NHV BOE Meeting - 06/28/2022

001the north hunter and voorhees regional high school district board of ed meeting on tuesday june 28 is now called to order in accordance with the requirements of the open public meeting act njsa 10 4-6 adequate notice of this meeting has been provided by submission of notice of the time de location or instructions for remote access to the honored democrat on december 9 2021 the star ledger on december 7th 2021 and subsequently re-advertised on may 19 notice and to the extent known the agenda of this meeting has been posted on the north hundred and warhead and voorhees web i'm sorry the agenda for this meeting has been posted at the north hundred and high school and the voorhees high school provided to the municipal clerks of bethlehem township california town of clinton clinton township franklin township

002glenn gardner borough hampton borough high bridge borough lebanon borough lebanon township tewksbury township and union township as well as all other interested parties and posted on the district website fire exits are located in the direction indicated if alerted to fire please move in a common orderly fashion to the nearest smoke-free exit and at this time i request that we silence all of our cell phones katie can you please do a roll call miss hoffman here mr kirchberger here mr mueller here miss selena here mr stanton here mr street here miss viano here thank you thank you we all rise for the flex of the united states of america and to be republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all can i have a can i call for

003a motion and a second to adopt the attached resolution 062822-2.1 for executive session to discuss matters falling under category 8 as reflected in the attached resolution the board expects to be in executive session for approximately an hour and upon return to public action to public session action will be taken second and rob um all in favor any opposed extensions we're in executive session call for a motion and a second to reconvene to public session roger all in favor any opposed extensions um i additionally want to add um that the board discussed matters on june 28 uh 2022 in the personnel category while we were under executive session that was under category eight in the resolution six zero six two eight two two dash two one um i'd like to read a statement um regarding the

004contract amendment for the superintendent of schools jeffrey bender whereas the north hundred and voorhees regional high school district board of ed uh herein the board wishes to amend the contract of superintendent of schools jeffrey bender for the effective period of july first through july 1st 2019 to june 30th 2023 and pursuant to njsa 18a 11-11 the board is required to provide public notice 30 days and 10 days prior of its intent to hold a public hearing to take action to amend extend re renegotiate and or alter contract terms and conditions of the district superintendent of schools notice was provided to the public via publication in the district's official newsletter newspaper on may 26 2022 and june 17 2022 and the pub publication on the district's public website every day for the period of may 22nd

0052022 to june 28 the subject contract was reviewed and subsequently approved by an interim executive county superintendent of the nj department of education hunter and county office on april 28 2022 or jeffrey bender at this time we have an opportunity for public comment on the amended contract of the superintendent of schools the board pursuant to the nj sa 10 4-12 the open public meetings act shall not publicly address personnel matters and shall not respond to comments made to members of the public please be aware that the subject of this hearing retains the right of privacy and shall retain all rights requiring regarding defamation and slander according to the laws of new jersey the board shall not be held liable for comments made by the members of the public so this time is there any public

006comment in regards to the contract amendment okay seeing none i would like to call for a motion there will be no answers to questions tonight but you're more than welcome okay somebody wants to answer the email they can and this is in regards to the superintendent's contract yes okay correct hello yeah good evening we got you uh i just got one question um yesterday when i looked at the agenda i'm sorry christopher's to-do list clinton when i looked at the agenda um regarding the contract it did i recall did state that the superintendent would a not have to be required to answer anybody's questions and respond to the public people of the community and also he wouldn't have to attend board meetings but today when i looked i didn't see that so if maybe i

007read something wrong but i have clarification if it did say that yesterday and it was switched and maybe why so if you could get back to me on that either way it'll be great anyone else for public comment okay can i call for a motion and a second to approve the amended contract for the period of july 1st 2019 through june 30th 2023 between the board and jeffrey bender so moved second brian deb um and the several call vote miss bonomi yes mr chapman yes miss hoffman yes mr kirchberger yes mr mueller yes ms celina yes mr stanton yes mr street yes miss beatto yes at this point in time we're going to have our goal-setting discussion with gwen thornton of the new jersey school boards association she's our field representative and she will facilitate

008the board goal setting for 2022-2023 school year welcome gwen and um really called this fortune ahead together and cults we're hoping that september of 2022 we will be back to what we would call the new york schedule of school and life will be a lot better so thinking about that just from the board's perspective to reflect on what you've learned this past year i know that you've had discussions about what has been accomplished and then considering what needs to be continued to move forward and preparing for september um 2022 what whatever that looks like now i'm optimistic of course so i think it's important too to just take a couple of moments to think about and reflect over the course of the last few years what we've learned because it has been different than any

009time in the last well at least in the 18 years i've been doing this work in the 10 years when i sat on my board before that so close to 30 years the resiliency of your staff of our students of boards of administrators um the ability to be flexible to pivot is something that we really had to get much more adept at than we ever once were certainly the tenacity and the endurance for everyone to continue forth um how quickly it became obvious gaps in equity not so much within northunderton borghese perhaps but as you looked across the state it became very clear very quickly there were districts who had the technology in place and were able to pivot quickly to being remote and then to go into hybrid and for some districts it was

010a lot more challenging just because of the differences across the state certainly the professionalism and commitment of your staff to continue teaching and learning with their kids throughout all of this also the parental commitment that really was required through these past two years of adults and children in the community to their because they had to if nothing else um the possibilities and limitations of technology we learned how wonderful it can be but also that it has limitations um certainly and the critical role that relationships play in that learning process kids were never so glad to be back in classrooms i think as they were this year and i think that speaks a large part to those connections among in between students and among the between the staff and the students and how important that is

011and then all of those opportunity gaps those mis learning moments those were missed extracurricular opportunities that our kids missed that unfortunately this year you were really able to provide again graduations proms all of those kinds of things that we just took for granted but can no longer do so making sure that you have clear goals to move the district forward around student achievement especially in light of the need to fill in those opportunity gaps that kids missed or may have missed and making sure that you have a vision of high expectations for all students because that's important that every child has an opportunity to have access to the curriculum and the co-curricular program to ensure that every child every adult student meets his or her potential so thinking about why we set goals obviously you

012know if you don't think about where you are where you want to be you're not going to make much forward motion in that direction so really making sure that you've identified the priorities that you need to focus on planning for implementation of programs and initiatives professional development having goals in place is essential it also allows you to do periodic evaluation to recalibrate if necessary and adjust if you need to because times are changing we're dealing with inflation in large part that we haven't had in more than 20 plus years that's going to impact small budgets it's going to impact what districts are able to do effective communication and collaboration among the board the administration the staff parents all of that is a critical part in their understanding what you're working on what your focus is

013and having those goals for the district allows everyone's words to be in the water rolling in the same direction which i think is very important and it speaks to the accountability to your community through your superintendent who holds all staff accountable and you hold the superintendent accountable so it really works well to have effective goals but my favorite reason is yogi berra and i'm old enough to have watched him actually play in the yankee stadium but if you don't know where you're going you might end up someplace else and so it really is important to have those plans in place so we're going to talk just a little bit tonight about district goals and work on that and then to talk about board goals and district goals really refer to the overall operation of your

014district as you know your curriculum your programming your instruction your staff pd your facilities your financial the budget board goals are around your processes and procedures and they're really about how you function and operate and how you can be more effective in supporting the district goals and assisting your administration in reaching their targets by providing support whether it's financial support whether it's through policy those are all things that are part of board goals but not district goals typically you see goals in these areas in student learning equity health and wellness for students and staff of course we know that there have been a lot of mental health issues that have emerged as a result of the pandemic for students facilities again you know expansion keeping them up to date we've never paid so much attention

015to air quality ever in all the years i've been doing this but we certainly are paying attention now so safety and security again that is an ongoing issue every time we think we're past something happens again and so we know that that's something we always have to be continually mindful about communication has become increasingly important to provide communications during normal times and especially during pandemic times to keep parents in the loop it's been challenging and then making sure you're engaging your community effectively we need their support you no longer have to have them approve your budget but you do need their support to be successful and support the school district these were your district goals for 2020 21 22 that we set last year and again we're focusing on social emotional learning for students and

016staff you were addressing your long-range facilities plan you had the plan in place for reopening effective districts learning all of those pieces and again addressing dei diversity equity and inclusion so all students have opportunities so um i spoke with the superintendent who had said that he had developed some district goals that you have shared be shared with all of you they're here solutions to your current future budget challenges again looking at a referendum which there is still money through the state this has been a very good year for the state of new jersey they were having fun this week under the golden dome and trying to figure out how to spend the excess surplus that they have um they're actually making another full pension payment to the pension system for the second time and not

017too many years which is a wonderful piece for the state but certainly they do have money for assistance in terms of facilities and it is a wonderful time for you all to to access those dollars and make use of them while they're available because they were there for a while then they disappeared and they're back again so certainly that's a very valuable goal um completing um the audit of your policy manual again making sure that all of your policies and procedures are up to date again critically important it's also part of cusack that that's a requirement as well the accountability system monitoring and addressing the effect of lost learning on student achievement i mean every district needs to have that as a goal quite frankly for 2022-23 because it's something that we're going to be

018working on for quite a while i do believe in school districts developing sops for um schedule b c schedule like payments standardizing procedures between buildings and creating efficiencies in the process i would turn to you jeffrey to explain what all those schedules are i'm assuming the board members know you publicly not this is all around personnel and uh contractual positions relating to chaperoning and covering sporting events okay and then to conduct a successful campaign resulting in the package of a capital project referendum board thoughts on the goals i actually really like them um because we came up with them our we came up with them as through committee so i think it's reflective of each of the areas that we focus on every month um so be easily monitorable easily trackable um so seeing them

019all listed out like this together um it feels like maybe what's missing though is some sort of tie back to like the social and emotional learning and like i think that number three like lost instruction can be just broadened a little bit to to cover like the total impact of the last two years on the students and the staff so i don't know if we can like change that wording a little bit too because i think that there's lost instruction but i think that um like there's just sort of a broader impact to that than lost instruction so you can add and provide social emotional learning and mental health supports for students to enable them to be successful language something again to that would that broaden it efficiently to incorporate those pieces that are important

020for kids let me let me offer a counter argument and that is i like that there's a succinct goal around student achievement okay i don't like i don't mind that idea but i would prefer myself not to dilute that particular goal would it be a separate goal yeah would you be amenable to adding a separate goal without me ordinarily just it's usually it's that's a lofty list as we get going for the superintendent in the district don't we usually like to keep them at three or four and then i was going to add we had a big discussion in curriculum about whether what how to how to state that and we we talked a lot about digital citizenship and and i was going to ask is there any way i know roger and i were

021talking about this to use digital citizenship as a way of support to achieve that we can somehow intertwine loss of construction and add digital citizenship so basically saying that we're going to use technology we're going to use the digital citizen curriculum to meet the needs or i'd like to see something great that we could meld that goal i know that was a goal of in our committee so when in the committee what came up is originally the administration is looking at goals to move the students forward and the original goal was to launch a digital citizenship curriculum within the district but then there was the discussion around we can't forget about missed misleading so um but both are still happening it's just whether or not they're stated goal the administration is still going to be

022implementing this new curriculum to advance the students which is what they should be doing it's really up to the board you know you can make that student achievement goal so broad and digital citizenship to me is not necessarily the use of technology to advance learning it's not right digital citizenship is about appropriate use of technology accompanying broadly speaking as opposed to the implementation of technology to to assist in i don't know if it needs to be a separate goal or i mean if we're talking about separate goals and having i was i was firm on uh to continue to moderate address uh lots of instruction on student student achievement i felt that was a need it's ongoing and it's something that districts are are [Music] i think we can take four and five and make

023that they're like they're sub goals of one i think agreed yeah right like that's a we're talking financial that's fiscal can we definitely agree with before i'm not necessarily sure i see you know ways to become more efficient as a district and i don't have an issue at all with you know finding new ways of doing something that's more efficient and it's going to base it on starting with the different schedules i think that's a good thing i mean we we do spend a lot of time talking about these different schedules and how we're implementing them and i i see no reason why that wouldn't be a good goal for the district to take on for next year yeah i'm not saying to like take those like take that specific action item out if the

024if the objective of that standardization is to create efficiencies and creating efficiencies means saving money then i think that falls under the banner of seeking creative solutions to address current and future budget challenges so like i think the referendum is an example of that i think standardizing the operating procedures is an example of that that we're we're working we have a like a high level goal of seeking creative solutions and then we we are listing a couple of very tangible examples that we're going to tackle this year the referendum is one and standardizing those operating procedures to drive efficiencies is two so why can't we bullet them under one that's trump said um i'm just pushing back a little on roger that i think those are some goals under number one so i would ask

025katie our ba because each of those my understanding of them being separated is they're very lofty and time consuming whereas i look at like a goal and then subpoena the subtles are not as lofty time consuming they are just part of achieving the big goal so my question to our ba is in a sense if we do that we're now like giving the district eight goals instead of you know even though we don't have eight listed like rather than have a list of six like so i so i think the easy one is one and five are the same they both talk about the referendum right like i would agree i mean they literally had the same words creative ways to do the future budget that could be how we do create efficiencies that's how

026we actually generate revenue in the district you know we've had a lot of discussion over the years how does this district create revenue because we don't you know so we have to find ways in the future that we're going to have to move budget shortfalls we're going to have to find interesting ways we're going to have to get creative in order to meet the gaps or we're going to have to have other budget cuts can someone explain to me why why are we so concerned about how many goals there are why why is sick four better than six or twelve goals and then you come to diffuse your approach um but but certainly it's up to the board if you wanted to dump four and five back into one then we could you could add

027the social emotional learning and mental health supports as a separate goal from the student achievement piece which i understand your point in terms of diluting it but at the same time i think it is a critical component for the kids and those who follow the curriculum committee one four and five are all going to follow financing um but that would certainly seem to address it i think we were looking at the campaign more with the community relations committee okay so five is actually because the campaign for that is not finance and facilities it's more it's much well it is because yeah but the communication piece of it right um and i think that was where we were going with that so what have we decided even though community engagement will be working on the campaign

028obviously for the successful passage of it but the technical components of it can be done through financing facilities obviously um and then the fourth goal would be the social emotional learning piece mental health yeah [Music] so your superintendent will develop action plans obviously to implement those goals and to make them happen and you will monitor that over the course of the fourth year so the next thing we wanted to talk about was good goals i sent you out actually did it send you out a copy of the selfie belt i think includes a written one in a patent for you in case you didn't have an opportunity to review it um ahead of time um we didn't get around to setting um have an opportunity i should say to set board goals last year so

029i think it is important this year to look at your board selfie value and make sure that we have uh board goals in place okay and so it's really talking about how you can be more effective as i said before in supporting the initiatives that the district is undertaking and making sure that it's afford people working as efficiently as a group it's a little more challenging if you're a 12-member board that makes them a little harder to do but it's important to think about so thinking about what professional development might assist you all um and what does your report evaluation um what issues are those out of there so in looking at your employed self-evaluation um i was struck by two things um several things actually but two i think that are important um there

030seemed to be some um in a couple of different categories that came up around the boards monitoring the progress toward the chief of the folks and so i've also included in your format on the left-hand side a copy of the annual calendar one of my suggestions would be that as you move forward this board here that you actually calendar reports on progress toward district goals quarterly and put those on the board calendar so they will appear on your agenda four times okay so that you know that you have reviewed that your community will know that you are staying on top of it as well and i just think that that's a really easy solution for the board because i know you get all of those reports but sometimes if they're not labeled okay we're not

031going to you know review where we are on goals sometimes you may just not remember that you did it i know that's not silly but you get financial facilities reports you get curriculum reports but very rarely did someone say okay now we're going to just review the progress we've made on each of the four district goals so i would suggest that putting them on your calendar now or once a quarter so that when you finish up next april and you're going to do the evaluation of the superintendent for the 22-23 school year you will you will have all those results in your hot little hands to be able to look at because i think that's always a challenge to remember it's an annual evaluation and you have to think back to july 1 which is

032two days away three days an hour when it came away it is from today and the year is july 1 until you do that evaluation so i think that would be helpful also one of the scores that was a little lower was around recognition of stats so i would suggest again it sounds really simple it doesn't have to be challenging calendaring at least once quarterly an opportunity to recognize your staff publicly at a board of education meeting and if you get those dates on the calendar now you will be able to ask your administration for those people that you need to submit because that happens at least quarterly but that way you don't you don't get to the end of another year and say you know what we should have saluted our staff more and

033more so i think you know having that kind of calendaring sounds really simplistic but it really does help structure it so that these little pieces don't fall through the cracks okay so the other areas that you've identified um and and it was a very good self-evaluation i have to tell you all of your stories were in the threes and fours are doing a lot of religious work but thinking about areas for the board to focus on i think you have a real role to play a supportive education in communication specifically around the referendum you have to stay within the constraints of the law obviously but just in terms of being able to talk about the pieces that are contained within that referendum and why it benefits the district while also talking about what this cost

034is right because you have to be balanced but i think that the board needs to provide support all of you not just the people on the community engagement committee right but all board members around the world to be able to speak today so you may want to think about a full goal in that area also additionally perhaps considering doing an in-district onboarding process for new board members coming on we are finding especially because so many things have been remote for so long that there are gaps especially for new board members and that doing it at least a portion of it in district because now you have time between the november election and january reorganization to be able to do on-boarding for new folks who are coming on board that is specific to your district sharing

035with them your policy manual your contracts your processes and procedures to get them up to speed so that when they sit at that very first board meeting they're more comfortable um than they would be if they didn't have that and i think that that helps to make people feel more a part of the team because i think team building and consensus building is another area for focus for your board to think about doing a board goal around and the other parts of justice point a little earlier um i know regionalization is something that you may want to continue to explore as a void goal and to think that so those are just my thoughts around in reading yourself about what hit me um as being things that you could consider certainly they are your goals

036so you need to weigh in and tell me what you would like to focus on as a board you guys are never always quiet every year at this time so one thing i was thinking is just to throw out to all everyone is training board member training and having it where [Music] you know like it's mandatory that each board member at least take one njsba per quarter and it is tracked and logged i know you know to keep developing ourselves and to hear from someone else other than just our own voices um this the messaging which is just in order to make sure that we're you know that we are always expanding our knowledge of what's happening in education you know to pursue training so that that aligns with that idea so do you think

037we could take because i sort of like the idea of the new board member onboarding um like formalizing that a little bit that's something deb's been an advocate for a long time have been through that semi recently i guess um so i can can we just have like an overarching like i'm sort of into like goals with some goals clearly and then like one element of it is new board member onboarding and another is a more developing i don't think we've got to set the like one class per quarter i'm not maybe that's it but like developing a a development developing a mean a meaningful commitment to um ongoing board member institutions measurable it needs to be tangible most of the programs are available like if you mandate it i think it's more i think

038all of us go just at least one yeah oh yeah at least one but i mean right not everybody's going well i mean and it's been virtual so i i think if you mandated i think you are setting yourself people this and and to say this there are people that you know put their time into the boards work diligently and have we all have other day day jobs and just can't do do things and when they go from virtual back to face-to-face if they do that we don't have this offering i just don't think it's to mandate it people are going to do it they're going to do it but i don't think we should be mandating how many i think we will continue to offer in most instances and it's been great being virtual

039because now you can attend many you know you you might be in a bind you're in a pinch you can't get to that place but you can do it virtually well and they are archived on the website so if there was something that was a particular interest that you wanted to see that you didn't have an opportunity like someone mentioned in there about problematic procedure well there was a webinar so you could go watch the webinar and your slippers and jammies right on your own time when it was convenient and that to me would would be professional development for you individually as board members if that was an interest that you thought would be helpful unless there's unless instead of mandating it maybe we track it so we're not mandating that you attend something but

040if you do there is there does the school board track who takes the class or is there maybe a way for us to report in to self-track instead of making it mandated we do track courses um things once they're archived you don't receive academy credits so we when you do it live or virtual for an academy credit program we track that right but when we record them and then archive them so that board members have access to them you don't gain the credit right so yes they're tracked some but some are not tracked per se how long are they it depends on the program generally not even more than an hour i think the only one that's that i usually go to is the law forum and that's like three hours so if you really

041feel strongly about this why don't we make it part of the board meeting i was gonna say two take a night put up on a display and make everybody sit here and do it if you feel very strongly i'm not saying i feel strongly about what i'm saying i what i feel it rather than mandate it track it that way we're not what was it what's the difference you're still waiting for yourself to pull somebody out either way if they're not donating you're gonna expose and it doesn't make them a poor board member so one way of thinking of this it would be the same way we think of teachers right when we increase expectations or we ask them to do something addition in addition we offer more support so maybe we want to prioritize

042our board learning and making sure we're up to date with what's happening in education we can do something more altogether like bring someone in to do trainings and we're all seeing it and wearing it together yeah and then we can even discuss it or come up with an action how can we apply this in our district so the only thing i would just call out to that is then our that board meeting will be longer which i know some people would complain right now oh wow it is what it is but it'll be pretty saturday mornings specified saturday morning eight o'clock we'll all come in here and watch a video or we do it's a virtual yeah together yeah as long as we're thinking about how to apply it apply the knowledge to us i

043think that would be the really particularly useful part how can we make that useful here to support our students i like that and then is it once a quarter still or not i like quarterly i don't know i do too about that i know it's a lot but it's a lot of people why don't we start over twice a year to see how that works that works i'm flexible i'm i'm i'm in njsp all the time so like for me this is nothing big right us to have a board goal that sort of formalize around exploration of regionalization like some some sort of wording around driving that forward with the sending districts collaborate with your sending districts yeah to go with that probably maybe another goal would be somewhere around the vocational trying to do

044a better job or not better job but let's let's how can we do how can we incorporate the vote tech into what we're doing as a as a district that will integrate it into our system or somehow you know somehow we're more in line with everything that they're doing with what we're doing so that we feel like we're one so do you think that's like do you think that's totally separate like like somehow optimize the investment in the um polytech like a different goal would be like figuring out how to um leverage the partnership with the polytech district to um you know somehow better benefit our district like that i think that's different than the conversation around um really like taking steps to drive the conversation on k-12 regionalization like i think that's it's i

045personally think that's its own thing different than i like them not just one experience you're too separate yeah i was suggesting you're trying to think i know you're i thought you were saying i wasn't doing this i thought you were doing this do you want to reword integration and leveraging the the value of polytech into our campus can we say partner with maybe sure partners might start partnering with them anything else i mean i think those are three pretty lofty goals but i think you also have to be prepared to support that referendum too ten meetings trainings i think we should put as a sub note no to the training that roger will be selecting what the biannual topic is yeah i think you should be part of that selection on this on a subcommittee

046as a sub goal you're going to select the training i had one more idea that i had noted when i was thinking about this it's just it's around like communication and transparency with the community and then the board community relationship we're just talking more education about what the role of the board is i don't i don't have any brilliant ideas on how to award it and i and i don't have as long of a history here as many of you do so i don't know if there are practices we could bring back that worked really well that we haven't done because of covid things that we could just increase that that the positive relationship between board and community anything else i don't know if it needs to be its own goal but it's something that

047i thought i think it's an ongoing consistent goal that we're always trying to achieve every year i don't think it's something that we don't try every year to kind of improve on i think at this point in time i think you know we're better than we ever have in the past you know i think the community relations team is doing a really good job of getting the word out i think they're doing a fantastic job of getting the weeklies the you know the email communications out i think we're now using twitter we're using facebook we're using all the different social medias that we've ever had in the past so i think from my perspective we're in a really good spot and we've been doing you know a fantastic job of getting the information out jeff's

048giving out you know monthlies to us so i mean i i think we're really good but that doesn't mean that we can't improve um but i'm not necessarily sure which which area i would pick as to a center and say you know we could do this better i i would kind of leave that up to the community community relations team and kind of find an area that maybe they think that they should you know work on that would be better for us as a goal but i i personally think we're we're in a really good spot i think we're doing a great job everybody else and maybe this is create a survey monkey you know do a survey and figure out from the community what they would want to see that we do better a

049lot about team building as a board build on our team building for the year work on that that that's meant you want me to spend more time with you now [Laughter] i think it's a matter of that's not going to happen during the bi-annual training that right is i tend to buy annual training including and you can have it that's what yes one of them link those together and maybe you don't do them in both sessions one of the sessions the team building that's great yeah because the need for the need for that did come through kind of loud and clear i thought in the self-evaluations me referendum you know it's like aren't you going to consider this you're going to end up doing it whether you make it a goal or not it is

050part of the district goals right right i guess so you know making sure that you if you create for example many districts will create an fa2 to put up on their website on a referendum so making sure as an individual board member you're familiar with the answers on the faq so if you're stopped you know mcdonald's or on the sideline of the game you can respond and that's what i mean by you have a role to play in this to make sure that you're up to date and well informed and can speak intelligently about what's included and why you're doing it and all of those pieces i'm not suggesting you have to you know stand on street corners and tech literature but i used [Laughter] are you suggesting that vehicle is that team building on

051facebook [Music] difficult reasonable that another option could just be this is part of the community relations committee's job it's not always a goal it's not always listed as a goal excuse me like it's i think this is a lot it's a lot right there and i don't think it has to be a goal and i would say that the community engagement company is going to be responsible in large part for a large larger pieces of that but as individual board members i just want you to to be able to be effective communicators out there on what's included in the referendum so that you can support it in because you're all from different communities too right so it's it's not as though you have one compact group of people that you're talking to you're talking to

052people in multiple municipalities um and in town so i think that that's why it probably occurred to me in this instance it might be a little more important because you may all shop in different places you live in different places it's a little different in a regional than in a non-regional district where everyone's from alamouti or boone or you know wherever when yeah and to brian's point i think compared to other other referendum that i'm familiar with this one doesn't seem to be it's not as scary exactly because we're doing it because it's a procedural thing we're not looking to to bond for long term we're just doing this in order to like when talked about the money that is still available and trying to access that money through this referendum and then we would

053immediately pay this off it's just a mechanism to tap that uh state funding so we haven't prioritized it like like all our eggs in this basket like we need to get this through before we'll upgrade the libraries and fix the roof and all that other stuff this is just like a procedural thing but the same token it can the perception in the public you know they hear that word referendum it's a scary word so we have to make sure that our messaging is on point too that it you know this is that it is just a procedural thing to access that money so i think that's why it's more important like this time like because it's such a very specific objective and like we all should be on the hook for being able to communicate

054that message like clearly like and accurately and succinctly right like that that's and that's why i think it should be yeah i agree it should be a goal just as a reminder not to give a question i've been through dozens of referendums in different districts and and the the ones that pass are the ones that have the support of not just the superintendent that everybody's kind of engaged you know um it it makes it it's just word of mouth you all need to engage whether it's you know what you're describing right or a million or ten million whatever it is and i'm not suggesting that you ever knew that i don't mean that but you you need the support of all of your board to make it successful those ones that are successful have the

055support of their full board let's add them active yeah number four sub goals this is a whole new category all right [Laughter] well thank you very healthy much get some rest guys because september's coming quick so enjoy the summer months okay and if you need anything you know i can tell you how to access clothes recording thanks glenn thank you will you be sending those tests all right moving on with the agenda can i call for a motion and a second to approve agenda item 8.1 which is the minutes from the may 24th 2022 regular school board meeting second damn death um and this is a does anyone have any questions regarding the minutes okay all in favor all right any opposed extensions yep thanks fred um at this point in time we'd like to

056have the uh chief school administrators report please uh graduation ceremonies were held on june 15th for the class of 2022. north hunterdon graduated 397 seniors before he's graduated 236. we wish them well in all of the future and thank you to the board members who attended graduation summer enrichment program is running this week june 27 through the 30th five courses on various topics were offered at each high school to rising freshmen sophomores and juniors courses are taught by our high school teachers stem camp and spanish immersion camp will run august 1st 2nd and 3rd at north hunterdon incoming freshmen from any of our sending districts are invited to sign up and i have an update from polytech their construction documents are about 80 complete they hope to have those done in july and go out

057to bid with uh ground breaking now scheduled for september the hiv report may we had two incidents investigated both were unfounded and then just a reminder on the last report in may was that there were no incidents first i need a motion to some seconds all in favor the abstentions these motion passes and the monthly reports are attached for your information um just want to remind everybody that july 26 2022 is our regular board meeting at seven o'clock in the district office um and that july 25th 2022 at 4 pm is the deadline to submit nominating petitions for the board vacancies to the county clerk's office at this point in time i'd like to review the committee reports um marin are you going to do community relations okay who was in who was um kim

058were you in attendance at community we actually got a lot done late so it was a few minutes i don't know who else was i think it was just me brian no brian brian brian i don't have the minute so i didn't get that i didn't take uh community relations committee met on thursday uh tuesday this one third mrs james was not an attendance all the other committee members were there kim signed on late uh the only thing we discussed was the campaign for the referendum being a committee goal and that in august we would present to the board the plan for the campaign perfect moving on um curriculum curriculum committee met on june 22nd all members were in attendance we discussed four topics the as usual the board agenda items were discussed and there

059was a further conversation about home instruction both rich brown and mr bender explain the actual process the approvals that need to be in place and then the check-ins not only throughout but the post-check-ins um for home instruction so there was a lot of clarity surrounding that the second item was the district goal uh the curriculum goal that we already kind of spoke to with gwen coming up with what what the committee agreed and presented which was approved this evening the third item discussed was strategic planning the only item not completed in the curriculum portion of the strategic action plan is creating a transition coordinator and that was not completed because it was determined that that position was not needed it is not necessary so to save the district money on that and that the administration

060will be starting the next strategic planning cycle next year and then the last item discussed was supposed to be like our monthly check in with what's going on in the district it was originally planned that it would have been the technology survey and the climate survey but they were not available to the district yet they were not completed or sent so instead we flipped and we did the final grades for the school year of 2021 2022 there is around 65 percent of the grades in the entire district were a's and one percent of all grades in the district the final grade in the district were f's and when we just dove into that one percent it was mostly within the math uh the highest percentage of that one percent was math classes um so we

061discussed that the final grades are consistent with the final grades from last year they are in sync with the percentages from last year and then the action items is we will obviously be continuing to monitor them mr brown discussed the action plans in place and continuing to support struggling students through the response to intervention program that's in place and that was our um committee anyone have any questions oh thank you for that roger i did actually highlight that so um we did in terms of the district goal we did um clarify thanks to um rich brown that there is definitely if you see a lot of the research just making sure that as a board we understand that it's actually lost learning or lost construction or missed learning it's not learning loss they didn't lose

062learning during that period of covid they actually lost the opportunity to learn right so it that's important for us to have that distinction and distinction and use the right terminology as a board thank you for that you do [Laughter] sean you want to help us have a facilities financial transfer sure um facilities finance transportation met on the 20th everybody was in attendance except for tara um the first uh agenda item was uh the district goal setting so we've already talked a lot about that i don't need to move any further um second um agenda item was talking about the inflation um as it's pertaining to uh transportation we're seeing increase of 30 percent for our routes um so that leads into okay where can savings be be had there's been some further investigation into you

063know what are there some of the underutilized routes uh one one of the areas uh seriously considering is eliminating the 315 runs it would result in roughly a 200 000 savings and those runs are very underutilized and the fact that we have some online tutoring available that's that's new to address you know that's one of the reasons people utilize that buses for extra learning so um you know you can see that i'm coming in if not next month but a recommendation later this summer for limiting of those 315 runs additionally we talked about uh the the solar projects worries now is online the solar panels and north hunterdon will be um going online uh in july so um it's exciting i guess that's taking a little longer with the uh the curvature of the roof

064over the uh gymnasium at north and it was a little bit more of a problem but anyway we'll have that done soon also the summer projects are underway uh progressing nicely so uh um no no hiccups there uh and the last thing we discussed were just some of the routine agenda items that you see tonight on our agenda you know such as renewing for food service copiers the class three and sro contracts with the municipalities things of that nature but other than that it was a pretty pretty short meeting any questions so the 315 buses is that's the quote-unquote late bus and uh so that would mean students not only for the tutoring or help after school help but also clubs right so they would now have to figure out a way home right are

065you saying they're underutilized correct that's our i mean like single digits we only have a couple kids but oftentimes we're leaving empty so kids are finding other ways home already from their clubs and tutoring so these buses are virtually non-utilized right almost would we ever consider um and this is probably uh this is probably silly because every sport ends differently but instead of it leaving at 3 15 would we ever consider pushing it out so that like if it's just practice they can go home and then this way the people who stay later for club just stay a little later and do homework but then you get some of the sports practices driven home as well well the late late buses were killed they were they were eliminated a long time ago which addressed all

066the athletic uh ending around five o'clock with those buses but do all the i don't do all the athletics end at that time they're all different times that's the end that's the i mean it would be like hit or miss that day is this like uh year to year though i mean they've been under unified they've been just declining every year i think the reality though is that we're facing a dramatic increase in the cost of the transportation so we're looking for opportunities to cut the costs not only it's bus drivers okay we have a shortage yeah right and then also at the same time that these buses are on these uh empty runs our sporting events are delayed because they can't get bus drivers to go to you know the away meets um or

067matches or whatever um and so it's you know you're fighting for that limited pool of bus drivers uh at that same time that's a great point there were tons of games home and away games that were cancelled so then we would have buses to prevent that that's a good point plus we're already offering the services after school with the teachers face to face on a zoom call with the teachers so there is nothing that's being lost at this point in time except for the fact that they're not going to drive on 100 bucks at that point i would just be curious to see like if our club enrollment decreased a lot if that was why it probably isn't because they're underutilized that's probably not going to stop kids from doing clips but if for some

068reason we saw it fall off we could just note this may be part of the reason yeah that's the piece that i don't know that it's going to get replaced by zoom calls is is the clubs but the data is the data yeah if they're underutilized then that means and then i haven't heard that the clubs are you know single-digit you know are unattended that means that they're getting home somewhere else we want to i mean just just as a another aside most of the buses are underutilized now anyway we still have to pay for transportation for all the kids in the district but our buses are still running at a very low utilization rate anyway but we're still running in the morning it's a problem because you know our juniors and seniors are driving

069we still make access for them all and even i mean i don't know if you've seen the lines out here on regional road and on 31 in the morning but people drive their kids to school and yet we're still running the buses and they can't we still have to have each kid has to have a bus so we're still running full bull bugs buses at you know with two or three kids on but we still have to run the routes state law yeah so i mean it's a problem for us all the way around and it's an enormous expense and it's only going to increase as we move along and to rogers point uh we also discussed interest in drafting a letter you know resolution of the department of education encouraging them to allow us

070uh kind of opt out for transportation so that we didn't have to you know so parents if they knew they were going to drive the kids all the time they could opt out and then we wouldn't have to provide that seat with so many buses that are only being partially used so i'm sure other districts are facing the same pressure um we have to get creative to you know and it seems like such a waste to have all those partially used buses running day after day after day so maybe we can put they put their heads together and find a solution okay just i think we want to um signal that strongly that we're going to if we decide this is not tonight right you said you're going to bring it right it's not on

071the agenda but it would be later sometime prior to school starting so if we decide to stop the late bus we want to signal that well ahead of time earlier what would be prior to school year sneak it up no it would be announced prior to school well i i think we're going to do it now personally with the parents thinking about we will be announcing it in july so that all the parents are aware and then in august is when they approve all the bus runs so it would give parents the opportunity to provide feedback any other questions on that topic just asking with feedback are you going to be implementing a survey for the parents or how do you pose having a parent comment i would just ask them to email us because

072there are students that we still have to be cognizant of that don't have that kind of transportation or somebody some their friends picking them up for driving them and it is uh they're both working parents okay um ryan are you prepared to report out on [Laughter] adjourned at 7 personnel all committee members were in attendance as well as mr bender and mr projects we were agreed to discuss the personnel portion of the agenda and um the only other thing we discussed was a proposal from the north honduran theater um north of hunterdon to run a theater camp that will be that will take place from august 15th to 19th three hours per day for four days with the fifth day being a longer eight hour day culminating in several scenes of a musical that will

073be performed for family and friends this camp is open to any rising freshmen and north american students that's it a question about that program is that is that just like for acting or is it like for stage background questions the policy and school security committee met on june 20th at 5 30 pm all committee members were in attendance with the exception of dan spanton was not able to make it we talked briefly about the second reading of the 10 mandatory policies that are on the agenda tonight there were no concerns raised we have two mandatory first and only regulations that are on tonight's agenda there were no concerns or discussion around those we talked about the district goal that we coalesced around tonight about completing the strauss estimate audit for the remaining board policies so

074that this policy audit began in 2018 but we were have it as a district goal and the focus of the policy committee to make sure we drive through and conclude that this year we talked about um policy and regulation 1240 which is the superintendent evaluation and it was decided it was concluded that we were going to follow that policy as revised earlier this year for this this year's superintendent evaluation process which we did tonight and that we would continue to look for opportunities to streamline and make that process as effective as possible going forward we also talked about next steps regarding potential regionalization um and it was decided that the level of interest among sending districts was seemed high at the board uh meeting so i'm not sure how that was actually a policy committee

075discussion but it sort of felt a little policy-ish like it would be a good policy to be regionalized um but so anyway we have that on our uh goal too and that those are the topics that were discussed during the policy committee meeting any questions um so for next month's agenda are you going to add on um re-re-evaluating the csa evaluation in terms of the implementation of the csa evaluation right the the only the regulations related to the delivery of the csa evaluation is something that um next month next one perfect thank you well i have two questions um one is uh these the the policies uh 3161-4161 about examination for cause when i read them what appeared to be the case is that if if the staff member that was being subject to examination

076for cause wanted to hear have the board hear about this there was a process to do that what happens in between the time they're at you know the letter or is telling you hey you're going to be subject to this policy and let's say the next board meeting is you know 29 days later what happens to the individual in between those two time periods do they continue working or are they suspended until you know well the suspension may not be the only remedy but um you know what happens in between that if or is there a special board meeting called it would be situational depending on what the concern was if it was for example a custodian who was having difficulty meeting the physical requirements we would send them out for a physical examination but

077maybe their responsibility would be altered in the meantime while we're waiting for the results if a staff member has emotional issues and we're concerned about the safety of the kids they would be suspended until we had the results of the report and then reinstate or continue the suspension so you'll take action regardless of when the next board meeting happens they may ask to because the policy states that they can't ask for a board hearing or to be heard at the board that won't happen but you'll your actions will take precedence over waiting to the next quarter right okay it wasn't obvious um and the second question i had was on regulation 93 20 which is around cooperation with law enforcement it was super super revised like the entire thing was basically struck in a new

078regulation written speak to like was this another case where where our advisor said hey you guys this was an old one you you don't have it up to date you need to revamp it or was it there's some something deeper going on this was changed as a result of uh state action so the state changed the requirements surrounding that memorandum of agreement and then strong that's made his follow suit to get policy okay all right any other questions on policy did the i'm not aware that there were any meetings for the new jersey school boards or honoring county school boards any were there any meetings that were held last month i didn't think so no okay i think we should talk about the sending district meeting okay um because it was really productive and um

079well-attended so if deb if you want to report on that so jessica and i met with the sending district president and vice presidents on thursday june 9th actually it was supposed to be in may but i think you remember from last month we pushed it out to june asking gwen thornton to attend and actually do a presentation to not only all the sending districts but us on the regionalization and what is it what is the legalities involved um and what are the steps and processes and procedures that would have to be followed so gwen gave a very impactful and detailed presentation for us it was excellent easy to follow she talked about the feasibility study that would need to happen first the impact on taxpayers positively and the impact on our curriculum again positively so

080we talked about having possibly a steering committee of board members of the districts involved that's actually one of the requirements once it's that's part of the feasibility study requirement gwen went over like really just high-level positives and negatives high-level positives state pays for the feasibility study and the election costs return of some state aid the s2 funds that are being taken away from us that we talk about every year the districts that agree to go into this feasibility study you are eligible to get each year a percentage of that s2 funds back but you have to be in that feasibility study in good faith because there were some districts that entered it just to try to get the s2 funds had the state pay all the money for the feasibility study and then said no

081you know we have no interest so they phased it into now two phases and if in order for you to continue to receive that aid you have to say yes if it was today we would do it and then you go into phase two the regionalization a key point it's actually a 10-year phase-in so it this way we can take into account um staff members that retire so it you know you don't have to worry about like so many people are resigning but we're also in a better position right now because there's such a shortage that this is actually something that can help us as well and another key point it only requires a majority of one constituent district to approve to move forward so there's there's been some legal changes yeah there's a change

082of system it doesn't it's not a unanimous consent consensus now you don't need all the sending districts you just need one yeah so um the negatives that were discussed um there is a penalty like once you go through the entire process and you start it if you withdraw from the regionalization within the first five years you actually have to pay back all those s2 funds and all the money but so there's misconception on that you only have to pay back if you withdraw not there's no no cost to the districts other than that um only submitting i'm trying to think some negatives that really was that was it so the end result what happened with us after we all met is that um we do have some sending districts now starting a email chain amongst

083descending districts and jessica and i the presidents and vice presidents saying okay now that we've had this meeting who's interested um and so far we've had two districts um just so now three yeah this email just started this week so there is some interest we said that of course we would be willing to have conversations with any district that is interested um so it's you know we're progressing with that which is a good thing and it is on the agenda for the next sending district meeting it will be one of the topics that we discuss yeah um and then we're already in achievement for one of our goals this year at graduation jeff and i saw the polytech came to voorhees and we just discussed with the superintendent and the board president there if they

084would like to be included in our sending district meetings uh and they said yes so we are starting to include them already that was positive and deb just you know i know i mentioned it last month you guys should get in contact with to have at your articulation meeting um stop hundred and they went through this whole process and they had gwen actually led that that was probably like seven years ago she she led that um meeting there's some great input people you can talk to go with that went through it and the bumps in the road that they hit you know things that we can avoid if this were to go forward wasn't that state mandate though the state forced that yeah it was but they they still have to go through the process

085in the road a lot of money issues another but it was great it's you'll get great feedback gwen had mentioned them like you said she she was part of that um she what she also pointed out to us is some of the bumps they've now been eliminated from the process which is fantastic yeah yeah but if you can get some of them that were involved just to speak to the group yeah you know hands-on okay take it to the next step how many districts would you need to express interest in doing this only one we only need one and we have three so but then that impacts what we look like right so you know the because then it's there's little questions of like well how does it impact the high school district so um

086for now we have the three and we'll we agreed to be part of their conversations um but we'll we're hoping more it's a procedural you could do that two or three districts at a time and then all of a sudden you know a year there was a qualifier about if someone if the surrounding districts regionalized and the one didn't yeah um and there was a p a penalty for that one who did not exactly come so what starts to happen is as districts do this if you don't and then you opt that you want to do later there's some financial penalties to that district so we have 12 sending districts so what you're saying is right now you have three so you could potentially begin what happens based on their requests because they have to

087start they would request the sending districts have to trigger and what about the other nine sending districts that are not interested at this time they don't well they haven't answered yet so we don't know that for sure yeah they have to they have to attend their board meetings and and start talking to the their administration and their board so would we reorganize i mean trying to get through like our like let's say to talk about those three boards let's say for instance they are interested would we reorganize our board um we didn't get that far okay that and we couldn't because that's part of the feasibility study okay yeah at all the feasibility study which takes five years to do yeah um so we are this is yeah it's the five pull but that's part

088one it's part of the ten year plan it's part one important it's a ten year project a study takes five years according to one it does that's what she said it did yeah there's a there's steps to do it i mean the demographic study that goes that ten years doesn't take that long it could take five years it doesn't have to you know it's an interesting discussion she said what what expedites it is if the districts cooperate because the the company doing the feasibility study again that we do not pay for if they when they call and say give us your staffing charts give us this give us that if the school reciprocates very quickly they go through the process quickly if the school doesn't respond for a very long time it just pushes it

089out so was there any conversation i think that the biggest factor that is just a a sticking point is the transportation our stunning districts are spread out so far i mean you look at bethlehem township and where we are it's far right so when they when they you don't eliminate any schools so the k through eights i mean part of the feasibility study is to determine if the k through eights will stay open um but they're not eliminating them necessarily yeah they're not eliminating anything yeah yeah you're consolidating the administration and the oversight the board and then the parents and the boards right but like in terms of i i think trying to get to i i think the basic premise of trying to regionalize the organization of the districts not trying to we're not

090like immediately i don't think proposing that anybody's looking for cutting schools out or closing buildings or anything like that i think we're looking to gain the efficiencies of operating and if school districts were to say that to you let's say you know we have a struggling district saying along with that we'd like to do be absorbed we'd like somehow was that a discussion absorbed into you know just in general like you know california we've had other schools where they're struggling right you know maybe they're i'm just saying just posing what would we which they were part of that discussion they were part of the test would be that like the feasibility study would look at it and say okay so we hypothetically have these two k through eights so can we merge or do we

091even need to but can we merge there and then so it wouldn't be that they'd come onto this campus oh no no no no i'm just talking about that yeah yes so it was uh very interesting and gwen cleared up a lot of uh miss information and there's a lot of new information she gave yeah so that it's not the same regionalization conversation we had years ago that might be interesting for if gwen has that that that uh presentation presentation yeah she was about to give it to the board we could ask her if we could send the link right i actually just emailed all of you to require oh great so there's a recording of the media welcome thank you all right uh moving on now is an opportunity for public comment during this

092portion of the meeting the public is invited to address the school board with questions or comments the public is requested to sign the register provided for this purpose and to state their name municipality of residence group affiliation if applicable and direct their comments to the school board president while all comments will be considered and a response will be forthcoming if and when appropriate the school board members will 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's unusual circumstances those appearing will be allocated three minutes to speak and no one will be permitted to speak twice until those that have not yet had an opportunity to speak have had a turn so anyone who would like to speak during

093public comment good evening hi my name is evie i'm from greenwich township on new jersey taxpayer which is one of the reasons i'm here just concerned about children in your education um thank you for giving your time i'm sorry i'm having a hard time hearing you what is what is your name in your affiliation my name is evie roger i live in greenwich township okay and then i was thanking all of you for the work that you do i do have some concerns with children some of the things that are soon to be taught i guess first i've had a question and i apologize i have not been here before so i do not know if you have done this um are you planning in the summertime to contact parents to have an open forum

094with the parents to inform them of all the things that will be coming in the new health standards that you will have to be teaching in the fall as i'm sure that they would be very interested that might be something that you have not thought of or talked about and the parents would really appreciate that because you may have some very surprised and angry parents coming to you after the fact one of your goals i've heard before was the board what professional development versus the board in improving their revenant skills and i don't mean to be flippant but one of them might be to actually engage with the parents and listen to their concerns and act on them education is not supposed to be indoctrination supposed to be teaching children critical thinking math english writing

095social and emotional learning is nothing but critical race theory these health standards that are coming down is nothing but grooming children for pedophiles it's something that you certainly don't want me discussing openly in some of the things that they'll be discussing in class or some of the books that you have in your libraries it's pornographic and i think you know [Music] there's something called the sipa act child internet protection act and if you have certain things in your library you certainly do have the internet connected and you receive funds from the federal government for that insurance access the child internet protection act makes sure that there's certain things that you don't allow to go over the internet through school violence so that's something thank you for your time thank you hi guys um i did

096want to speak to a couple of situations or points i should say about the new dei that's coming down that i know is on the table for the kids um first of all i do want to point out that as we all know that the board is supposed to be political many of us know and hear in administration on the board that there are people in two specialist activist groups evolved and indivisible that is affecting a lot of the curriculum and decisions that are made on this board i do think that's a conflict of interest and i think that needs to be addressed somehow some way there's a lawsuit going on plenty lawsuits that parents are suing school districts for the dei because it is racist it is excluding white males it is excused excluding

097conservative values and morals one of the things that i've noticed in the curriculum coming down is it is very anti-white with a lot of research that i've done on just blacks whites native americans and everything i've come up with a couple of things but i just wanted to point out the agenda lists of blm gilliam activists have murdered burned looted democratic cities they have destroyed homes and businesses to teach children this behavior is okay and to be violent it's counter-intuitive i thought there was no place for hate 323 000 white males died to end slavery the first man to own another man was a black man his name was anthony jackson who the gentleman wasn't able to pay off his dad so the court awarded him custody of him has first fought man to own

098a black man in the united states which is in 1654. the united states had the lowest percentage worldwide 2.4 of slaves in the world not that many things should be owned other countries portugal is 46 currently in 2022 there's 94 countries that sold states both blacks and native americans owned slaves if we were pro [Music] for the blasts and we were wanting things better for them we would all be happy about roe versus wave why because margaret singer who rated planned parenthood to get rid of the body population okay black population is 13.4 38.4 of abortions are black babies [Music] good evening christopher's to do this clinton township i'd like to address three items uh before i do i'd like to uh read three quotes uh president biden said quote they're all about children and

099the reason you're the teachers of the year is because you recognize that they're not somebody else's children they're like yours when they're in the classroom end quote gubernatorial candidate terry mcauliffe said quote i don't think parents should be telling schools what they should teach end quote congressman malinowski said parents concerns are quote made up cultural end quote i think some of these people from top down in this country are forgetting parental rights and what that means but we're going to remind them we're going to keep fighting mark my words sex standards the first one i want to address uh it's illegal in my opinion um gender identity explicit descriptions of private parts romantic sexual feelings masturbation mood swings puberty blockers sexual orientation gender identity various ways one can get pregnant uh abortion define anal oral

100vaginal sex these standards to me are very illegal it's obscene content obscene material based upon the law new jersey state law 2009 obscenity law just because schools are given a green light or we have teachers that have licenses to teach sex ed doesn't allow obscenity that kind of content to be taught to other people's children uh and if you're going to have and you've got to go forward with this curriculum or i should take state standards that you're going to put into the curriculum it should be an opt-in option not an opt-out that forces all the parents to know what their parental rights and what they're allowing and signing on to to allow their children to learn because there's gonna be a lot of parents that are not aware of this they're sleeping at the

101wheel they're working two three jobs they're busy they have problems in their life or some of them maybe have language barriers and they're not going to read and understand what their children get they're going to get caught up in so i'd like you to consider that district policy 4283 electronic communications between teaching staff members and students i don't know how we can have this policy which says communications of a sexual nature sexually orientated humor or language sexual advances or content with the sexual overtone would be violating a policy not even the law but we're going to ignore obscenity law and have teachers teach this stuff in person does it matter if it's in person face to face or electronically i really don't dei diversity equity inclusion that's also illegal in my opinion and there's a

102lawsuit right now in a mountain lake school district and why is it discriminatory because it's against white people shaming white people making them feel guilty not judging people based upon their character but the code of their skin but we're losing that martin luther king dream i think uh the lawsuit filed june said the district forced a racial political ideology on students which violates students constitutional right to not be disputed against because they raise more skin color chris thank you um good evening i'm christina cagnell pottersville thank you so much for volunteering for all your time i i want to add and agree to many of the speakers parents who spoke just now and i feel that there needs to be more transparency with our school district telling parents what is happening especially with the upcoming

103health education program i feel like this particular curriculum needs there needs to be communication of what materials are being used what resources are being used what websites what videos what is being shown to our children and i agree with chris with their needing to be an opt-in rather than opt out for the health curriculum so that we have informed consent so we can um have the knowledge to make a decision so my other concern that came to mind i don't know if you're aware of what happened with with hundred and central of the push to have our children become social justice warriors and the position that happened down there where it was okay for students to protest a very very controversial um it was real versus way right it was during school and there was

104an assault on at least one student there's a video that's out there that's very very disturbing and i pray that something like that doesn't ever happen here thank you um i would like to address one of the emails before you start could you please state your name on may 16th we received email regarding sexting exhortation issuing concerns let me just read you one sentence for me in the last few years there has been increased talk of sexting among teens and the dangers associated with the behavior yet our school the library still have obscene books that contain pornography pedophilia not to mention new curriculum that's coming up sex between men boys and boys that contain book segmenting illustration images of inappropriate immoral and risky sexual behavior that degrades our children to be only let me mention

105that again only as seen as the objects of sexual pleasures not as beautiful innocent human being again objects toys let me let me clarify that let that same thing nothing else why are you surprised of sexting i mean it's a it's a hypocrisy you can teach sexual um responsibility teens by teaching them to act recklessly and my question is who will have um who are the victims here and all of this our children because in the email stating you will not tolerate that kind of behavior it's illegal and can be prosecuted right i mean wow brilliant if you ask me again you are each one every one of you you are responsible for exposing promoting encouraging our teams to sexual explicit materials in this school not just in california schools virginia chicago which is happening

106everywhere and parents are fighting because we're quite frightened we're tired of asking pleading negotiating we are pushing back and you're going to see that we are tired we are done uh what else i would like to mention here uh last sentence i'd like to say from the email our goal is to continue to educate parents and guardians on the current trends and genders of our children may be facing you are educating us no we are actually you we are asking you to stop this and quite frankly what kind of results are you expect expecting to get by promoting such a film let that sit thank you uh good evening my name is trisha sharpnet clinton township um my my main purpose here this evening was i wanted to see as a board what your goals

107were and that's really my objective here to talk tonight i really i want you as a board when you're listing your goals and how you can move forward in the best interest of the district and the students i believe you really are missing that whole community engagement component this should not be a you versus us this should be all of us working together for the best interest of all the students and i do respectfully disagree with mr strait's opinion earlier that you are always encompassing um you're always working on you know working on community relations working on community engagement that's all good but i think that just continually trying to work on it i think you actually need to come up with solutions to continually say that this is just ongoing i think is unacceptable

108at this point and i think you need to look at and listen to those constituents that put you in those seats and hear our concerns and stand up for our voices because that is why we chose you to be there we wanted you to hear us out so i think there's a mistrust there there's distrust and i think you really need to work on extending yourselves out to your your constituents and the community so that parents can work with you in the best interest of all students not select groups not select few thank you anybody else would like to speak hi my name is cynthia reyes to doulas uh township i just want to say you know we are all here as parents and we all as trish mentioned wanted to the best entrance of

109all students and as a parent having a child here in northampton i'm not comfortable with the curriculum the way they plan on rolling it out and what it entails that's definitely something that should be at home discussion i know my child and i'm connected to my child more than a teacher with me i wouldn't even feel comfortable with my best friend speaking to my son about certain topics that will be discussed in this new curriculum that is intended to move forward so i'm in all hopes that that this will be very you know taken under consideration every child learns differently we know this we know our children other parents know their children and how they learn and how they mature everybody matures their company and understands differently and i do think together everyone will achieve

110more if parents and board and community could come together because i'm sure we would agree on so many things as my husband had once said and i i just think it'd be a better place i don't like the separation i don't like to see separation i'm not for that i'm that respect i respect people i teach my children to respect people i don't teach them to look or treat someone because of how they walk how they look what they wear who they are it's what you know who they are and they're a person just like you i always say a person is a reflection of me if someone sees me for their beauty then you know what your beauty because i'm a reflection of you if someone sees me as something less than beauty or

111ugly or intolerable then maybe they need to look at themselves because maybe that's who they are as well i just i just i just want respect i want education i think it's great the goals that you have in regards to you know loss lost education i i think it's great that we focus more on academics to really help elevate their education and those are the things we need to focus on and i think we can get there i know we can get there we just need to get there together and i think there really needs to be a focus on that [Music] hello christopher stedulis clinton township just wanted to touch upon my third item uh library library books that were once in question but were voted on and allowed to stay in the library

112i've heard a lot of arguments a lot of it personal emotional which is not invalid perfectly acceptable their own experience is their experience and nobody can take that away i've also heard the one main argument which sounded great when you hear it the first amendment the speech the right to read what you want to read and read different views and opinions and ideology and i'm all about that but there's nine types of speech that are not protected by the first amendment and the books are not a problem for us and we didn't raise the issue of the books because they lgbt as my wife said we want people to get along we probably agree on more than we disagree we might feel differently on how we get there but we're from new york city i

113used to be a liberal obama voter support gay marriage i used to be an actor i have a lot of friends in the lgbt community we have black family my wife has asian family so nobody knows anybody and to judge people based upon a stance on an issue or the code of their skin or the gender or what have you is wrong so i wanted to put that out there so you know a little bit about me and my wife and where we come from because we're probably not at all different in a lot of ways but nine tears of speech not protected by the first amendment which is also on the doj website obscenity obscenity is not protected speech it could be a love story beautiful love story about the titanic in a book

114if there's one page with excerpts or or visuals images of obscene content that is illegal content the law doesn't say there has to be x amount of percentage of illegal content does not it's black and white it's also a violation of the 2009 new jersey obscenity law that i mentioned earlier and the last thing i'll say right on new jersey excuse me department of justice website obscenity is not protected under first amendment rights to free speech and violation of federal obscenity laws are criminal the supreme court even stated this in a case in 1998 they stated quote and i'll end with this the supreme court has ruled that transmitting obscenity in child pornography whether via the internet or other means is illegal and under federal law for both adults and juveniles so anything on the

115computer on your your your website the district's website or if any books that are shipped in hard copied mailed and it has that kind of content it is illegal it doesn't matter if it's given awards harvey weinstein was given awards roman polanski was given awards convicted rapist i don't care who gives these books thanks chris thank you sound like you ended my time there before the bell break i didn't actually i started timing when you started speaking yeah you can take a breath i'm not going to go all the time i have respect fantasy township i just want to make a statement these parents are speaking from their hearts they're coming to you some of them it's difficult for them to get up and speak to you like this i know that you don't answer

116us which is sad because we can't have dialogue and i want to say i realize that most of everything that's being said is going on deaf ears i just want to say it's shameful thank you all right moving on with the agenda can i call for a motion and a second to approve agenda items 4.1 to 17.23 i'm sorry you said 4.1 14.1 through i'm sorry to 17.23 motion roger second depth second so does anybody have any questions before we vote i do uh resolution 062822 professional services has uh the hourly rates increased for any of the firms so noted has our is particularly legal legal has not increased now this is set from last year none of these have increased which item number you talking about uh sorry i'm 14.3 thank you when you

117refer to legal the legal and the bond council did not increase and our and our fees for uh general counsel general counsel did not increase that okay any other questions all in favor all right any opposed abstentions i'm in favor i'm going to abstain from 17 9 10 11. can you do this mission um yes okay um jess i'm sorry we took we took all of them went through 17 to 17.23 through 7 14.1 yep to 17.23 okay i do have a couple questions um this goes to the bills list um katie maybe you can reference there's there's a um it's continual through the bills list i just i don't know it looks like it's a payment um i can give you the number it's db 6143 it occurs several times through it'll be an

118individual and then payment it's just a consistency is it something that happened it sounds like that's the vendor code so i would have to see which vendor i can forward it to you but it's it's through that the whole yeah you want to build the code and then the name that's next so that would help me be able to answer your question there's like dozens of them so i was wondering if it was related to something that there's a need for in the district or a lack of again i'm trying to on my own but if i have the name of the vendor i can answer it you can go to um i can give you the check number i can give you that i don't want to give an individual uh go to 030876

11902.03 so zero three zero eight seven six i'm just pulling one out i don't want to give in list the names to it i mean it just goes this is a list of cafeteria refunds so we're using the same vendor code but it's several individuals that are getting cafeteria refunds okay so people have requested that if their students graduated that they get whatever money is remaining in their cafeteria that's why it's so hard when there's no i know it's hard to put in just to see so i would you would have never asked this word you can always ask the question ahead of time because i know in several instances if there's a specific question regarding the agenda katie can get back to you prior to the meeting i couldn't get to this beforehand that's

120why i just did this to that the bill's list today thank you twenty do we need to vote impacted that or not no i i was just i sorry i didn't know you had gone to 17.2 through my apologies but i will katie i would have sent that to you i just saw it today thank you all right moving on is there any older new business we'd like to discuss i have a new business i guess it's actually about the solar thing i i've had several conversations recently that people in the you know that they're in the district in my neighborhood who have no idea that we have solar on our our schools and this is like a big win to me i mean this is like funny bring that we did talk about having

121a ribbon cutting of some sort at our committee meeting so i'm not sure if uh we've started making progress honeywell but we want to touch base before we start releasing anymore but the idea is once so when north hunterdon's done because that that's not done until next month then both schools will be done and we can have some sort of like ceremonial like ribbon cutting like for the public and like kind of make a big like invite invite the new you know invite some press and you know sort of publicize that but but letters did go out to parents to let them know because this way they weren't concerned like what is all that i was shocked but i thought well you know i do sit in a meeting every month where i learn about

122these things so maybe and they don't um but it just it's a it's a positive thing that was uniformly to the few people i talked to unknown it's like oh wouldn't it be great if we did solar like yeah we're doing i live in clinton township so we have this little clinton conference newsletter but that's the clinton township board or uh district has a little thing in there and probably doesn't make sense [Laughter] because there's a lot of empty nesters that you know just don't hear about it or don't have kids anymore the district so maybe it's good pr and opposed to that you're written because it sounds fun yeah we talked about it we thought it'd be a great idea would that be something you'd put on the websites the president principles with that

123is that something that goes on the website or is the website yeah like when it happens so we could do it there will be well this kind of brings us back to the referendum they're the first group of people we try to reach out to you know for any of the folks that are retired in this community we talk to you about helping people pass this thing because they're the first ones to show up at the polls so it's really important we communicate really well with that constituent of the community because they're the ones who really feel the tax burden more through our yard for some other event they typically wouldn't know because we spent a lot of time talking about these kind of things that we do at our board meetings and long strategy

124meetings and our long-term planning and all the other stuff but if you're not really involved you don't have kids in the district yeah you probably may not know some of the things that we've been doing and you know but you know back to the referendum that is a group that we really need to communicate with more more and find other ways to get that information to them about all the other things and unlike some capital projects that will be obvious i don't think you can see the panels from the street yeah photos on the website in the trashcan if you don't no it's got crossword puzzles in it so i open it oh there you go any other older new business all right i call for a motion and a second to approve agenda items

12522.1 and 22.2 including hand carries if provided second all right yes except no to 7.3 on the personnel agenda 7.3 yes mr street yes yes yes i call for a motion in a second to what emotional adjournment i am trying i'm getting there are you uh calling for the motion roger do you have a second on that second all in favor you