001Call to order. Public meeting notice. North Hunter and Bor's Regional High School District Board of Education meeting on Tuesday, May 27, 2025 is now called to order. In accordance with the requirements of the Open Public Meeting Act, NJSA 104-6, adequate notice giving the time, date, location, and the extent known. The agenda of this meeting was published by the Hunton County Democrat and the Star Ledger on January 9th, 2025. In addition, notice of this meeting has been posted at North Hunton High School and Boris High School provided to the municipal clerks of Bethlon Township, Califon Burough, Town Clinton, Clinton Township, Franklin Township, Glengardner Burough, Hamptonboro, Hybrbridgeboro, Lebanon Burough, Lebanon Township, Tukesbury Township, and Union Township as well as other interested parties and posted on the district website. Fire exits are located in the direction indicated and
002if alerted to fire, please move in a calm and orderly fashion to the nearest smokefree exit. At this time, please silence all cell phones. And Doug, may we have a roll call? Yes. Christina Keggo here. Brian Chapman here. Angel here. Gallow here. Terra H. Beth Kron here. Rich Morty here. Brandon McKisac here. Cynthia Ray here. Kimberly here. Spven here. Jessica here. Thank you. Can we rise for the flag to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Okay. At this time, can I uh call for a motion and second to approve agenda item 4.1, the April 29th minutes? So moved. Second. That was Christina and Brendan. Kim, I had a question about the minutes if I can. You may.
003So I after reviewing the minutes, uh, bullet point number 22, old and new business. I don't know if this is a question for you or Doug. Can we get a little bit more detail on that on adding who said what so there's more clarity on it meaning like who brought up the ad hoc committee who brought up the natural gas to VHS who brought up the recognition shared board Google Drive can we do that so can we amend this one and do it going forward so you can't amend these unless we tabled it um it would have to be tabled and approved next month. Um, but it's all in recording as well as um, you know, so the the minutes aren't supposed to be a transcription. It's just supposed to be a general idea of
004what what happened. Okay. So, can we add going forward the person who said it? Is there a reason why we're not doing that? It's not it's not required by law. I understand that. I mean, if the average person is reading this, it's hard. It would make more it would be add clarity to who said it because there's maybe they want to know that like this isn't the some of these things are not the opinion of the board necessarily. So I'd like to see clarity on who said what because certain things could be would the transcripts provide that though? It would but if somebody's reading the minutes I would Does it hurt what is the alternative? Would it hurt us to not put food in there? It's additional work is what it boils down to. costing.
005They cost time. Yeah, it's staffing issues. You know that now you're going to use one of your resources to, you know, uh transcribe the um minutes from the the videotape. No, no, that's not what I'm asking. I think you're saying go I'm sorry. Yeah. So, so like just says ad hoc committee. Say that. Say I said, which I don't think I did. Can you just quote Rich Lord ad hoc committee mentioned ad hoc committee? Not asked to do anything crazy. just the name of the person who whatever the old or new business was discussed. If the board president is fine with that, then we can do that. Well, let's moving forward. Let we can put this in committee and have a discussion about um the procedure. We can put it in policy. Yeah. And we
006can look at that procedure and and it's and looking at too we talked about new and old business having actionable items. We want to be using that more appropriately. Sure. So, that's a great place for it. Okay. if I could add to that cuz I know I had requested previously that as um items become new business or even old business if there's the opportunity to sort of update where that action might be um like referred to committee or you know examined and sort of um you know decided not to act on it. I think anything that would give that through priority I agree would be help and we we do have in the drive we have a spreadsheet and we can we should be utilizing that. So that's again we can address that as well
007with that. Great. Right. Any other questions discussion on that? All in favor? Any nays or abstensions? [Applause] Yeah. Okay. As um moving on to recognition of student achievements, um can we have Dr. Catrell come forward? Ameilia, come on up. So, uh, there's more than a few people here that have been directed to do thankless jobs. Um, and two of them here are from North and there are students here. Uh, so Shivam and Amelia, it's been a pleasure to work with them uh throughout this year. Uh, we met monthly uh to review some of the issues going on in North Hunter High School. They provided me with feedback. I provided them with feedback. We talk about the report that we're going to share with the board. They both have an impressive background. They both have very
008bright futures ahead of them. And I I just personally thank them for the service that they provided to their students. Again, they were elected to do this job to be uh board representatives. So, they ran for that. They volunteered to be here and their student uh their their peers chose them. Um and so again, they served a great uh purpose and service to their student body, to me as a as administration at North Hunter High School, and I think to you as well as a board of education. So, I want to tell you just a little bit more about them. Uh so Shan Patel uh Chevon will be attending James Madison University in the fall. He will be majoring in in engineering. He is hoping to explore a career in either mechanical or biomed engineering.
009He has been very busy in his time at the North Hunteran in the past four years. He was class vice president for his freshman and sophomore years and he has been the class president for the last two years. So you'll hear him speak at graduation. He serves as an executive counsel of the interact club. He is a student ambassador, a peer leader, and a member of Roappa. On top of this, Shivam also threw for the track team his sophomore and junior year, and he has been on the swim team all four years. Amelia Amelia Wrightman, she has uh she plans to attend, I believe it was RV, in the fall, pursuing two associates degrees. So, that's kind of interesting for her. She's pursuing a degree in both accounting and biomed science. She's a member of
010pretty much all of our honor societies. She's the secretary of our model UN. She's the vice president of the key club. Uh she has been a member of the engineering club and has been a leader in installing the new pollinator garden. And we look forward to watching that grow. So if anyone's been up to North Hunter, if you walk up from here, you go past the line right by the um entrance with the elevator, there's a pollinator garden there that has uh is planted with, I believe, native plants to New Jersey. And it's designed to help pollinate the area. and Amelia has been really instrumental in doing not only the work but planning for that as well. She uh also volunteers for the environmental commission for Clinton Township and is an EMT EMT for South
011Branch. She is also in the Girl Scout since kindergarten and she does competitive Irish step dancing. So again, on behalf of myself and I think the board, let's give them a round of applause for their service. [Applause] sh them. And we're going to get a photo of you guys in front of that back there. Shiv, looks like Shiv donated some blood today, too. Congratulations, [Applause] Mr. Peter. All right, speaking of old or new business, I got to take care of some old business before we start with the two of you with new business. Brooke, can you come up here, please? So, if uh you remember last month at the board meeting, I introduced Brooke Angler. She's now here in the flesh. um and gave you a little teaser about what you don't um what she's
012here for with skiing moguls. Some pictures are being passed around so you get a little bit more of an idea. The first one shows you the bumps and just in case you didn't know what mogul were that she has to go down and try to go in a straight line. And just to give you a little bit more idea of the depth. Um they throw a couple jumps in these events as well. And uh that gives you an idea of the vertical element of the the hill that she's actually skiing down. Uh, so Brooke Angler is an exceptional student athlete who competes in freestyle mogul skiing at a high level within the Eastern Freestyle Central Division representing Killington Mountain School's weekend program. Brook started skiing at just two years old. No polls. That's right, no
013polls. Um, and has been competing since age 10. Brooke has consistently demonstrated remarkable passion and resilience, overcoming injuries to return to the sport stronger each season. This year's this year marked Brook's most successful season to date, achieving eight top five finishes and two additional top 10 placements in the highly competitive field, often comprised of full-time ski academy athletes. Notably, Brooke frequently earns top scores in the turns and lines, showcasing her exceptional skill despite uh less on snow training, and I think I told you um that last time, how much uh less training she gets than her competitors. Her outstanding performance earned her an invitation to the Vout Stram, a level just below the World Cup circuit. Demonstrating remarkable dedication to her regional standing, Brooke declined this invitation to compete in the Eastern Regional Championships, where
014she secured third place in her age group and fourth overall in singles. Brooke also qualified for the Junior National Championships and New York and US Nationals. At junior nationals, Brook qualified directly for the finals, placing sixth after the first run. Despite a significant fall during finals training, resulting in a painful tailbone and back injury, Brooke showed incredible determination by traveling to US Nationals the following week. Although unable to complete her run due to the prestige um due to the injury, her courageous decision to start the event secured her a spot at the prestigious prestigious US selections. A testament to her strategic thinking and unwavering commitment to her skiing goals, Brook's dedication, skill, and perseverance in the demand in a demanding sport are truly inspiring. Matter of fact, um, mom had emailed me that when she
015got the injury, the first question was the doctor. I think it was, um, when can I get on my bike and do downhill mountain biking? So, uh, just her dedication to what she does. So, uh, Brooke England, [Applause] everybody All right. Now, the two of you, Sarah, Audrey, can you come up? So, we had prom Thursday night went very well. Um, and uh, it's the first of all the events where we start to really say goodbye to the seniors. And this is another one of those moments where we look where I look back and go, man, where did the time go? Even though I warned them at the beginning of their freshman year how fast it's going to go, I all these years later, I still, you know, it it hits me when they're walking
016graduation. I remember them coming in as freshman uh, class. So, two remarkable seniors of Warheis High School, Sarah Schwar and Audrey Devine Burns, are preparing to embark on exciting new chapters after four years of their significant contributions to the Vorhees High School community. Sarah has been an integral part of the Vorhees High School since her freshman year. Her dedication to both academics and extracurriculars is evident in her involvement in several key organizations including SHIP, the Lifesavers Club, and the prestigious National Honor Society. An avid athlete, Sarah has been a consistent presence on the girls volleyball team throughout all four years of her high school career, showcasing her teamwork and dedication. In her senior year, she expanded her athletic pursuits by joining the track team. Demonstrating her willingness to embrace new challenges. Looking ahead, Sarah has
017ambition ambitious plans for her future. She is set to attend Boston University where she will major in neuroscience on a premed track. Her ultimate goal is to become a critical care physician, a testament to her passion for medicine and her desire to make a significant impact in the lives of others. That's Sarah. Audrey has also left an undeniable mark at Vorhees High School through her leadership and commitment to social justice. During her time at Vorhees, Audrey was the driving force behind the establishment and operation of the Black Student Union, demonstrating her initiative and advocacy. She further showcased her leadership as the president of the diversity club and a captain of the mock trial team where she honed her critical thinking and public speaking skills. After graduation on Audrey will be attending American University where she
018plans to major in history on a pre-law track. Her passion for justice and equity will guide her toward her aspiration of becoming a civil rights lawyer. I wish you all the best and thank you for all your time. [Applause] Thank you. At this time, can we have uh Siobhan and Sarah report out if you have any to report out? Um, so for sports, recently our track team just competed in sectionals. Our girls team won uh North two, group two, and we have multiple athletes advancing to groups, which will be held this Friday and Saturday. Along with that, stage tournaments are beginning for many spring sports. Going into those tournaments, we have a few teams that have had excellent seasons. Boys lacrosse is currently 14-4. Our boys tennis team is 9 and4. I believe they're divisional
019champs as of right now. Boys volleyball is 14-5. And our softball team is 11 and 10. And our unified football team finished their first season with a record of 7-1. So that's off to a phenomenal start. Um we did just hold our junior and senior prom this past Thursday and we have a number of senior events coming up. Our senior awards ceremony is being held tomorrow. And then we have our senior trip to Dorney that's coming Friday the 30th. And then after that, our senior dinner cruise is Tuesday the 3rd. And then we will be having our senior sunset on Monday, June 9th. Um, as for our recent club activities, our Lifesavers club held the final blood drive of the year earlier this month on May 1st. And we had our Relay for Life also
020early this month on May 2nd. and the class of 2025 held a Kota Ice fundraiser on May 12th. That's all I have. Thank you. All right. Um I don't have much for you, but um I do have some. So, North because of Joey fundraiser. So, that was in place for Relay for Life this year. Um going to uh towards uh cancer inside. Uh so, it was inside this year. It was a great event. It raised $27,000 of a $30,000 goal. So, that was It's 32. Sh 32. Okay, my bad. 32. So, we exceeded that goal. Um, so we also had our blood drive today, as you can see. Donate. Uh, we had around around 200 units of blood uh today. Um, and that makes around a,000 on the year, which is really impressive because that
021saves around 3,000 lives. And that's just from our school alone. So, encourage everyone to donate. Um, baseball won Hunter Warren Sussex three to zero. It was shut out by Brandon Suler over Central. Um, who led the team to victory throwing a complete game shutout and he's committed to Stevens Institute of Technology for baseball. So, shout out. Um, so our senior sun, we're having a sunrise instead of a sunset. That's on the last day of school, June 4th. Um, hopefully the seniors will get up for that. Um, project graduation is being held by the PTSA June 12th, returning of the morning of June 13th. And then we have our prom. The theme is last night in the jungle. And that is June 8th. No, May 30th. I don't know. Uh, which is this Friday. And the
022senior awards night is on June 4th, Wednesday. And then graduation. So, I also just wanted to say thank you guys for letting me sit on these meetings. It's really been a big deal. So, thank you. And I appreciate what you guys do. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You forgot the students that were the from the honor society. You pick it up garbage in Union Township. Oh, you're right. Was it a couple Saturdays ago? Yeah. Yeah. They did a great job. They really did. They really did. Thank you. Uh at this time uh we would like to uh welcome Richard Grip. He will be giving us a a virtual presentation on statistical forecasting. [Music] Thank you. Yes. Yes. Thank you. So, I'm going to be presenting the results of the demographic study that was
023prepared for your school district. The presentation tonight will probably take about 15 to 20 minutes. And if you could please hold your questions to the end, that' be great. Specifically, since we're doing this remote, a little more a little more challenging. [Music] Okay. So, you should be able to see that hopefully on your screen. Yes. Can you Yeah. Can you expand it into slide mode instead of preview mode? So, we we tried that this morning and what happened was um I'm advancing it on my end, but unfortunately on your end, you're still seeing the first screen. Okay. The first slide. Um let's see if I can do it for you. It's okay. It'll do. Okay. Okay. So just want to give a little background about our company. Um the company testing was formed about 27
024years ago. I'm the executive director of the company. All work that we do is exclusively in providing demographic studies for school districts. Most of our clients are in the New York metropolitan area. We probably done about 200 school districts or more in New York metropolitan area. the demographic consultant for the New York City public schools since 2006. Um, our reach comes down as far south as Arlington County, Virginia, right outside of DC and as north as Vermont executive director. I have a doctorate from Ruckers University in the graduate school of educational statistics and measurement. wind up working for the college for I wanted a more applied approach to my statistics degree. I was a former teacher um prior to getting involved in this business in the first quarter and really far as a physics and
025statistics teacher. articles published in this uh area of school demography both um nationally and in peerreview journals and I testify for witness and school demography in several administrative law hearing that's strongly known in cases in New Jersey when school districts want to each other usually done in sending receiving agreements where one school district wants to pull their kids out of one um district and move them to another. So what's the purpose of the study? Well, most people think that the main goal of a study such as this would be to project enrollments and of course it is. We're projecting for a 5year period from the 256 year which is next September through the 2930 year. But also look at attendant area characteristics such as demographics, race, um population trends and that for all 12 communities
026combined. We did not look at any of them individually uh with the aggregate uh and also the age structure of all 12 communities combined. So once we got away from the community, we move down to the school district level where we then look at the historical districtwide um also by two high schools as well as looking at the enrollments of your feeder K populations what your enrollments are going to be in the next five years. We were also asked to do what's called student yield analysis where we compute the student yields for children per housing unit for doing such as one four family homes which in your area most detached or detached single family town and condos and apartments to figure out how many children we would expect out of any comfortable apartment building. We
027also contacted the municipalities all problems in their respective communities and how that would impact school district and finally we compare the school building capacity to current and protected enrollments to see if there's going to be any new uh assured seating or surplus seating in the two school. So this slide shows the historical and projected population from 1940 to 2050. The only thing to the left of this vertical line right here is from the census. Um as you can see there in 2020 which is the most recent data we have available for us. there to report more than 51,000 people um that live in ascending communities and growth was really strong and significant up until about 2010 and as you can see things have really rolled off um and growth has really slowed in the second
028area in the last 10 years. This value on the right hand side of the screen where it says 53,000, that's a projected population count of the regional sending area for 2050 by a third party agency called North Jersey Transportation Planning Board. So, who are you as a collective community? Because there's a lot of different communities predominantly white about 82% white. The second largest race is Hispanic is 7.4. 4%. In the last 10 years, the Hispanic population has been increasing while the white white population has been declining. And that's pretty common, not just for your communities, but for most districts that we work with around the state. The median age is pretty high. Um 46 years compared to about 40 in the state. Now, the median is not the mean. They're not the same thing. The
029median is the 50th percentile which means that half the population is over 46 and half is more fairly high number which means they have a whole community 10% of the population is born which is much lower than that state of the state India and United Kingdom are the two largest sources fairly educated more than half the people have a bachelor's degree or higher 55% uh a fluent area Median household income that's 142,000 compared to the state is about 100,000. All 20,000 county units can be a setting area in which 88% are one unit homes. That would be attached homes like a townhouse or detached single family home. Not too many occupied units 16% compared to about 39% state level. And the median value of occupied unit um is not much higher than that of state
030about 485,000. So this is a map showing all the communities and um the two high schools. You can see four in township and north in Clinton Township. So when we look at your enrollment, we looked at for the last 10 years and the enrollment as of October of October 15th probably is 2024. That's the date we look at every year for the um enrollment because that's when you set your enrollment date into the state. What is approximately 1915? If we go back 10 years, the 1516 school year, your enrollment was 274 12. a half of a shared student has declined at all 800 students in the last decade and clearly stated your loans have been steadily declining in the last 10 years. We use something called the cohort to operate ratio method to project enrollments
0315 years out. So here's the enrollment for your district as you can see pretty much declining. It's pretty stable the last year. We'll see that maintains going forward in the future. You'll see that in a moment when we talk about your projections. This is showing the enrollments by school over the last 10 years. Um at this time in the enrollments declined through the 23 24 year which is the bottom track here and still stabilized. Um declined about 460 students in North High School in the last decade. We've actually been about the same thing declined through 2023 school year report about 337 and a half students over the last decade. So both schools have declined. This is showing the incoming nth grade classes over time and you can see that 10 years ago incoming nth grade
032class were all 700 students and in 24.5 it's not even 500 students. So you're talking about almost 200 fewer ninth grade students coming into the district. And of course, as you imagine, if you have less nth graders coming in, you're going to have declining enrollments. So let's take a look what's going on at the K to8 feeder district. Um you can see here we aggregate all the enrollments. There's almost 5,000 students in the 1516 school year. enrollment declines through 2021 school year before reverse trend. So in the last four years, there's been an increase of around 300 students approximately in the preK8 population, which means that eventually those higher PK counts move to the high school and cause this declining enrollment to end in your school district. So the projected moments we use something called
033the coercive operation method which is approved by the state of New Jersey and what it looks at is the progression of students from one grade to the next or one year to the next over that 10ear period. So I'll give you a simple example here. Let's just say you have 110 graders in the 2324 school year which becomes 95 graders in 2425 school year. So you lose five children in a day. That 25 over 100 or survival ratio of 95. So we do that for all four grades 8 to 9 up to 11 plus. And if the ratios are above one, you're gaining students due to inward vibration. And if they're more than one, that means you're out vibration. So like that we do this for a 10-year period. Then we take an average of
034say the last four or five years and multiply those averages times your current enrollments assuming those progression rates are going to continue into the future. So the fiveear ratios that we were looking at two of the four are one. So you don't really have a defined migration pattern at the high [Music] school. This is pretty interesting. This is what's called an age pyramid. Uh it's also called a population or an age sex pyramid in demography. And what we're looking at here back in 2010, 14 years ago, it's a percentage of males on a lot in orange. And the percentage of females on the right in green at 5ear intervals in their ages. So for instance, 10 to 14, 15 to 19, 20 to 24, so on so forth. What we see back then is that
035the largest groups for males was 50 to 54 and for females was 45 to 49. And you can see how few people there are in the 20s and the early 30s probably because the real estate prices in your sitting areas are very high, very hard for people to move in. So let's see what happens in 2020. You can see if I toggle back and forth how the pyramid kind of shifts upward because the people don't move out and they don't die. They're aging in place. So the largest groups in 2020 are the 55 to 59 age groups. No wonder that you have declining enrollment if you have such a high elderly population that 55 to 69 group. that it's an over group of people not having children to replace a lot of kids in schools.
036They'll be showing in the last 10 years where the biggest declines are by sex by male females and where the biggest gainers are. So, that's the biggest decline which is the 45 to 49 population and the biggest gainers are the 60 to 64 population. And if we were to aggregate the male to female changes in the last 10 years, um we found that there were gains for every age group from 55 and up, which means you're having a great population. And they're also big in the 0 to 4, 5 to 9, and 10 to 14, which would be more elementary population as those kids enter school in the near future. Makes sense. and aging population. So the first thing we did is we contact like I said all 12 communities they're planning zoning departments there
037are 831 non age restricted housing use plans um most of them are half are Clinton Township so when we look at the developments for the next four or five years 97% of them fall within the north high school attendance area and when we projected on children that would be in the high schools for 50 children. So what we did is we took the baseline enrollment projection of 100 high school and we modified it to account for not do any modifications that we use because the amount of housing units in that area is really not going to be significant. So when we compute the student yields that I said at the outset for the different types of housing in the 12 communities to determine the impact of new development. So what we do is we took
038the student address from your school district database and we joined it to the aggregated property databases of the 12 communities. So this is a pretty big undertaking and really what we found is that the student yield for the 9 to 12 population for a single family home is roughly.20 2000 children per housing unit and you can see for townhouse and condos they're very very low yields 09 and 0042. So what I showed you is a sample from the report. It's basically the research that we did. It shows you the development house economy development each um which are located in what's the approximate sale price of the townhouse unit when it was built. What's the distribution? How many units are in that development and if there affordable units? How many children are actually in that development
039right now? And what the student yield is which is just the number of students divided by the number of units. And this is where we got the 0.09 number I mentioned. So we did this analysis also for the apartments. I'm not showing it in tonight's presentation because it's about three slides long. It's not worth showing, but at least you you told it worked on. You can look at the report. When we look at historical construction, really there wasn't much going on again until roughly the last 2 to 3 years. And a lot of that had to do with um a couple developments. One was in Clinton Town units in something called U22 which was in 2023. Clinton Township had 84 units in Clinton Woods also in 2023. And Union Township had 74 family home bridge
040in 23 and 24. So those are the three three to figure developments in those communities in the last 3 years. So a total of 329 units have been built over this time period. So we actually map it out to show you where all housing units are located in the last five or six years. When we look at home sales um this is common for many communities in the state again for all communities in the aggregate. You can see that sales increased through about the 2004 year and then they started to go decline quite rapidly. This is the housing um market crisis, the banking crisis around 2008 2010. You can see how low the number of sales are been going up. You can see in 2024 there was more than 1100 sales the pandemic and housing
041market rate. Now you can see where we are now in 2024 only about 367 sales as the interest rates gone up as well as fewer homes inventory much lowering homes being put for sale. So when we look at the number of homes sold by census block which is a very small geographic unit um you can see the darkest region here in the center of the screen is where the great homeless fail have occurred um in the last 5 years. So for your own projections we projected for a 5year period using two sets of projections. one called baseline and then the other called adjusted for housing growth assuming all the approved housing is constructed. So in both projections we're projecting enrollments to still decline for the next four years before reversing trend in both those projections.
042So in one projection the baseline projection we're talking about a decline of 138 students in the next 5 years and in the other one 117 students. So we look at by school work in high school is projected to decline for the next 3 years before reversing trend small declines are projected in that school about a decline of about 100 students and they're projected to decline the entire 5-year period. This is showing the capacity of each building with respect to the current enrollment or projected enrollment 5 years later. Uh you can see we take the difference between the capacity and the current enrollment and then also the projected enrollment to find out if you have a full surplus seating or inadequate seating and they're all blue and they're all positive which means that you have a
043ton of surplus seats in both build. So summarizing tonight, enrollments have declined in the last in the last 10 years. Enrollments are projected to decline for the next four years before reversing trend as those larger K8 cohorts would be seen as they gained about 300 students in the last four years finally start moving up to the new high school. Open it up for questions. I will continue to share in case someone has a question about. Yeah. Okay. I question can you put the the projected declines over the next four or five years in perspective to the historical declines? But so maybe if you pull up the slide that had the historical decline I'm talking about uh enrollment in the schools not not you know population of the district are we talking yeah so this this
044kind of slides is this like basically yes there's the numbers are you're projecting is going to get smaller but are they meaningfully like are they you how big were they another hundred students in each Uh well students in war and depending upon the method for North two projection one baseline and the other one is adjusted for housing growth which the worst case scenario assuming that all homes are built up and we're talking about all last 20 students decline. Okay. So to answer your question, it would be on a level much much lower in declining enrollment in appropriated share compared to historic measures. Okay. So if if we play this out like you come back in 5 years and it's and and and miraculously happen just exactly as you predicted what this would show is kind
045of like a a bottoming out a kind of a flattening except for Boris is going to get pretty is going to get smaller and the reason is because the turn has finally happened at the K right here. um they're they're really they are declining actually more longer period of time than you are because it takes a while for those students obviously to get up into your school and takes a while for the smaller cohorts that are in your school to get out of the system. So you can see it took them a while to finally turn it here and they've been increasing for the last four years. So once those smaller cohorts move out, the current students in your school, the bigger cohorts start to come up. That's when they start to reverse trend. Thank
046you. I had a question about the reverse trend. So um so I know that with some of the numbers we're looking at projected enrollment out to 2030. I mean, in your experience, do you see significant increases when the reverse trend occurs or um based upon the facts here, do you expect it to be a slow increase when it reverses? Yeah, that's a really good question. So anytime we see a reversal, there's usually a few years of more or less stable enrollment because you still have some smaller cohorts in the system being leveled out by increasing cohorts coming up. So in case of like a 2 years or 3 years of an inflection point before things start to reverse back and when they do reverse back um it really depends upon what's going on in your
047communities in terms of the level of increase. I don't expect it to be extraordinarily uh large games because we're not really seeing that at the elementary level, but uh and we don't see it normally. It takes a while before these bigger beings start to play out. Thank you. Any other questions? Seems like a really well executed study. Yeah. Yeah. This is great. Is he going to be able to share that with us? Yeah, I can share the presentation. Awesome. But but just one question though. So, I may not be necessarily um as a specific as to the the the report, but is there enough of a you at the very end of your report, you talk about the capacity of each school, the and the difference based on current enrollment and the difference on projected
048enrollment. It doesn't look like you could end up as the schools are currently situated to merge the two into a single school. I'm not suggesting we do that. I'm just asking. Okay. I'm just asking about it because I know what an uproar it created when they closed First Run at, you know, at Clinton Township. But I'm just curious as to whether the the the enrollment trends are going to be enough to keep both schools, you know, operational and worth the money that the dis that everyone pays for it, right? So, so yeah, based on members isol there, and correct me if I'm wrong, Dr. Griff, but um B we could almost get to that point where our lowest decline is now, but then we're going to start to trend upwards. So we wouldn't quite if
049we kept going down for another 3 or four years maybe we even possibly look at that but um I think the enrollment is going to good. Yeah because this the the K through eight is starting to shift upward as well. Okay. But to be clear they're projecting that for four years from now. Yeah. Correct. No no no the enrollment to shift for the next four years is anticipating a decline. Is that correct? Yes. Yes. enrollments are projected to decline for the next four years because these smaller growers have to work themselves through the system. So it's it's going to be yeah near the end of the decade before you start to see the increase in population. Yeah. So if you really look at it, it's a 14-year period on a decline. So this is great
050information. I don't know what the time how this works or how the timing of this is in a perfect world. I wish we had this a couple months ago. Uh but this is great. Yeah, this is great. Yeah, it's really helpful. Dr. Grip, are you saying then with the K to8 is it the lower grade? So are are you able to tease out which grade level is starting to increase overall with all the 12 sending interest? Is it like third grade, second grade? Yeah, that's a good question. I don't have that. I'd have to go back into the spreadsheet to see how the the grades line up, where the higher ones. My assumption is that if they're starting to get higher at the K to8 level, it's usually in the entry level, the kindergarten, the
051first grade. Uh again, just like anything else, they have to move their smaller cohorts out through the K system to grow, right? So they're they're at the lower elementary level, I'll be honest. But there's been a significant amount of housing that's happened particularly in the students of Clint Town and Clint Township and Union Township and some of the information we looked at you know most of that enrollment is going to be for them at the lower elementary or elementary grades as well as the zero age population kids that are going to be coming into the school system in the near future. We don't see too many kids um in new housing and high school just because who would want to move their kid into a new high school from out of the setting area? It's
052just a very difficult emotional social change for a kid that age. Great. Great. All right. Thank you, Dr. That was fantastic. Thank you. Thank you. You too. Thank you. [Applause] Thank you to um uh Richard Grip for that presentation. Um it's very very interesting to see that trend. Um moving forward, we have a uh review of the New Jersey Department of Education school self assessment for ter determining grades under the anti-bullying bill of rights act. Uh the district school grade report for 2324 presented by um Miss Jennifer Kamaroski, our district anti-bullying specialist coordinator. Everybody, welcome. Okay, just here to present the final review from New Jersey Department of Education for the HIP assessment grades for North for district as a whole. It was linked in the agenda. Um, as a reminder, these results were actually
053um from the NJBA were already brought to the board um on October 15th, 2024 board meeting by actually Dr. Bergox at that time. Um, so the process from there, for those that aren't familiar, the results then have to be entered in the HIP grading system for review and certification that has to be done by October 31st, which it was. The scores then get reviewed by the NJ DOE, which then creates and issues the report you now have tonight in front of you. Um, so essentially same information from October. It's now just also has the NJTOE's approval on it. Um, when reviewing the report, you can see the district scored 76 out of a possible 78. Um, North Hunter at 75, Worries at a 77. Um, I have reviewed the individual self- assessment scores for each
054school. Um, and we'll work with our anti-bullying specialists on any needed areas moving forward. Um, but I'm pretty happy with how the scores looked there. Um and we will tenatively schedule our next self assessment for 20 uh September of 2025 which is looking at the 202425 school year if you can follow all that. Um and then this report uh will eventually be posted on our district's website in accordance with the anti-bullying bill of rights act to fulfill that requirement. So any questions? At what point does the um state um approve this? You said there was a process you had started it in October then so we submit in October and we just got it back last month. After the April board meeting, but before this one. So, yeah, there's a little bit of time in
055between there. Anything else? Yes. Thank you. Thank you. At this time, we'd like to um Dr. Bax report. Thank you, Kim. Welcome everybody. First of all, um before I start the actual report, I do want to thank all of our board reps personally. Um there's not a lot of 17 year olds, 16, 17 year olds, probably 18 now, um that want to spend the amount of time that you have that you all have here at our district and our war table and your input has been invaluable and I think everyone here is appreciated. So, um you know, thank you to all you know, SH and Sarah, I believe, but Amelia and Audrey, I know you were um in the background sort of waiting for uh both of them. need and I know we saw both
056of you at least once but um thank you for your willingness and to help with all that. I do want to send some congratulations to our North Hunter music department. Um they really excelled at something called the music in the parks adjudication awards festival. Um the list of awards would take me about 10 minutes to read of what they got. Um they they were really successful. It was the first time they participated in it and they were um really happy with the results. So congratulations to all of our music students for that. In addition to that, uh I want to congratulate four North Hunter students for being selected for the 2526 All State Choir. Um Sophia Emory Reed, Savannah Wrigley, Giana Marina, and Maxclar. Um all four of them, um you know, huge congratulations. That's
057a huge honor to be selected for that all state choir. So I do want to send a special thanks to Miss Morris and her entire team and a diversity club at North Hunter for organizing an outstanding cultural celebrations day. uh students shared food, traditions, artifacts, and facts from their culture. Uh for anyone that is able to attend that in the future, it's a great event. We were fortunate to have representatives, the leadership from the end Hunter County NAACP chapter, uh visit us that day. They were able to uh walk around and see what the experience was like and they were very happy with what they saw and u we were glad that we were able to share with them as well. Uh as Shivam uh mentioned on Thursday, May 27th, North's Interact Club hosted their
058because of Joey event. Uh the Interact Club is proud to share they raised over $32,000 and supported a national pediatric cancer foundation. Um those of you who don't know Joey Edwards was a student at North Hon tragically passed last year and um and so they they created this event in honor of him and his family. Um you know huge thank you to all the students, staff, administration and community members who donated and showed support for this meaningful cause. Um I shared the information with the board members as well. If you click there you can go to the actual website. there's a ton of information you can get and it was just such a moving ceremony and um to see our community come together and like that was just really awesome relay for life event. Uh
059they drew strong participation from community members students from North Horn and surrounding schools because North Hunter did because of Joey instead of the relay. So we had a lot of students from our surrounding schools uh join Vorhees and together they reached their fundraising goal of 15,000 in support of cancer research and awareness. Uh they had food trucks, vendors, um school groups and live music. So it was quite an event up there. Uh and then on Tuesday, May 13th, um there were four players from the Vorhees United soccer team had their signing day with the unified Red Bull soccer team. So, four of our um peer leaders um at Borhees actually got on the unified soccer team for the United Red Bulls. Um those members were Juliana KDTO, uh Julian Kufo, Natalie Hoffman, and Joey Pascal.
060Uh that team will be traveling to Austin, Texas on June 14th to play the Austin FC United team. So, that's pretty big accomplishment as well for those students. So, congratulations to all of them. So we have our report on harassment, intimidation, and bullying for tonight. We have uh three cases that are being reported to you. One is unfounded, one is founded for all offenders, and one is founded for some of the offenders or not for all. And then we will also need our motion. Yeah. Can we have a a motion and a second to affirm the determinations on the hip in incidents reported at the April 29th board meeting? All second. All in favor? I Any knees or absentions? Doug, did you get that? That was Brian. I got it. Okay. And then reports are
061there. There's any questions. U moving forward. Um, I'd like to note uh Bor's high school graduation ceremony June 12th, 9:00 a.m. Uh, North Hunter High School graduation will be the same day but at 10:30. Uh, for board members, there will be transportation here at North Hunter. It's arrive at before 8. Yeah, by 8. I would say the latest. Um, and then you can transport to Bores, attend Bores, and then come back to North um for the ceremony. So, I can sell this then if Yeah. If you're not driving here, but the idea is to come here first, leave your car. [Applause] Can I ask a question? Is there um you as a president or is there a representative that speaks at this event? It's never happened. Not that I'm aware. Years ago, we used to
062have the board president would address crowd. Um it hasn't been done for over a decade, I would say. I think the most important person to be heard from is your CSA. I think everyone does it a little different district. I will be changing it up a little bit and be part of their ceremony at each school. So, yeah. Yeah. Great. Thank you. Any other questions about that? Okay. Also, um annual goal setting and uh will be on June 24th. Um that'll be a 6:00 p. am start um here in the district office and the deadline to submit nominating petitions for school board vacancies to the county clerk's office is July 20th by 4 p.m. At this time we will have um public comment during this portion of the meeting the public is invited to address
063the board of education with comments. You are requested to sign the register provided and to state your name, municipality of residence, group affiliation if applicable, and direct your comments to the school board president. While all comments will be considered by the board of education or response may be forthcoming if and when appropriate. Individual schoolboard members may not respond to the speakers at the time of their appearance. The public comment period will be a maximum of 30 minutes in length unless there are unusual circumstances. You will be allocated three minutes to speak and no one will be permitted to speak more than once on the same topic until all others who wish to speak on that topic have been heard. Please keep your comments respectful and non-defamy and maintain the level of decorum appropriate for a
064public meeting where students may be present and in the audience. Thank you. Welcome to our public [Applause] [Music] Good evening. My name is uh Ivonne Shepard. Um I'm a longtime resident of Franklin Township of Hudson County and I'm one of those people that Dr. Grip referred to that has been living here for a long time and is doesn't have any kids in the school system, but I am a taxpayer. So, I'm very interested in the work of this board. Tonight, however, I'm reading a statement written by a former board member, Deborah Bonomi from Tukbury. Uh, I am very honored, however, to read this statement from her because I concur with her 100%. So she just happened to do a wonderful job of writing it and I read as a concerned resident of the North Hunter
065and Vorhees Regional High School District, I feel compelled to publicly voice my deep disappointment and concern regarding the actions and conduct of board president Kim Solino. Miss Selenino, your recent formation of an ad hoc committee without informing the full board of its members was not only misleading but unethical. Transparency is a foundational expectation of board leadership and once again once again you have failed to meet that standard. Forming a committee without balanced representation or boardwide input is a clear violation of the spirit of collaboration and public trust that this district deserves. You have repeatedly claimed to follow process, yet your actions continue to prove otherwise. This latest example is not an isolated incident. It reflects the pattern of non-transparent unilateral decisionmaking that continues to erode confidence in the board and its leadership. Equally troubling is
066your ongoing public reference to a frivolous ethics complaint filed against those board members only against those board members who voted to keep books on the library shelves. There is no justifiable reason to weaponize an unresolved complaint to undermine fellow board members in public forum. Your continued mention of it is not only slanderous but unbecoming of your position. Shame on you, Miss Selenino. You have repeatedly use your platform to push a narrow agenda while silencing disscent, misrepresenting facts, and dividing this community. The students and people of this district expect better. We deserve leadership. We deserve leadership that operates with fairness, transparency, and integrity. I urge the public to take notice and speak out. Submit your concern to the New Jersey State Board Association and demand accountability. It's time to restore trust and competence and remove Miss
067Selenino from her role as board president. Thank you. [Applause] Good evening. I'm Amy Barrett and I'm a resident of Hybridge. My remarks tonight are about the new NJSBA policy manual. The policies about library resource materials, public complaints, and transgender students are less specific and less clear than the current Strauss Esme versions. The new media center library policy 6163.1 lacks the details about criteria for selecting library materials that are in the existing policy 2530. The existing library resource materials policy has been a model for other libraries and includes book selection criteria that are compliant with the new freedom to read law. These criteria are important because they enable both book selection and book reconsideration to be based on specific objective standards. I'm confused about which complaint policy is intended to be used for library materials. The
068new community complaints and inquiries policy 1312 says nothing about book consideration, book reconsideration, and the complaints regarding instructional materials policy 6161-2 does not even mention library resources. Both new policies are vague. In contrast, the existing public complaints policy and regulation 9130 provides details on the process for reconsidering a book, which this district has relied on twice during the past four years. This existing process is compliant with the new freedom to read law. The proposed gender identity and expression policy 5145.7 is intended to replace the transgender student policy 5756. It obfiscates the student centered approach of the Strauss Esme policy. The existing policy says clearly that school district staff are not required to notify a student's parent of the student's gender identity. The proposed policy says that the issue of parental notification will be addressed on
069a case-byase basis and the school counselor must balance the rights of the student and the parents. The existing policy states clearly that the school district shall allow a transgender student to use a restroom based on the student's gender identity. The proposed policy says that the superintendent, parents, students, and staff will evaluate options. Without clear guidelines, district staff may inadvertently violate the law. The NJSBA characterizes its gender identities identity policy as a sample discretionary policy and states that sample discretionary policies are not model policies or suggested best practices and should not be adopted without district revisions and consultation with your board attorney. I urge you to review the gender identity policy as well as the policies relating to library materials and complaints with your board attorney attorney to ensure that this district remains compliant with New
070Jersey law. I urge you to keep the current policies in place for now. Thank you. [Applause] Hi there. Uh Jennifer Cusack of Highbridge. Uh going to keep this really pretty simple. Outing students literally is endangering students. Um, I don't usually talk about these sorts of things up here, but I'm a lesbian. I had a friend who, um, many, many years ago, was outed when she was 14. Her mother beat her nearly to death. She spent weeks in the hospital. Outing students can kill students. [Applause] Good evening board. I'm Dan Kleinman. I'm from Chadam. I am not uh from this school, but I am somehow involved. Uh this this evening, we heard a speaker talk about a false ethics complaint that was filed. Um, I want everybody to know that that's still being considered and it's
071not my fault that it's taking a long time for that to be considered. There's just a big long backlog with the Mr. Can we just not be speaking to I don't think you should be speaking to the ethics complaint. Well, this first speaker talked about you're making slanderous comments ba based on your talking about the ethics complaint, which sounds like a freedom of speech complaint or ethics um problem to me that you can't even say something because she considers it slanderous. Then she finished up by urging people to file their own complaints. Motion to recess. Second. Oh, can we have a vote? Can we have a vote? You have to vote the vote. Can you do that in the middle of my two paper? I can. I'm doing it. I'm asking for it. Is that
072okay? We'll resume public comment once. We have to vote first. I think motion and a second. Yes. Motion by Josh. Second. Can we do a roll call vote? Sure. Ready? Yep. Christina Kaggno? No. Brian Chapman? Yes. Angela Dei? Yes. Nicole Gallop, no. Beth Coloulton, yes. Richie, yes. Brendon McKisac, yes. Cindy Ray, no. Kimberly Selenino, no. Tanton, yes. Jessica Vo, yes. Okay. Here real quick. motion [Music] carries. I don't know if that means executive session. Okay, I need a motion, a second to come out of uh break a German. Second. All in favor? Any nays or absentions? Mr. Climb in. Before you start, I'd like to read something to the to uh the board and yourself. You have been advised that ethics matters while pending are confidential. You were specifically directed about this by the school
073ethics commission. The board solicitor also advised you of this confidentiality issue during your prior meeting. I also want to remind you that while members of the public may make appropriate public comments, excuse me, may make appropriate public comments during board meetings. No one may defame or slander another person during their comment. You are cautioned against making an inappropriate comments and reminded that anyone you mention also has rights which they may exercise against you in the event you speak inappropriately. With that said, we will permit you to speak during the time remaining consistent with this rem with this reminder and it's approximately two and a half minutes. Thank you. I've signed my name a second time because this is part two. Uh during the per previous 30 seconds, I had said all that I wanted to
074and was about to sit down. So, I'm going to do that now. Thank you. Good evening. I'm Harlon Edinger. I'm a taxpayer and longtime resident of Hybridge, New Jersey. I came up mostly in response to Jen's comments before about the real dangers of outing students. Just to ask you to please remember the safety and well-being of every student in the district is a much higher priority than the discomfort any of you may feel about people you perceive as gender non-conforming or who you might perceive as the other. Protect our kids when you think about making changes to the existing policies. Thank you. [Applause] Good evening. My name is Marina Bartelli. I live in Franklin Township and I am the mother of two North Hunan grads. Um, I'm just struck that the students of our North
075Hunter and Vohees district are so very accomplished and they're just impressive young people. Our community can and absolutely should be proud of these students, the ones that were featured here this evening and throughout the school year. Um, and those students can look upon themselves with pride and self-respect for who they are as human beings. They are shining examples for all of us and for our community at large. They're well-rounded. What's most striking is that their activities speak to their being out not just for personal success but and not for solely their own benefit but these are young people who are contributors to our society. They put their efforts towards the greater good of others. They go forward with kindness and consideration and compassion for others, not judgment, not exclusion. This is the fabric of a
076thriving community and a successful healthy society. These kids are it. So there they all must have a personal spark within them but it has to be supported and encouraged by their family who give them strong values a moral compass of ethics basic human ethics of how to be and that's supported by their peers, their community and and more importantly in some cases their school community. the opportunities that are there, the clubs, the activities that they have so that they can thrive and expand and grow as human beings. So this is the why behind school board leadership to be student focused and to make sure that the policies that are enacted that the administration the teachers are maintaining policies that are supportive of the of the personal growth of these students that will encourage their intellectual
077growth and and their expansion so that they may thrive and achieve and this is to the greater benefit of all of us for our district for our community for our state and for our country. So, you really have an amazing group of young people. We've seen all year round. And I would encourage you as a board to keep that in mind and put policies in that support and provide safety and encouragement for these young people to grow, thrive, and expand as individuals. Thank you. [Applause] There any more public comments? With no more public comments, we will close public comments and we will move on to our committee reports. Uh, curriculum, instruction, and technology. Um, Brendan. Okay. Um let me just double check the date here. The committee met on the 21st. Um in the report
078the items that you have uh first was the monthly reports and um each month sort of uh sometimes there's a question about uh absentee uh data that appears on there. For example, this month there was a date that came up that showed a high level of absenteeism. the administration looked into it, was able to determine that it matched our um take your child to work day where a lot of students were supporting the work of that day. Um but again, that's just the sort of thing that as um sort of aberrations appear, it's an opportunity for us to look at and inform policy decisions, particularly as we look at as a district how we're allowing for uh excused or unexcused absences. Uh there was also an observation regarding an uptick in uh some vaping incidents.
079So the district will also be re-evaluating some of their uh bathroom policies and practices uh where the vaping seems to be occurring. Um we also looked at home instruction and some new curriculum textbooks. Um the textbooks themselves are being recommended for approval. But it did spark a conversation about uh just the reading experiences of students and the degree to which kids are reading physical books versus possibly screens and or digital uh versions of text. which kind of opened up some additional conversation about just the impact of screens on student learning and learning experiences that um tap into more analog kinds of experiences like reading a physical book or writing in a journal. Uh and some of the some of the research and practices that speak to both wellness and and better comprehension um with some
080of those skill sets. Um, and so it's really going to be finding the balance between some of these textbooks, uh, and their digital formats that we're using and sort of the analog experiences that we're giving kids um, in the classroom as well. Uh one of the points that was sort of raised that under the strategic plan uh as we go forward trying to formulate a little bit of an instructional philosophy uh and design that can emphasize those types of experiences and just ensure that students aren't spending uh inordinate amounts of time on screens as as part of learning versus uh face-to-face interactions and and things of that sort. So that was something that Rich would continue uh to bring forward with the strategic plan. Um the last part of that first set was our comprehensive
081equity plan uh was up for review. So this is um something that districts have to do every 3 years. It's a state requirement and basically we have to attest to the policies that we have in place that meet the respective equity mandates. And in the agenda, you can see the mandates themselves and the um policies that align in support of each of those requirements. The conversation did move to the fact that as we transition to the school board's policy, some additional care would have to be taken to ensure that the school board policies that support those various requirements are appropriately replacing any of the stress estimate policies uh that do the same. I know we have first reads of policies tonight and I know I had a chance to get in and look at some
082of them and see that a number of those items are in there or captured in those those new policies as well. The uh next item that we spent a little bit of time on was the common assessments. Rich Baron demonstrated the pair platform that the uh students and teachers are using for assessments. He showed us the dashboards that give uh both district level data and uh teacher class level data that informs teachers about how kids are performing and affords them the opportunities to meet and work with during uh professional development days to review those data uh to identify trends, patterns and what the instructional response to that information might be. Um, the platform itself allows teachers to target specific skills, specific question types, the amount of time students are spending on a given question. Um,
083and we'll continue to sort of map that to the standardized assessment data like the NJ SLA and and GPA. Uh and then I think one item going forward was looking at the ways that our student information system sort of interacts with the assessment platform so it can help us examine um subgroups that we have within our school because those are things that come out on state reports as well to identify what any of those trends or needs might be. And then the last item was uh the first in our new effort to annually get a little bit of an update as to each curricular department. And this year it started off with health and PE. So Rich Brown gave a little bit of a report talking about the various dimensions of the health curriculum. everything
084from driver's ed to team PEP to unified health. Um social relationships, digital citizenship, the experiences of adolescence and stress, drugs and alcohol. on the uh PE side uh an emphasis on lifelong fitness, safety, first aid, family planning, finances, parenting, and then highlighting certain activities like project adventure, team building, team sports, lifelong sports, fitness, and wellness as sort of like the PE um trajectory that students go through through grades 9 to 12. So the goal now is for each year to kind of provide the committee members with a little bit of an update as to the existing departments and sort of what's uh emerging in each of those areas. Uh committee was recommending approval for all of those items. So I just open the floor to any questions or clarifications. Any questions? So, um, with I
085know the community's been focusing on absenteeism and I'm just curious, um, with that approach, I know there's no quick solution. I know this is something that's been focused on for a while. Um, where does student voice play a role in that? Um, do we survey students? Do we try to take a look from their perspective or their eyes what may be contributing to that? I don't know. And I guess I don't know if on that do do any of the climate and culture surveys that we give have items that help us speak to to that dimension. Yeah, that might be um the method that we can maybe try to do some correlations. Um we haven't done that yet, but that might be a good idea. And then the other thing on that that I wondered
086about is that um the district does use the strong evaluation, right, to evaluate teachers and one of the major um standards in that area to evaluate teachers is the learning environment. And so how does looking at the data with uh teacher evaluation in terms of learning environment impact um what the learning environment is like and how that may or may not inform absenteeism. I think an interesting opport Sorry no I was just going to say yeah we can make that connection as well. Yeah, I think I think some some interesting conversation if I understand what you're saying there. You have obviously metrics from our evaluation instruments that sort of indicate each of those areas where teachers are performing informal observations. Um, and then if that could be put in conversation with climate and culture data.
087In other words, do do the ratings in classroom environment sort of match the reporting from students andor parents? but mostly students in terms of classroom experience. Are there any trends that emerge when we look at at that one standard? Right. Right. And I don't remember I know the the things are sort of finalizing regarding the strategic plan itself. Um but that too obviously there's the since they use the CUAC dimensions on that where that environmental learning culture is sort of present in that as well. Yeah. Going forward. That could be another and I do think it it I think it's a little bit of what we were having a little conversation about again with that idea of screen time digital experiences versus interpersonal face to face or just the the research behind the wellness of
088being able to write and sort of being able to to hold a physical book and sort of have that connection as well. Classrooms that have higher engagement, do they see higher attendance rates, right? Question I had on this my first time going through the comprehensive equity plan assessment. So my understanding is now we're good for 3 years. Is that correct? I think what was this 25 to 28 I think it was. Yeah. So every 3 years. Is this a statutoily required? Yes. Okay. Mhm. So I read through this as best I can. It's pretty detailed. So going through the school and classroom practices and then it lists whether the district is compliant or not and then the documentation or evidence is substantiate all makes sense. So when I scroll to like table nine the equity
089in the student access there's parts of this that really make sense to me and then one I just question just for my own understanding. So ensure equitable and bias free access for all students to computers, computer classes, career and technical. That makes a lot of sense to me, right? I think that's common sense. It could probably be easily quantified, right? But there's one on here like for instance, ensure the minority ensure that minority and female students are not under reppresented in gifted and talented or accelerated/advanced courses including math or science. Isn't that black or white? Like, how do you like I I don't know. Like, either just give me some rope here because I'm not familiar with this stuff. Well, either you you you're gifted and talented, you meet the criteria, or you don't. Is
090that correct? Am I correct in saying that? Because if you are if that's not how it is, then how would you ever and maybe this is in the policy that they're referring to, policy regulation 2260 or policy regulation 5750, but how would you ever enforce that? Like how would you ever either you're gifted and talented or how would you ensure that equity is involved in a process whether it's black and white whether you make it or you don't. That's what I'm confusing. Well, I think and some of the conversation that came up in the committee and actually thanks for reminding me was um sort of this idea of uh as a school we have external assessments like the PSATs that all kids take and then we have internal processes by which students select classes or
091maybe there's criteria to be recommended for a class. And one of the things that you can look at is you might have data that suggests from an external assessment like a PSAT that a student is capable of a certain level of achievement that might not match their course load selections or uh it could even be something where you have students who are maybe not being recommended for an honors level uh even though they've shown the aptitude on external measures. And it's just a matter of that's something to sort of look into. I know with gifted and talented, and Angela helped me out on this. I mean, a lot of that focuses on younger grades with with firmer descriptors. By the time you get into high school, there's a lot more self- selection going on. Right.
092Yeah. And the way you get in and all that. Yeah. I I read that as we don't want to have an environment where it's Oh, you you you can't do that. You're a girl. I don't think anybody would agree that. Yeah. So, you there's nothing there's nothing in that document that I hope is going on like that we have problems with. Right. Right. But that would that's how I read that one was like, yeah, you probably don't want to do that. Why don't why don't you just take the regular course? Um, you know, that's that's that girls don't do that and that kind of thing. You don't you want to prevent that from happening and if you cuz there should be some kind of distribution, right? If you go if we don't have Yeah, that
093was the gifted and talented. I tried to interpret it as okay, this is a state mandate that's broader. We don't have a class in our high school called the gifted and talented class. you get, you know, the different levels. But anyways, that's that's what that's what I was interpreting that was if if it ends up that the highest level of math is all boys, then there's something in the system that's goofed up. Well, and that's exactly what I was thinking because I was like, well, what happens if it happens to be all girls just just because they made those numbers or all boys and there wasn't a boy or girl? Like, is that equitable? cuz now you have to bring a boy or girl in, but they didn't meet the criteria. So that's why I
094that's the way I took it too. So that's how I read it. Well, I was like, but it's not about maybe it's not about bringing up but that's the way it was reading. It was kind of weird. Maybe what what's wrong with the the the way the students are are going through the program that they're not getting the grades to right qualify for. you know, is there something that they're I could support and you know, or you know, there's also, you know, the responsibility of the guidance counselors too because the the students work on their schedule based upon the recommendations of teachers in the previous year. So, just as an example, if you have a student that was in an advanced um algebra class, right, and the student wants to stay on that track, there's
095discussions that take place between the student as well as the parents and the guidance counselor about, well, maybe that student is ready to go up or stay status quo. So, I think the way I read this also was it's it's it's about making sure that we're we're making those classes accessible properly to students who the school believes can can move them up and it should be done on a on an equal basis. Um, right. Meaning like we're not making it not available that are That's right. meet the criteria or are capable. Exactly. That makes sense. And I think you've even seen it culturally. I think about like when my girls were young, you saw a huge like girls in science, girls in coding, sort of this effort to just um engage girls in areas that
096might not have been like the automatic go-to. And I think we've seen the the impact of that. I know some of the data that we even looked at last year was showing some amazing performance by our female students in the sciences. that sort of bucks traditional trends and I think as long as and as long as a district is sort of looking at the data to sort of say do we have these any disproportionalities that are caused for investigation. Sure. So Beth to your point Yeah. So to your point and Nicole's using Nicole's example, you could have a math class or whatever full of all girls or all boys hypothetically and still be in compliant. Yeah, I would say that that's correct. Okay. Maybe not five years in a row. Yeah. Not exactly. If so,
097if any given year it is what what it is, then you know I think the idea would be to evaluate are there changes that need to again meet to the prior classroom levels to understand why we're not getting girls or boys or minorities into those classes. And so it becomes an assessment. But a couple themes here I'm hearing too is that proactivity not waiting till it gets to that point. But the counselor we talked about before what do you need to do to get there that kind of thing. So I think sometimes it's just misread when you read it. It's hard to kind of So if I can just interject this is a um a state form and you know it's meant for all school districts in the state, right? So not just 9 to
09812. So they'll use terms like gifted and talented which we really don't have. We have an AP program, right? Uh but this is um inclusive of all school districts, K12s or K8s and plus us. Um and all that this is doing is saying that these areas of concern, here's a policy that addresses it. So if we saw some trends, we have the policy to fall back on and say here's why we need to investigate this and make sure this is not an issue. And we might investigate it and say it's not an issue. These were all just this is how it landed. And sometimes it's, you know, a um an anomaly of a year for for for something. But again, if it was happening three or four years in a row, you know, then you'd
099start to look at trends and say what's going How are we going to update this form with the new policies? We're going to we will once the new policy goes in place. Yeah. I mean, theoretically, it doesn't have to be until we do a statement of assurance for next year. Um, but we'll we'll do it between now and then. And I think this one particularly also speaks to if we want to be a best practice on this, it would speak to all marginalized groups, not just these two, right? Because what happens with groupings is sometimes we it sometimes groups are put in a box and then we think of those groups in some ways. So then we can get them sadly sometimes as a deficit instead of a strengthbased place. Right? So I think um
100I think that's something that um has to be considered with that and from a day-to-day practice I would say we do that. Um this is again a compliance document to make sure that we have all the things that we need to be in compliance with state federal law. Yep. So yeah but I agree. Okay. Can I have a motion and a second to approve 12.1 12.3? Second. All in favor? Any kn or abstensions? I abstain to 12.3. I'm sorry. Vote no to 12.3. Doug, do you have I got that. Thank you. Okay, moving on. uh 13 policy and school security a committee report um who's gone. Okay. We met on uh committee met on May 19th. Um all were in attendance. Um we were obviously discussing New Jersey school board's policy review. We kind of
101did the 7000s and 9000s. We had some questions about the 6000s. Um the committee discussed the last two sections. Um the consensus was to move forward with the first reading of the full policy manual at the May meeting with the second reading for June adoption with adoption at July 1st. Uh okay. Uh okay. Second agenda item. Sorry, it was kind of combined there. Policy 5113 was the attendance absence and excuses. So if this was the one exception that we kind of decided prior to adopting the manual to make a change to this. So because we're trying to work on the absenteeism, uh most of discussion was regarding the adoption of this revised policy and regulation as part of the full manual adoption. This policy and regulation was revised to better support the goal of lowering
102our chronic absentee numbers. One of the most substantial changes was require additional documentation for absences due to medical reasons with um with most requiring a note from a medical professional. In conjunction with this, the policy regulation would increase the number of unexcused absences from 12 to 16 for a loss of credit. There also notifications made to parents when students have accumulated 4, seven, and 10 absences so that the remediation plans can be set up and monitored to ensure students do not go over thresholds resulting in a loss of credit. So the conclusion is the new revised policy and regulation will be part of the full policy manual adoption in May and June. So I just if I can just provide a couple clarifying points. So it's it would be 16 for a full year course,
103eight for a halfyear course. Right. Um and we also discussed the fact that it would be very important prior to the school year starting that it was um communicated well to parents so that they were aware of the changes that were made. Um the only other comment that I wanted to make was just to give a bit of background, a little bit more background. um because I know that there were some questions from the public. So, if there's a lot of policy documents as part of this whole policy and as a as a board, we agreed we were moving over to the New Jersey um schoolboards policy. And so, really what we were looking for were things that had to get changed so that when the school year started that we changed before the school
104year started. Now, we'll have the opportunity to go through and look at the individual policies to make sure that we're comfortable with the the changes that are being made based upon it being the school board's uh policy. So, I just wanted to provide that clarification that we're not just going to adopt it and then we're just going to leave it. So, has anything else other than 5113 been revised? Nope. except no there was a couple language things they made us choose you know um but they they were minor changes um and so we made those decisions as a part of this review process like what language I can't remember the one I was thinking about was the one that were about pagers there's a whole section related to yeah there were some obsolete language and
105then there was that one too that but yeah the rest of it is model school board's language um with the exception of the attendance policy we just mentioned which we wanted to change that to reflect what we want it to be next year not what we had before because school boards looked at our previous policy and modeled their language after our previous policy and we wanted to make changes to that to affect Steve other than that nothing's been altered okay Nicole I just I when you were talking about the increase in the number of unexcused absences from 12 to 16 is that the change we were making to the schoolboard policy to make it match our current or was that a so we're just incre we're just changing the policy entirely. So we took the
106New Jersey school board base policy which kind of looks at ours as well and kind of combines it but we're switching the unexcused absences from 12 to 16 because I think we're going to be changing what what a what is an excused absence and an excused absent actually is. Okay. So it's more and I don't know if it needs to follow with the medical note, right? So I guess I I'm just trying to in my head put it in conversation with the idea of reducing chronic absenteeism. This is more about redefining what's excused and unexcused and recognizing the need for some latitude in excused. Yes. And a student would have to have 18 absences or more to be considered chronically absent. Okay. So that's why we moved that because we're going to require more documentation.
107Right. we go from 12 basically freebies to 16 freebies. Um so we gave them a little bit more latitude there. Um but we're still going to, you know, we're still be below that threshold where they would lose credit. Um and we would have a chance to remediate that before they get any further. And is that sort of a new dimension also sort of the remediation steps happening at those intervals or was that something that we had in existing absentee policy? We already had that. Okay. Yeah. like the 4710 sort of dictation process. The idea Brendon, but it hadn't come across yet um was parents were allowed to just write a note. That's what I recall. So that came through mostly through co too. We were having there was a reason for it became kind of
108habit or and so back but it was like um and not all parents but some parents were just routinely it's I I So now they're 16 but that kind of ability to use that respond. Okay. Any further discussion on that? Okay. Can I uh call for I need a motion and a second to approve 13.1. So move. Second. All in favor? I. Any naysay or abstensions? [Applause] Okay. Uh next will be finance facilities and transportation. Um Dan, uh the committee met on the 19th. Uh just about everybody was there at the um committee meeting. Um some of the things that we discussed were um um so on the agenda we have the the safe there was a safety grant that was we're asking for acceptance of um this was applied for and um we're asking
109that we accept that. Um, one of the other items that that came up that there a couple of board members had asked some questions about were the district donations. There were some books, the list of books that were donated. Um, so I I got some information on that. I just wanted to report out that these the books that are on the list for donation um were sent by uh they were unsolicited, sent by the vendors um to the school. And this is actually they were sent back in February. Since February, they've been reviewed by the librarian and the building administration. Um the books were um in support. Is Beanstack like a a program? I I think it's a publisher, I believe. Oh, that's the publisher. Okay. So, the Beanstack is the publisher that sent the
110books. Um and it's for the uh enthusiastic readers program for students. Um it's an incent it's to incentivize students to read for recreation. Uh the goal is to increase the interest in the Beanstack enthusiastic readers program in the media center and provide an incentive for reading to increase the number of books that students read for entertainment. Um the uh librarian uh has a plan to use these books as prizes for uh incentiviz. So, um, that's that's the goal of these books. And like I said, they've been, uh, reviewed by the librarian and the building administration for and we're being asked to approve them. Um, poly the polytech agreements are in place. Um, I don't I don't know that they're finalized. I guess they're being sent to So, yeah, they'll be finalized by our board tonight,
111right? And then Polytech will adopt them after we Okay. Um there's an amendment of the professional services agreement with Ruckers University Behavioral Health. This is an amendment. You you'll see this is actually for 2425 which is this current year. So this amendment is really uh something that was already uh and tell me if I'm saying this wrong already in practice but wasn't ever in writing and needed to be added just to writing in the agreement. That is correct. It basically is another vendor that we can use for psychiatric evaluations, right? Um the student student activity event contracts. This is something we um where uh we're not approving any costs for this. It is just to approve these um school events so that if uh there's any issues that it's been approved by the board and
112um it's understood, you know, uh for liability reasons. We want to make sure that everyone's in agreement that we are supportive of those events. Um the requisition of taxes. This is just the uh statement of the um the tax the tax certification for each municipality. Um the medical and dental [Music] benefits. So the review of the healthcare market had increased anticipation of 10% for medical uh 2.7% for dental uh and no increase for the prescription plan. Um there's a we talked about just a reminder I think we've talked about it already that the uh candidate acts applications for uh board member candidate applications are due on July 28th. Um, there are two projects we discussed. The district office roofing project and I just have a clarification. I the the minutes actually say that we're getting
113bids and we're opening on June 4th. I believe it's they're still in the process of working on the documents. Is that correct? We we've signed off on the the the schematics. Yes. So, I'm I'm not sure that the June 4th is is accurate as far as So, it's in the process. and they're being they're being um worked on right now. Um the door lock project is a is a project that's currently going on, but it's being expanded using the contingency funds that were already in place for that that project. So, uh the contingency uh since it wasn't used um it's we're expanding this to include all the exterior doors which would be um so all the the doors um in the school would be tied into the same uh system. What is this project? The
114the doors. Yeah. So, it's for uh card swipes and Yes. It's actually a replacement of a of the all the interior doors. Um is this security? It kind of Yeah, somewhat. But it it it's more to make sure that the doors open and close easily. We have a lot of doors over the years that have swollen and they get you know the door jambs get stuck and um so it's replacing the doors so we have a operating door and then also um while we're doing that putting swipe card systems are we allowed to ask if the doors have windows or not? Yeah, every door has to have a window. I was going to say because a fire safety but I know that like in in a different incident no windows would be a good thing
115but in a situation where there was an evacuation or like a smoke thing or something like that we go through that for an actual classroom is a requirement that there's a site window um and the balance of the items uh there's the staff training and travel requests and bills list and th those are all items um that are you know standard monthly approvals And I believe that is it. Anybody has any questions? I have a quick question. The building next door. Um, is it going to be ready in time for the school year to start? Oh, it's looking a bit delayed. I did I did miss that that it was it's currently slated for September 20th. So, yeah, September 20th. So, about a month into the our school year. Okay. Um, and we have some
116alternative um, plans on where we can house some of those classes and if there's a plan C where they can bring them down to Bart's corner for that month if need be. But I think we'll be able to accommodate everything for that month. Okay. And I did I did have um, anecdotally I I had a a friend who student went on a they did an open house I think. Okay. in in the building and took a tour and she said although the outside looks very undone, she said the interior looks very Yeah. So, like two weeks ago, Todd did ask me, he was coming up and he asked if I wanted to do a quick tour while he was here. And um the inside, yeah, there is significant progress inside. I I think the site
117work is the last thing to do to make it look it's going to be a building, but um they are working pretty there. Just go ahead. I'm sorry. Is that the same topic? It's a different topic slightly. Let's stay on top. Um, just connecting that with our demographics report. Um, I'm assuming the demographics report does not include the Polytech or the academy students who are not our uh sending district cohorts of kids. Well, it it included some of those. If those if if it was a North Island student that was in that academy, it did account for them, right? Um it's only looking at people in our footprint. So it does not account for the ones from the other areas of the county that come to Polytech and we provide the educational services. Right. So
118none of the numbers even the projections would have that information as part of Yeah. They're all going to be a little higher than that because we have kids from other high schools that are coming here for thosemies. And then where was that number just averaging again? And in terms of how many of those students I think typically ourmies are about a 60/40 split of versus ex yeah 5050 at least. All right. 5050 but those numbers for the for these are going to increase each year because the the programs are going to build. Yes. That's kind of important. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. So you're saying so after the academy students are from out they would if it wasn't for the academy they wouldn't go here. Oh interesting. That is correct. And the same thing for the
119new programs that are going to be opening up in this new building. Because admittedly I mean that's one of the things that's enabled us as a district to sort of stave off a more significant decline by attracting external students. So, I'm sorry I missed that. So, did they take into consideration that more people may be coming to the school for actually four-year poly techch program? Not yet. No, the demographic study did not account for the out of district students that were being admitted to polytech for vocational programs. Will will they come into play next time we do this? I I I think the way they do demographic studies as you can see they they have their science. Um, so what we do is then we do the um, informal thing and start counting up numbers
120and add those to what we have or we look at our current enrollments cuz when you look at our enrollments in our student information system, it includes those students cuz they're part of our program, right? So we compare our numbers that we actually have to numbers that they say we have. Um, again things like the numbers he's using are if a student is in a polytech program right now as a junior or senior, they count as a half time student. So we only get.5 that student, right? Okay. So for every you know 100 kids that are in that program we're only on on the state books we're showing 50 kids but we still have 100 kids to you know provide structure of these 100 seats and we are able to denote students from outside districts
121we already know that. So yeah and that's data we constantly look at um for staffing and things of that nature. Sorry, Angela. Totally fine. Fine. Did you have a question? Yeah. So, going back to the um professional services agreement, Ruckers um services will be provided from December 24th to June 25th. And I think that's come up before with um I don't know if it was with our SRO or something where we had another backdated sort of contract. Is there a way to get ahead of that? Um, and just have that information before or could it not be avoided? Yeah. No, we we do our best to avoid those things. We like things to be done proactively beforehand. Um, yeah, cuz that's a sixmon one, right? We only have two other um firms that do psychiatric
122full psychiatric evaluations. Um, and this would be a third now. Okay. And again, we we we want that for the rest of this school year so that we have that third. We've had situations where the other two are very busy and we have the opportunity to do this. And then I have a question to tag along on Angela. It says here that the provided psychiatric evaluations on a need on as needed basis upon request of the client. Would the client be a student or would it be the school? It's a school. So a full psychiatric evaluation um is typically done. There's a few different reasons, but typically if we have concerns about a student's behavior, whether or not they would be a danger to themselves or others, we're asking them to go out and get
123a psychiatric evaluation. So, it's in our interest to get that done as soon as possible so we can get the student back in school. Okay. And that is with parental consent. Yeah. The parents have to take That's right. I just wanted to make sure. Yeah. So, so is to Angela's point, does that end June 30th? It does because we're out for RFP right now for those services. So we don't want to we don't want to k ourselves past that. So the we're covered it'll happen again next year but we're just asking for the remainder of this year. So okay I have a few things. Um the first item the acceptance of the safety grant. I'm just curious with maybe you can or cannot say anything because it has to do with safety but what what
124would be the risk reduction projects that would happen or have happened in the past? So specifically, I wouldn't want to mention, but I can tell you that we use that money basically for um safety and security issues. Sometimes it's um fixing sidewalks that could be a tripping hazard. Other times it could be cameras to put in an area that we might not have full coverage of. Okay? You know, so things of that nature. That's okay. That's um the second one after that 14.2, it's just I'm just noticing this now. There's a couple typos on that one at the very end. Um item three, fourth line towards the end. Um should you contract, right? Mhm. And then there's something the last sentence for public. Is it interesting? Spelling error. Oh yeah, spelling. Yeah. Just a It
125says republic instead of for it should be I think there was a space between the O and the R. And that's exactly what it is. Yeah. Auto correct. Auto correct. Yeah. Um again, we can run that past, you know, um the attorney to see if we'd have to read this later or if it if that changes things. Right. Yeah. I I again I think it's a typo. I don't think it changes the substant substantive language of the resolution, but and I have a question and I have one more. Oh, go ahead. But we can always approve it noting that too that we would change that as well. Okay. All right. So, um, the district donations, I think I think it's great. I actually took the time to look through all these books because I was
126just curious about them. And there's some great books here. Like 32 books really good. like just diversity and it makes me want to read some of these. There's there's one particular book that is a concern to me and it has to do with some situations within the book. Um there's a 9-year-old being molested. There's two separate rapes. Um, I just I think it's a very uh I guess I didn't mean to say pervasively vulgar where it's going to be a surprise perhaps to a student. Um, if these are given out as prizes, I'm not sure how that all is going to play out, but I wanted to voice that and I'm not sure where we can go with a vote because this might be a vote, right? all or none and I wouldn't want to
127discard multiple books for one. Is there a way we can line item when we get donations? Something like that. I mean, we could in the future. We didn't for this one because it's typically a list. This was all the book titles that were sent. Um I was Is it a true story? Is it fiction or non-fiction? The book that you're referring to, it is fiction. It's fiction and I did read it all the way through. Okay. Yeah. So, it's it's unfortunately it's it's it's a sad story following kids and it it does have a lot of parallel with what could happen because it it follows two kids in foster care. So, it's it's deep content. And there was another one too which says when the the when the world tips over. or I read a
128couple of the pages and I I stopped. But there was a a scene in there where adults sexually assaulting a 14-year-old. It's pretty graphic. I don't know. You just don't know if these are going to trigger something. Um I mean it's talking about squeezing breast, thrusting against back, ejaculating, keeping hands over mouth, stifle the screams. I mean this is an adult sexually assaulting a child. So these books are approved by the librarian. So yeah, these were sent by that publisher um to the librarian unsolicited but you know it was like advanced copies, right? The librarian did look through them um uh and you know determined they were appropriate titles uh recommended them to the building administration who recommended them to me who is recommending them to you. So what is the process when they're approving
129it? Are they reading the books? Yeah. No, they don't read every book. Obviously, a librarian can't read every book that comes into the library, but they're usually um reading summaries um and seeing if there is any controversy surrounding it kind of thing. So, they is there like a is there like a from there is a library association or something like that they take recommendations from? I'm not sure so sure it's the library associations. It they do use a I can't think of the name of the title right now. Um hold on. Let's see if I can find it. years ago. We went through this all years ago, Rich, with book donations and things like that. Yeah. But we're just questioning the process to see if we can item lines because there's good books in there
130that would be very helpful. There's some books in there that would be a massive trigger. Yeah. If if there are books that um individual board members have concerns about, they can send me their concerns and then I can look at that administratively and determine whether or not that's something we let the librarian hand out or if it's just something we add to our collection for a student that might need it. Okay. Well, the librarian might not even be aware well in there or whatever. Yeah. So, again, those concerns that were brought up, I can use that administratively to take a look closer look at that and then report out later on. But I know we're changing policies and all. Is there a policy behind um donations? What can be improved? What cannot? And then secondly,
131um when those come in, do we run them by our attorney? We do not run book donations by our attorney. As far as the policy policy, the policy really dictates process. The policy dictates process. It doesn't dictate content, right? Um and so that's that's something that we rely on discretion and professionalism of our human. Okay. Yeah. I just have our old policy here 7230 that says gifts to the school should not be contemplated unless they have a real place in the educational program. So I just Yeah. And again in this case I I believe they felt like it did. Right. Um I know there were some concerns about some excerpts from the books and we can again look into those. Um but like you said I wouldn't want to stop this process just you know
132for the rest of the books right because I think they are beneficial. Um, can I go I wanted to go back to 14.2. So, um, just from a process point. Well, before I I don't want to stop you, but I did I I didn't report on that because I was not part of the FFT committee. That was Yeah. And I did ask that if someone from the ad hoc committee could report out and we can do that. Can I just before we report down on it, can I ask why it wasn't covered in the FFT committee since it's a recommendation that the FFT committee it should go to the FFT committee prior to recommending to board to review an FFT? I'm going to um defer to our chair. Well, before I get there, I mean
133I it's a fair question and it's a good question. I I also have the same question for 14.3 cuz we didn't discuss that in I mean I know I was under the weather that day but I could have missed it but I don't recall that coming up at FFD at all. It doesn't typically come up in so I don't know I'm some of the stuff that I'm hearing is for the first time so I if I didn't see the books I didn't see the passages. Didn't read it admittedly. Was the list on the uh agenda? That's not our that's not and it's not our area to micromanage either. I'm not saying that, but I'm saying that's not my information. I'm saying there's a concern raised and if if if what she's saying is in there
134and I believe that there is like that would be hearing it for the first time. So that would be that's that would cause me some concern. That's me personally. Okay. Well, can we go back to 14.2 then and please explain why this wasn't presented in FFT um prior to adding it to the agenda? I I don't think I can answer that question. I would defer to the FFT chair. Well, the FFT chair wasn't on the committee and the agenda item was added to the agenda after the original agenda was published. The the draft was published. Um I listened to the FFT committee. It was not covered in the FFT committee agenda. This item was added to the board agenda after the original draft and it wasn't covered in committee. Isn't it a separate committee from
135FFT? Is that what it's an ad hoc committee? It's an adop committee for the DEI. You reported out on that. All I did was report out and for the for the board. So, it's a separate committee. So, why would we? But we're asking for board approval on the decision of an ad hoc committee and that ad hoc committee has not presented to our traditional committee or to the board. Right. No, but you didn't present it to FFT. It's the order of operation. Well, the the report was not complete by that meeting date that it shouldn't be added to this month's agenda, nor nor was um FFT recorded or FFT was recorded actually worked this month. That's the one that worked. That's right. But so there are a couple things under FFT that are in question.
136Why they're there on the agenda, right? The book donations was just one and now this one. Why aren't they set for agenda items then? No, but this is this is I mean we're talking about a contract here. This is a contract. Okay, but the chair could have asked ad hoc. I mean it's it's it's one of these guys. I mean in this case I don't understand why in this case half of the board is not included in the ad hoc committee. There has been no when when we looked at the findings of the ad hoc committee, there's no information as far as how the interviews were conducted. I know that Rich is going to talk about this. However, my point is before you even discuss it is how did it get on the agenda without
137having it been reviewed with transparency? Full transparency put in full. So, I don't know maybe has to go into committee. Yes. And and and it doesn't have to go back into committee. We have done that. You're you have done that before secretary. recommended advice what the policy is for ad hoc committees with Robert Sules of order and how the results of those committees are presented when it's involving a contract. Well, it's it's a committee as a board by the board obviously and so that that that committee then has the um I'm not say the authority but the their role is to you know and in this case to review attorneys for presentation to the full board. Now I think to rich's point the reason they gone FFT because I don't believe that the results were
138available when we had the FFT meeting on Monday night. Correct. Can I can I question that? So that we had that meeting in the evening on the 19th and your your chair's email about the results being done were sent the next day. Correct. So the results were discussed prior to the meeting. Prior to the email, I'm assuming and not presented to the board in FFT and and you sent your email the day after. No, I I can tell you the report was not complete. I didn't complete the report till the 20th when I sent it. And to be honest, I mean, the decision wasn't made at the time of the FFT meeting. It wasn't finalized. So, at the at the very least in the FFT meeting going forward, we we should have should have had
139a report. This is where we're at. This is this and then, you know, we expect the report to go out tomorrow so that everyone um so that we would know it was coming. Um and the concern is because the report, and I'm not questioning that, the report doesn't have a lot of detail in it. it kind of just gives the results of of the process. Um, that's why I'm hoping that's why I asked for for someone to report out on it so we could hear what the process was and how you came to the conclusion you did. I I mean, respectfully, I think the report is very detailed. It it outlines the process from the start to finish. I don't know. But it doesn't say the responses of the attorneys that you interviewed. It doesn't
140give any comparison between the attorneys. It doesn't say what you found for this attorney versus what you found for that attorney. What made what led you to this conclusion. It says what questions were asked, but there's no room. Why don't you let me read the report and then if you have any questions, then we can go from there cuz I think some of your questions are in fact would be answered. Okay. In the report. So, um, so I'm assuming report attached. I don't I just see the resolution. No, everything's in in the board drive. Okay. Yeah, I have that over Didn't you send an email to the board that was I did and as we went through the process we added uh to the board drive continually we were we were in check there was
141a process and the uh administration can attest to that as far as the qu the questions I'd like to answer that um the questions were uploaded we took um a lot of time I I feel like this committee um sourced really vetted. We I sent an email to the board and asked if there was anyone that had input, had points they'd like to contribute, and I received two responses and that was it. I'm not questioning the questions that were asked. I'm questioning as to what the responses were that led you to the conclusion to pick four different attorneys. I'm not saying that the questions weren't valid, that the questions weren't um useful, but but as a person who was not on the committee, who's on the board, who has to vote on a decision to
142employ four attorneys, I don't know anything about them other than the RFP and the questions you asked. I don't know how they answered or and I'm going to I'm going to respond to that and then I will have Mr. Lordy read out. Great. We all there were six proposals respondents. They were uploaded to our drive. They were there Jessica. They were there for all board members to to read to go through. I sent an email requesting any feedback to uh so we could take that to the committee. The questions were formulated. We asked questions based upon our culture and our environment, our needs and we interviewed as a process previous to uh four years ago. I believe it we was our last time we went on 21 the same thing occurred. Questions were asked the
143board was pulled and asked if there's any if they have any points they'd like to share and it went to committee. that committee interviewed and selected period. There was no qu there was not actually this is I have to say this process although may be different from what you've seen before in your years on the board it was very thorough and effective and I felt um and very transparent. It it was transparent. Everything was uploaded to the drive as we were doing it so you could see and take the time to ask questions. I'm not I'm not questioning the RFPs in the drive. I'm not questioning the questions that we asked the attorneys. My point is is that we didn't follow process yet again. Here we are making a decision without without due process. This
144should have gone to FFT. It should have been reviewed in committee to give a heads up to the rest of the board that this was coming rather than a finalized agenda with this item on it. We did follow a process. Jessica, let let me have Mr. Lordy as the chair. Go ahead. Rich, why don't you give out your great Let me let me start off by saying this. I've been here only a couple months, right? But it I I understand for whatever reason that this has become a hot button issue for some maybe all when it shouldn't be right. I mean it I can attest to you and for anyone that respects us as board members, me as the chair or anyone that would participate, this process was on the up and up. It just
145was. I mean, any insinuation that it wasn't is just it's just not accurate. Um, I I think to to Kim's point, I mean, knowing that it was such a hot button issue, I I feel like we went above and beyond to to to communicate updates every step of the way. Um, and I think, you know, I when I even submitted the report, I was like, "Hey, make sure you get this on the drive like immediately." like I wanted it out there as soon as it was completed. So I I I don't know like looking backwards I I don't think we could have done anything differently. I mean this was probably it one of the most exhaustive processes that I've ever been involved with both in my personal and business life and in public life. I
146and I was cognizant because I knew that this was a hot button issue for this board for whatever reason. I'm not saying I agree or disagree with that, but it just became that. And I'm not sure why, but so I wanted to make sure me being involved with it, if I'm putting my name on it, especially as the chair of the committee, everything had to be above board. And I can tell the the committee right now, everything was above board. Whether you believe me or not, I that's up to you guys. I'm not saying you're not above board. It's above board. What I'm saying is is that process wasn't follow. I can't speak to why it was why it's an FFT or why wasn't But that's not why but but what I'm going to say
147that is all right just the report as soon as as soon as we came to a consensus and as soon as uh the report was in by the way this stuff doesn't happen in 5 minutes like we have to take time to write this we have to gather each other's thoughts we have lives we work this stuff doesn't happen overnight it just doesn't so anything that like we like we I wish I had a magic wand that could say interviews are done. Let's decisions made. Put it in the drive. Okay. So, it's not realistic. Are you just going to read to us what's on the drive because there more information? Because I think the other part of this is that there's nothing here. This tells us why the decision was made for these firms. Sure.
148Okay. and if there was any if there's any special billing arrangements that are agreed to other than just their hourly rates for the partners and and parallegals. So there it would have been helpful to see what went into the rationale for selecting these firms and appointing them for these and there's there's even a scoring matrix on here but there's nothing in it there's nothing in it. Yeah, we didn't get the results of the scoring matrix. If you put a if you put a matrix out there, it's great, but what did they score? How are we supposed to know what the different girls scored? So So I can answer that. So um we all did a pre-in matrix and it was strictly based off of the RFP assessment. So of our assessment of what they had
149turned in. And after that we then had the interview process and sometimes the scoring of the matrix aligned with the interviews and sometimes they didn't. Right? So um we just made the collective decision that this was our scoring and that's so how did you score them? If you didn't use the matrix and you're telling me that the matrix was used pre but not post, right? How did you actually score and make the decision? So, we it was it was factored in certainly factored in but I would also say that the interview answers to the questions heavily factored in uh to to when we had to come to a decision. So, it was both were to answer your question both were considered. We don't know the results of Well, I I can let I do wonder
150even though you guys have this I I do think it's just If there are no results, that's my point, Rich. I went through the drive. I read the RFPs. I see the questions that you ask. I saw the matrix that you used, but there's no answers to the questions. No results in the matrix. And all we have is a a document saying we picked these four attorneys for these four things. Here's their RFPs. Here's the questions we might have asked them because we don't know because we weren't there. And here's and we have no answers and nothing on the record that says what happened during the interview. So, let me let me let me answer part of that one. I'm not sure if you're asking if all 15 questions were to have documented answers from
151all applicants. Unfortunately, we didn't have a stenographer in the room. So, that's just Did you record the meeting? We did not. Out of respect for the applicants uh because it would simply make them feel uncomfortable like if we were going to a job interview, I wouldn't feel comfortable being interviewed. So, can I interrupt? Did you guys do that for when when this attorney was selected? Okay. Go on. Yeah. So part of this and I again I I understand this is a hot button, but there's got to be a level of understanding that the people that were selected involved in this process did it the correct way. And and I I know that you have this document, but it is not currently a public document. So I do want to read it into the record, but
152I don't think it is supposed to get read into the record. Well, it's on the agenda, so anybody can click into it. I don't think it was. I didn't see it on the resolution. Oh, the resolution is read that. It's it it's not supposed to be into the record. These are like minutes like anything else that we do, right? It's a committee report. Okay. Okay. That's how I saw it. Okay. So, again, I I know some of this is going to be a little bit redundant for you folks, but committee members were me. I served as as the chair, Kim Celino, Nicole Gallow, Christina Kagno, and Angela Dean. Uh the timeline and process overview started on March 14th. Requests for proposals RFP for legal services were publicly advertised. April 4th was the deadline for all
153RFP submissions. April 10th, each committee member as well as a superintendent uh Rich Bergax and interimm business administrator Doug Panic received a pre-in evaluation matrix to score and assess each submission. May 6th, the RFPs were uploaded to the BOE resource materials drive. The board president notified all members and asked that they review the proposals and provide input. One response was received, technically two, I think one was a thank you, I believe. Uh, one response was received and incorporated into the evaluation process. May 7th, the committee met to prepare for candidate interviews, review the priorities, and formulate targeted questions based on the district's current needs. So these 15 questions that you guys all saw, this was incorporated by some that were existing and some that we felt needed to be addressed uh during the interview process.
154So there was a lot of time and effort that went into just the question coming up with the proper questions. So please keep that in mind. And I will say going back to the questions, even when Dr. Berg, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but when he saw this and Doug, I don't think they were like there's no way we're getting through 15 interview questions. I we did efficiently and I think they were a little going into said, "Hey, this might be tough." But we got through it and we we stayed on time and we stayed on task and we got every candidate to answer every single question. Um, and we all took very detailed notes. So, um, if that helps you a little bit with understanding how that process, I I
155hope it does. So um May 8th in-person interviews were conducted with five of the six candidate firms. Uh Murray Nolan Biruti was unavailable to interview thus did not participate in the process. So we had set that date was a little bit difficult trying to get everybody in the time frame on the date. This particular firm was just unavailable. So we decided that they essentially self- selected out of the process. Um May 12th, the committee reconvened to evaluate each firm using the submitted RFPs, pre-inter evaluation matrix, interview answers, and committee member notes. May 20th, the committee report was finalized and submitted. After a thorough and collaborative evaluation process, the committee concluded that a diversified legal team structure utilizing firms with specialized expertise would best meet the district's complex and evol evolving legal needs. The recommendation is
156as follows. The legal services ad hoc committee recommends awarding contracts for the 2025 2026 school year as follows. General Counsel D Franchesco Baitman Kutzman Davis Ler and Flam PC Special Education Council Shank Price Smith and King LLP Labor and Employment and Oprah Council Clearly Gakobi Alfairi LLC special council the Bush Law Group LLC. Conclusion. The committee strongly believes that a diversified and strategic legal services structure offers the strongest foundation for the North Hunter and Borhees school district to navigate the complex and involving legal challenges facing public education today by leveraging the unique strengths and proven expertise of each selected firm. The district will be well positioned to receive responsive, effective, and specialized legal guidance across all critical areas. respectfully submit this recommendation with confidence in its ability to serve the district's best interest and support
157sound forwardthinking governance. So, lots been a lot of questions have been circulated of how we landed on on on who was going to take each role. So this is a difficult little bit of a difficult question to ask because out of respect for all of the candidates, I don't think it is appropriate to say why certain individuals or what characteristics they might have had that others they were maybe a little bit weaker in or others were stronger in. So that can be viewed as kind of a little bit negative to those that maybe were not chosen because you have to keep in mind each candidate there was to interview for general counsel. They had no idea um what the committee ultimately or the plan of the committee ultimately was going to come and and and
158what what what it would be. So we had to then prior to prior to the meeting had you already determined that you were picking four councils. We had we had discussed in a perfect what a perfect world scenario would look like. So to answer your question, we had not made that decision, but we had said, "Hey, if the opportunity presents itself, this is like what what would be best case scenario?" Best case scenario would be we had we were knocked off the floor by everyone that walked in there and we had a litany of professional legal services that at our disposal with diversified and highly technical and specialized areas of focus. That was our let's keep our fingers crossed that happened. I can tell you during the interview process thankfully and luckily that's exactly what
159happened. So it it played out exactly like we had hoped but we didn't know it was going to happen that way. So during the interview process I mean to I mean Doug and and and Rich were there there were some candidates that were just no-brainers for certain for certain areas and immediate consensus. So I can tell you that the general counsel chosen across the board um hit on the same theme repetitive repetitively which was that students first education first well-being of the students special education um safety of students but everything came back to the students everything and that was something that across the board um and Again, I don't I'm not saying that other firms did not do that, but this particular firm just happened to stand out that everything was student center. Rich, can
160I ask a question? Sure. Just because I'm not an attorney, can you can you describe the the categories just Well, sure. I think general counsel is our general counsel. So, that's just anything that comes correct. Standard, you know, correct? That's not specialized. So, special education, we were astounded what walked through the door um from from that law firm and I think we have luckily got one of the preeminent special education litigators or attorneys that probably in the state of New Jersey. So, and that is how they answered their questions to have you come to that decision. It it all factored in. It was the RFPs. It was it was cost. Was there answers to it? Was there answers to questions? Everything was factored in making decisions. Wasn't just one thing. So for for special counsel,
161is that is that what Bush is doing now? Correct. Is a very sim similar role there for No, special counsel is not if it was if it was noted conflict counsel, they would only be able to handle conflict. Special counsel you they can handle anything. So Dr. Verex or or Doug needed to reach out, they can reach out for special counsel. That is the role that remains. Would there be a case where if we reach out to the general counsel and for some reason someone doesn't like their interpretation, we would then go to the special counsel. That's a discretionary of administration to be used if if they if they wanted to go out to let let's just say who would make this labor labor and employment the B between the the BA and the president
162uses the also the services has to be comfortable sitting in that role reaching out and connecting they they do but so does the the superintendent absolutely but the BA will have those regularly you know back and forth and we'll be able to determine detine, hey, oh, you know what? This is we need to we need to we have an Oprah. We want a specialy. We want to request that this approved. We're going to reach out to Clary, Jacobe, and uh Alfie. I think that we're trying to figure out the difference between the general counsel and the special counsel and who makes the decision of when we use special. That's your ad. It's going to be up to the what we're doing now. I mean, it's the same thing having we don't have four now. We've
163had two, right? So, it's the same difference. If Dr. Burjax has, you know, reaches out to the attorney and there's a second another one, another purview, another view, he's reached out to our special counsel. Okay. I mean, we're not paying for the services to have them on. There's no retainer. There's no retainer. No, I understand. There's no retainer with any of these firms? No. The the two new categories though would be specific. Correct. You can't go to the special education council or council for a labor question. You can go either to general or special. But what you're what he's saying, you don't have to you're not necessarily going to um the special ed counsel specifically that that that conversation will go to the council and if there's more to that that case or they want
164second opinion or other they can go to um piece versus what we're understand other courts do it other ways just we I've been familiar with we've had a general and a special when I I think we did maybe we don't haven't called it formally general but we use that term lead council and special counsel. Okay. So now we're adding these other two for but they're we're trying to limit them to specific we only can use them for specific reasons new correct me if I'm right Doug. I think they'll all will they all follow? I know what you're saying. I'm sorry I didn't get you. Correct me if I'm if we're wrong. Are all of them uh listed as spec just specific or just specific? They're listed as specific and we have pushes special counsel. However,
165you you know that all of those attorneys have departments that would take care of all this, but you guys have narrowed it to four firms to take care of that is the intention. So it it we if there is a special special education case or situation the full intention is not to have general counsel handle. Does that answer your question? Yeah. Yes. And and um the committee must have been hadn't preddecided that it must have been impressed that even though all four of those or all however many have the whole they cover the whole field, right? You've decided for in two cases I want that person that group for this issue based on responses interview discussion and the committee said it's worth it to not just have general and special it's worth it to have
166this you know I I want not just an infielder I want to you want a short stop. Yes. So because that the in person interviewed as an excellent choice. Yes. If I if I'm understanding your question correctly um coming into the interviews we would like I said what does best case scenario best case is that we have targeted firms that are that are specialized in specific areas where we do not have to lean on general for everything and overwhelm them and reduce response time and put all our eggs in one basket so to speak like we didn't want we we wanted to get away from that right then when going through the interview process process. It kind of worked itself out exactly how we had hoped it had. And the the the intent is again
167if there is a labor issue or an OPRA request, it's going to go to the OPRA and labor council. It's not going to go to the general or special counsel. If there's a special education case or situation, special education council is going to be looked at, not general or special counsel. So just how it reads right now is the full intention. And I can tell you guys, this is the bottom line. It's a very talented group of people. We are really fortunate to have this group of people at our disposal because I can't stress this enough. They interviewed to be the general counsel. Three of them agreed to to to and were excited to be working with the district in a job function that they didn't interview for. So, please keep that in mind. like
168they they came all they all came there interviewing for general counsel and three of them didn't get it. So if I could so two things just so we can start to to wrap it. The first thing is I think it would have avoided a lot of questions and also the risk of discussing things publicly that we can't if there had been additional information in the folder about what your what the final interview what it resulted in and how you got to it. That's neither here nor there at this point. My question is about the resolution. Um, and it may be semantics, but I went back and I looked at at just as an example. Franchesco Baitman's um RFP and to say contract general counsel and then their hourly rate implies that it's only as to
169one lawyer um and same as to the support staff. So, I just want to confirm and maybe it gets modified slightly that we just say that the the rate is the lawyer rate and a support staff rate for the contract instead of saying the contract council because you want to make sure every lawyer that's working for us, for example, I think Franchesco is charging us the same hourly, right? I think there's a there's something in the drive that specifies exactly what the attorney fee is and what the but the contract the contract we have right now will govern. So, you want to make sure that we don't end up in a billing situation where they they add a partner to this that's going to charge us, you know, double the amount of the hour the
170contracted hourly rate. That would just be my one suggestion. Um, if we need to get this done and we could do that, but we'll make sure the contracts are consistent with what's on the resolution. I was just I was I mean, first and foremost, right? So I I I would say that and I I don't I didn't look at the semantics of the agreements, but as long as they align or match up with the summary of the respondent sheets, which I get the all attorneys, parallegals, then we're good. Yeah. So as long as the contracts have it, we'll make sure whatever. Okay. And just I just have one last question and I I understand that this is um I know this is done um in one other district, but has it been looked at? Is
171do other districts do this? Is this I know some of that. Okay, that's I just wanted to make sure. We're not we're not a trailblazer with this idea. No, I Yeah. Okay. Uh, so my comment is this is that I'm I'm I'm really happy with the level of effort that that's went into this. This is to me this is another one of these issues of it's we're on board by committee. Um, so I'm I'm personally fine with what's been reported out. You guys did your job. Thank you. You know, it's you said yourself it's a hot button issue. So to me the two things that we should have avoided was the way it was the committee was set up because it was you know described as we're keeping the people who are under this ethics
172investigation off the committee that that wasn't your job to do. Uh but the other one was because of this this hot button issue. Why did it You could have just had it discussed at the FFT. I mean, you sent out the email with the full report out less than 24 hours, 18 hours or something like that after the meeting. Maybe it's 20 hours after the meeting ended, the FFT meeting. So, you were the committee was close. You had just And in your timeline, you said you had your meeting on 512 and you finalized the results on 520. You had the results for days. That's not true. Let me clarify. So clarify. I can tell you this. If there's any belief that we had a decision on May 12th inaccurate. So no no 19th. 19th just
17319th inaccurate. So the report was not finalized. And I'm not going to put something in FFT and speak into the report and like I'm just not going to do that. Right. So um I mean but I do have a question for this because if you read the ad hoc committee it says ad hoc committee may be created in charge by any time by the president majority of the board members presenting and voting. The president shall appoint members to any committee. So created charge members shall serve on the committee until it's discharged. Committee shall consist of no more than five board members. I mean everything here was done exactly the way it was done. It doesn't state in here that has to go back into another committee for review because it came out of FFT for
174the you know the FFT committee stated that we want to create a a committee for this to have this RF RFP proposal which we did and now you're saying that's not good enough. You wanted to go back from another committee into another committee for that committee to discuss the committee and findings. Point seated. Okay. Okay. I don't I I'm just saying the perception could have been easily avoided. What perception? The perception that I have that this was this was fine-tuned. We had the the the committee meeting on the 19th and like 18 hours later was the email from news saying so it could have just been you could have said hey you're on the FFT meeting. You could have said hey we're going to have the report out soon. Had the report been completed by
175that time I would have had no problem doing it. I can assure you that as soon as that report was completed and we had a consensus, it went out. But it took time for me. I did not have So what happened between FFT and when you hit send on the email? Was there I was I was making the report and we were making sure that this this was the decision that we were going to. So, I I believe the board president said, if I'm not wrong, in one of our correspondences, that the goal was to have this ready for the board by the next board meeting. We did say that and we did say that to the respondents in the interview. So, that was stated at the conclusion that we would have this uh at
176our May May meeting for a resolution. Mhm. But yet again, and and it is in the RFP, but yet again, the members of the people, members of the board who were not on the committee were blindsided when the finalized agenda came out with a new agenda item after we read through the committee notes of the FFT committee. It's under the FFT committee report. It came back to FFT now for approval from the entire board and nobody knew it was coming until the draft agenda until the final agenda of the meeting was positioned when there was a specific meeting that it could have been mentioned. You had a goal of getting it out at this meeting. Somebody could have spoken up at FFT where we're all reading the notes trying to figure out what's happening in
177committee meetings. It's not mentioned. It appears on the agenda. Somebody in that committee could have said, "Hey, by the way, we're finalizing the report. We're going to have it out to you. Here's it's coming. I just want to let you know, expect it for the agenda." Okay. Not only was that and I did not feel blindsided. And not only was it put in the folder on the 20th, but I believe the email that came with that said, "If anyone has any questions, please reach out." Did you get any emails about it? I I did not. So, I mean, that was a 20. Respectfully, Jessica to say the word blindsided is just fact. I mean, I don't know how you can feel that way. We I think that it's a pattern, but Jessica, it's not maybe
178Maybe I read the report. You can't be blindsided today. You have But there's no information in it. You have a rubric. You have a rubric uh scoring grid with no scores in it. You have questions with no responses. you have um a decision being made and and no supporting evidence to to have that it what didn't go back to committee to at least even present the preliminary findings and to let the board know that there's a heads up that it's going to be discussed. It comes out of your committee on the 20th, the day after the FFT meeting, which looks very sus. Come on. Everybody at this table is saying it looks very suspicious that this was finalized less than 24 hours after this. You're calling by action. Well, regardless, Rich, I'm making an assumption
179just like you all did that we would assume that your decision was rightfully so. We trust your judgment. Unfortunately, we again were not provided with enough information prior to it coming out in the agenda for us to make a sensible vote without having this elongated conversation that could have been avoided had it been disclosed to the rest of the board on a timely basis and not on the 20th when we have a meeting on the 27th and not when an agenda is published on Monday for or on the 16th for a meeting template or whatever the original whatever the was aware of the timeline Jessica so I don't I'll give you the timeline I'm going to give it to you how was supposed how you wanted the timeline's in the drive it's in the drive
180I'm just not sure respectfully I don't think we and I don't think Jessica respectfully I don't question that you did a good job I'm questioning as usual the procedure that went on behind the scenes the discussions that were had without the full board present decisions that were made and conclusions that were met without having other people's opinions and AB together and let the rest of the board know what you tell us what drove you tell me what drove you to pick um Francisco as general counsel what drove Jessica to pick and the special education council. I'm not finished. You haven't. So, what did you what was there? What was the key question that enlightened you to say, "Oh my god, I have to pick Clearary and Jacob to be our labor representative." I'm not feeling
181any of this. I'm not saying I don't trust your judgment. I'm saying I don't have anything to support your judgment. There's nothing here. There's nothing tangible that I can sink my teeth into that says, "Why did you make this decision? How can I trust this decision and I can put my name on it? I can put my hand up to my constituents to say that I agree with the decision that was made by the board if I don't know how the decision was made. I agree. It's not fair to the people that I represent that I have to sit here and file a vote for a decision that you make that we don't understand. I'm not sure to answer your one question that we could have avoided this conversation, but let's be honest about that.
182Nothing was going to stop this conversation. No, it would have. I mean, get to a place where this wasn't going to reach I do believe technical questions. I I believe Cynthia has a question. I I mean there are a lot of questions coming from board members which I'm trying to understand why weren't they communicated prior to this meeting in order to avoid as you mentioned um this what questions are you what questions are you asking I'm not asking a question I'm saying that Jessica mentioned that she had questions and she spoke on behalf of some board members here. I mean, and correct me if I'm wrong, Rich. Did you receive any questions via email in regards to it? I believe no questions came back, but one board member came back. one statement I no one
183board member contributed points and valid points that wanted to be put into the committee once it was finalized finalized nothing and we've we've had ad hoc committees previously I mean it's a committee it's an ad hoc committee but in this case we're making decisions well we're making a decision that impacts our school year and our students which is the most important thing for the next school here, right? But there were parties involved including administration during the process that we should have faith and they presented the information. It was available on the drive. It's at our fing there is no information but if there wasn't enough information then you know to your point but the report wasn't finalized until the 20th and after the FFT committee there was no one to to speak or discuss it.
184report is finalized on the 20th and you received no questions but we're having a discussion at the board table in because it was added to our agenda to vote on it agenda 5 days ago agenda before the final agenda was to be available for us to disc to and I reviewed countless amount of hours to review the RFPs and everything else but still our questions aren't answered but you just answer the question and the other thing was too didn't you put in there that we were going to have it I think we also told the attorneys that we were going to have it for this meeting. We did. Right. Yes. Oh, we didn't know that. But it's in the drive. What's in the drive? The actual RFP document. The the RFP document. The timeline. The
185the expected decision date. Expected decision date. But again, a decision was made. Meetings were had, finalized theories were met, but nobody understands how the decision was made. What led to the conclusion to pick these four people? What sparked your interest? What caught your eye, caught your ear? What led you to the decision to take four four out of the 15 RFPs, put them in these four positions, and what made that what made what can you tell the rest of the board wasn't part of the meeting? You're interrupting me. What can you tell the rest of the board to help us buy in to your decision as to why these councils were picked? I have yet to get that answer. I got an answer that somebody highlighted that they could be in special education and somebody
186said they'd be great at legal questions, but nobody's saying to me, "What differentiates D Francisco from the rest of them to be general counsel? What differentiates from being special ed versus a different council? And how did we come to this conclusion? How did And it also feels like you had an agenda prior going into the meeting that you were looking for separate councils because you did imply that you hoped for that yet you're yet your questions were tailored to general counsel and not specified counsel. So really we're making decisions based on general counsel questions and not industry and not specific criteria for these council areas. And that really bothers me. But I don't understand legal. Just because it's diversified doesn't mean they're the right ones. So just let's do a sports analogy. Let's say that
187I'm the coach of the doing the batting and then there's another one who does the pitching and whatever. And you're going to trust each of those people. They're going to look at certain criteria and then they're going to tell the main coach that what these individual batters or pitchers met in order to explain why they were selected. We haven't seen any of that underlying information. If we had a rubric, if we could just look at the rubric that you scored them on, maybe that would help. But we didn't get any of the results. Not a single solitary result. We got a questions asked how the process was made or you know here are the questions we asked here's our timeline that we did these things but not one justification as to why these councils were
188picked and I'm asking and no one's answering I I answered on the general I said it was without with respect to all of our applicants there was one firm that kept kept hitting on the same note of student centric student focus education focus more than others and and and and it it it came to us feel big they still feel vague Jessica Jessica I don't know I'm not sure again this is my first run through on this report out committee I'm not sure but I mean ideally if you if there was available as an attorney yeah so look when when when when I select law firms to work for me I have certain criteria that I'm looking for them to meet I want to know if um they've had any prior cases that we might
189have that's similar. Talk about that. Okay. Or that you know I'm also looking at their their costs. Are they willing to offer us any special I and then I'm also looking at how they're looking to staff it. Are they going to have are they going to staff my business with one lawyer that's going to charge a lot of money and then two others that are just associates? Are they going to use them as learning opportunities? But the thing is is that I get the answers to those to make the assessment as to whether that firm is the right firm. We don't have the assessments. We don't have anything even of from 1 to 10 on how well they answered the questions to know whether we're comfortable with the firms that have been selected. Listen, I'm
190I'm not I'm not discounting what you're saying, but what I'm But you respectfully like I hope they're I mean, this is doesn't seem like a warm welcome to our potential new representation. I'm not really I don't really care what the attorneys think of. We're This is a contract. Number two, um I would say all of the questions that you have were asked and answered during the interview or in the RFP. Okay. So, we don't know the interview questions. Do you have the answers to the interview questions and how you rated them based upon their answers? We do. And that was that was the part of the how to communicate. I can't speak to how you guys done it before, but I can tell you that I have notes, grades, and I'm not putting my name
191on, but they're your personal notes. They're your personal grades. They're your personal opinions. That's what you have. The rest of us have nothing other than you saying, "This is the guy I trust." That is the role of the ad hoc committee justified in any committee for Jessica. you're still haven't gone into the details, but it's like the same thing in like a personnel committee when we're having a discussion about something and we make a recommendation for the board and we go in executive session, we discuss it and we come out, but we're discussing it. You're there's no transparency for the people who weren't at the committee meeting. I disagree with that. I disagree with that. That's because you were there. Does anyone have anything? So, so, so I can say this and I don't want
192to get I don't want to say anything that could be a perceived slight slander against a respondent of any of the inappropriate but no I won't I won't but what I will say is that the firms that we hired or potentially going to hire or have recommended for hire I should say um the committee feels that are best in class in what they are subject in what they are outlined for there's I don't know how else to say it to you. Is it in the best interest for all students? 100%. That's what I mean any I mean I would say we would be doing the district service by having one firm handle all of this madness uh in in today's day and age. I I think anyone arguing against diversification with firms that have certain
193I didn't is I don't disagree with your decision at all. In fact, I'm willing to vote for it if I just feel like I understand why you made it. I have no problem. We've heard that and we'll agree to disagree. Brandon, uh just a I think a couple of suggestions. Um, sort of like Brian, I certainly don't want to discount the time, energy, and work that was put into this. I've actually worked with one of these other firms when I was previously on a board. A couple of things that I think could have helped. I know in the past, for example, when we had the DEI ad hoc committee, there was a monthly report coming from that ad hoc committee. And this sort of speaks to that old new business. This is something that was
194launched into existence I believe in February. The timeline that Richie just shared with us outlines a series of things that happened month by month. One issue was this the rest of us on the board did not learn until an email on April 28th that this committee had begun operating and been operating for a month and a half that it was the members were chosen and the process had begun. that would have struck me as something that if a timeline began in March by the March meeting ad hoc committee could report out this is who it is this is where we are this is where we're going same thing last month and then to the other point when you're including things like a m a matrix that is justifying your decision figure out a way to
195sort of populate the matrix so we can kind of see the scores as to who is rating higher in one thing or the together. That in my mind would help with just I think a lot of the questions and concerns that folks are expressing. It could be a cleaner process. Um we'd all be hearing it. Questions could be asked along the way. Again, I don't want to discount the work. I just wish the the process had been clearer, cleaner, more transparent. Okay. Okay. With that said, is are there any would have talked about getting the thermostat fixed in here. Next. I thought we were doing HVAC work. I'm only Okay. I'd like to uh have a motion and a second to approve agenda items 14.1 through 14.17. So move. Second. Um, all in favor? I.
196Any nays or abstensions? I vote yes on all. I vote no on 14.3. Abstain from 14.11. [Applause] So, uh, Nicole, you 14.3, you're a no. You're a No. Yes. And doctor? Yeah. I'm um abstain from 1411. Okay. Thank you. [Applause] [Music] Okay. Okay. Moving on. Community relations and student affairs committee report. I do not believe they we we did not meet. Um but you'll see here 15.1 there's a proposal for healthcare occupation students of America club at Boris. if you had a chance to look at that. Can I have a a motion and a second to approve 15.1? Motion. Second. Brian and Nicole. All in favor? I. Any nays or abstensions? Okay, you got that. Mhm. Okay. Uh moving on to the delegates report. Uh Christina, can you report out forundan? Sure. So the last
197meeting for the school year was on May 1st at Mountain View Chalet and several of us attended. Uh Dr. Bergax was there. Uh Brian, Angela, Kim, Tara, and it was a wonderful meeting. We got to hear Megan Luick, our school teacher um of the year forund and her her speech was really um very heartfelt and great to hear great to hear her history. Yeah, she was very funny too. Um she was great. And also uh Tara is not here tonight. She was elected as our new president. That's it for that. That was an exciting meeting though. It was very exciting. Um and and to sit with her and speak with her, she is a riot. So um she had a lot lot to share with us and it was nice not to be at the
198board table as board members. We got to speak to her. So that was fantastic. Um the delegate uh meeting there were only three votes. Um there was one was on esports. It's where now they have electronics like um clubs and so forth. It's an option for school districts to uh give out a varsity letter for that. So they're they're approving it. Well, there's lots of clubs like that. Um you get college scholarship now for that. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, school nurse, the school nursing, that was huge. That vote came down to a 3738, um, to admit, uh, nursing with, uh, just license, not a BSN. So, yes, it's great for sub purposes. And the third one was um for VOTE continued EV ed and it was um approving absences allowing them to be out for
199certain um you know development um continuing ad classes and so forth. Um and that was it just three on the floor and they were all uh passed and that was it for um the delegate. Structurally, what does that mean? Like at some point school boards will update their policy package and when we decide to adopt them or not the legis Yeah, these they they were approved that there's legislation for that. So yeah, I believe school boards um approves at the delegate level. They go to the legislature to then um make changes on the legislature which then school boards then changes their policies. The state legislature opines about whether you get a high school letter or not. Uh I'm not sure about the letter one. That might be one that they you know uh but definitely
200for certificates um for requiring a BSN versus just a Okay. So I I guess depends on which one. Okay. At some point it'll work through a process but at some point it finally hits us. Yeah. Is we'll probably hear about it at the county meeting in the fall. Our first nothing until we adopt it. Correct. Okay. um personnel committee. Uh that is Christina. Great. We we met on May 20th at 5:30. All were in attendance and we discussed the personnel agenda. We also had some extra discussion items which included updating one of our job descriptions. So, our intent was to try to update three job descriptions, but we didn't have time to get to all of them. These are the par profofessional job descriptions. And what prompted that is our new schoolboard policy 4123. We
201wanted to have the qualifications for the PAR professionals match um the job descriptions match with the policy that information in the policy. So, we we got to the media center um one and we completed that and we uh placed both the original one in the drive and the strikethrough one in the drive. Um so that's up for vote tonight. Is that with the personal agenda? It is. Yes. At the end of the personal Okay, great. agenda. Um, and then we also wanted to discuss professional development because that's one of our items, action items in our uh committee to discuss the effectiveness of professional development. Um, we didn't quite get to that either. It was very brief. So we'll probably continue to talk about it at the there's a school improvement panel committee at each school
202which is responsible for evaluating effectiveness professional devel development and re recommending areas to focus on for the coming year. So uh Dr. Bergax brought that up and we can talk about that in more detail as it comes. Thank you. I need a motion and a second to adopt resolution 0527252 for an executive session to discuss matters reflected in the attached resolution. The board expects to be in exact session for approximately 1 hour and upon return to public session action will be taken. All in favor? [Music] Oh, sorry. Motion second. Second. Nicole, sorry it's late. All in favor? Any ns or absentions? It's 10:20. That's Sorry, oh G, are you ready? Sorry. Beth and Angela. All in favor? I. Any naysay or abstensions? Okay. Okay, I need a call for a motion second to approve agenda
203items 20.1 through 20.3. So move. Second. Wait, as part of that though, you want to Yes. I'm sorry. Sorry. I on 20.1. I'd like to move that. You're just you're going to add add the the title to item 3. Yeah. To 3.5. On 20.1 in the personnel agenda, I'd like to move 3.5 and add the title of athletic director and the school. And the school. Oh, and the school. Yes. Thank you for that. We did not catch that one, Doug. Okay. Okay. I need a roll call vote. Did Did we get the motion? I'm sorry. Yeah, I was a second. Yeah, I was first. Beth, right? Was that? Yes, you were. I had Beth and Andrew, but it was Beth and Dan. Yeah, I'm not arrest. That's fine. I can't see you. Are you ready?
204Yes. Christina Kaggno? Yes. Brian Chapman? Yes. Angela Dei? Yes. Nicole Gallow? Yes. Beth Katron? Yes. Rich Lordy? Yes. Brian McAhn? Yes. Brendon. Brendon. I'm sorry. Uh, Cynthia Rays, yes. Kimberly Selena, yes. Daniel Spent, yes. And Jessica Vto, yes. Motion carries. Excellent. Okay. Um, old and new business. Um, I just wanted to note that um that uh template it's in our drive and I I think I know Rich had um updated it but if we can just in our P in our committees if you're add if you want to discuss things Pat you can send me a note we can add it if it's going to be an actionable item um using new business and old business but it it's in your drive and you can track it. It's Rich has been track. It's been tracked.
205There are a few things that need to be in the resource material. Yes. Board resource. [Applause] Okay. Wait, I have some questions and I don't know what committee it would go to some of these things. So, can I ask it here? Go ahead. Yep. Um, is it possible um during Like tonight we have some great pictures that were presented of the mobile speed dipper and is it possible when we the board does get pictures that they could be up on the screen um during the meeting? That's one question. I don't know what committee that goes to. It would have been fabulous to see her big pictures, you know, on our screens. I'm sure we could cast that up. One thought. Um, and another thing, um, is it possible when we have presentations, I know we
206need to give advanced notice to the public, but when we have presentations, especially on nights that we have more than one, could we move our start time to 6:00 or 6:30? Another thought, and I don't know what committee to put that in. Um, is it possible on our board agenda that um instead of chief school administrator's report, it could be superintendent's report because we do have a superintendent and I think having a superintendent is fabulous versus um and then also I know that with old and new business now we're just kind of funneling things to whatever committee But is there did you used to have something on your minutes where it was something like board of ed comments or business comments or something about where you just want to comment? I don't know what that
207that's what we used old and new business for. Okay. But if we can't really like right now I probably shouldn't be rambling off but if there's some kind of well a lot a lot of these things that you're the great suggest want to make a comment those can be emailed to myself as the board president and or Dr. Versacs. I mean, those are a lot of those are just simple things that he I would probably say that's a great idea. That's a great idea. You know that we're Do you know what I'm talking about? We talked about this and you actually kind of jog my memory on it. You mentioned that there was I think I you had mentioned there was something that used to be on the agenda that wasn't called the new business.
208It was called something else. I know of other districts that we haven't done it here, but other districts have um board comments on their agenda. I think it was actually So instead of all the new business, board comments. No, in addition to that in addition. Well, I know like normally a new business proposal like if there's a topic that you want to engage in or bring to the board's attention, I know you make the new business suggestion to the president to be added to the subsequent meeting that then creates the forum for the conversation. But it's also determining what is new business, what is old business. So like if we're saying, oh, you know, I'd like to change, can we change the font on this? Oh, can we change the you know that those are
209simple things that you can directly reach out to the administration or myself and that can be taken care of without it's not new business old business so it's just I guess determining which and then that list of old and new business is that where we kind of see what we're taking care of and what went on it's in the board resource folder y perfect [Music] okay I have question of course you do plan to filibuster for the next 55 minutes to make you guys sing. We'll sing anyway. Hey, so last meeting, last meeting towards the end, I think it was like 1:00 a.m. Um, Jessica, you had brought up a situation with Oprah, right? Which, let me say this, get the disclaimer right away. I fully support Oprah. I believe in Oprah. Um, the public
210has every right to see everything, every communication that we that we have. In fact, any member of the public suffering from insomnia, feel free to open my emails. It's an immediate cure. Um, but I I my question is more directed about how they're processed. So, I just kind of what struck me at that table was this. It seemed like, and if I heard it correctly, and mind you, this was 1:00 in the morning, that Kim was hearing this for the first time. So, that's a question I think I want to see if we can get an answer on because we have a board attorney here. We could ask him, but we don't. So, no. But are you asking about the process? I'm asking about the process. When when someone submits, correct? So, if if someone
211if if a member of the public submits an open request, what what happens? And then how does it get like is there just a quick timeline that like how how does that get processed? There are timelines. I'll let Doug take. Yeah. Well, whenever whenever not turnar around times like staff mean yeah need time. We we get the request and then and then I'm I'm going to give you times. It's like you know the the board has seven days to respond and and your business administrator or board secretary is usually the uh you know the uh custodian of public records. And so if long as we can lay our hands on we got to produce them, you know, and and and there's some back and forth. usually get the attorney involved because I want to make
212sure we're not, you know, u if there's students involved or uh sensitive information, you know, private, that has to be redacted before it's, you know, released to the public. So that that's that's the process of taking care of. Now, as far as notification to the board, we can have a discussion about, you know, how um how do you want to do that? Because in in my mind, you guys ought to know everything that's coming through the office. That's that's an Opra request. Agreed. And and I would think that possibly that would be in one of the committee meetings in particular, maybe the FFT that they say, hey, on a monthly basis, we report, hey, we got all of these requests and and and here's where they where they fulfilled, etc. they've done business with in
213the last 5 years, you know, and if we can readily make that report available, we'll do that. But some of them are, you know, like, hey, I want the emails between the board president and superintendent or and and and so so it depends on the the content, you know, that but I think the board should be aware. The only the only issue is and I and I I experienced this in my last district is that when when you start providing that to to the committees that that becomes not necessarily it gets sometimes becomes minutia and and you drill into it and it's not it takes up a lot of time and that was the only reason that we didn't do it there was because for efficiency reasons. So, your choice. And now, and I did
214speak to the attorney about being able to uh, you know, inform the board that I'm not violating any of the Oprah laws by providing board members information that they've been operate. So, that's that that can be um a procedure as well. So, Oprah request comes in, comes to your desk, comes to my desk, then what? Let's be honest. Well, I I I review it to see, you know, what's the content and I'm going if there's any question in my mind as a custodian records is there a security or not security but a confidentiality issue. I fire it off to the attorney. Okay. Attorney says process. Then what? And and then we we may send them what we call a we send them a letter in response. You know, may sometimes ask for additional time. Otherwise,
215we say, "Hey, we're going to send it to you, but once the attorneys redact it, something along those lines." Yeah. H how h how do you get it? How do you what how do you how do you get the information internally? Correct. Yeah. It it I have to be able to we have to be able to lay our hands on an existing record. We don't get to produce reports, you know. Uh it has to be an existing record and and how do you get it? Like say it's an email. How do you get it? Well, you I go to the tech department say, "Hey, give me the give me the email." So the tech department then gets the over request and they'll provide the information to me. I'll send it. How do they get is
216there a is there a program or do they have to are they going through everyone's like digging through every like how does that work? Just like anything else they do a search so a search for buzzwords buzzwords right then they provide it back to you then goes I'm assuming back to legal they got to say hey is this anything need to be redacted and then they say you got the thumbs up and then you process. Mhm. Okay. No problems with any of that what I'm hearing. I guess my only concern is at what point in this process is the person that is Oprah notified that there's an Oprah request on their behalf and that we have to go into your emails to process. Emails are public property. They're public. They're you're a public official. I'm
217not I'm not arguing that. I'm not the legality is not what I'm saying. At what point is it even just giving the person the the courtesy that hey just want to let you know we see the open request for records your your emails like do we is that not involved in the process? Is there is there a reason why we wouldn't do that? The the the attorney's advice the attorney's advice to you is to be careful what you put it right. Yeah. Correct. Because they'll be they would be concerned that you would delete if they notified you. You have the potential to delete information. Well, I would assume that okay, that's a fair question, but fair point. I I would assume that like there's safe safety, you know, deleted, you can't acid wash it, right?
218Like I would assume so. Right. That's what I'm saying. So the tech department you get to delete it even so I guess even whether it's in before whether it's before it's been processed or after should there be some point in that process where the person that has their records have been requested been given a heads up and notified that hey we received an open request and we were we had to say hey we received a legal oper request we had to process it we voted into your email to get it. No, we we don't have a legal requirement to do. You don't have a legal requirement. I doubt it. No argument ever. So, it's not legal required, but is it the right thing to do? You're an elected official that you don't you're a public.
219You sign off your rights as an elected official. I'm not arguing. Yeah. I said, is it wouldn't it just be the decent thing to do? Say, hey, we got a legal open. No, it's not necessary. I'm not saying you should expect every day that open requests are coming in on you and that people are wanting to look at your record. So if there's if you have nothing to hide then it then it doesn't matter if you're not before or after the prosecution. At the end of the day listen we all understand we're we're public officials 100%. I have no problem. Yeah. I have no problem and I'm wellware but I understand what you're saying a request for my emails and you it is a cordiality. So I've never been in a previous experiences and maybe
220you have a town or other it's a cordiality basically what I'm saying just because you don't have to doesn't mean you you shouldn't correct that's all but I I hear you we we do I I think we all hear that and I I have on my but it would also you know it it if we were notifying everyone of their Oprah requests Um, wouldn't that kind I mean it would give the the whole thing about the OPA is to be able to get information that is that they're looking for that transpires behind the scenes that's public record. So if they're asking for information or looking for more information on anything and it's already public record because you put it in writing, it doesn't really matter. Well, I I think it matters in the fact that
221I don't think anyone at this table should find out that they've been open from another member at the table. I think that's a little The only reason why I found out that doesn't Well, that's how But if but if our constituents are offering our board president and my constituent comes to me and says, "There's been an ad hoc committee formed. You are are you sure that you don't know about it?" and I confront the board president in new and old business about the days of the ad hoc committee based on her on her over her email requests. That's come. It's public knowledge. I'm not arguing that. I'm just saying we we but I also don't think it also opens up an opportunity for retaliation. I'm going to end the conversation. Well, that's good cuz I
222don't think I'm going to end the conversation. We can have a discussion. I can move it to committee if it's about a pro about process. It's a great idea if we want to talk about policy is a process. But yes, if you're asking me was it should be a cordiality. I've never been that would be a board norm, right? But we never establish a law. Yes, we're all we're all bound to that. But I'm not policy. He's not saying that. The reason I bring this up is because I've served in government, right? and I've been over it before and the process was completely different like so that's why it's different from here because we didn't have like an IT department so when the over request came in the clerk came to the individual say I
223need this so that's why I was only asking that I thought hey that's odd that you're finding out at the table from that see that's what I'm saying so he's just asking about process same law handled two different ways so that's why I'm asking yeah but I don't think it's up I think that there won't said, "Hey, can I'm I'm ending the discussion. Um, can I have Can I ask when we do this is old and new business? I don't know what committee. When do we do board norms?" We haven't done we're doing going next month. We'll be we'll be doing district goals and superintendent. Board norms. Yes. And then moving into July. We have a lot and we still have the strategic planning uh that we're finishing. So, there's a lot going on. Um,
224can I have a motion and a second to adjurnn? Just before that, I'm sorry. I just want to say we got the Happy second. Yeah, two things actually. One, um, we got the next district newsletter just a couple weeks ago and I just wanted to emphasize I think it's a great new communication mechanism going out to the community, capturing so much that happens here and putting it out to that audience. So, I just want to say that and sure, what the heck? Let's all sing happy birthday to October 27th. And lastly, lastly, before um we have our last evaluation, I had sent an email out. I gave 10 days. We still have board members that have not submitted. I would um quarterly request and ask that you have those submitted um you know tomorrow, Thursday
225the latest um and we can get that rolling and letting you know that there could possibly potentially be a special meeting so we have we can hold the process in two meetings and I want to have um I've been working with Patricia to have her come in. She was away so I you know to present for new board members on district goals so everyone's aware, right? But um for QAC, we want to get this Oh, that'll be done. It'll be done for before July 1. Yep, absolutely. Two meetings for June because I really potentially because I thought the um submission for the superintendent's um evaluation was a hard fast deadline. So, I've moved mountains to make sure it is. We are. I am. No, but I'm saying all of our Well, that's on everyone here.
226And if it's not if it's not submitted, if I do not have that in by Thursday, we're moving the process. So, anybody that doesn't finish it complete, have you have an issue, please let me know. We'll be we'll move on with the process. It has to that is your superintendent's evaluation. And that's one of the key factors um that of our jobs. So, I appreciate that. I need a motion, a second. I move. Second. Got that. Thank you. Okay. All in favor? I have ster attention. Sorry, it's 11:20.