their new recommendations we have always followed what the New Jersey Department of Health has recommended and what the New Jersey Department of Education has recommended our plan is to continue to do that and follow their recommendations but we recognize now they may change their recommendations so versus going over all these specifics for 20 minutes when everything then may change next week we are not what I said last week was basically what was sent home in the reopening plan back in June the reopening plan will be continually updated sometimes we
003catch like a little mistake we update it every time I update it I change the date up top to show that it's been updated basically right now we're saying that mask use is optional however encouraged for individuals who are not fully vaccinated per the order of the CDC passengers and drivers must wear a mask on school buses that's where we are now based on what the guidance has been from the state and from the New Jersey Department of Health but we're not going to spend today spending 20 minutes going over all specifics when the specifics may change okay thank you all right are there any changes Ronnie have anything just the thing you added item 20 yes I am 20 which is sent home in an email all right okay so now we're up to
004public comment on agenda items one one second can we get chairs for these people okay just make sure we get some more chairs yeah all right tonight on the table with the agendas was a copy of policy 0 1 6 7 which is the policy that we abide by for public comment for whatever reason I'm not going to place blame on us or you or anyone meetings have not gone well the past few meetings so what I'm hoping tonight is we're going to try something different I personally didn't like someone standing over by Ronnie to have to speak at the last meeting that's why we now have the microphone so that you can come up and speak the way you should be able to speak not leaning over someone so we made a few changes
005tonight dr. Santor is going to explain some of them and all I'm asking you is one of the mothers said at the last meeting that it shouldn't be like an us and them situation so what I'm asking all of you is why don't we try tonight to maybe wipe the slate clean I'm not asking anyone to forget anything I'm just and can we start fresh and we'll see how it goes okay okay so I'm a teacher right that's what I've always been and as a teacher we reflect on our lessons and we reflect on our classes and we go okay what what could have went better what could we change we listen to feedback one of the things that I've noticed and I've gotten emails about and and people have said at these meetings is
006what is a board meeting right there's questions on what a board meeting is so I just wanted to spend some time going over what a board meeting is all of our board meetings are announced publicly they happen usually two to three times a month and there's always a meeting notice that goes out and the public's welcome to attend for the most part we have two different types of board meetings there's others but for the most part we have regular action meetings and committees of the whole for regular action meetings there's things that the district needs to do that they need the board's approval the regular action meetings are when we get that approval from the Board of Education or we don't get that approval from the Board of Education but that's where we have that
007vote committee of the whole our meetings where we just discuss board business that's our chance as a board to talk about what's going on we fill in what's happening in schools the manal pin township television network and TTN records our meetings they tend to record our action meetings because action meetings where action happens hence the name at both meetings we may have workshop we try to keep workshop down to our committee of the whole but with timing and whatever it's not always possible workshop is the opportunity for the board to discuss different topics then we have presentations presentations are more of our opportunity to present to the public things that are happening in our schools and then we also have public comment now if you notice on the agenda there's always public comment twice the
008first one is on board items I'm sorry agenda items the reason for that is that at action meetings the board is going to be voting on things so it gives everyone that attends the meeting an opportunity to speak about items on the agenda before the board votes so their opinion is heard the second one is anything else because there's a lot of things happening in school and they're not all on agenda meetings and on the board minutes so that gives that opportunity we also have something called executive and closed session executive and closed session is when the board goes in to talk about matters that cannot be talked about in public some of those can be in negotiations personnel matters student matters their confidential matters depending on what we talk about we may have action
009after close most usually we don't have action after close but occasionally there we do so that's why sometimes we have to go into closed session and then we say okay there'll be action after close that's usually voting on whatever we talked about in closed session so that's just a little summary of how most board meetings work because I know last week when we were here a lot of people were wondering why MTCN wasn't here I know in other meetings people asked why we went to closed session so I just wanted us to do a little summary that's yes that's a good point also our board policy says we have to end all meetings by 1130 which is why we try to keep public comments to an hour because a lot of those things that the
010board needs to vote on we have to get to in order for us to move forward HR the business office they can't do things unless they hear that vote based on public comment and I've had people email me I've talked to some of you individually I've talked to you here to heard you at these meetings there's a feeling that not everyone is getting an opportunity to speak for the full time not everyone's voice is being heard or that our answers aren't as thorough as they need to be so that being said we're going to make a change to this public comment as Ms. Procaro said everyone will have their three minutes to speak public comment will be an hour we will keep both public comments to an hour after you speak you can give your
011statement if you have a question this pepchinsky is going to record it when you're done speaking I'm going to repeat your question and make sure that we got it correctly at the end of public comment if it's a quick question we will answer it if it's a question that may require a more elaborate answer we're going to create a Google document where we record our answer it'll be accessed on the website and within I want to say two days but emergencies happen but we're going to try our best for two days our answer will be posted on the website so this way everyone gets a chance to see what we said hear what we said and have the appropriate rationale so if we need to report refer back to a policy or a state statute
012that can all be in there so that's what we are going to do for this public comment and I just want to add one thing public comment is just that you guys get to come and air any concerns or issues you have it's not a dialogue so you really should not address any of the board members if you have a question for a board member you can address it to me if I feel they can answer it at that time I will let them do that if not I will write down the question and just like dr. Santora said we'll get an answer to you as soon as possible okay so we're starting fresh tonight so we are up to public comment on agenda items if you want to comment you have to state your
013name your address you don't need to give your house number just your street and you have three minutes and we're starting at 742 yeah Ronnie has it I mean the three minute timers yeah Ronnie has Mike has it okay so I take it no one wants to comment on agenda item I don't see Kathy so what where's Kathy oh on an on an agenda item okay fine Amy O'Brien in the June meeting you all agreed to review with us the parents the three different SEL proposals being considered for the Monab and English town curriculum for this year and I know that you said that you would present that to us and let us take a look at it first and it was in regards to the social emotional learning it's been around for a while
014but has now been branded as transformative social emotional learning and it has been championed by the pro-left novo foundation who are very pro CTR I know you said you're not doing see CRT I'm sorry CRT but it that's who branded it the pro novo foundation this is another vehicle for the anti white racism in schools no decent person approves of racism but the new concept of anti racism has a more sinister meaning and under this system of ideas white children are by definition oppressors minority children with the exception of Asian children are by definition oppressed and all of education must evolve into a churning mass of guilt and resentment so basically I don't want to go into the whole thing but I'm concerned that the SEL which was previously have been you've been using it
015for a number of years has been rebranded and my concern is that we're not really quite sure how you're gonna move forward with this because it is under social emotional learning so to put it simply so you all can understand I don't want my child to identify anyone as anything else but a friend and the way that they're going about it now they're giving out under SEL they're giving out surveys to the children the parents are unaware of this and they're told you don't have to tell your children I mean your parents you can just tell us how you feel how your parents think about things this is a concern because again SEL has been rebranded and you did promise us that you would show us the different consultants that were you're meeting with so
016we could take a look at it and when you look at any type of information regarding SEL it also looks very kind and wonderful great words and that's all true but again when you dig deeper and you look at what people with the what the these foundations want which are very pro-left it's not so wonderful and it shouldn't be discussed in school that's not appropriate so I was wondering when you will be able to show us the consultants that are bringing this information to you before you make a choice on them okay thank you so your concern just before you sit down I want to make sure that I have it correctly your concern is the SEL has been rebranded how will the district move forward and when will the community be able to show
017our plan that's your question you want to see our plan for SEL okay thank you last name is in Brenda Sweetman's lane to piggyback off of this and I know that a lot of teachers and whatnot are have a hard enough job as it is to teach our children and I think I mentioned it this is now my third time being here and it's gotten more important now than ever because I see it going back to what we were last year and it's it's I don't even know what to say at this point and I can't September is gonna wind up being where we're gonna wind up pulling our kids out of the school within the first 12 days and it's gonna be a nightmare but I want to piggyback off of what she's saying
018and the reason I want to is because you guys can't control your teachers the teachers now have reached out to the parents okay so my daughter's going into the eighth grade and the crap that she is seeing and now that the teachers are speaking out and now that pant not pamphlets booklets that are coming from the Board of Education that are coming down from the Department of Ed from coming down from the Biden administration from even from last year and from August of 2020 so what she's telling you and what everybody from the beginning had said we're not teaching that we're not doing it you can't even control these teachers They have a hard enough job as it is to teach our kids just math and just regular you know science and all the other
019things and now we're trying to throw things on them which is this see this social emotional learning and this is the guide for it racial justice and abolitionist social and emotional learning this is a guide from two of the biggest bigots and racists in this country with Tina love if anybody wants to look her up check her out she handed and how I know this is this is on the Department of Education and everybody probably knows that this link for this curriculum was on the website and then it came out from the Biden administration to tell everybody that it was a mistake that it was put on there by mistake it's been sitting there since last year so our kids have been telling us this and we saw it because you want to know why
020it's because it was all on the computer screen and we saw what was going on now it's gotten to a level where now parents are completely aware of it and it's got to stop this is available I can make copies for everybody and the booklets and the handbook from the from the coming from the Department of Education and the links that are on there it's on there the links are there going to this SEL program so why she's asking that question it's extremely important to know that my kid is not being taught those types of things and especially emotional learning that's my that's me that parents supposed to do that kind of stuff and we're getting upset I'm getting I'm getting upset just thinking about it it's because my my child should be coming to
021school learning about all those other things and the teachers have a hard enough job we're just asking for those kind of things to be outlined so then when they go into school next year this kind of crap is not going to be available for them and we want to make sure your minutes is up thank you I have two things um so you're basically following up on her question well yeah and then if you have specific incidences that you want to speak about that you feel happened in our classrooms please email me okay okay okay thank you did we send that out okay all right all right um I'm going to end this portion of public comment because it doesn't seem that anyone wants to comment on an agenda item we're going to get to
022the second part of public comment as soon as we get through the agenda tonight okay where can you give me an item number but their list is okay I didn't realize okay I I will all right I will explain I know it's there and it's in print but if you look at the dates that's one of the things we're going to work on tonight is new goals because we're now in the school year of 2021 2022 so that's no longer a goal so explain what they are so our goals there's two separate goals there's goals that we have as a district then there's the board goals our district goal last year talked about social emotional learning we've had a form of that as as you said for years our goals for next year that were
023approved in the June meeting I'm almost certain also mentioned the social and emotional impact yeah so that's that's why we will respond to you in the Google Doc yes yeah we'll respond okay so back to my original question is anyone else want to comment on an agenda item all right so I'm going to close this portion a public comment for now okay what time is it seven fifty two yes all right so I'm gonna skip over the workshop because Cathy's not here yet and then we have for the boards information that was a report that was filed and now we're up to G administration action items Michael can I have a motion and a second for g1 through g10 mr. Kane and mrs. Schecter questions David no thank you Joanne anyone else have any questions
024on administration okay Mike oh I wanted to say thank you to all of the PTA's PTO's for their very generous gifts we truly appreciate it they buy some wonderful things for the district so I want to thank them okay Michael mr. Bruno yes mr. mr. Graham yes mr. Kane yes mrs. Parisi yes mrs. Precaro yes mrs. Schecter yes and mr. Urga yes motion passes could I please have a motion and a second for h1 through h20 mrs. Parisi and mrs. Schecter questions Christine no questions Joanne anyone else have questions on the business section yeah I do yes on number seven the the grant we got for school security is rich gonna make a give us a plan as to where those funds are gonna be going at some point obviously it'll be in closed session
025but because it's security reasons but will we be getting something soon yes okay I can't see what I'm on the agenda tonight is the grant acceptance form that was one of the requirements we had to have the board approved in order to submit for reimbursement at some point so that was just a record-keeping to get out of the way we did receive updated quotes on the work basically we're gonna replace the security camera systems in both Pinebrook and MEMS I'm using a combination of these grant funds and then the $50,000 appropriation that we annually put in the district budget so because the quotes were over a year old this grant has basically been in the works for almost two years now because the quotes were older we asked for updated version just to make sure
026because we know how prices have changed with everything going on with the pandemic so we're still within the money that we had allotted and I plan on putting that on the agenda next action agenda in August what's what's wrong with the security cameras or they're just starting to age out it's there the system has been there a while and we're seeing that they need to be replaced and there's updated technology better better cameras I'm sure rich can rich can basically talk to that that's fine okay thank you okay dr. Santor is gonna schedule rich to come in August to give us just like Vince does Vince comes and gives us an update on facilities rich you'll come thank you very much okay Michael mr. Green yes mr. Cain yes this is Parisi yes this is
027percaro yes this is Schecter yes mr. ergo yes mr. Bruno yeah I'm staying on on 1d and 1c I'm a yes on everything else that was 1c and 1d correct the July meeting July 13 and mr. DeMato yes motion passes could I have a motion and a second for i1 through i7 mr. Cain and mrs. Schecter questions David no thanks Joanne no ma'am anyone else have questions on curriculum I had one question yes sir the stars program is this new when if it's not just give me a refresher about what how that works no we've had this program for maybe two years now we did it we used our immigrant funds from ESA in previous to run it unfortunately this year ESA did not give us any immigrant funds so at the time we were
028just running it for immigrant students because that's the funds we were using when they didn't give us any funds we recognize how important the program was and we have students that would benefit for it from it that are not immigrant students as well as immigrant students so we updated to use title four and then this way we can offer to all students so it's not really coming out of our pocket it's all title for money mm-hmm okay thank you anyone else okay Michael mr. Cain yes mrs. precy yes mrs. Procaro yes mrs. Schecter yes mr. Hergo yes mr. Bruno yes mr. Di amato yes and mr. Graham yes motion passes but I have a motion and a second for j2 through j32 mrs. precy and mr. Urgo questions Christine no questions Ryan so I just
029had one I am can't seem to find where there was an update on I think it was on tonight's agenda for approval of a like summer appointment to giving can you maybe elaborate on that dr. Nicole maybe I'm I can't seem to find it on this agenda which oh under an administration for summer appointment for me to be able to appoint staff right so that's what that's did we pass through that one or any no we're up to it now no it was an under administration that was on that was under the administration section under oh that's right if you'd like I can speak to it a little bit um so basically in the summer we have to sometimes hire last-minute in order to staff our buildings or there's right now a shortage of employees
030so it gives me the opportunity to hire someone and then we'll put it on the board agenda afterwards right with that that would only be in the summer yes right we approve it for the summer okay so okay to make sure that our schools fully staffed okay and we get the best staff yeah okay it's done every year oh yeah no I was just making sure that it was just this summer thing and not oh no yeah no but it's it's something we do every late July yeah okay anyone else I just like to thank Michael and wish him luck thank you yes Michael we will miss you thank you very much how much longer do we have you my last day will be September 13th no I'm sorry this says September 14th it's effective
031September 14th mr. Graham and if you don't mind me asking what district are you going to I will be with the Haddon Heights school district in Canepin County oh very nice thank you best of luck I appreciate that okay Michael this is Parisi yes this is Percaro yes this is Schecter yes mr. ergo yes mr. Bruno yes mr. D'Amato yes mr. Graham yep and mr. Kane yes motion passes could I have a motion in a second mr. Kane and mr. Bruno David questions no question thanks Jerry no anyone else okay Michael mrs. Percaro yes mrs. Schecter yes mr. ergo yes mr. Bruno yes mr. D'Amato yes mr. Graham yes and mr. Kane yes and mrs. Precy yes motion passes okay and that's the agenda all right now we're up to new and old the first
032thing I want to say is welcome back mr. D'Amato thank you we're happy to see you back and you're feeling better okay I'm going to start with mr. Kane do you have anything for us tonight no I have nothing for tonight thank you okay what about you John no I have nothing Joanne no good thank you okay Christine nothing thank you Ryan um I just wanted to circle back maybe get a little bit of intel from you on the um you said it was not on the agenda but the the home the home instruction policy for next year mm-hmm yeah um could you just maybe briefly hit on that yeah I will just let me just pull it up so I don't misspeak okay so we are planning for alternate instruction guidelines for September the
033road forward gives us the ability if someone it's a mandatory isolation or quarantine to allow us to use virtual learning during that time so we're following that premise in all of our classrooms one through eight when we look at classrooms such as self-contained or pre-k or kindergarten it's a little harder to provide virtual instruction in those instances we will work with providing either one-to-one or small group right or we will look at also the parents aren't interested in that synchronous work that would be in the in the kindergarten context when for obvious reasons it does quarantine yes yeah but for the purposes of like a con like a like a close contact quarantine scenario is it gonna be are we gonna just gonna avail ourselves of a like a synchronous virtual option essentially yes in
034grades one through eight it'll be a synchronous virtual option okay the middle school seven eight is looking at a possible other arrangement they don't know if they can make it work but right now that's what we're looking at I is just virtual each each classroom already has cameras in it so we're already set up for that all of our teachers are familiar with doing that remote instruction there is something in the road forward in case and I hope this doesn't have to happen we have to close down the entire school or the entire school district to go virtual after three days in order to meet our 180-day requirement the road forward also for the mandated isolation or quarantine allows I believe allows those days to count towards the 180-day requirement when the child is virtual
035right Jody that's what okay it does count so if they're if they're virtual and they're quarantining those days count okay good and this is all in contrast with sorry were you gonna say something else I was gonna move to the next group but in contrast to what so this is this is I'm just delineating between this and the virtual option which the governor has said it was gonna be a no-go for next year this just to kind of clarify folks understand it's this is only in cases where we have quarantine yes right this is and we also we will also have medical home instruction which people have applied for for medical and home instruction we are going to have a class set up depending on the grade level where they will be virtual for the
036whole year as it's medical if it's full year medical home instruction in those instances we are getting these devices that kind of follow the teacher around so this way it's more inclusive of the students that are virtual if a student is going to be out for not a full year for medical reasons but a long period of time for whatever reason maybe three months four months we'll talk with them if they if there's a classroom available at that grade level if they feel that that's the best option or we will have them go virtual from the class that they were already in and that's where we're at that's good that's great I just wanted to confirm my understanding of the summary I think that works out well thanks Jerry yeah two things first off we
037talked about the public public participation in board meetings you know I hadn't read this policy I guess I probably read it at some point could we schedule this for a workshop meeting to look at this over as a as a board just there's one item on the on the policy that I'm not entirely comfortable with and I thought like maybe we could just discuss it as a board and just run through it see everybody feels not tonight I don't do it tonight maybe definitely better for workshop okay all right the second thing I'm hearing a lot of the folks you know talk about this you know social emotional learning I don't want to open a can of worms but like in a nutshell what part of our curriculum is this delivered in and in what
038form does it take because I'm a little naive to this I know what the words mean but how does it formulate itself in reality of the teaching environment how do we deliver social emotional learning Jodie do as a coming out of the principal just give me a layman's like absolutely I have no problem talking about that so a lot of the social emotional learning type activities that have been implemented at the building level have been more for the wellness and mental health piece we've established calming corners and the counselors might work with the children and the teacher to have an understanding how to really self regulate feelings and that's typically done one-on-one a counselor might do an overview but it might allow the child who's struggling behaviorally or under stress or anxiety to have a
039calming mechanism for him or herself that's one way we do some school-wide activities such as the year of kindness which is more celebratory I know as a principal I did and many parents saw day after day my morning messages that were delivered that is part of our social and emotional learning that we do building wide we deliver messages just to help children learn to work with stress or anxiety a lot of quotations were used and again that was all filmed and broadcasted I know there's some parents here who I think may have watched some of those messages on a daily basis when we were virtual other activities are ways that we celebrate each other a lot of our health curriculum really addresses the social emotional learning piece as well but I'd like to look at
040it more as a blanket of working with children on stress anxiety self-regulation understanding their own feelings because life is tough and we want to give them the availability and the options to be able to focus as many of you want on school and education so it's a lot of strategy in that regard curriculum wise it mostly sits in our health curriculum typically yes and I know dr. Santora last week did give some examples of what that looks like thank you there are pieces that fall under our current social studies curriculum which is broadcasted on the website that focus on areas like civil rights that's there that's always been there the Holocaust slavery and I invite you it is on the website you can look at the different state standards that are available as well as
041the different ways and objectives that we address it this this is this we will write that in our in our document also last year I believe Brian had asked us to put together a little presentation on what each school was doing for social emotional learning well it's actually I mean we Jerry I didn't talk but I mean so I think we put that together maybe last November so we can reshare that out as well it'll be last year's information obviously but it'll we can reshare that that's it I'm good thank you okay thank you mr. Chinsky you're on so to continue what Jerry's saying Jerry was saying and usually I'd be directing this to dr. Santora so I'll go to Jody instead not necessarily the curriculum part of things but I've always I mean it's
042got to go back at least ten years since I've been here every year I probably bring up the same topic about our guidance counselors this year's probably going to be the most critical year for them coming back to school in addition to our great teachers and everybody else but they're gonna have a lot on their plates and I know Cindy's always done a great job with some programs we brought into like the middle school to Pinebrook on suicide prevention and stuff like that not that you know that's I mean you know something that we need to focus on but certainly my concern for students and it's not even just K through 8 students I got a son in high school a daughter in college it's adjusting back to learning with your peers and being comfortable
043asking questions you know if maybe they don't get it they don't feel comfortable next to somebody who may get it because you missed possibly a year and a half of school over the last over the last 18 months and I just I feel comfortable that our guidance counselors are prepared I guess my question statement is do you have a plan for them that you can maybe share with us because I'm hoping that our guidance counselors could be more proactive than reactive I've always felt that a guidance counselor again my interpretation only they're a reactive organization somebody has a problem it gets addressed I want to try to avoid those problems I want to try to keep our kids engaged and if if a student does feel like that they're not getting it because they missed
044out on so much by being home I mean we do have a full day of school now which is going to be fantastic so there's gonna be a lot of catching up to do and I want to just make sure that the entire building from guidance counselor to teachers prepared to be more proactive not be more but be proactive in a sense of making sure our students are comfortable with this with the speed of getting back to back to school Brian that is a priority and I know miss Seminoe has been working closely with the supervisors particularly in June to help start that preparation so I can ask her to come to an upcoming board meeting to present if you'd like yeah and I'm not saying that there's a specific grade that matters the most
045but I do believe some of our children that are becoming you know more of the adolescent age the pine brooks the memes of the world's where they're changing classrooms they have lockers they're being they're much more independent than the K through fives I'd like to see that maybe ramped up a little bit I don't know what the proper terminology and something to also remember miss Seminoe can elaborate but we are going back to our six-day calendar rotation the a through F schedule and at the elementary schools the counselors see the classes they do large group counseling sessions every other week so that's part of what they build into seeing every child at those levels which is essential yeah that's great I mean again just to make it something that the children aren't scared of being
046involved in I know you know if you got sent to the guidance counselor back in the 80s and 90s it was a little bit of a different situation so thank you Jodi you're welcome you done yeah yeah thank you thank you okay Ronnie do you have anything for us you ladies down there date Jodi you want to just elaborate on what next meetings presentation so next meeting that August 10th meeting I will be presenting our curriculum updates at workshop I believe dr. Santor at our last workshop meeting did explain that the curriculums that are up for revision were highlighted I can rename them for you so you know what I will be elaborating on revision adoptions will be looking to be approved for science in grade 6 science in grade 7 science in grade 8
047English language arts in kindergarten first grade fourth grade and fifth grade and also our kindergarten STEM curriculum and the changes are really allocated to updates with the New Jersey standards that were made in 2020 and really at least in the ELA piece for kindergarten and first grade it's to adopt our reading workshop model and really to ensure that we have focused units on reading foundations because what's more important than learning to read it's the foundation for everything else thank you you're welcome we're also going to have a presentation by mr. I'm sorry dr. Fiorello on student leadership and mr. Chinsky is also going to go over the new course elective at MEMS which I think Brian will address a lot of your concerns great actually I do have one more question is the state still
048I mean are we still doing men mandatory assessment tests can answer that for you as well I worked on the assessment letter that all of you will happily receive in September yes the as you know the state canceled the NJSLA for grades three through eight in the spring however part of that cancellation does require us to administer the strong assessment we will be administering that in August two grades four through eight because it's based on the previous year's content so fourth grade will be assessed on third grade it's two grade levels well essentially it's two subject areas except for sixth grade which will also have science so it will be one day for ELA it's approximately 40 to 65 minutes for that distribution of that assessment and the administration for math is the same about
04940 to 65 minutes one day science for grade 6 would be one day same time frame so it's a three-day assessment at the most what's the state doing with that data once they take that test in the score and I guess my other question beyond that is that has have you seen any indication that the tests have been altered at all to deal with the fact that kids have been home for the last 18 months because I could speak from confidence that the SAT has not changed and you know kids missed out on 18 months of school and still to take the same test that kids took so I got it okay so for in order to receive our federal funding we have to have an assessment and what they this federal government did was
050they waived the assessment for the spring but we still had to administer something so we're gonna be doing it's called the strong stay strong strong start strong we're gonna start strong it's a start strong assessment which came out last year as a formative assessment a September assessment to kind of benchmark where students were at in preparation so it's a shorter assessment than that's usually given in the spring so that's what the state decided to use to order to meet the federal requirements as far as our data I had it for the next meeting on 810 but I've moved it to the presentation 824 mr. Abel and mr. Schmidt are gonna come to represent the language arts in the math department and give a presentation on how we performed on Lincoln State and we're gonna compare
051our 2019 on Lincoln State to our 2021 Lincoln State to see to just show you how last year measured up so it's being used as a measuring stick at best right now I mean our our assessments yeah okay our assessments are always being used to make curricular decisions to measure student achievement to look at how to provide individualized attention the state I don't know what the state's going to do okay that's fair thank you both just to if I may just jump in on to Brian's testing question what is the least amount of state testing because I know over the course of the year we have multiple days of testing two three times a year and it's just I know we do Lincoln assessments so the teachers can benchmark and see the growth of the
052student which is valuable data but as far as these long days long hours of repetitive testing multiple times throughout the year are we going to be able to eliminate any of those testing I know we do have to do the mandated federal testing but are all of them mandated question as far as which tests that we give that are mandated like the state testing that not the link it that the teachers use for classroom you know to show their SGOs but like that the state requires for our federal funding so can we as far as we know we're gonna have to do the one in the fall to make up for last spring and then we should probably have one again this spring but do we have to it's part of code part of what
053I'm sorry and we but is it I know it's like three five days an hour we try to shorten it is there a way we do try to shorten it the best we can without also overloading the students they usually say like some sections you can give to a sec two sections in one day so if they say we can give two sections in one day we normally do we streamlined it a lot when I first got here we had like every school did their own thing and we had months of testing so we've got it down to two weeks I know there was a point in time where you did streamline it but I was just wondering if we could streamline it even further it's just I mean aside I like I said the
054valuable data is the Lincoln assessments where the teachers can really see what well that's our internal data we get specifics we look at specific standards we look at specific skills it gives us a lot more information than the state assessment right and I just think this it's overwhelming and we agree Jodi if we're doing it right out of the gate in September I mean again that's kind of where I my comments regarding guidance counselors and stress and anxiety people that are poor test takers they haven't been in school in 18 months and now they show up and all of a sudden gonna hand them a pencil and make them take a test for four hours right we're aiming the testing window is September through I believe the end of October we're going as far into
055October as we can because we do recognize with our Lincoln assessment and coming back after transition it's important to have that time in between oh good thank you and we're also we are trying to eliminate we just got we were one of the six one of our schools was one of the six schools in the state chosen for a federal but we have the option it's optional on literacy it's a federal assessment on literacy so we are we're going to decline that I reached out to the county reached out to the state department and let them know that we were probably gonna decline that because we don't want to over assess our students okay good thank you everybody good you got all your questions in do you have anything to add okay and I just
056want to say that like I said in the beginning everything's changing we're going to continue to be upfront and as transparent as possible my plan was to send out my welcoming letter mid next week and in there was going to have the whole reopening plan I'm hoping that I can still do that so we'll let you know when we know okay and I just want to remind everyone our next board meeting Tuesday August 10th 730 here at Pinebrook it's a committee of the whole Jody will be presenting okay since it's a committee meeting I know and we're presenting on curriculum should we make sure that it's being videotaped because usually our committee meetings are not how do we do that it's probably an important thing to we can just we can just request MTN to
057okay I can email Jan okay all right okay I have to put you on the spot I mean you know no because normally make up make the makeup we'll get a stylist they don't tape our committee of the whole meetings okay all right okay what you've all been waiting for now it's public comment this is public comment on any are we doing the board you though yes we're gonna get to her we do that let after before we go into clothes do it last this way yeah they make sense okay Kathy you're right with that okay thank you all right so it's time to comment on any topic I just ask please state your name and address and for the most part you have three minutes and we do have one hour of public comment
058starting at what time Ronnie 822 no because you did point out that it was part of the no they they have your question written down for you to get an answer okay thank you okay Dave Ferber Applegate Terrace so regarding some of what was spoken about earlier with SEL and and relation to critical race theory and a lot of things that people are concerned about well I know it's not the intent and and we're not trying to bring some of this these theories and concerns into our curriculum right but there's obviously sometimes little loopholes and things that maybe are out of your control right what if any safeguards are being put in place to you know now that we know this has been happening as Joe pointed out before and and others and I'm sure
059you guys have all also heard about things in other districts and other schools where things are flying in under the radar and what can be done to try to safeguard against that obviously I don't think there's anything that's a hundred percent foolproof I get that but you know is there more we can do to make sure that we are sticking to what the curriculum is that you truly want to present to the students and not you know allowing other things to kind of sneak their way in okay so so just what what safeguards are in place prevent any theories from being taught or flying under the radar that basically I'm gonna rephrase that what safeguards in place to ensure that our curriculum is being taught that and only that don't want coming in or not
060that it's just our curriculum okay okay thanks thank you hey Nicole I mean obviously I would encourage people that if your student comes home and tells you something that you'd contact us immediately I mean that's a safeguarded itself right so I mean understood understood but I do believe Dave that this group is very diligent in their in their philosophies so I'm pretty sure you're gonna be asking your kid a lot so you know I'm sure they'll get it out you get out of them if it's a problem I don't know you seem very persuasive come on up will you be giving out any surveys or assessments to the children where they have to discuss their emotional feelings because that's a concern I've seen a number of them would we be able to see that first
061before you do that so these are things that I would never question before because I would think well that's a wonderful thing they care about their feelings or they want to make them comfortable racism is bad but that's not what I'm that's not what I see in other districts okay so well they're predominantly in you know Democrat state so this is a concern that's all okay so will there be any surveys or assessments given to our children about their feelings and will and if so will you be notified ahead of time any other comments and Brenda again sweet miss Lane this is on funding so it's away from the other stuff and I know you mentioned it and I want to mention what you had mentioned two meetings ago which was about the two million
062dollars that you were saying that you were as far as like we weren't gonna be getting the money and you were basing on that if you don't follow what the guidelines are for coming from the governor and we wouldn't be getting any of the money so what I wanted to know was because you'd mentioned about full reopening and going into the reopening plan and I know it's coming down from the Department of Education and I know that in Manalapan there's three point eight million or three point eight six two that was given for the Manalpan COVID relief package so what I'd like to know is what are we doing with if you decide or if they're telling you you have to take this money and you have to use this per the education of teaching
063this SEL otherwise you're not getting the nobody ever followed up with you about that when you said when you mentioned that two meetings ago so are you being threatened again by not you remember when you said that yes and what I said was that there was a possibility if we with that we went well we went against the governor's order anyway and let the kids come to school without masks for the last ten days we didn't hear anything as far as I know we we didn't we went with the extreme heat oh we went with the extreme heat so that's how we got around it you got around it and kind of made it happen right okay now one other question I do have is that I know that there's a lawsuit that's that you
064guys had filed I think back in May is there an update on the lawsuit last meeting I had asked the board I told the board that we were moving forward with the lawsuit and they were I believe I don't think it's called Oprah situation but what they called it was something else but yes do we get it do we do we know what happened like what's the update on that or how it's going or they're moving forward how would we know when litigation matter to it might fall under the parents won't know how that's how the how it's going when we get updates we can share I will share them so there's no update as of now as of now no okay thank you thank you any other comments or questions yeah you have to
065yeah those three consultants the names of the consultants and the name of their foundation or a company or I will I will put it like I'm so confused on what I'm going to see that when we're gonna see that in for me so we are recording all the questions we will have detailed answers within hopefully two days if you're if you don't feel that the answer has enough information please just reach out to me okay but you can't just tell us the names right now no okay okay know them now I'm just curious we don't have the names we don't any other comments or questions you have to give your name and address I'm sorry are we gonna get the curriculum before our next board meeting so we have time to review it and come
066in with the appropriate questions and follow up based off of your answers the board is not prepared I thought I was gonna come in and get the curriculum and I don't see that the board is not voting on the curriculum at at the next board meeting they're voting on August 24th we are going over the changes at the next meeting so when can we see them we can I'll put that in the in the list in the past we have not shared curriculum prior to if you got a board meeting I don't really see please let me finish of course I don't see a reason why if it says draft we can't share our drafts so we can put a link to that as well I have a question so the curriculum I know was
067we were told was online so I went online I looked through it I went through all the different grades if we find stuff in the curriculum that we're not happy with who do we present that to you can contact the specific supervisor of that content area okay or you can contact this Pivchinsky who will probably refer you back to the specific supervisor of that content area that can better address your questions the woman before me that was speaking saying that the the curriculum I guess will be available the next meeting what was the curriculum I was seeing online is that gonna change no no so so just to put very quickly our curriculum has to be updated there's a five-year recycle period and every five years we have to look at our curriculum decide are
068we gonna update it or renew it as is state standards change when state standards change by code we have a certain amount of time to change our curriculum to match those standards initially there was a big change for 2020 and it's over three years these curriculum had to be updated in 2021 these in 2022 these in 2023 what happened was with kovat is they let us get through this year they okay worry about it in 2022 a lot of our staff and our supervisors in some of the areas such as science worked really hard to update their documents they're ready to go we're going to approve them now I'm in reading workshop we want a curriculum that accurately reflects what we're doing in the classroom we're updating that now so it's oh that's online is
069not that six through eight will be updated six through eight will be updated below sixth grade will remain okay and if let's say there was an artist or a book that you had a problem with you would go to that specific department I would okay thank you or miss Pipchinski or myself thank you okay thank you yes ma'am I know that CRT is the main topic that a lot of people are concerned about but I've also heard and seen different things regarding sex education and talking about transgenders at a young age specific things like using contraception just things that I know that us parents know are not appropriate especially from kindergarten to fifth grade and also story times that we've been seeing on the news as well like appropriate books you know is are they
070books that we as parents can view or know about get a list of so we know what they're teaching and reading to our young children we could share our sex education curriculum on I will I'll be honest with you it is those standards were rewritten for I believe update in the following year and the standards have significant changes but that's a year in the works in Genesis every year as part of the required reading and this is part of my presentation next week there's a letter you receive about family life which falls under a lot of what you might have questions or concerns about with sex education it lists the topics that will be addressed throughout the course of the year and that letter reminds you that you have the option to opt out of
071certain lessons so just keep an eye out for that letter opt out what does opting out look like do they remove the child from the classroom we'll put that in there as well okay okay regarding the answers that you're gonna prepare right and you said post to the website on like a Google drop mm-hmm where should we expect to like look for that or find that exactly I'll put the link on the home page okay great and right now labeled BoE meeting Q&A okay BoE meeting Q&A has a very sophisticated name B wait just it'll be on the website on the home page also regarding notification about these meetings you know I try to make it a point to post about these meetings when they're upcoming and particularly on social media and get people to
072attend and over and over again I constantly hear I didn't know about this I didn't know about it nobody no I I get no alerts nothing I follow men's page on Facebook on social media website we get no notifications I'm not sure how the notifications are going out I would only know about it because I'm going to the website to look for it and find you know and look at the schedule but I don't know and I don't think it's being done well enough that the information is being shot out there and people are being informed about the meetings I'm glad to see a lot of new faces back there tonight seriously you know I don't care what where you're coming from but it's good you know we need more people attending here and you
073know we got to get the word out so people know when these meetings are happening okay thank you hello Laura Carly C Oxford Road I just wanted to reiterate to the parents I was here at I don't know if it was three or four meetings ago but I had that specific question about opting out if we felt there were subjects or materials that we were not comfortable with this was the original email I had sent to you Nicole back in March about bill four four five four so just so the parents know if they don't know so they there's a state statute that allows you to not have your child participate in specific topics it's 18 a three five four seven parents statement of conflict with conscience any child whose parent or guardian presents to
074the school principal a signed statement that any part of the instructions in health family life education or sex education is in conflict with his conscience or sincerely held moral or religious beliefs shall be excused from that portion of the course where such instruction is being given and no penalties as to credit or graduation shall result there from so that's just something in case any of your parents weren't aware yet that's the letter that goes out if anyone wants to so it is wish I have my glasses 18 a dot three five dash four dot seven okay thank you any other comments Stacey I'm so cursed first way I'm gonna switch a little bit I'm not really interested in the education right now I'm interested in the social emotional I'm in more interested in the social
075emotional right now you said that you're gonna have the third the guidance counselors doing groups and individuals to address kids who are having some struggles returning back into the school I'm a therapist through the children's system of care I've been inundated with kids in the district local districts in three different counties one of the big things is that the guidance counselors feel that they're not trained properly to deal with a lot of the traumas that the kids are talking about so they pass it off to mobile response and then to people like me who do in-home therapy or virtual therapy are the guidance counselors I know there's not a lot of them are they going to be trained to address and I lost trauma neglect you know a lot of kids are home you know
076their parents could be working 24-7 and it's pretty emotional on top of all the So the question is are the counselors going to be trained to deal with trauma? As therapists because I don't know if the guidance counselors are licensed clinical therapists. Okay I will answer that thank you. Dr. Santora you did mention that PD they're having PD. Those are gonna all tie to the PD we're talking about first for social emotional learning is focused on trauma and the students coming back to school so when I answer I'm gonna tie all that together it's all related. You did mention that a couple of weeks ago. Yes that was the point of the PD. Any other comments? Okay. Anyone before I close out? I just have a question there will be no any mention of anything
077to any of the students about the vaccine getting vaccinated like the nurses won't be coming in and having discussions about it or anything along those lines right from kindergarten all the way up to high school. We don't have high school so we're I know I just put on our web page I think today that Brookdale is hosting vaccinations for those that are interested is on our COVID page so that is on our on our COVID page for parents. I'm talking about like in the classroom like the nurse isn't gonna come in and do a lesson on it. COVID or how to prevent COVID and stuff like that. That's not our plan no wait that's two different things how to prevent COVID like wash your hands yes. I just read your question in my head I
078was like wait no yes we're gonna talk about how to prevent disease yes. She wants to make sure we're not preaching the vaccine. That's not that's not our plan but we will put listed in our questions. Since you just said you posted something on the page I don't I mean I try to get onto the website the MERS site often any way we can get backpack information on all the new posts you know subscribe to each school is there any way to do that for you know. On all updates the web page it's hard because like sometimes we just update like Miss Pipchinski had update all of our pages to say that it's her and her philosophy and each department updates their page so the business office updates their page HR updates their page so
079it would be hard to keep track of like you know like what you just said about the Brookdale thing or so big things coming up maybe big things and okay like about our meetings helpful okay thank you Ronnie where where do you post our meetings the meetings are posted on the Espresso Park Press news transcript and patch the old places I say in the beginning of the meeting those three places they're in the Park Press they're posted on the doors outside the administration building they're posted in the county library there's certain areas around town that the notices are posted within the community as well as on those in the website too excuse me what do you mean what do you mean they're there there's an entire calendar there for the whole year the the calendar
080the count the board the board approved calendar is on the website for board meeting going you're going to MERS and j.us MERS and j.us you have to go as far as I know what no if you go to under administration it says Board of Education and on the left-hand side it should say eating it says meeting schedule and it's listed from July 13th 2021 through June 21st of 2022 so you can print it out and put it on your fridge and you won't miss it and any time there's additional meetings or if there's any changes an additional revised meeting notice is put out and posted and sent to all the normal places that the meeting notices are published okay all right Ronnie Dottie explain that there's a section there for the minutes that's what I
081was just telling yeah that's what we're looking at they're there there's a couple of things on the Board of Education the the videos of meetings there's the minutes there's agendas there's the calendar there's our pitches you know if you if you go on the MERS and j.us site and the page comes up it says up at the top administration and you click on that it says Board of Education that's where you find the calendar under meeting schedule and the meetings if you're looking under agendas you're never going to see more than the current agenda the the agenda is posted and made public the Monday morning before the Tuesday meeting so you're never going to see agendas for meetings in advance like you're never going to see an August 10th agenda until the Monday before the
082meeting don't look at the agenda link look at the actual meeting schedule link that shows you all the meeting dates okay and you also know that we we all have an email address so if you wanted to write to me my email address is Deepa Caro that's PORCARO at MERS and j.us and all the board members have an email address too so you can always reach out and write to us with any of your questions prior to a board meeting you know if something comes to mind say tomorrow or the next day and the next meetings not till August 10th you can always shoot us an email or dr. Santora okay all right now we're gonna do our workshop item up yes so just today I don't know if it was yesterday today but for
083me today I saw that the CDC is recommending universal masking for all staff students teachers regardless of vaccination status Nicole you opens up today saying that at this point you're making it mask optional so now will you go with CDC recommendations or the state level which Governor Murphy said he's leaving it up to the districts right now we're following what the New Jersey Department of Health and New Jersey Department of Education is giving us they did say that it may change based on CDC recommendations but they haven't obviously are all this happened today you know it's hard so if we follow what the state tells us the state goes back and and goes with the CDC guidelines then you have to follow that it's hard to say the hypothetical let let's see what happens okay
084thank you okay thank you good job I think we have three more dr. Santora you know me very well when it comes to the masks um my opinion about that has obviously not been taken very lightly for those of you who don't know I do have a severely medical fractal baby um so I do my son missed ESY this year he missed four weeks of socialization which he's never had because he's always been in a hospital bed he missed on out on OT therapies he missed out on speech therapies he missed out on PC all because I wasn't asking any child to be masked I was asking for the teachers there was no proof miss Paul there could you so at what point I get the state but what point will you take IHPS into
085consideration and a IHP is the medical IEP is which is written out by your child's medical providers that lists all the concerns so my child needs to have an AED in the building he's in God forbid he has a cardiac arrest all I asked was if you were not going to show me that you had the immunization I can't go by honor of value right now I've seen again my hot son has been on the ventilators three times he was hospitalized and was pronounced dead because he got a virus so at what point will you take a doctor's note miss pulled out with IHPS we get we get the notes from the doctors we then give it to our medical position then we come up with an IHP plan and we have meetings on it
086but when you go against all doctor recommendations that can be discussed at the IHP meeting hey you so you'll email me when my son's IHP meeting is mm-hmm thank you Gia Cambridge court I have a question so let's say it happens again with Murphy right now this is technically this is not a law he's they're recommending this what is gonna happen if we send our kids with no mask on it's physically not a law and you are not allowed to refuse our kids education we're again we're going back to hypotheticals right now we're not saying we're mandating them so you want me to give a hypothetical situation and then hypothetically how we're gonna have asking in we can put that as part of our plan that we share out okay Marina 22 Marion Drive I
087just wanted to find out about the gifted and talented program in the district I did look at the guidelines I saw the the write-up but I haven't seen any gifted and talented program so I just wanted to find out if it will be available and perhaps going into middle school that that would be an option we do have a gifted and talented program it's at the middle school as well we did do a presentation on that mmm may may may may may going over it I don't know if that presentation is on our website so miss Pepchinski maybe you could just make sure that it's visible but we can add that that presentation to our comment section as well and how do we ensure that our child our children who are eligible are actually part
088of the program and is it a pull-out program can somebody elaborate on we will put all that in in the comments they change it everyone's eligible right no not everyone there's got there's there's requirements it's just different guidelines a lot different yeah but not anybody okay going once going twice old I'm closing public comment look at what a nice night we had okay well now we're gonna do a workshop you're welcome to stay if you have other plans that's fine too but you're welcome to stay for a workshop with the representative from New Jersey School Boards Association you want to take a five-minute break we could do that too five-minute break okay so we provide training to boards of education and just so the public is aware because they think sometimes it's it's good information
089once somebody gets elected to the Board of Education they are required by state statute to attend mandatory training so a board member a newly elected board member is required to have training in year one year two and year three of their first term and then every time a board member is re-elected they have to have mandated training in year one of any re-elected year so our association provides that training we're named in the statute to provide that training to all board members in addition our association will facilitate goal-setting so that's what we're here to do tonight for the board I come in and I would you can tell that I don't use these very often I'm sorry and so we facilitate sessions training sessions for the board and so tonight like I said we're going
090to review the board self-evaluation so this board of education has always done a self assessment and it's done annually on the work that they do as a board in nine different areas so I have returned that the compiled evaluation back to the board members they are going to review it and then from the evaluation we're going to have a discussion and develop goals for the board of education to work on in the upcoming year so a board of education and school district the superintendent has goals that she is working on and those were presented to the board at the previous meeting and the board will adopt those goals and then those goals are the goals that the superintendent is evaluated on annually so the board of education evaluates and they are the only group that
091can evaluate the superintendent on her performance so and they've evaluated the previous superintendent every year I've been working with the boards here in Monmouth County for thirteen and a half years so the thirteen and a half years that I've worked with this board they have always evaluated their superintendent so that's a good thing good information for people to have so my question to the board and I'm sorry I'm looking at Nicole reading this my printer printed things out a little wacky today you know I mean I've been away for two weeks and so yesterday was my transition day and today nothing went right so you can see that the evaluation is printed a little bit funny so I don't know if you all I had sent it out to Dottie yesterday she shared it with
092you if you had the opportunity to read through it or if you want to take a few minutes to go through it and then instead of me doing all the work this time I'm gonna put you all to work at the two big post-its that are here that talk about interesting observations that are contained within the evaluation what did the evaluation point out that is a strength of the board then I'm gonna ask you to go over to critical concerns that are facing the board that are in the evaluation and then from reading the evaluation is there an area for that you feel would be good for a board goal so what I'm go and then I'm gonna take over the 2021 board goals so what I'm going to ask you to do is to
093read through the evaluation and then there's a marker underneath every one of the post-its if you would come up and just write on the big post-its this time I'm gonna ask you to do to work it this way versus you calling things out to me and me recording them so do you understand what I'm asking so read through the evaluation and then we each get each one of you I want you to come up to these large post-its and I want you to set tell me after you read the evaluation was there something in there that you found interesting and if you did I want you to write it up here same thing with did the evaluation point out strengths of the board it did because I did read the evaluation so I want you
094to write those there then I want you to come over here and then if there is something that you feel is a critical concern that's facing the board with the board governance I want you to write that here and then after reading the evaluation if there is an area within the evaluation that you feel the board needs to work on in the upcoming year I want you to write it here and then from this document after we get through the critical concerns and this document will come up with some goals for the board to work on in the upcoming year so that's what I'm going to ask you to do versus you just calling things out to me this way you can get up and walk around okay you assume they want to do interesting
095observation you've already read it and you know the responses how about it you like yelling interesting interest could be good or bad wait what are you doing right are we going are we starting over there it doesn't matter no you don't have to go in my head right you don't have to go in order although if you work although if you were calling them out to me we would go in order I'm just saying okay I need going out of work quiet okay we're back in session okay so so this isn't different than what we would normally do normally you would call these things out for me to write out but I do think it's important for you all to kind of sit back reflect on the evaluation and and and put your your questions
096your concerns your issues up one on to the sheets so you know as we go through so we will see you know what is here as the interesting observations so and I do have something just to say under some of these observations here just as information points so you know obviously somebody wrote here based on the comments that are within the evaluation that somebody doesn't like the board president and here's what I'm going to say to you and it's it's really hard as somebody who previously has set it has been in that position it is really hard whenever you go through the evaluations and you clearly see comments that are directly attributed to you you know because it it it sometimes feels okay like it's an attack been there done that okay and so what
097we need to do is maybe understand get a better handle on roles and responsibilities within with within your governance structure and some of that then falls to the second bullet that is here is why does the board president speak for the board well we can't have nine spokespeople for the board the board in the end has to speak with one voice and that voice does come through your board president and if you go back and we talk about you being that policy-making body if you read the district bylaws which the bylaws really lay out how the board operates okay in all areas you know whether it's finance how the budgets developed whether it is public comments all of that is contained within that policy manual so you will see within your policy that your superintendent
098is the spokesperson for your district so that means all communications that come out from the district have to come through your superintendent and the board speaking with one voice because you've elected a board president the board has to come to an agreement on a majority opinion and that's what the board president communicates out to the public on behalf of the board so if there are major issues that are facing the board and the board needs to communicate information out to the public it really does need to reflect the majority opinion of the board the board can't do anything without counting to five you have to have five votes five board members who are saying this is what we as a board want to be communicated what we want to be communicated out to the public
099now as a board president if the majority of the board has said this is what we want to have communicated I as the board president may not be in agreement with what the majority of the board has stated but yet as board president that's what I need to communicate because you all have individual voices but what gets communicated out from the board just like when you make your decisions it's it's a majority of the board has to pass a particular resolution in order for that to get enacted by the district now there are certain things that are prescribed by statute and code that are called administrative decisions and those the superintendent doesn't need your vote to do okay so the most infamous administrative decision that the superintendent has to make is your school calendar that's
100an administrative decision the board by law does not have to vote on your district calendar so so she is allowing you or your superintendent generally will bring that calendar to the board to approve but the reality is that they don't have to so and those you know and those are the superintendent would be kind of crazy not to bring it to to the board you know for approval but in the end that final calendar that she brings she doesn't need your approval on so all of your work about what you vote on and what you don't vote on is prescribed by statute and code so if you go to our website now if there are certain areas within our website that are password protected this one particularly would be but anybody can look it up
101in statute and code they they list out you know what things need to be voted on what things don't need to be voted on what needs to be voted on and approved by a majority vote what needs to be a majority vote meaning five people or a majority of the board seated at the time or some things have to be passed by a two-thirds majority so it is very prescribed about those particular votes and and what the board needs to vote on so the comment you know about the who why does the board president speak I'm going to jump to something else is that it is important to know that under the sunshine law the Board of Education is required to meet in public but it's not a public meeting so the board meetings are
102a meeting held in public but not a public meeting so what does that mean it means the board has to do its business out in what they refer to as the sunshine open so that the public can listen to debate and the public can observe the vote that's being taken by the Board of Education by law the board is in has to have public comment the board is only required to have one session of public comment by law so a lot of boards okay that I work with some only have one public comment and it usually occurs at the end of the meeting a lot of boards will still continue with a public comment in the beginning of the meeting that's restricted to agenda items only so that they can make comment on anything that
103the board is going to take action to and then the second public comment which generally happens at the end of the meeting is pretty much open to anything most boards within their policy will have a time limit for overall public comment they will also have a time limit for individual comments that are made the board and the superintendent do not necessarily have to respond to questions or comments that are made and addressed to the board chair at the meeting why well you know sometimes based on the comments or questions that are made the superintendent needs to go back and find out from a staff member you know what what the issue was and how it was addressed so when dr. Santora is talking about hypotheticals we as a board need to make sure that we
104are not you know talking about hypotheticals because there is often the perception that those hypotheticals are all of a sudden set in stone so you know we are you know most of us who sit on the board I know I'm a parent and I'm not saying that the public or any or staff member or whoever is coming to the day to the podium or to have that public comment is you know there is generally two sides you know to every issue that comes before the board and generally you know the resolution lies somewhere in the middle so as a board we need to be careful not to jump to conclusions and come out and make a statement that we may then have to later retract because if we start retracting statements and responses that we
105are making at public meetings all of a sudden the public is going to say well you know are they you know are they hiding something you know why did they tell us this whenever it's this it just gives the superintendent who ends up being the person who's responding to questions and comments the opportunity to get the correct information and it's just like if you as board members okay are asking Ronnie questions about the bills list to do that at a board meeting whenever there's public here really puts her on the spot because of the size of your district she really cannot unless she's really super amazing which I know you are Ronnie but you don't have all those numbers and all of those purchase orders and everything else in your head to be able to
106give a response so what you want to do is make sure that any information that you're you're imparting as the board is good accurate information that may not end up making the board look bad because that's not what we want to have happen because when we look bad then the public loses confidence in the job that we are doing at the board table so that kind of covers you know a lot of things here and you know they're they're most like there is always room for improvement as to how we communicate how we communicate to each other and how we communicate to the public how we communicate to our staff so there's always ways for us to continue to improve that communication piece it's not ever going to be perfect because I always felt as
107a board member that you know no matter how much our board communicated out to our community our community and all the surveys said well we weren't communicated to enough so I always felt that the only way they wanted to be communicated is if we went and knocked on every door of every resident in the in the community which is really hard to do so you know I just think we need as a board to put together some kind of communication plan for how we're going to communicate out now Nicole I had spoke to her yesterday she explained to me the process that she is going to be using for responding to your public comments it's not a bad way okay for her to respond out because this way if she's taking the questions and then
108she's creating the responses and then being transparent enough that she's putting it up on the website this way she's giving good accurate information to the public about their questions and concerns that they're bringing before the board because the back-and-forth that then becomes a public meeting and that's not what your job that's not what you as board members are supposed to be doing you're supposed to be coming in voting on the business that's here before the board so that the district can be able to move forward so that's kind of like you know everything kind of in a nutshell I don't know which would you like to add anything else is there anything that I missed because I do miss a lot of things okay Kathy can I ask you a question please so over here
109I know you move I know I'm sorry don't do this it's crowded over there love over here she needs company under I understand the comment and the and the and the policy regarding the president speaks for the board I get that my question is more of going to be about what happens when someone from the public whether they're here or not I mean I mean what question from the public directed to an individual like what if someone says Joanne what do you think about masks in school why can't Joanne answer that question I mean it's directed right to her she could potentially you know but here's the thing you need to make sure that any time you are addressing a member of the public a member of the press whether you're posting on social media
110on Facebook or on Twitter or whatever although I will say and then I have a caveat to it that you okay are speaking you make sure you clearly state that I am speaking as Kathy Weinkauf a member of the public not Kathy Weinkauf member of the Board of Education because it's too easy for somebody to say that everybody in your community knows you're a member of the board and all of a sudden your statement becomes this is what the board position is and it's your personal meeting though yeah at a meeting you can't say I'm taking my board hat off and talking as no okay I'm saying someone from the public comes to me and gets up at the mic and says sorry Joanne Joanne what do you feel about I'm looking right at you
111what do you feel about masks why can't she answer that person I mean that's going to start then that dial it's gonna start the dialogue where it's now becoming a public meeting but but if they're asking the question directly who shuts that person down because personally if somebody asks me a question I want to answer it because if I don't answer it I feel like I'm dodging the question it's just me personally it's how I feel I don't know how the other folks in the room I think you always a group and not that and Kathy not that we get people directing questions directly at us but it's happened from time to time well and and so you know her opinion okay whether she's a board member or not whether she's seated at the board
112table or not is still her personal opinion and she doesn't have to share it if she chooses not to right but if I wanted to could I answer I mean this is this gets away from exactly what Kathy's talking about that I thought process of this is the board's meeting what happens is it turns into the board starts to address the public the presentation starts to address the public everyone starts to look at the public it's not a meeting between you all and the public it's a meeting between you all so the public has an opportunity under the law to comment during the comments period but not to inquire personal opinions or you know ask the superintendent questions they can say whatever they want to right but what happens is it's very easy for the
113board you know to fall into this routine of being responsive that's not the purpose of the meeting yeah no that's helpful okay understood I just understood right right it also gives the public the perception that their members of this meeting right understood that's fair there I mean it's it's observation and the other thing that's important is you know for the public to understand there are either seven I think seven protected areas of the board operations that get moved into closed session that can't be discussed in public and that's prescribed by statute also I mean the ones we talk about all the time is student matters can't mention student names particular student issues a parent could bring it up but it's not for Nicole to address because that is an area that could get you in
114trouble if you should have those conversations legal matters okay can't be discussed in public because it could potentially jeopardize any court case or any negotiations that you may be having in order to do an out of court settlement negotiations whenever you're talking about negotiating the contract of any of your staff members by law that also is something to be held in closed session if you are looking to buy a building or a piece of land all of those discussions have to take place in public because imagine you know I always use the example you know when I was on my board we were building a brand new middle school we needed a hundred acres to buy this middle school and so you know when you're looking okay 37 square miles at different pieces of property
115if all of a sudden you're letting people know well I'm looking at this property I'm looking at that property all of a sudden property prices are going to go from a hundred thousand dollars an acre to probably two three four five hundred thousand dollars an acre because we've already put out you know those pieces of property and we may end up paying a premium for it if you're going out for any kind of bonds those discussions are being pieced in public and those five are the ones I know the best I know there's two other ones personnel public you know if you have a student hearing that goes into public I mean into closed session person any personnel issue gets and so when you go into closed session you will have to state what you're
116going into closed session for could be the evaluation of the superintendent it could be to value what you know to discuss a legal matter what personnel you need to state why you're going into closed session and then the other part of the statement is that minutes will be released at the time where confidentiality is no longer necessary so eventually those closed session meeting minutes will be disclosed but not until that issue has been resolved in whatever manner it's going to be resolved in and all of that's really prescribed I didn't know we released the minutes from closed like even if it's personnel or it's a personnel talk gets tricky but for certain things and Ronnie can tell you because she's the keeper of the minutes basically what you see on the agenda the attachments are
117there the minutes are very they're vague they basically touch on broad topics they don't mention names if we do mention an employee it's an employee number it's generally the board engaged in a discussion regarding a discipline matter involving employee number whatever things like that we don't there is not specific details there so that's why we don't have to hold the meeting the minutes for very long because I'm putting them out there contemporaneously there's not divulging any information we're not giving up any strategies for litigation or anything like that it's just we discuss the matter of litigation so then once the litigation is finished the board generally has to vote on whatever that resolution is so that's when those closed session minutes become public you know once it comes and is is before board action so
118I don't know is there any other questions on that first on on that first page that's there you really see what's over there anymore well really talks about public you know addressing the public the superintendent responding to the public I talked a little bit about improvement for how the board interacts with one another the administration and the public and one comment is how the public views the board yeah you mentioned by laws right mm-hmm there's the board we create our own bylaws yes we could create or dissolve bylaws as we see fit and as long as everything has gone through your your board attorney to it to assure that any changes and that happens even with policy you can adjust your policy and you can also adjust your bylaws it will be your attorney's responsibility
119to make sure that any changes that you make to your bylaws and your policies are within the legal guidelines I had a question related to what Jerry was just saying oh you mentioned earlier that the the the president and vice president speaking is in the bylaws I thought that was a matter of state law is that the president speaks on behalf of the board I don't want a clarification I yeah I thought it was state law is it not a requirement is it just our bylaws or is that we'd have to look into that I just always thought it was state law so I was just curious okay thank you right and if you look at the end of those bylaws any any right okay that's why she's here will be at the end okay
120of any bylaw and policy that you have one of the things that you should be doing on an ongoing basis as a board is to have a process for ongoing policy and bylaw review so every so often you really should be as a board you know pulling up policies and bylaws to look at them to see when the last time was that they were adopted whether they were readopted or when they were changed and all of that information is at the end of each one of those those policies and bylaws generally it's under the legal citations and it will say that this particular policy was adopted on such and such a date and so that is the date at the board meeting that the board approved the policy revisions reviewed or a new policy so
121if you're using Strauss-Esme okay Strauss-Esme is constantly sending updates to the board on any policy revisions that have to be made and a lot of the policies that you are have in place generally are state mandated policies so if there is anything that is mandated by the state you as a board need to adopt that policy even though you may not agree with it the board still is mandated to have those policies in place for districts you know because in the end what happens and you know I don't know if it has ever happened but that ends up getting if you're you don't have those state mandated policies in place that gets reflected on your CUSAC scores okay so that's the accountability system that the DOE has in place for a board where they come
122in and they do reviews if you don't have those policies in place you're going to lose points in CUSAC and if you get below the 80% score then the board has to put a corrective action plan in place to address those deficiencies that occur within CUSAC so so you know it's kind of like that vicious cycle that we all go through some of the things that you wrote here about the strengths of the board okay somebody said you are a policy driven body and that really is everything that you do as a board is covered in those policies and you know they start generally in the 1000s which is the bylaws and go up to 9000 and so that covers pretty much you have transportation the budgeting process you know placement of students and you're
123gifted and talented is generally one of the policies whatever it has it for everything that you're doing and if you question something that's happening on the board agenda and you really don't understand the question that we ask is what does our policy say because we need to make sure that we are abiding by the policies that have been implemented and approved by the board and Kathy also all board members have access to stress estimate they all have logins and can go in and view the different policies and regulations at any time and it's just a matter of logging in makes for riveting reading oh it's wonderful right that's what you do you go there okay so somebody wrote here about despite the budget cuts the board is still able to develop a budget that balances
124the needs of the students and you know that piece of it is important because in the end you all okay are the advocates for the people who have no say in the educational process and that's the kids okay so what we need to do is that delicate balancing act between your taxpayers ability to pay and offering you know a really good program for your board I mean for your for your students and I mean you're talking about being fiscally responsible recognizing student and staff achievement great job somebody wrote here maintaining standards and quality under difficult financial conditions the board provides stability I had a conversation with somebody today on another board you know that having a board that is a stable board is a good thing because that stability you know also transcends out to
125the rest of your district oh and I wrote one okay so the one that I wrote here is is your master certification status so you know I know it's a pain and I know sometimes it's really hard to deal with me you know I know because I go into bushes oh she's here again but I think it's important you know for you all to recognize and I say you know hats off to you that you continue with your professional development as a board you know there's an expectation that your staff is going to have professional development that your superintendent has professional development your administrators have professional development that means it's important for the board to have professional development also around a whole host of areas so that piece is important I mean let's talk about
126it you've dedicated a lot of hours 16 hours with me in order to get your certification and then another 10 so now we're talking 26 hours with with me my husband would say bless you all and you know so that you can get that master certification and then you're continuing with that that that training in order to maintain that master certification so it doesn't lapse because if it laps then you have to go back over and spend another 26 hours with me and we don't want to do that so you know I do say to you you know it it's important and I think you all should really pat yourselves on the back that as a group you've you've done this training but there are some of you okay who have gone on and received
127your individual certifications and your master certification because it's important to have a well-trained board you know when I came on the board you know I'm a numbers person I worked in public accounting before I came on the board I didn't know the first thing about curriculum and instruction and you know whenever they would do the meeting where they would talk about the test scores I would be there like a bobblehead like I really understood but I really didn't understand but I was afraid to raise my hand and say I don't really understand what you're talking about can you please explain it to me in kindergarten terms so I can understand so you know I think it's important for each of us to continue with that training for us to be able to make the most
128informed decisions that we can around our students and the programs that we're offering within the district so then some of the critical areas okay so you know I added one and I think it's really important you know for you all especially because you have a new superintendent in place to do some scores under plan of every of all areas of the evaluation that is the one that that in the past has been a problem for the board and you know this year is still a problem with the board because I will tell you when you look at those scores for planning this year it's the very first one it's the very first indicator in here I mean you all scored about the board is a 2.8 the scores for you okay really when I look
129at a board self-evaluation I like to see scores three and above okay so when I see scores or when I see individual indicators that fall below a three that says to me okay this may be an area that the board may want to address moving forward in in the future so for me that was like the big one that I thought was an issue I mean coming out of the pandemic for every school district is going to you know be a concern your future community concerns and how you deal with them I'm your new superintendent and your new assistant superintendent we've got to get them transitioned I mean although Nicole has been here in the district for several years and I'm assuming you have also you were a principal before you okay so everybody in
130the district knows you as the principal of whichever school you were in I'm sorry and they know Nicole as the assistant superintendent your roles now are very different so you all need the two of you and the board needs to assist you with that transition into your new roles here in the district and it's important and I'm gonna say it upfront right now to all board members they're going to make a few hiccups every now and then okay they wouldn't be human if they didn't have a hiccup every now and then it's how we as a board deal with those hiccups okay that makes the two of them be successful because you now have a whole new team okay so every time there is one change on the board your team changes the dynamic of
131the team changes and so you have to work to make your group that's now here in place to be as cohesive as you possibly can be meeting management meeting management sometimes is always difficult you know using the gavel sometimes is really hard you know and so I think as we transition from post you know back from post-covid you know you may find that there are going to be some hiccups in the meeting but it's now you all need to have a process in place as and your board president needs to have a process in place to bring those meetings back to the way that they were beforehand and so that's where those bylaws around public comment around board member comment you know take place that the board president now needs to begin to manage the
132meeting maybe a little tighter than what it had what you've done in the past because the other thing that comes with having board members who have been on the board for a while is that we all become comfortable with each other okay and we get used to sometimes just blurting things out and sometimes those things that we blurt out probably shouldn't be blurted out but if you want to have true meeting management then that means we have to observe the the Roberts rules okay go back and nobody speaks on the board unless they've been recognized by the board president for the members of the public that are here you you know address all your comments to the board president that's the way that it's written through Roberts rules of order and if she start and
133starts to tighten those reins then the rest of us who are sitting around the table need to recognize and abide by the way that we run our meetings so you know so so this one sometimes becomes a double-edged sword you know because we really want things to tighten down but sometimes they get tightened down to a point where all of a sudden we feel like we don't have the ability to speak and not many boards I'm gonna say this to you right now because I do work with all the boards here in Monmouth County and I have a handful in ocean there are not many boards of education where your board president allows each one of you to ask questions and make comments at your meetings at the end of your meetings like Dottie does
134I'm just here to tell you that doesn't generally happen in a lot of meetings so you have the opportunity during that point in time to ask questions make comments so I do think you know for you there is a little more opportunity to have that ability to make those comments during your meeting sure let's say Dottie or whoever the president is next year the year after decided I'm not gonna let anyone speak we're gonna you know no more you're not gonna give you your your time at the end of the meeting for new business I don't care that's the way it is could we just go creating the bylaws that you have to give each person their time you could change it you could to stop a dictatorship if a president doesn't want to allow
135the other board members to speak there's a solution I mean you could potentially you could if you really wanted to however the way your meetings are run you've established a past practice yeah you know you've established a past practice and the board president just can't come out and say this is how we're doing it it needs to be a conversation that the majority of the board agrees to so now if five people we count to five and five people say well we don't want to let so say your board majority two years down the road completely flips okay and now all of a sudden you've got five people on you know that's voting differently than the way the seated board is and they come in they change that bylaw they vote on the bylaw five
136people vote yes you're kind of stuck with it you know because that comes with whenever we make those votes we really have to understand that the majority rules okay and the minority even though they may not agree with it has to accept the vote of the majority of the board until such time that the board majority changes okay so you know and I've been on the losing end of some of those battles too and they're hard you know when we're the person who is in the minority and if you think about it although you can't participate for people whenever they do the superintendent's evaluation there may be somebody on the board who may think sorry Nicole that maybe the superintendent's not doing a great job okay say John okay John that thought that John didn't
137do a good job well you know one person in the minority may feel well why am I even filling out this evaluation because my voice doesn't mean anything well yes your voice does mean something because when you go into closed session and you have that discussion around the superintendent's evaluation that minority opinion has to be expressed verbally to your superintendent you know so so there is that you know opportunities for that minority opinion to be heard working more as a team being more proactive and reactive this this proactive versus reactive okay sometimes will be addressed by your long-range planning what kind of long-term planning does the board have in place that allows you to be more proactive versus being reactive to issues that are coming before the board but there's not always an opportunity to
138know all that in advance so as things do come in how do we how do we escape a dynamic where and you know where what's that oh my fault no no I just thought you were addressing me um like how do we how do we escape a dynamic where the board's feeling is that issues are kind of thrust upon them last minute like administration or okay yeah okay all right okay so all right so so that okay needs to be a conversation and possibly you know another topic for down the road where the board sits down with Nicole and you talk about expectations you know these are the expectations that the board has of the superintendent and the superintendent is going to have expectations that she's going to expect back from the board that's going
139to make us a good working team okay and so her starting out now okay brand new is the opportune time for you to begin to have those conversations because when you look at the indicators that are here within the planning section of the evaluation you talk about with broad community input established a district-wide mission and a multi-year plan for education you have a 2.6 there how do you go about doing that does Nicole have a play a process or an idea as to how can we address this now I'm going to be really up front I went on to your website today as I was getting materials ready for tonight I couldn't find your district mission statement anywhere on the website and I clicked on every single I haven't gotten to that yet but I
140was gonna make that one of my goals for this okay to redo it with public input all right so I haven't gotten to what my goals are gonna be my superintendent goals yet for this year but that is one of them okay so and it's important because that mission statement is important now not that I'm you know so eventually what you may want to do is do some strategic planning for the district that you know will that mission should drive having that mission in place should drive everything that everybody within your school district is doing I was I was strategic planning isn't something we've always done but I think doing the mission statement is the first step so maybe not a full strategic plan but start small start small start with the mission redoing the
141mission statement updating it you know and you want to make sure that when you do that that you do bring district stakeholders together now sometimes facilitating those conversations around a mission statement becomes difficult that's something I can help you with you know that we could bring some of your stakeholders together and develop a mission statement so that if we have that and like I said that should drive everything that happens within your district because as you're approving things on your agenda as individual board members we should say is this supporting the mission of our school district is this goal supporting the mission of our school district so that's why that becomes really important when you look at number three it talks about reviews action plans developed to support the goals so ideally once Nicole's goals
142have been adopted by the board she should create action plans steps as to how those action plans are going to get carried out what's the activity going to be who's going to be responsible for doing it what resources are we going to need to carry out this particular step what's the timeline when should the board expect to see that particular activity accomplished and then what's the indicator of success how will we as a board know whether that particular action item has been accomplished and so Nicole should share those with you and she should be providing you updates on the progress towards the achievement of your goals throughout the year the first time that you hear about the accomplishment of goals should not be when it comes time to evaluate her so whether she gives you
143written reports whether she does a report at a board meeting you know I often recommend that there should be a public update on the goals at least two or three times throughout the year so that the board knows that we're moving forward on those goals and the public knows this is what we're working on and this is where we are and so if you do that okay then this whole if you do those three things your planning issue here within your evaluation will be addressed as you move forward so those are things you know and this could potentially be a board goal to make sure that the board okay and the superintendent are bringing the public together in order to develop a mission for the district or the board can have a goal to ensure
144that throughout your board agenda throughout the year that there are updates on the progress towards the achievement of goals and they should be the updates on the district goals as well as whatever goals it is that you as a board are working on because just as your superintendent creates action plans for her district goals the board should be complete and making action plans for the completion of your own board goals here's what we're going to do to accomplish this particular goal so that would address you know some of this being proactive versus reactive how changing changing something affects budget who wrote this economy okay all right okay great and then each individual should board members should have more training so so these are you know good things and it's better that we talk about each
145of these so that we all get kind of a better idea or a handle or on what we as what our responsibilities are as board members and what we can do to address some of those things so some of the areas for goals are focused effort on mental health all nine of us need to do better at meetings members feel they cannot express themselves better community involvement if Nicole is going to bring people together to develop that mission statement that starts on getting your your community involved in what's going on and then keep goals two and four number two is focused on funding for the district and number four is maintaining your certification and then follow up on newly implemented programs will tie into this planning area for the board so you know that's so
146what we need to do now is that to craft three or four goals for the board to be able to work on and if you look at the PowerPoint that's in here I wrote I put in here your goals from last year where's that it's the PowerPoint that looks like this page sex and really this talks a little bit about the different types of goals that we have in the district I did take Nicole's goals and dump them in here for your district goals but you will really see okay so so if you look on page five okay some samples of board goals that are in here besides completing the board's superintendent's evaluation one of the sample goals in here is to review our bylaws to review and revise and ensure that they reflect your
147current practices so those bylaws really do need to reflect what you are actually doing at the board table so your goals from last year on page six as Dottie said the first one was to gain an understanding of blended learning and how it could be implemented in the district to best meet the educational needs of all students goal number two was to continue to evaluate the implications of the revised state funding formula and address ramification of potential changes to the district budget and develop communication strategy to inform the community of those changes number three hip hip hooray that's done and accomplished the board will implement the plan for the succession of the educational leader for the Menalop and Englishtown regional school district and then number four was for you to maintain your certification so you
148know I'm now up for you know ideas for your board goals and I guess the most important question is does the rest of the board feel that goal number two and number four is worth continuing with in the upcoming year I love with the goal number two I mean I think where we said budget-wise is a better place well what do you think I think I think tomorrow I think the funding where do we go goal number two this year was about implicating the budget the funding formula I mean where do we sit what do you think budget-wise I thought this COVID money was flowing and I thought we we sat at a better place am I wrong we're still we're still gonna feel the impacts of the s2 reductions that that's gonna happen regardless
149unless something dramatically different happens with this lawsuit that we're involved with but right now we really don't see anything changing with that so we are going to be losing another 2.7 2.9 million dollars next year while we do have some of the stimulus funds this year to help with certain things in a way it's somewhat of a false funding source you know we are going to use it to have seven teachers to help with learning loss and and you know that we couldn't put in the budget because we just didn't have the funding and to keep the class sizes down where we need them for the social distancing but that money is going to go away it's not going to be there forever so it's learning it's really about learning to live in a smaller
150financial footprint on a continue on a moving forward basis you know knowing costs are gonna be going up health benefits go up salaries go up it's coming up with you know alternate ways of funding it but we really don't have many we're limited in what we can do with our tax levy we've been very good about you know you've been very good with me is allowing me to go to cap with that so we have taken advantage of those numbers we are going to have a little bit of an excess surplus more so than in the past because of kovat we weren't transporting students we didn't special ed children weren't being transported to out of district placements we saved money in that area buses weren't on the roads we saved money in those areas we
151did have some money come back we do have some FEMA money coming that'll be a reimbursement when we actually get it I don't know but that will be a little bit of a windfall but again those are just temporary things and we've been really lucky as opposed to just you know having to deal with a more harsh reality but we've been fortunate in some ways we're going to have to learn to tighten our belt you know so I don't know you know what kind of communication out to your community you're going to need to make because to Ronnie's point one of the things that they said was you really do need to be careful about the monies that you're using for the relief money because you want to make sure that whatever it is you're
152using the money for that future budgets are going to be able to cover well yeah like this those seven teachers are going to be temporary right they're not well that's that's the point I mean for sure but there's a you know you when we sit negotiations sometimes you ask me about certain things you know can we afford this and like my response to you always is well we can afford it but you have to you have to know what are you willing up to give up to get that it's always about a give-and-take if you want that we can have it but what are you willing to give to get that and it all has to fit within the same financial footprint I get so we go back to do we want to keep goal
153number two I like goal number two just because I think that given the funding shortfalls getting increasingly worse it definitely it seems to be like the central hardest thing for us to continue to do to maintain quality and and I think we've done that admirably and it impacts it impacts you know staffing it impacts the ability to provide supplies in the classroom it impacts the maintenance of the buildings it's not just a doesn't hit just a one single area it is very broad across all areas of district operations okay and what about goal number four to maintain your certification well I've been here since 8 o'clock so that means you've you've already earned two and a half credits for me just okay I mean so every time I'm here you know you get you get
154those credits goal number one about the blended learning you know looking at the comment up there about mental health and the fact that you're going to be having a presentation at an upcoming meeting about mental health and student and staff social emotional well-being I don't know if you want to adjust that a little bit to cover that social emotional well-being and health of students and staff versus the blended learning I was gonna say I think is there a way to create a goal that's more holistic at the student level meaning it's I think you're on to something it's not just about the education it's about the student as a whole their their mental well-being their educational well-being is there a way to maybe draft something up where okay but you need to be careful here's
155what I'm my caveat yeah please we can but you just need we need to make sure that whatever goal you're establishing for the board right is not becoming a goal that you know for it that should be Nicole's goal versus what should be a board's goal so any goal that you create around the blended learning social emotional health needs to fall under the roles and responsibilities of the board I think the call and Jody on the same page with that topic right okay so goal number three which is on the pink sheet but it's also in the you know on the PowerPoint but goal number three on the pink sheet talks about the district will continue to utilize okay it's tiered response blah blah blah blah blah the board's piece okay could be that the
156board will support the initiatives brought forth by the superintendent yeah to that's fair okay love you know do it that way because then that way that specifically belongs to the pool yeah I think we've always been tied to the academic part of the student and this kind of rounds it out a little bit more and it allowed the public to see that right a little bit different side of us particularly coming out of the pandemic which is up on the board as a critical thing you know and kids having to make a difficult adjustment reacclimating I mean it just seems like such a huge priority and truthfully I think it's such a big priority us coming out of the pandemic and being successful that maybe we only need three goals we don't need four and
157and and that's my opinion no and that's totally fine because you don't want to you know you don't want to overburden yourself with trying to accomplish something that you end up spinning your wheels and you know you don't have public here but what's gonna happen if you have to pivot again it's being recorded so yeah you know well and I can be the bad the bad person you know I can be the bad person that says that because we really don't know what's what's going to happen you know I was just saying earlier that you know I spent the last two weeks in North Carolina and what happened down there is in the county where I have my home they had a public hearing countywide for the schools where their governor who is a Republican
158governor has now implemented a statewide mandate for their kids in school that all kids in middle school and elementary school have to wear masks in school and all staff members in elementary and middle school who are unvaccinated will be required to wear a mask and at the high school level any high school student and staff member who is not vaccinated is now going to be mandated to wear a mask I mean and that's in North Carolina our vaccination rate is much higher but we don't know that's the whole issue and what Nicole was trying to say about hypotheticals we don't know what's going to happen and so as a group okay as the group who's going to be more proactive rather than reactive we need to be prepared for whatever may happen once schools reopen
159I was actually just going to throw throw that one out there just to see if what folks thought as another goal because that was it seemed like something that we talked about before being as a board being kind of like operating more as a cohesive unit being more proactive being less reactive you know it seemed like that was a thread that came up a few times I wonder is there a way to translate that into a goal for the board I don't I don't disagree with what you're saying I just think that the unknown of COVID threw us into a whirlwind I don't think prior to COVID we were that much reactive I mean yeah we were reactive to the security concerns that people had after the shootings but other than that I can't think
160of many others that where we were reactive and I could be wrong but I just think there's just too many uncertainties with not that I disagree with you I do think that the cohesiveness needs to exist and being proactive needs to exist but it just it might be hard to put on paper without knowing what it's going to come in the news tomorrow and so it's like you're creating a goal for a hypothetical situation with you well we talked the only thing is we did we talked about that in the context of setting kind of those expectations up with Nicole in a reciprocal fashion like hers of us and and us with her so to me the right way to do that is not in a vacuum but maybe as a board goal or just
161putting it on the board possible we could I think that would really fall under the planning aspect because I know we're not just really supposed to discuss you know more than five people but sometimes we do feel a need to discuss certain things before a meeting like with the masks the options how are things going to be addressed where what is that you know what is Nicole's goal or plan and I know it's presented to us but to really have a conversation yeah yeah that's fair because that's the problem I don't want not to throw John under the bus but he did back us into the corner a couple times with what he had in his head and kind of surprises at board meetings especially the one right before you know when we had to
162put him on leave you know he kind of thought about that ahead of time it would have been a nice heads up coming into it well that's three and a half hours before the board meeting I think he had a little more but again I'm not saying I mean that's just one example I maybe there is a way that's that's what I'm that what what you just touched on Christine was kind of what I was trying to say about like a sense of that things are maybe thrust on us reactively and that part of that is a function of the pandemic okay but there's this other piece where I'm not so sure we're all kind of getting the right temperature check from one another about issues like nothing is ever really socialized and I and
163I get that there's this element of well we can't do a meeting without it being public but there's got to be a way for us to socialize these complicated issues with one another in a way that that doesn't make it a meeting and that doesn't allow the only opportunity to do that to be it has to be what anytime the board comes together has to be an advertised meeting well we still I don't mean I don't mean I'm not talking about we even go into a brief closed session just to get feedback on what each one of us is thinking about let's say for example the mask mandate I know technically we can't but you know sometimes we need to discuss you know throw things out these are new challenges no one has ever come
164across the data isn't out there you know to get feedback from each other that are together in the district to see right no no no but but I think if I if I'm just being can I be fair if you don't no offense on this I don't know if we're being I don't think I don't know if we're thinking creatively enough like I don't we're not talking about getting nine people together at one at one time sorry did you want to finish my comment was that I'm not I don't think we're talking about getting nine people all nine people together all the time and trying to do a clandestine meeting when we need to have it in public but I'm talking about some other vehicle through which we can socialize ideas and prepare one another
165and sound things out even if it comes in the form of like little groups or little chunks like there's there there are definitely other ways to do this I don't know if I agree see that daddy when you did the committee meeting to do the reopening I thought we fostered a really good dialogue in those meetings and I thought so maybe that's what we're looking for no now an ad hoc committee is different than a normal committee an ad hoc committee ends up having a specific charge that is given to that ad hoc committee by the board but the committee but but there are there are committees freestanding committees I'm sure in their remit that could take on you know like a wide enough range of issues such that as things come up there there
166would be a committee logically that would be like then you would have to go to a committee structure okay and so that's all and right now you are a committee of the whole so that would be a conversation that the board would have as to whether they want to remain as you want to remain working as a committee of the whole or do you want to go to specific committees now here's what I will tell you there are pluses and minuses to both types of board governance because the biggest piece that ends up happening of being an issue with committees is the people who are not on the committees feel like they do not have enough information in order to make an informed vote at the board table so so there's pluses right right there's
167pluses and minuses to both and if you're going to move to committees then you have to have those committees and how the committees are going to operate completely structured meaning you have to have agendas you have to make sure that those agendas go out to everybody who is on the board the committee needs to meet minutes need to happen who's recording the minutes those minutes need to go out to board members so you have to have a very clear process in place as to how your committees are going to work of all the boards you do how many are committee of the whole how many are committee you want to know what I would tell you that it generally ends up being about 50-50 and sometime you know with the boards that I work in
168if I had a list of boards I could probably of all the boards here in Monmouth County I could probably go through and tell you which ones work as committees and which ones work as the committees of the whole and the other interesting thing is the boards who work in committees think that committee of the whole is better and people who are in the committee of the whole think committees are better so you know it's kind of like throw it up there and kind of see what happens that don't allow the board members to speak when I learned way back when when I first was on the board old and new was the board members opportunity to speak about any topic so say Brian goes to the soccer field and somebody at the soccer field
169says you know the fields are written really crappy shape or whatever so Brian comes to the board meeting and he says when we do all the new I want to bring up and I heard over the weekend and that was what I was taught was all the new it was every board member has an opportunity to voice and and how boards operate are different from community to community you know and so I mean I'm sure you know your attorneys can tell you every client that they have how they work is very very different the role of the president is very different from community from board to board and it's over and done it's over and done right and it generally is what the past practice has been so saying that I did put if you
170want to move forward with a potential fourth goal I put here develop operational norms for the board superintendent to ensure a successful transition of educational leadership I would put within the district that could be your fourth goal if you wanted a fourth goal yes and then you're gonna have to create action plans okay so the promise is this because we know what my calendar looks like I'm just saying so you might not get it until Friday instead of tomorrow that'll work okay so those will be your minutes Ronnie you do them now I'm gonna go through you need to do if you need help you can let me know but I am telling you right now you will not be able to see me before November 22nd because I'm completely booked up until November my
171first open appointment is November 22nd that's a Monday I actually will put it there but then I'm blocking out the 22nd because by the time the 22nd comes I'm gonna need a time a day off is that a problem so we need a no no no okay I gave that meeting date to somebody else so I have to send them an email and say you snooze you lose and then the other thing I would say to you if you're going to do that did we do something in January this year yes we did yeah we did so so if you want to have ethics all right so when is your reorganization meeting do you know Ronnie okay well you know you can come and do it with me okay Bruce always did no no we
172will do it so are you gonna ask me if he was a good board member no he was one of my favorite board members but he's not a board he's probably a great board member I mean I was an attorney and if I knew the law backwards I'm sorry sorry to hear that motion to adjourn he has a teacher negotiations I'm gonna abstain from that well my wife wants to be a custodian I think I have to leave I'm fine I'm fine I just want to know I don't want to be here from nothing