001the north hunterdon voorhees regional high school district board of ed meeting on tuesday may 24 2022 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 date location or instructions for remote access to the hundred and democrat on december 9 2021 the star ledger on december 7 2021 and subsequently re-advertised on may 19 2022 notice and to the extent known the agenda of this meeting has been posted at the north hundred and high school of voorhees high school provided to the municipal clerks of bethlehem township californ borough town of clinton clinton township franklin township glenn gardner borough hampton borough highbridge borough lebanon borough lebanon township tewkesbury township and union township as
002well as all other interested parties and posted on the district websites fire exits are located in the directions indicated i've alerted to fire please move it in orderly and calm fashion to the nearest smoke free exit at this time i request that you please silence all cell phones katie can you please um do a roll call miss bonobi present mrs president mr farbanish here is his president miss hoffman here mr kirschberger here mr mueller here miss celina here mr spanton here mr street here and miss vietnam here may we all stand for the flagship under god indivisible with liberty and before we start the meeting i just wanted to take a moment to say that our thoughts and prayers are with the families in the community of uvalde texas if you heard the news today
003you will know that they experienced a school shooting at their elementary school that so far has taken the lives of 14 children and one student this is an unspeakable tragedy that no parent or community should have to live through i know we all we all hold our children a little closer today and in and then the days to come again our hearts are with the uvalde texas community um at this time i'd like to ask for a motion and a second to approve agenda item 4.1 um which are the minutes from our april 22nd regular school board meeting any questions about the meeting notes okay all in favor opposed you roger motion passes um at this time we're going to review the new jersey uh department of education uh rich i'm sorry dr richards will
004be presenting um a review of the new jersey board of ed you can't speak tonight new jersey department of education school self-assessment for determining grades under anti-bullying bill of rights uh district and school grade report for 2021-2022 good evening everybody so just to refresh your memory a little bit um each year uh this district is required to have each school can be a school safety team that school safety team conducts a self-assessment of how we are implementing the anti-voting bill of rights then those results are then important to this board in the fall which we did those are then submitted to the state have this award here so senate public hearing and then the state reviews that information that had data conducts a final report and then we have projected the final report to the
005law as well so our scores have not changed since they've submitted to the state each score scored themselves as having a 77 out of a seven league each school felt that they could do a little better in one of the areas that relates to hit programs approaches and other initiatives just giving ideas the score of one is that you don't need it scored two as you do and the score of three as you exceed so most of our categories are used so with any questions thank you very much um at this time i'd like to uh ask that um our student representatives present their reports um so vanessa could you please tell us give us your report from north hunter of course so i want to start um by talking about relay for life so
006north was able to raise forty seven thousand dollars for relay for life proud of that lots of students teachers and the community was able to come out and participate in that wonderful event um it was really lovely it was really successful um another huge success for the senior class was prom it went really well we had a rainy night but we made the most of it um outdoor prom was actually very nice it just felt like we were outdoors because of the weather and not because of cohen um we also want to thank the polytech cosmetology program for providing us with stylists who were able to do our hair i got my hair done it was very nice they were all very sweet i know some other people got their makeup done and they were
007very lovely crew they came out to spend some time with us um i also want to talk about the volleyball team so the boys volleyball team took third overall in the skylines conference ranked above the boys central volleyball team and they lost to bridgewater who won first um some upcoming events for the senior class are senior awards on june 1st graduation on june 15th and project graduation we want to thank the ptsa for providing lunch for our rehearsal on june 10th and i just want to overall wrap up the year by thanking the board of ed and the ptsa for making this year very memorable and making the most of what we got um we really appreciated having the tutoring programs the dogs coming out the new teams coming together and all these wonderful activities
008such as dances and just fun nights that we were able to have as we transitioned back to normalcy so thank you so much thanks vanessa hi bethany can you um report out for voorhees please yes so the start of the month of may we had ap exams which spanned over the first couple weeks of may so those went well and then after that we had a successful week of nj sla testing with the week of may 16th today we had a blood drive to help with the blood shortage and that ran all day and there was many people who volunteered to give love for the seniors some seniors volunteered at highbridge elementary school to have fourth graders with their writing and both fourth grade classes got a bunch of seniors to help write paragraphs um
009senior trips happened last week on the 19th and 20th starting with the dinner cruise on the 19th and a six class trip on the 20th upcoming prom is this thursday may 26th of bethlehem pennsylvania so i know me and a lot of people are very excited for boys and girls track and field they participated in the skylines conference on tuesday and then girls golf won the 101 championship um jack tobacco and protract won the 3200 meteor championship and then joey avalon who's a senior broke the school record in pola with a jump of wow some upcoming events we have relay for life which is june 3rd our unified theater is performing wizard of oz june 4th and 5th and senior awards and graduations are happening in the next upcoming weeks and we'd like to thank
010the board for their patience and helping us throughout this journey of the school year well thank you does anyone have any questions for bethany or vanessa so at this point i'd like to take a minute to say thank you to you both for your contributions this year we have a little bit of a recognition for you um so if you'll join me marin will be here we're taking a photo we are chicken you've been with us all here thank you so much [Laughter] thank you so much [Applause] this point um we're going to move to the chief school administrators report so we'll start with the principal's recognition of student achievements in the building we'll start with uh all right it's my pleasure to introduce to you a junior we're very proud of her name is
011ashley page asha has distinguished herself for her accomplishments as they relate to science so specifically today we're going to recognize the fact that asha was selected to be in the new jersey governor's school for the sciences and that will be held at brew university in july 10th through the 30th so she'll be spending three weeks our first summer at peru uh engaging in some research research projects so during this uh three-week period ms page will participate in comprehensive challenging and intensive college-level programs with other science math scholars from around the state students nominated or nominated by their high school so she was nominated by us and of the student students that are nominated to just be nominated for north carolina is a challenging process and of those students that are nominated only 20 of them
012are actually selected for the program so it's a very competitive and very prestigious program to get so we're very proud of her for that i asked um asha why she thinks she was selected and she actually has a pretty impressive resume outside of just her her governor's school she was an intern at the davinci science center for the last two years and in that internship she worked to develop programs that encouraged females to get involved with the stem careers so she worked with that and then she also was a founder of our research club here at north carolina high school with mr allen so she also gave a shout out to mr audi one of her science teachers for being an influence on her so uh she's only a junior we look forward to seeing
013what she accomplishes this year when we're publishing this research paper based on what they do down there see what else she has in store so i think she has a bright future [Applause] and mr peterson all right so this guy here is thomas larson he is a senior at ortiz high school in my 27 year career i'm i've only said this about one other student during that time what i'm going to say about this gentleman here first of all in his high school career he's been a straight a student i always ask students when they're coming to see me or myriad of things or checking in their grades i ask them what does what sound does your report card or your uh transcript make now they got straight a it's at this point now it's
014just not only that but he is involved and at least i count 12 different clubs or activities okay so i can go down the list of volvo i'm going to highlight it with uh with five he is a four-year key club member and was vice president his junior and senior year he worked hard to keep the club members active through cobit and helped the club collect thousands of pounds of food for the county thomas is also a member of the relay for life team this club has been enacted for several years and was revolt this year and he's a very active member of the team and is in charge of the logistics for the five hour event that is including three other schools besides mortys at that event so there's a lot of undertaking with
015that upcoming event he's also a member of the class council of the class of 2022 he's been involved in the class council for four years he plays a big part in organizing last year's junior senior prom and this year's homecoming and senior trips he faithfully attends meetings and has always followed through with his commitments thomas is also a four-year member of the theater club where he has been the sound director behind the scenes his expertise has helped produce numerous successful shows over the years he's also a member of the national honor society and a four-year member of the boys tennis team and also recently he was with the model that he won on the model uh trip where he was chosen as the premier advocate for the international court of justice so what i had
016said about that one other student is it's rare to find a student like thomas that can be so involved in so many things and give a 100 commitment to it and always bring out the best in those clubs and activities so i thank him for his time and thanking him for making boardings look good [Applause] okay [Applause] i have a few items that are actually repeats of some of the announcements that are made by our student board reps uh first we will continue our code of 19 protocols through the end of the school year we did have a slight uptick in cases following spring recess which is similar to what we've seen following other holidays we will keep you updated over the summer if we receive any recommendations from the new jersey department of health
017for the new school year uh blood drive will be held at northern high school tomorrow from 7 30 a.m until 3 p.m in the main gym today was a blood drive at 40s please consider donating as new jersey blood services has declared a blood emergency due to an alarming drop in blood donations then as we move into the last few weeks of the school year a couple of events that are coming up or have already happened the north holland prom was on may 20th and the 40s junior senior prom is on may 26th senior awards night is june 1st for northern and june 2nd for four years final exams are scheduled for june 8th 9th 10th and 13th with makeup exams on june 14th all final exam days are early dismissals for students graduation ceremonies
018for the class of 2022 will be held on june 15th uh hiv report for this month we have no incidents uh just revisiting last month's report we had three founded incidents can i have um call for a motion in a second to affirm the determinations of the hiv incidents reported at the april 26 2022 board meeting in the monthly reports are attached to your information um just a reminder that our uh voorhees high school graduation uh ceremony will be on june 15th at 10 a.m north hunterdon's high school graduation will also take place on june 15th at 10 a.m next month's meeting on june 28th will be our annual gold setting and board meeting which will begin at 6 00 p.m a little change in time and i'll be here in the district office um
019and that we have an action item which is pursuant to njsa 18a 17-20 0.3 a and in preparation for the june 28th board setting meeting board members are requested to complete the board self-evaluation the chief school administrators evaluation available online at the nj school boards association also um the deadline to submit nominating petitions for the school board vacancies to the county clerk's office is on july 25th 2022 at 4 pm at this time i'd like to have the committee's report out on their meetings that were held this month i think the first one we'd like to start with is community relations tara i think community relations met on may 19 virtually was myself and mr chapman missing with mrs costello and mrs celino uh the administration was involved um this vendor pointed out about the
020covet so i won't go into that that was one of our topics but the second topic was a brochure that the new jersey school board association released the beginning of this month and it's been embedded on our website but it's one that i think board members in the community should look at it's a guide to board of education meetings in new jersey and it was a currency that was released by the new jersey school boards association there are also copies of it here at the board meetings and we'll keep them here available for the public but it outlines what a board of education meeting is and it's one of the things that everybody should read so they understand the roles of our administration and our school board so i highly recommend people going to click
021on our website which is already embedded or if you're here tonight take a copy of it and read it and other than that besides the covit and the protocol staying the same that was all we had to report on the schools have been busy so student activities have been very busy but we've covered those in our student representatives so eloquently stated everything our students are up to and it's fabulous i'm so glad you guys are having a wonderful school year so thank you jeff um thank you tara does anybody have any questions for tara can we move on to curriculum instruction and technology yes the committee met on may 18th all committee members were present with the exception of kim celino and roger straight we had four items of discussion the first was we discussed
022the three items on the this month's board agenda which is next year's professional development plan the home instruction list and out of district placements we discussed discussed clubs and activities that could assist with addressing items listed in the professional development plan and we looked at plan the actual professional development plan what's in that is items that guide our large group dis sessions in august and throughout the year there are other topics such as learning laws that are addressed by individual departments so we clarified the differences between the development plans the second agenda item we discussed the summer curricula out curriculum hours which are on the may personnel agenda for this month as well and the reasons behind them many of the hours that are on there are due to the revised state standards that go
023into effect for next year and the other hours are for new courses or to take make revisions into current courses that are needed the third item that we discussed was the student enrollment this item is one of our monthly analysis that the committee undertakes we reviewed the district enrollment from 2017-18 school year to projected number for next year overall the district enrollment has decreased by around 290 students from 217-18 to 221.22 however the enrollment is around 190 students higher than the last demographic study projected in addition to that it's important to note that we have more currently this year we have more than 300 students in our district that are academy students which are part of the hunterton county vocational school district and then the last item that was discussed for the good of the
024order we just discussed as a district what the process is for final exams and confirm that the final exams are the same at both schools and that's our report okay anyone have any questions for doug i do um when was last demographic study done so 2017 2017 [Music] hesitant to start another demographic study right now because of the polytech program that's going to be coming on board plus with the new housing that's going in locally it's going to be difficult to get an accurate number so we're going to keep an eye on things and i'll probably start that a little bit later then maybe even 2024. okay thank you another another question um based among the faulty projections from the last study you said it should be lower but that were higher because of the
025academies did i guess that last projection have the academies uh were that part of it so i'm just wondering if that just made up the difference and we were still following that projection or also part of the reasoning for the increase in our enrollment is uh during covid we had a higher influx of families move into the community than had been happening and other than that these are in the projected numbers for next year no no but the project projects in 2017 so that that helped to prop up our numbers okay anyone else okay uh facilities finance and transportation sure thank you um our committee met virtually on the 16th everybody was there in the administration it was uh it's nice to have an easier meeting since the budget passed last month so you didn't
026have to uh you know talk about that but um an update for some of our other projects the solar project uh at voorhees is scheduled to tie in on the 21st of june and the 21st of july at north hunterdon so that's nice and that will be coming to an end soon our summer projects will will commence uh immediately after graduation and be completed by the time we come back to school then in late august uh referendum um the application is still the department of education it's been submitted under review no action at this time the tech project which is we're hosting on our campus uh meetings are are ongoing they have appointed a construction manager and um they will be submitting a logistics plan to us uh when it is completed um and as
027far as some of the agenda items uh i guess there's there's some money to to fix some of the tennis courts here at north hunter end it's um unlike vory's which will take that tennis court work will take place this summer some more severe repairs the work that's on the agenda regarding the north 110 is like a uh ongoing maintenance which needs to occur every five years which is part of our contract for when we fixed it the north hundred and tens were the last time so it's it's an ongoing thing and we expect the same to be employees after the repairs that are done at 40's this summer it'll have to be maintained i imagine every five years as well so that's their um the renewal of medical dental prescriptions for uh the following
028year is in line with what we budgeted um however we did see a small increase um and medical no increase on dental prescription uh and um our liability insurance provider um you'll see we we were awarded a little over thirty thousand dollars and that money will be used to offset our class three officers and at both schools so those are just some of the highlights but otherwise a light month for our committee any questions thank you first now personnel met on may 18th virtually at 6 30 pm all committee members were in attendance as well as mr gertrude and mr benter we discussed the personnel portion of the agenda and then we also discussed two proposals for clubs and that was the needles and hooks club and the unified leader in musical at birdies high
029school and that will be taking action on after executive session thanks sean anybody have any questions for shelley no um did any of the our delegates uh oh i'm sorry the big ones oh i'm just moving on forward the policy committee on may 16th at 5 30 pm and all members were in attendance including me including you there are 10 policies up for first reading this month none of them have any substantive changes to them so the committee recommends you read them and if you have any questions you can bring them for next month per second reading but we don't have any recommended changes to those 10 first readings we talked a little bit more about one of the policy i'm sorry one of the regulation changes so regulation nine one three zero which is
030the use of school facilities um sorry that regulation 7510 is the use of school facilities uh the administration is recommending and the policy committee supports a change in the over in the janitorial rate that is charged to outside groups that use our facilities in today's version of the regulation that rate is based on the actual custodian that picks up the work so one group might pay more than another group depending on which custodian actually gets assigned to work and instead they are recommending one consistent rate which is based on a blended rate of all the custodians and that way all the outside groups would be paying the same amount in overtime custodial charges the committee recommends change in regulation we talked about regulation 9130 with regard to reconsideration we've been sort of talking about this
031one for the last few months uh we have concluded after discussion um sort of a lengthy discussion that there's no need for a change to policy 9130 um with regard to the reconsideration of resource materials uh we're going to recommend a and not recommend but the administration is considering a minor change regulation 9130 about implementing the policy um and that would be that in the event of a challenge materials they would inform the board that the superintendent would inform the board and may form a reconsideration committee which allows for some flexibility for re-challenged materials so without having to get into statutes of limitations or anything else that might be more administratively complex and not supportable than would need to be so i think that would allow the ability of the regulation to function when it
032needs to and not when there's um not necessarily when there's recharges of materials that have already been considered we also had a discussion on the virtual participation there was nothing up for review for the board about the public's virtual participation in the meetings but we did after a lengthy discussion um recommend that we maintain our existing existing approach to public participation in the meetings and now that we're in a sort of non-coded posture that public participation is in person and that's how two-way or that's how the public can comment to the board and in sort of coordination with that we also circled back to the discussion from several months ago about board member remote participation and it was the conclusion of the policy committee that the stance for board members should be the same as
033our stance for the public which is to be a involved two-way participant in the meeting that the policy committee represents recommends that board members should be in person and not be enabled to participate remotely at this time although we did also discuss the fact that technology is continuing to evolve and as the technology evolves that we would be that the policy committee should be open to continued us reassessment of that so that we can have as transparent and active board as possible finally we talked about something that came up at last month's meeting which was the regionalization an ad hoc regionalization subcommittee for consideration of re regionalization and it was decided that the recommendation of the policy committee is that that effort should begin at the board president's roundtable with all of the board presidents
034of the sending districts since an effort like that would require the involvement and participation and consensus of all the sending districts so jessica had agreed that she would take that topic to the next board president's roundtable and that was our meeting anyone have any questions uh just to give you an update on that last point the um marin helped us we have gwen thornton from njsba attending the sending district uh meeting and she's doing a presentation on regionalization for us and all the sending districts so we are on it what is that yes anybody have any questions for rob corrections so was the only reason why board members can't attend remotely with technology is because we don't let the public attend remotely and we didn't want you attending all the board meetings john you wanna
035you have any further comment on the considerations around remote board participation sure i'd be happy to so copet gave a different perspective to this issue than had ever been considered pre-code pre-covet there was standing kind of disincentives from various public authority with regard to remote participation in board of education meetings there were conflicting opinions from the attorney general's office as well as dca and there were very very few school districts none of ours that that permitted remote attendance from a policy standpoint and a legal standpoint much of what was shared in the summary of the minutes and that is kind of put simply it's a public meeting and members of the public are going to attend to be heard the thought has been traditionally that elected officials ought to be public and live as well
036there is certain basis under law if a board wants to by way of self-governing permit remote attendance and participation in action it can we see it at some in some municipal bodies i don't know if any county bodies uh pursue this but i hear much more of it at the municipal level i still don't think any of our near 80 school districts permit remote participation for the policy considerations that were shared pre now we get into code the cameras go on and they zoom and it's efficient meetings and because of public health crisis everybody's remote it has to be remote and is remote and operating under multiple governor's orders now that one of them went away and now we're here again most of us without masks on and i think the policy considerations and perspective
037resets in many ways as to the past and what we've seen in public bodies just as was shared before we have virtual committee meetings we have virtual iep team meetings the oil is still virtual some courts still have virtual proceedings but when we have public meetings that are noticed almost all are back in public and so the thinking is it's a public meeting and we get the public can come and attend members ought to be there as well from a public standpoint it's not to say that that has to be the board's perspective and certainly my recommendation for a number of reasons both from a policy standpoint as well as a legal standpoint and we want to climb further into kind of the intricacies of remote participation we get into confidentiality issues exactly okay take
038exec off the plan take the exact world we already talked about exactly was never going to be part of the board meeting just the public meeting while we had never thought why we couldn't attend a public meeting from afar okay i get the executive because other people can be in the room i get that but the public meetings i don't get okay well you know i've shared a couple of thoughts i think another thought is that i hear and i haven't heard this here but i i have heard this in other places folks and again i'm not saying this to you but there is a certain perspective at times i think optics if one is going to run for the board or be appointed to the board and participate in the board i want to
039be at the board and take action publicly and is there a disincentive in that if uh folks can phone it in again not my words but i think that's another policy consideration uh there certainly are logistical considerations and i won't talk about exactly because that apparently wasn't part of the conversation before but i think there are both legal and practical and optic considerations involved from my perspective okay thank you thank you thanks john anybody have any other questions about the policy committee all right moving on then thanks rob i think i did that once before too i just missed that one um did were there any meetings that were attended by our liaisons or representatives or the school boards association or any of the educational services yeah we had on we had the delegate meeting
040on saturday may 14th and it actually was a very amazing and a big meeting so on business side there was no pressing legal or resolutions that um emergencies that had come up to the delegate assembly as members we approved a motion to approve and affirm the 5 000 section of the pupils new jersey school board's manual positions and policies on education so if you don't know those and you want to go to new jersey school boards and read up on the 5000 series we approved it the other was that um we considered an amendment to article seven section two of the new jersey school board bylaws to state that in addition to having served one full year as a board member prior to their election to a new jersey school board association office candidates will
041have must have qualified for and received the certified board member qualification set forth in the new jersey school board's governance and operation manual which is geo 66031 if you want to know what the biggest part of the delegate was is that the board new jersey school boards met on friday the 13th and um dr lawrence finally who had served as the board president for 10 years is retiring and um we elected a new incoming executive director it's dr timothy purnell and he is just amazing he had been a uh nominated as a new jersey superintendent of the year and he had been the interim executive county superintendent of morris county he comes with much energy and perspective and it was quite an exciting delicate meeting one of the things that he expressed uh to the
042delegates was the concern over the dwindling number of students seeking to become teachers and we know looking at our candidates pools and as teachers retire we need to find outside teachers uh teaching is becoming a profession that is not being actively pursued so he spoke at length on this and one of the things as a delegate and as a board member i wanted to bring to our board is and to our administration on ways we can as a district encourage our student population to maybe pursue education as a vocation as a a career path so i don't know what we can do to do that but i i was empowered by his speaking and i believe teaching is one of the most noblest professions so as a board and as a school district i'd like
043to encourage our students to pursue teaching as a collegiate degree and as a career path so and then dr lawrence feinstein who's amazing spoke and his wife spoke and um one of the things he said and of course i started to cry because that's what i do but um he told the audience and he said we need to remember it's about the children and we get caught up in things outside of us ideologies whatever but we all as a district as teachers as boards of eds need to remember it's about the children so he ended with that and of course he said he wanted to say it you know 15 more minutes about the children and everybody was moved and i just wanted to bring that energy to all of us as you know i
044know we're here sitting on the board because that's what our intent is it's about the children the children of our district and our community so um it was an amazing delicate assembly and um i'm honored that you guys had asked me to be our representative so that was it i can feel the passion yes all the way over here and it is a noble profession yeah and then anyone else attend any meetings okay um oh did you have questions for well sort of i guess so like how do we like what can we do as a district like to encourage that as a vocation like that's what i wanted to maybe we can you know think about it as administration as a board as our you know guidance counselors but um i i really wanted
045to bring that message back because he was very empowered by that that that was something that we really need to as communities as board members you know help the future and encourage teachers into the next generation um i attended the county school board association meeting and um they had they did a government relations legislative update nothing that we hadn't already discussed as a board or at some point in committee um and then gwen porter did a presentation on the board's role in curriculum which was excellent which i can share if anybody wants to see it you've probably all seen it before i probably learned more than most of you would as a new board member but it was really good um and then she talked about the new jersey social emotional learning competencies and sub
046competencies which was also a really interesting presentation um i i had the pleasure of attending the no place ready committee meeting at voorhees on may 11 and um this month the meeting was facilitated it was a training and facilitated discussion by dr natalie edmond and it was just an excellent discussion on privilege in power wheel and we just had a really um it was a great conversation about identity and privilege and how knowing ourselves helps us be better educators so it was a really it was it was a beautiful meeting um and then on friday i had the opportunity to to go to the new jersey school bus association equity conference and i have like two too many notes and i i don't want to go on forever and it's hard to compete with the
047level of power but i actually one of the things that my biggest takeaway from everything that i heard which was state leaders school districts student leaders from all over the state doing equity work diversity equity inclusion and really belonging work in their districts is that centering student voice in the process is by far the most effective way to do good belonging work you have to include students in the process and and hear their stories and let them leave when i let them lead the way the best um so it's similar right um anybody have any questions for ryan i think i don't know we did our student representatives we brought this to the board and i'm so thankful that we approved to do that and i hope we continue this every year because it's invaluable
048what you just said the voices of our student representatives is paramount to us as a board of hearing from the student populations on everything that's going on so thank you for your commitment and i hope as a board i don't think we voted on it but i don't know if it's going to be an ongoing situation thank you right thank you ladies um during this at this point in time we have an opportunity for public comment during this portion 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 team municipality of residence group affiliation if applicable and direct their comments to the school board president while all comments will be considered a response
049will 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 for a maximum of 30 minutes in length unless there are unusual circumstances those appearing will be allotted three minutes to speak and no one will be permitted to speak twice until those who have not yet had an opportunity to speak have had a turn is there anyone here for a public comment hi i'm mary fran daly and i am a parent of two fifth graders in print town and i just wanted to respond to some of the remarks that were made of last meeting by other members of the public uh first of all thank you so much for your service to our community that i very
050much appreciate the time that you give and also the gravity of your your role and also it's fun it's kids but i know it's a lot of work and a lot of balance to pull off um but it's such a weird position like you're an elected official right but when your name's on the ballot your politics aren't on there because our kids and our schools are such sacred things that we want to sort of pull some of that out of it so that you're focusing on what matters to our community what matters to our kids but i know gender identity and some curriculum and some library books have really gotten a lot of attention that is political attention and that there's a lot of strong feelings about that and i also too have strong feelings
051about that and they are because of an empty chair that was at the front row of the college of new jersey graduation last week and that was i'm a former sunday school teacher of this child who grew up in my community in my congregation he was a trans kid who died by his own hands his freshman year and i think it wasn't just his hands that he died by that it was a lot of this political intensity and focus and hatred that our culture is throwing at some of these kids and i just want you to take seriously your role of protecting these children who are marginalized from a minority who are unheard or who are perceived as having an agenda or whose acknowledgment is perceived as having an agenda that they're kids who need
052to just be left alone they need library books that represent their stories they need curriculum that acknowledges something that's not a heterosexual lifestyle which doesn't mean that we're ignoring any of the other life choices any of the other cultural beliefs just to let them be so thank you would anyone else from the public like to address the board okay uh cnn hi everybody i am high school and i am privileged to follow fran's remarks um as you are probably aware may is mental health awareness month an annual event to advocate for people and families dealing with mental illness given today's horrific news from texas a focus on mental health is not just timely it's essential you may not realize it but the school library plays a role in protecting student mental health every day kids
053tell us how much they appreciate the library as a peaceful refuge in the midst of a stressful school environment here are representative verbatim comments from this year's student library survey these are kids words the library helps me not feel lonely library staff have been very helpful supporting students they give me a nice and quiet place to study they're very kind whenever i get overwhelmed or need to focus i come to the library it's like a safe haven clearly students know the library to be a safe and welcoming space but the monthly protests at this microphone are quite a pain a very different picture characterizing the library's addend of iniquity its staff as predatory monsters and the materials as smut those basis attacks in the library and its books are by extension attacks on readers when
054you falsely describe well-reviewed award-winning titles as obscene disgusting and pornographic you're also demeaning the readers of those books according to the national coalition against censorship quote lgbtq youth and children from lgbtq families get the message that their own stories their very lives do not have value that they are shameful unquote that shame those feelings of worthlessness are a ticking time bomb in its 2022 survey on lgbtq mental health the trevor project found that 45 of lgbtq youth seriously considered suicide in the past year research at oregon health and science university found that feelings of loneliness are a key predictor for depression and suicidal ideation books and the library are a lifeline out of that loneliness books show readers that they are not alone and as we have heard the library our library offers students a
055safe haven just yesterday a colleague told me that our school library is perceived as having an agenda that is quote way overboard unquote in support of the lgbtq community although i would argue that such a perception is inaccurate i'll live with it because trevor project data showed the kids who found their school to be an lgbtq affirming place reported lower rates of attempting suicide if our library our library staff and our diverse materials keep students from self-harm or harming others that's work worthy of praise not criticism during this mental health awareness month i ask you to remember that the community and our kids are watching the words spoken here have an impact please manage these meetings to ensure the impact is one that protects the mental and emotional health of students and staff rather than
056one that attempts to achieve a false equivalency to placate a hostile extremist fringe thank you [Music] hi my name is elliot schneier union township i was part of the graduating class of 2017. um and first of all i want to thank all of you board members obviously this is kind of a thankless job sometimes right especially these sort of nonpartisan life positions are really kind of the bedrock of our system so i think you're taking the time out of your day especially some of you who maybe didn't sign up for such a position with such a spotlight i am though slightly concerned because um you know beyond those discussions of lgbt books i noticed and those these challenges may not have reached this district yet um but they're working their way through some other districts
057i wouldn't be surprised they arrived here um of some other books that are beyond um questions of lgbtq identity to a more broader net for example kurt vonnegut's slaughterhouse-five sally rooney's normal people and the kite run and it's a disturbing trend because it seems that coming before boards like this are going to be challenges that are not just to the identity of a marginalized group but more against people that have the guile to go against the hegemonic view of how society should be structured you know the reason that people like margaret atwood or george orwell um or kurt vonnegut are so controversial the same reason that they are so persistently relevant they stand up and say that just because everyone else says society should be structured like this does not mean it has to be
058they point out the hypocrisies the various moral failings for society and that's important for students content like that was certainly important for me um coming up and finding that because you might have a voice that is a little or opinions that are slightly different from everyone around you or even the um convention around you does not make it incorrect necessarily um and i think that this board has done a really good job making sure that people can read books and paintings that might go against as crow the supervision of a very good staff that we can see the results of the new us news report that puts north 100 in one of the top 10 percent of schools so i would just like to say that you know if those kind of challenges come up
059before this body i hope that they make a very wise decision to say that people should be able to think about alternative use the status quo it's not just about lgbtq identity although that's very important um but also the idea of you know the dominant view of society the criticism of our society and people may come up and feel threatened by that and say that shouldn't be in front of our kids but in my view i mean kids may feel this is an institution of learning a duty to be to create good citizens of the republic right when you graduate you're at the voting age to pick the new members of school board or new representatives you can't be sheltered if you're going to be going out to be a citizen of the republic to
060be a confident steward which i don't think is too much so hey you know uh pete gallagher thank you for all the good work everybody's doing i appreciate it i know good comments about going in the library and you know just getting away from the world and lose yourself in books um i've done that somewhat myself um i didn't go to college but i knew at an early age that um i like to look to the professionals for things that i have questions about one of my favorite teachers was an english teacher my sophomore year i was really troubled and made an impact in my life so i looked into the teachers principals counselors and stuff like that any kind of survey can be skewed whether it's a trevor survey southern baptist survey you know
061anything like that they could definitely be skewed um i think there's some other surveys out there uh people are having problems at home 80 percentile want to commit suicide or think about it 60 percent make a plan maybe 10 you know follow through with it my family my siblings and i grew up in a really heavy atmosphere a lot of abuse my sister killed herself a few years back she didn't handle what happened to her too well and it's just i think there's predators out there and i think there's other just things beyond our control that happen mental illness somebody talked about is a big and real thing out there we got to look to people you know to help us out we got to look to the pros i have issue with some of
062the books that are out there um not talking about the type of sex per se but just maybe the sex itself my one daughter read a book called glass castle i think the book around page 168 they talked about an uncle who was watching um of all television programs while rubbing his 11 year old niece's leg and pleasuring himself i kind of was disheartened to hear this and so i said let me look at it and i read it and um okay it was there it definitely was there i don't really teach that to my kids i only have three kids and i try to teach the best thing you know we have ways to go through life respect everyone you know try not to disrespect anyone you know defend yourself but i think that
063both sides are really inflamed you know just it's really a lot of uh stuff going on out there um and there's good cause you know because there's people that are setting fires and you know there's words that are you know out there nowadays and people are like oh they're gaslighting it's like years ago they used to call that lying but what i'm trying to say is i think the values that everybody's trying to teach is let's get along with each other we're all suffering through what we just went through over the past couple years and we just want the best for our kids one second and um i don't know if i'm too comfortable with having my daughters read this heavy stuff um it doesn't matter what side but you know i just have to
064voice my opinion first time i'm here in this format but uh you know i'll be back i just wanted to see how it goes and uh yeah i appreciate everything you guys are doing thank you very much so anyone else from the public would like to address the board okay um moving forward with the agenda i'd like to call for a motion in a second to approve agenda items 12.1 uh to 14.14 motion so all in favor all right all right the opposed abstentions uh is there any old or new business that we would like to discuss to support before you go on you said one seven i yeah there's there's three items on the agenda that i have to abstain from there on the staff training and travel requested to 14.17 okay thank you
065thanks charlie is there any older new business the board would like to discuss uh i had something um since we're at a time going for district goals superintendent of allen bordenbaum um which brings us back to the policy 1240. it didn't we left that last year and i think it was because i think glenn had brought it up that we would discuss that after we took um everyone took their seats new nominations and i believe it was not we had a discussion but i don't think it was approved okay can you just pull that and make sure policy we had a lot of discussion at that yep and i think that discussion was still open and it was left at the end of last year i will thank you okay anyone else i do um
066i would respectfully ask the board and administration to consider um the board gold session is set for june 28th um i'm not going to be here and then i have made plans to go visit family in ireland and i made those flights before we changed we had our agenda had been the 21st and then uh ms blue had asked if we could do because of accounts so we switched it to the last tuesday of the month so i'm not going to be here and i really believe that as a constituent representing my constituents i should be part of the hole in the board on our whole goal setting so i don't know if we can do a separate i know we're moving it to six o'clock if we can do a separate meeting for just
067goal setting and then do the 28th board meeting from seven to nine if that's permissible so i just want to put it out there because i can't change my family gathering and i have flights that were purchased before everything went crazy and i'm not going to be here i would like to be part of it so i would ask for that to be considered well i'll definitely we'll look into a chair thank you anyone else okay so i'd like a call for a motion and a second to adopt resolution zero five two four two two dash two for executive session to discuss matters falling under category four and eight as reflected in the tax resolution the board expects to be in executive session for approximately one hour and upon return to public session action will
068be taken it's almost ken rob all in favor extensions we're an executive session so um i can't speak um can i have a motion and a second to reconvene public session all in favor any opposed sentience motion carries um this time i'd like to ask if there's any new business to discuss okay see none can i call for a motion and a second to approve agenda items 19.1 and 19.2 including the following hand carry which is uh to approve the cna with the nhvea for a period of 2021 to 2024 as discussed in executive session second all in favor does that include the uh executive minutes i have to i have to abstain from the executive management anyone else abstaining yes um i'm abstaining from n point eight point three point one through end point
069and eight i'm abstaining from its n 8.3.1 through n 8.3.8 got it thank you abstain from 19.2 i don't know where the end comes in i don't know where you look at the schedules it's just the um yes can i call for a motion and a second to adjourn so move second all in favor any opposed [Music] you