001good evening um first of all i'd like to apologize for the late start we had some training that went over over a bit so thank you for your patience uh i guess mr karate would you do real call please here please stanford and to the republic for which it stands one nation adequate notice of this meeting has been sent to all members of the board of education and the bergen record in accordance with the provisions of the open public meetings act chapter 231 1975. uh oh okay at this moment i will turn it over to miss violetti thank you mr accomando first i is this one first i thank you first i um wanted to apologize because i was notified that the full agenda is not able to be linked onto our website today my
002office was trying to do it all day they reached out to the tech person who had to reach out to blackboard the website company so there was a glitch so the full agenda is not posted you might be able to access it if you if you're able to access the main ninth agenda on the website but i just wanted to share that and extend my apologies for that um so that you know what's occurring tonight so we have the vfw auxiliary r is going to present some um winners from their contest mrs wonder the principal at smith school is going to share a brief overview of our wellness policy and i'm going to share a brief overview of a referendum that we were discussing before i do all that i am going to ask our
003student reps to come up to the podium i will get you a microphone oh thank you mrs wonder student reps if you can come up to the podium so you can share the report hi my name is emma lee and i'm representing our three k through six schools firstly the recorder concert was a great success and the music teachers at all three schools received an overwhelming number of students interested in signing up for band or chorus for the next school year as a result students at every grade level are gearing up for their first field field trips in over two years nj sla testing has been going smoothly and field days are scheduled for next month and we're all looking forward to seeing our students in action hi my name is carly maltovano and i'll
004be talking about the washington school early childhood center the students at washington are finishing their unit on buildings and will begin their unit on insects using the creative curriculum the butterfly larvae will be arriving soon and the students will be observing the lifecycle of a butterfly the playground project is moving along and the fence is in the process of being installed miss wolf the art teacher continues to decorate our walls and beautiful artwork completing the hungry caterpillar and finishing with the colorful butterfly hi my name is olivia lash and i'll be representing middle school high school we had a great teacher appreciation week thanks to our pto and some generous donations that were made the abandoned choir competed at the festivals of music in the parks in williamsburg virginia where the high school brass ensemble
005received an excellent reading and the high school festival fire a superior rating finished first place in their division and was top choir overall at the festival the eighth graders had their trip to washington dc for the first time since 2019. the middle school high school hosted bring your child to work day upperclassmen helped out as tour guides the science honor society national honor society and environmental club participated in the first courtyard cleanup day since 2019. the shakespeare theatre of new jersey came to the middle school high school to perform romeo and juliet for our ninth graders senior jalen poretro is an award winner for the bergen county stigma-free sticker contest the junior honor society completed their support hour community service project that ended with a food drive for the food pantry they were able to
006donate 15 bags of food my name is alicia khan and i'll be representing our athletics congratulations to senior caroline caprelian on being selected as saddle brooks recipient for the njsia scholar athlete award caroline and her family will be attending a luncheon this sunday to accept her award please come out and support our spring athletic teams as we begin state tournament play and follow us on twitter for updates scores and results hi my name is samantha apgar and i'll be talking about curriculum and instruction njsla testing has begun for students in grades 3 through 12 in math and english language arts students in grade 5 8 and 11 will also take the njsla science summer reading assignments for the elementary schools will go out on friday we are planning a summer reading celebration for september in
007each building co-gap testing will take place in grades 2 4 and 6. this assessment is used for criteria for placing students in gifted and talented programming the light the nice committee is very excited about the june 1st light the night community event we are coming together as a community with the leukemia and lymphoma society lls to show our support and raise money for those affected by these illnesses we hope to see everyone there a google form was sent out on may 6 2022 to sign up thank you student reps they always do such a great job and we appreciate you being here there is actually a new new jersey law i suppose that is going to go into effect next school year to have student reps be act an actual part of board of ed
008meetings um to sit at the table with us so we will definitely keep you all in mind as we move forward with that next year so thank you okay so i just have a couple items to share i wanted to just respond to some of the questions that were asked at the last board meeting one question was in regards to busing and reaching out to the township so we did reach out to the township we are scheduling a meeting with them um to discuss what was discussed in the past with the previous superintendent and see if we are able to develop a solution to that and then there was also a question raised about an sat prep course so we are reaching out to our staff to see if any would be interested in teaching
009the sit prep course as part of our summer academy here at the middle school high school and also looking into the option of using title funds for a course for next school year so we are working on that with the middle high school administration team so i wanted to make sure we addressed that i wanted to also thank all of our ptos our ptos did a tremendous job in making all of our staff feel extremely um welcomed and they're like thankful i suppose is the right word um for having them and our you know our staff does such an amazing job and our parents did a really amazing job showing them their appreciation so i wanted to extend a giant thank you to all of our ptos in each of our buildings i wanted to
010let our parents now i will send an update i try to send it the next day so hopefully by tomorrow afternoon an update on the sport of ed meeting will go out to the entire community part of that update will be a link to a one question uniform survey it's going to ask if you want a uniform or you don't want a uniform moving forward next school year if you want to keep everything as is currently with the current uniform policy where they're able to everyone students are able to wear their pe tire every day or if you want to not have a uniform policy in the district and wish to have a dress code instead there would still be guidelines set by the board and the dress code policy but it wouldn't be a
011uniform so that one question survey will be going out to our parents and the reason why we're sending it out now is so that our policy committee will be able to meet in june and get it on the june agenda if any revisions need to be made that would be the first reading our next meeting would be august we do not meet typically in the month of july that would be the second reading and any changes or revisions would go into effect for september of 2022 also if you did i will resend the late the night google form for the invitation for everyone the entire community to come join us we're very excited for our first light the night event that would benefit the leukemia and the lymphoma society we have one of our students
012that were designing a t-shirt pattern so at the late the night event there will be t-shirts sold where the funds will go to our families in the district that have been affected by this disease there also is going to be a full week of dress downs for leukemia and again the funds collected are going to our families in district that have been affected by this disease so i just wanted you to keep your eyes open to that and our student that created us we have very talented students in our district and i needed to highlight that i also wanted to share that myself and some members of our leadership team are presenting at the new jersey um association of superintendents we're presenting as a district on our sel initiatives that we've been doing for the
013last few years so very excited to be able to represent saddlebrook and highlight some of the positives that saddlebrook is is completing at this time so we're excited about that and i wanted to thank our staff for scheduling field trips so it was not an easy task whatsoever so late in the school year to start scheduling field trips for their classes they reached out to secure busing to secure a location and have a day where there's nothing on the calendar is very tricky at this point in the school year and our administration our leadership team and our teachers and our main office worked very hard in order to get these field trips on the calendar and i just want to make sure we extend our thanks to them because it's very much appreciated and nice
014that our students are finally able to experience getting on a school bus some have never been able to do that and go on a field trip with their classes so we're very excited to have that happen this year i think that is ever oh i have one more mr nicholas milan is a high school english teacher here in saddlebrook and he is resigning he um he was offered an offer he was offered an offer um that he couldn't deny he couldn't turn down just um to it would be the best decision for his family at this time he was unable to attend tonight's meeting and he did ask me to share a statement so if you just bear with me for a minute while i share what he wanted me to want to meet a
015state as i leave my position i want to wish a most sincere thank you to everyone i've worked with including leadership colleagues support staff and students so much of teaching is a calling and an identity and an identity and in this we find a great irony although my title is teacher i was the one learning every single day my colleagues and students taught me how to listen to learn they taught me what empathy looks like and how communities are built the saddlebrook community was there for me in every step as i lost family members and welcomed nuance the district trusted me and challenged me with growth opportunities and leadership roles so that i could offer myself to move the district forward i leave my role with pride as i reflect on my proficient professional impact
016the friends i've made and the many student lives i've had i have touched i know that in the hands of miss violetti along with the entire administrative team and some of the best teachers in new jersey the district will continue to witness growth and achievement deserving of saddlebrook i want to thank the community for allowing me to serve it has truly been an honor and a privilege so i just wanted to thank mr milan for sharing that with our community and we wish him the very best at this time i'm going to ask our vfw auxiliary art ms kathleen shanahan to please come up and you can present your winners thank you how's everyone good uh evening so um my name is kathleen shanahan i'm the president of the bfw auxiliary here in saddlebrook and
017i'm here to recognize some of our youth for contests and scholarship opportunities that we have and we offer them yearly they're very important to us because these programs will help foster a feeling of patriotism and that is definitely one of our program goals we're all excited to live in this great nation as we should be but in particular we um really are happy when we can see that our children oh there we go are are developing that feeling right along with us because after all they're going to be the leaders of tomorrow and um some of the contests that we had recently going through the auxiliary we had a singing contest that spanned uh two age groups uh the elementary and then we had a high school level and we also had art contests the
018same there were different breakdowns for elementary and also high school winners and personally i really love this opportunity because i think it's very important to recognize that children have many different talents and ways to express themselves outside of academics and so when we recognize the arts as a way to express their feelings i think we're really hitting education goals and program goals for us at the vfw as well so i have two of the elementary winners here tonight and i like to call them up miss emma day fernandez won our elementary art contest [Applause] congratulations emma also please and this is a welcome back for a second time for miss vida del orbe she was actually our winner last year vita by the way last year she went on to um place nationally so we're
019really really proud of her vita one on the elementary level congratulations again vita we're so proud of you and um this time of year everything you know high school students are going in 500 different directions so i don't have the high school winners here but i would like to tell you uh thomas wojcik from he's a saddlebrook high school senior he won the red white and blue singing contest for the high school and yep so he'll be singing actually the anthem at the memorial day parade the national anthem and then our other winner for the art contest for high school um is actually an out of district um young man devin muciel thank you so much thank you at this time we're going to have the winners come up to take a quick photo and
020the board members can actually go have a seat because mrs wonder is going to present next on the wellness commission okay all right testing all right thank you thank you very much have a great evening congratulations okay at this time we have mrs deborah wonder from helen i smith school she's our district wellness coordinator and she's going to briefly share a little bit about our wellness policy thank you good evening thank you for having me here last time i was up with mrs violetti she introduced me to deborah smith so i am at smith school you're never going to live that one down but good evening i'm just going to take a few moments of time to review our wellness policy um what is policy you ask that's a great question this is our district
021policy that deals with nutrition promotion and education so if you look it's centered around our promotion making sure our students are educated as well as the community on nutrition physical activity and other school-based activities so there are really seven major areas that we're looking at some of them are self-explanatory but i will go through a couple of them with you um these are things that we're gonna have to work on moving forward because in the past we haven't done much around some of this um so a lot of this will be a little bit new so nutritional promotion is the idea that as the coordinator and as a district we should be making sure that age-appropriate sign signage is up around the building so in the elementary schools there should be you know food pyramid
022different food nutritional things up on the walls what it looks like in high school might look a little bit different appropriate to their level of um their levels as well as they have some different smart snacks they're allowed to have something that we we look at as well um it also deals with getting student input so in the future we will be getting surveying classes or students at all different levels to get their input on the food services what they like what they want to change all those different components now that we have a lot of students on their chromebooks it'll be a lot easier to survey and get some real feedback from them and speak to classrooms across the district it also involves things like reviewing the placement of food items on the service
023line and looking at what's best for elementary students as far as the service line versus the high school students so these are things that two years ago we couldn't do much with being that we weren't here for lunch and this year it's been a little bit modified so this is something moving forward that we'll take a good look at in all the buildings looking at nutritional education again making sure our students are getting that education that they are getting the lunch menu that it includes information and facts that they're getting the promotional details and that these are all focused on the nutritional elements that they should be aware of and reviewing physical activity all students receive health and pe um it's something that we need to be reviewing regularly they want us to review age-appropriate
024recess equipments that's something we've begun looking at is making sure that all the buildings have equipment that is appropriate it also strongly encourages the ideas of doing organized play at recess not just let the kids run freely and those are some things that we've started implementing and seeing a huge difference on so that's something we'll build on and i'm going to have to look at across the buildings that we have the right equipment for recess and we're not always stealing from the pe teachers and losing things outside um also it's talking about encouraging classes to do events outside encouraging walkathons encouraging being outside encouraging different things that involve health and wellness taking brain breaks but not just a break in the room taking your kids out for recess doing some learning outside and making it
025active so those are elements that we're looking at other school based activities are are what we need to look at in adding wellness when we have other types of activities when we're doing things with the pto with class parents and other types of events in our schools so that's something we'll have to look at and and come up with some guidelines this will be something i report to the superintendent as well as to the board in the community regularly so you will see me each may assuming i stay on as the coordinator um and we will look at the growth and things that we need to work on um and encourage additional wellness activities if they're things we can add on this year we're going to do field days again we did them last year
026they were modified we were adding more elements every year um in different pieces i know some of the schools are doing walk to school wednesdays and things like that so looking at other ways we could promote wellness um and in in what ways are best in the different buildings it may be different per building other areas of focus are really looking at the nutritional guidelines that we're supposed to be following and that's in conjunction with pomptonians so i have been talking with food services um they're really looking for us to help spotlight their different promotion events um and their recipe events that they do all of the food and beverages that they bring in as well as ones we bring in for fundraisers and class parties should really need to comply with the federal meal
027standard and the hhfka which is the healthy hunger-free kids act of 2010 um and what is that that involves um really making healthier choices so it's things like low salt low sugar low fat items no empty calories so in the past you might have been offering brownies and cupcakes and donuts we should be having you know salt free popcorn fruit cups water i like all the water up here our flavored water things like that um vending machines in schools we have to look at that as well the options that are being given out should be in compliance as well as when we have class parties so those are things we'll be looking at um i will be consulting with all the administration about what that looks like in their building how we share that out
028to the community things like moving forward making sure there's statements in the handbook statements that are visible for others to see so as i said going forward you know continuing to build committees having surveys for the students getting feedback within each building because obviously the middle school high school is going to have different interests and wants than maybe the elementary school or the preschool as far as what we need for for posters or the materials or the food that we're offering um working with food services as a liaison trying to spotlight their menu items and things that they're bringing in so that they're successful and that we're also increasing the different fruits and vegetables and options that our students are trying out you know my job will be to make sure the information gets out
029there to staff administration the community and the students and continue to update all organizations so those are things we'll have to put in place moving forward so really ultimately our goal is to be active healthy and happy thank you very much [Applause] thank you mrs wonder the district wellness coordinator is a mandated position so we appreciate you serving as our district wellness coordinator you're going to stay there don't go anywhere yet i'm not done speaking okay i'm now going to share a little bit about our referendum proposal um it's going to be a quick overview this evening and what we're looking to do is have the board of ed vote to have the questions in june at their june meeting and looking for a community vote on the ballot on december 2022 so that's our
030goal so if you haven't heard i've announced it a couple times that we were talking about creating a middle middle school in the district so before i just want everybody to know it was not a quick oh let's have a middle school let's do something fun and different we really did take a look as to what the district does need and it also did organically come from our strategic planning sessions ironically around the same time we were talking about it but that was not i did not have that input i promise so one of the things that you know why a middle school was the space in the k to six buildings so i was principal at franklin school and i can tell you that when i first started the ell teacher was holding classes
031outside the gymnasium in the little area whatever that area was drawing a blank but in the area outside the gymnasium the guidance counselor was in the janitor's closet with this device that made noises throughout the day and our dyslexia interventionist specialist was in a corner of the hallway at the back elevator there is no space so what we have been doing is working throughout the years we're converting a lot of our storage areas in our elementary buildings to different offices and closets and small classrooms that can be utilized leaving us with no storage but we're doing our best even with that we are still lacking space and it's not really essentially it's not necessarily because of an increase in student population we are doing a demographic study we will see what the results are but
032i think more importantly it's the growth of our programs and our um what we're offering for our students what's mandated by the state of new jersey basic skills is mandated by the state of new jersey when i first started um and even right now long school has one basic skills person they have a reading specialist who's also the math basic skills instructor those with title funds have two they have a math basic skills teacher and a reading specialist will those teachers do need classrooms to host these small groups in order to be effective because those students that go that are participate in basic skills whether it's with the reading specialist or the math basic skills instructor they're generally speaking the students that get easily distracted the students that need a little bit more focus putting
033them in a large room or dividing a room in half is not really ideal in order to achieve the goals that we're looking to achieve we also this year have the interventionist that we hired with our esser funds we have three or four teacher desks in a classroom with the interventionist i'm really struggling to find room and locations for them to really meet with their small groups moving forward we're having one interventionist in the building which is also really important because it's a state mandate to have new jersey tiered system of supports and sorry i'm talking a lot but what that means is you have three tiers so tier one is the instruction that all students receive tier two are the students that need a little bit more instruction they need those small groups and
034tier three are the students that need intensive more instruction more intensive instruction so tier two students might have a small group two to three times a week for a half hour tier three might be one to one or two on one every day a week for a half hour so it just increases the intensity of it but in order to be in abidance with new jersey tier system of supports we need to have locations for these small groups to meet we also have child study team personnel so when i first started at franklin school all child study team meetings were held in the media center in the library classes would come down check out library books the meeting was going on supposed to be a really confidential meeting not ideal so we would have to
035close off the library tell classes they couldn't enter and it really got to be a little tricky so we have offices now in each building for our child's study team personnel and we have areas for them to meet and hold their mandated meetings that are mandated by the state of new jersey at a minimum annually i want to take a moment to oh and every building does have a full-time counselor we're so lucky insider book to have that um definitely needed and they need their space as well they do counseling with students they do small groups they do lunch bunches social skills they do you know a whole lot a whole lot um and they do need a dedicated space in order to accomplish their goals i'm spending the most time on the slide i
036promise special education programs i just want to take a moment and a lot of times when you're in education you assume everybody else knows what you're talking about so when we talk about special education there's different types so a special education student might have in-class support and class support is when the teacher goes into the general ed classroom and they co-teach and the thought is that you have two teachers in the classroom that treat every student so that is that like like they are his like he or she is their student then you have resource room resource room are students that get pulled out for a content area so they might get pulled out for reading they might get pulled out for writing they may get pulled out from mathematics they get pulled out for
037a content area and the rest of the day is spent in their general ed classroom but you do need a location to have those resource room classes another special education program is lld or lld classes those students are in their classes the entire day so it's small group instruction for all content areas but then they'll join their general ed peers with special areas and other activities in this school then we have our aba or multiple disabled classrooms those are the classrooms such as the cell program here we have an aba classroom at long school two at smith school those classes are a little bit more intense and they have one-to-one paris and they have programming aba applied behavioral analysis programming with those students in order to achieve their goals my point is that for all
038of these programs to occur and for us to continue bringing our students back to the district we need locations for them so we are creating an aba classroom at franklin school next year it actually might be lld because it is dependent on the needs of the students and what their iep teams determine is needed so what happens is when a child is brought over to the child study team for an evaluation they complete evaluations on that student those evaluations are then analyzed by the child study team and that's when they determine what the correct placement is and what that child needs so they might determine that child needs resource room they might determine that child needs one to one whatever it is they determine we need to offer it to that child and it has
039to be the least restrictive environment that is law so you cannot take a child and put them in an aba classroom because that's the room that you have space in okay it has to be exactly what the child needs there's also mandates such as there's a maximum number of students in an aba classroom you can max out at six lld i think it might be 10. and there's also limits on grade levels so we're at k to 6 building in the elementary school you can all have a k to 6 lld classroom that's illegal so i think it might and even resource room it might be two it's either two or three grade levels or a grade level span that you're able to have together so there are restrictions on that research and adolescence and
040their development so when we talk about our sixth graders at this point in the year or maybe a few months ago our sixth graders are ready they're ready to go to middle school they're ready to switch classes every 49 minutes they're ready to just developmentally have that motion and have that interaction with others and they're socially there and ready to grow um what the research shows is that around the time of adolescence there's a growth spurt in the brain there's a brain growth spurt and that's where you know these sixth graders really benefit from being with the seventh and eighth grade together where they're all getting exactly what they need because what a sixth grader needs is very different from what k to five needs even though fifth and sixth are a year apart it's
041still what the research shows is the sixth grade um students just develop a little bit different in different ways than their fifth grade peers also njsls are our new jersey state learning standards our new jersey state learning standards are written in grade level bands so they're written k to two three to five six to eight so when we're writing curriculum we have to write a separate curriculum for each grade level but our sixth grade teachers are on their own writing that curriculum because the times don't match up to the middle school so they're writing that curriculum on their own because unpacking those standards on their on their own without having any colleagues to collaborate with the other piece is when you purchase curriculum programs i was director of curriculum instruction before in saddlebrook the programs
042are sold k to five and six to eight so when we just looked at a math program for k to six you have to purchase the k to five math program and then you had to purchase grade six seventh and eighth grade here of a different math program so those sixth graders did have a choice so sixth grade teachers decided to go with the same program k to five had for consistency but now they're going to come to the middle school next year and there are going to have a different math program related services oh that just has to do with space as well so our speech occupational therapist physical therapists they are often struggling for areas in the school buildings to work with their students and a lot of times the speech is partnering
043up with either otpt or in the back of a classroom and when you when a child needs speech therapy they need quiet they need to focus they need that one-to-one or a small group so it's important for them to have a dedicated space the other piece is that all of our students would benefit from an expansion of program supports and facilities so if we're able to do this and create a middle school then our k-6 buildings would have space they'd have space to have a lab a meet a true media center at franklin school they could get the music classroom out of the cafeteria because that limits the number of lessons and classes that they're able to have there and it would make smith school have a media center or true media center there'd be
044two extra classrooms that we can create a true media center at smith school so there'd be benefits to every building part of the proposal is also to revamp washington school so washington schools are preschool so i'm going to talk about that a little bit later but then also our middle school students will have a brand new facility that they'll be able to grow in and our high school we're lacking space in our middle school high school because we're 7 to 12. and before i forget the other piece i wanted to talk about was that you know our middle school students are not separated the entire day from our high school students we try our best but when i walk these hallways there's definitely times that i do see middle school students in the same hallway
045as high school students so we really want to separate that and not have that interaction we do our best but it's definitely not 100 but at our high school we're looking to add these programs so next year we're adding an aviation program we're able to purchase the flight simulator we're able to purchase 10 drones super excited we have a teacher on board but we don't have the space so it's going to be like the back of a classroom is going to have the simulator the drones and you know we'll make it happen and we'll do our best but it would be amazing if we had a dedicated space that we can make into an aviation lab so if we want to bring programs back to the high school we need the space in order to
046do so um you know our music program they can definitely use more space for all the practices and the shows and they're an amazing program they just you know as our students shared they won awards recently um but you know in order to create the space this is our proposal and then you can see out of approximately 80 school districts in bergen county nine including saddlebrook have seven to twelve buildings i do have them all so i can share that with everybody this will be posted on our website as well um but i wanted to share that okay so what are we proposing we are proposing an extension of this building so what we are proposing is creating a modus middle school off of our auxiliary gym so that's the easiest way for me to
047explain it if you take in this building we have our main gym and then in the back we have our auxiliary gym that auxiliary gym would be the middle school gym and we're going to make it regulation size so if you take the auxiliary gym and just kind of go back over the back field the practice field that is where our middle school that would be our middle school and it would be separate from the high school but an extension of this building so i'm not going to details about the actual building but it would obviously be a state-of-the-art middle school building our we are also proposing turfing our athletic fields and putting lights there you know part of school spirit is having those friday night football games part of socializing is able to have
048the kids go to these games and not feel singled out not feel like they're not part of something so you know right now you know when i went to the football games this past year you might see three or four students show up and you know in their spirit wear whether you know they have certain themes like a pink out or a white out but when you go to friday night games in other districts you see an entire student section that are have all the way all the way you know wearing a white or wearing all pink whatever it is and they're all cheering and it just sort of brings it together a little bit more it also allows for more scheduling and different um sel for students there's a whole lot to that we'll
049go back to that but our roof of the auxiliary gym would be redone security office at the high school so at the high school front entrance making am security office out there so that way visitors do not enter the building to drop off things it's more of a check-in at the front door toilet room renovations which are needed in the building upgrades to the front of the high school so make them front of high school pretty making um an awning and just uh you know a nice path and some plants and just making it a little bit more inviting part of the proposal would be new furniture because you can have a building without furniture so that is a part of it in washington school you need you need an elevator to be in abundance
050with state regulations so elevator you need toilet rooms in every preschool classroom preschool in kindergarten you are mandated to have toilet rooms in there update the ceiling and lights and add a security window again for the front vestibule area renovation to create a media center at helen ice mid school taking those two empty classrooms creating a true media center there and then security upgrades at long school because long school also does not have that security area where you're able to pass things through a window all the other buildings do have that so we're just trying to make it consistent in every building the window curtain walls i learned this term at the middle school high school so when the walls are completely windows we're looking to redo those um specifically speaking if you think of
051our courtyard area here at the middle school high school those are window curtain walls so all those windows will be replaced i'm putting a new roof and ceiling and lights at the high school the reason you'll hear a lot about ceilings and lights because when you brighten up a school building it creates a more inviting feel and it just adds to the overall general happiness that people feel when they're walking and working in the building so by you know brightening it up with new lights and a new ceiling just offers that inviting feel so smith's school also so putting new roofs across you know across the district and ceiling and lights and brightening it up the cardiff is at franklin school are really dark and old so again just to brighten it up and make
052it more inviting we know from our teachers that when we do one of their classrooms when we do we do a floor and we redo the lights and we paint it those teachers come in and they are just as happy as can be and what a difference it makes when the area you're working in all day long is just bright and happy um and then another part we're proposing this is not 100 definite this these are our initial thought not our initial thoughts we've been talking about this forever these are our thoughts is three questions so that first slide the previous slide would be the first question this top half would be the second question and the third question would be to turf the remaining of the back field which would be a side field
053it would also be i think i believe a soccer field and a lacrosse field would be able to fit on that and then also renovations to coolidge school coolidge school is the building where our baseball team plays the baseball team that plays on the county park coolidge school is currently the township building so we get that back this year but it is extremely old on the inside so what we are proposing is renovating the entire building creating offices and a professional learning lab so the offices would be for the technology department essentially because we are growing our technology department and then also having a professional learning lab where we can have our literacy consultant that we use in the district and other pd in that professional learning lab and invite other teachers from other districts
054and create a revenue for the district so it'd be the thought behind this promise has a huge summer literacy um pd session for two weeks that districts all over bergen county attend and there's a large fee for that so the thought behind it was creating a true professional learning lab where to create revenue the other thing i want to add to going back to special education speaking of revenue holdings but having these special education programs in district enables us to keep our students in district important for many reasons but one of the main reasons would be it saves us money we currently have over 60 students out of district in special education programs special education programs range from 40 000 for the year to 110 000 per student and that's not including transportation so when
055we're looking at bringing these students back into district it's actually at a cost and a savings to our district and the other pieces if we do have the space we cur like i believe in our cell program we have at least one student that is out of district so other districts if they see you know their iep team meets for a student and they determine you know the student needs this placement and they don't have it in district they send them to us and they pay tuition so then we get that money as a district so it's something else i think it's important for everybody to understand as well i put a slide to that you know the turf field to sort of explain why there would be a need for a turf field i
056spoke about the friday night games but that's not the only reason so there's it actually shows a reduction in injuries there's research research that cites that um you know when you're playing on a grass field a lot of times there's uneven areas and it's not the fault of anybody it's just the nature of having a grass field or if there's a rainstorm there'll be a ditch so there's certain things that happen that creates injuries so having the turf field eliminates that usability having a trophy so with the grass field after it rains you can't use it it's wet and muddy you can't use it when chemical treatments are made when you see this put down so having a turf field will make it available and playable every day rain or shine so if you have
057children that play sports you know that when you play somewhere that has a turf field it could be a cold rainy day they're still playing so it does make a difference it also will benefit our pe classes they'll be able our students to be able to use the turf field throughout the day and all the extension of the classroom because they'll be able to utilize it and get outside and cost effective no cutting no watering no seating no aerating no other chores we don't need our maintenance people cutting the grass these police cause this is my favorite geese police cause costs a lot it costs approx i don't know 10 to 15 thousand dollars to have the geese police come they run around with their dog to scare the geese away so that would be
058eliminated time and hours spent by a grounds crew and we'll free up our groundsmen to complete other tasks so if we were to move forward with this what would this accomplish well we accomplished you know what a high school where we can bring back programs and create labs i know recently most recently in the paper in north jersey lodi school built created two labs it'd be amazing to be able to do something like that here in saddlebrook um you know it'd be a true middle school and we'll talk more about that as we move forward with this what the benefits of that are we'd be able to create so special education another piece of special education is you're mandated by law to have a you have that student until they're 21. so when they turn
05917 or 18 they would technically be a senior you're not done with them as a district you need to pay for them until they're 21. so that means every special ed student we have that would be in 13th grade 14th grade 15th grade we're paying every year to send them out of district so we would be able to create a program here in district with those 18 to 21 students teaching them life skills job skills things such as that to benefit them that would be all be part of their iep goals we'd be able to have services and supports to our k-5 students we would have true reading specialist areas we would have true math labs for them to work in um really we were able to have a gifted and talented area an enrichment
060area maybe even a wellness room we'd be able to have supports for our k to five students that we're seeing a need for um you know maybe this year after cover might be unique but we are seeing some students really struggle and i think that by expanding our wellness services we're doing our students justice a growing preschool so our community is growing our preschool is growing we love our preschool program um you know we have a lot of students that do pay for tuition to enter preschool we also have our three-year-old and four-year-old preschool disabled classrooms those are iep students so a district is responsible for a special education student when they turn three so if you have a child that is classified before the age of three but by either a developmental pediatrician or
061by the state of new jersey they may receive early intervention when they turn three it's mandated that they get evaluated by the district and then they you need to have a preschool for them so this is part of our preschool program but part of that mandate is also that you have general general ed peers so you need to have inclusive classrooms so that's where our tuition-paid students come into play and we're looking to grow our tuition program our preschool program it's such a happy building when you go in there there's a lot it's action-packed um and there's lots of fun that goes on there but they have the creative curriculum they're doing a lot with those students and we're really seeing what we would love is have more of our students start in saddlebrook as
062a preschooler and benefit from being in our district in our school community it would allow for more effective schedule options for selecting courses we are tied at the middle school high school our hands are tied a lot of time when students want an elective but it doesn't fit into their schedule so and that's just because of space you know teachers move around they teach electives in different in different classrooms and having that lack of space just doesn't allow you to hold an elect to host an elective at every period keep students in district student wellness security vestibules in all buildings our roofs are up for repairs so this would allow us to fix all our roofs ceiling and lights and the revenue that would be brought in okay so our you know costs and details
063will be shared at june's board of ed meetings we are meeting june 13th which is a monday and june 15th which is a wednesday we will have a little bit more information for you at that time and we'll also be hosting at some point excuse me i never speak this much at some point we'll be hosting a community event we'll invite the entire community we'll go visit different community centers and we'll share details we'll have the architects come we'll share everything but at this point we wanted to share what our thoughts were because we were sharing with the community that we were talking about it and we just full transparency wanted to share exactly what we were talking of and what we're going to have um our board of education vote on this question on
064whether you know to have that question and have it for a december vote um at june's meeting so i just wanted to share that there is an email that is up there so it's referendum 2022 at sbpsnj.org any questions or comments that you have you may send an email to that email address and i will receive it i am the only one that has access to it at this time so if you send an email to that any questions you have any comments you have we do want the community feedback because it's going to help us create something that's going to benefit the entire community so please send feedbacks and any questions you have any ideas you have and let us know what you're thinking that is it thank you okay thank you miss violetti
065uh mr karate would you like to give you a report yes i don't i don't have much this evening just that the budget uh will be approved tonight which is which is very good we can start ordering some items that are going to take a little while to get and and also the projects and if anybody missed the meeting on monday obviously you can watch it through our website and there's also a budget link that has um different budget information so you can see it there you can always email or call me okay thank you thank you okay uh i'd like to open well first of all thank you to the vfw um for the presentation and i'd like to open a meeting for a public comment on agenda items only okay never mind okay
066uh port action items b2122.39 to b2122.43 okay get a motion second thank you okay mr karate any comment question anything okay do i have to abstain yet just done oh yeah this one here okay okay so uh we'll start with mr shearer tonight miss traverso yes ms zadarelli yes miss borrelli yes designello yes mr lorentino yes ms mahoney yes mr accomando uh yes to all but i will be abstaining from b2122.40 okay thank you okay um okay unfortunately ms torvik is not here so at the recommendation of the superintendent i make a motion to prove the following items um e 2122.62 um that's it two e two one two two six four can i get a second second any discussion comment and okay mr karate mr shearer yeah mr verso yes rosadorelli yes miss borrelli
067yes designello yes uh but i'm gonna abstain from e2 item number 767. yes where's laurentino yes there's actually one you have to on the field trip and when i looked there were no problems sorry wrong one my fault i'm jumping the gun miss mahoney yes and mr commando yes okay uh mr shearer second any discussion okay mr karate mr shearer yes miss traverso yes ms zadarelli i i'm abstaining from f2122102 check number six one one eight and i am voting no on f2122.120 and yes for everything else who's borreli yes who's inelo uh yes but i'm going to abstain from certain items on f2 one two two point one zero two check number two one zero nine check number two four two eight in f2 one two two point one zero five i'm going to
068abstain from id numbers to eleven and 224 and then in f21222.116 i'm going to abstain from two and three with the parents association okay this will work okay thank you mr morentino check numbers two one four eight and two four six five i'm going to abstain under f2122.105 numbers 211 and 220. ms mahoney yes 12. policy mr lawrentino foreign any discussion second second i'm sorry second discussion comment mr karate mr shearer yes miss traverso yes is zadarelli yes mrs borrelli yes designello yes yes okay uh is saturday anything from you young lady nothing that can be reported okay miss traverso yes with regards to personnel at the recommendation of superintendent i make a motion to approve the following items p2122.82 through p two one two two point nine two oops what the hell is that
069what is that sorry uh i need uh any discussion okay um if i could have just done where it says new on page seven again i want to say but that's a great hire by the district for mr bernier he's uh well respected well liked by the students and coaches alike so good hire okay ready yep mr shearer yes miss traverso yes is that a rally yes ms burally yes ms ianello yes uh on the new hire i'm going to abstain from item number seven okay mr warrantino yes ms mahoney yes mr accomando yes okay um committee mr sheer i'm going to do that report tonight since mr scheuer was unable to meet okay sorry about that um we uh as mr shearer mentioned we reviewed and approved all the items under the budget financing
070facilities a lot of those things were things that we go through every year so we kind of just checked those out we talked about the long school parking lot that was repaved and also created um additional grass play area in that building we reviewed a facility use request from fire company number one we talked about the food service operations that are going well with their free meal reimbursement from the federal government the cafeteria serving lines will be replaced as well as some tables and finally we review the potential referendum projects okay thank you so much uh we're going to pass by you there's nothing oh okay what i can say is we've met several times the latest being monday and things are just moving along okay thank you so much mr lorentino we just voted
071for the first reading i think the ones to highlight is what our superintendent brought up in regards to the survey uh for the uniform says one thing that we're uh working on with the thrill to come back after he sends out the survey okay thank you so much uh liaisons um i guess we'll go to ptos let's start with you miss gave my ayanello on monday just re-enter it and say thank you to the middle school school ptl the um board for all the work you did for the teachers and support staff and everyone from uh thank you to all the parents to all the very generous donors and just a reminder that the next pto meeting will be on june 13th 7 30 p.m thank you very much miss traverso yes lung school is
072finishing up their year with some activities we have the sixth grade car wash this weekend i believe it's saturday at washington school and field day is being split this year on june 1st from k through 3 and june 2nd uh fourth through sixth grade and this one i love the name it's ties and tiaras and it's replacing the old you know daughter father daughter dance it's you know special man type of thing and and what not with a little girl and that was on june 6th of the fiesta and the tricky tray is also the fiesta on june 14th so they've got some things to look forward to okay thank you so much um is that really okay the upcoming events for franklin school is their book fair is on the 18th and 19th they're
073tricky tray which is on the 31st there are still some tickets available and if anyone would like to donate they're more than willing to accept their field day is scheduled for six two and six three they're splitting it k through two and three through six rain dates six eight and six nine uh they're doing lawn signs for the sixth graders as a fundraiser uh they did a great job on teacher appreciation week one of the big highlights was they did mo's mexican uh the pto is also supplying field day t-shirts for field day class trips they're contributing to i'm very happy to say they've resumed um other than the turkey tray that's it their wax museum is tomorrow night and the next meeting is to be determined because of breaks and june is a crazy
074month okay thank you so much okay first i'm going to do smith but first i want to say like miss violetti said thank you to the ptos for acknowledging our teachers and appreciating what they do and then that note um thank you miss carberry for the information the ptl the pto held its uh spring book fair in april and it was a it was the most successful book fair they've ever had uh the plan is to use the book the proceeds to buy books for all students for summer reading the pto also held an upcycle challenge on earth day students made a new item out of coal old recycled or trash recyclable trash the kids made some pretty awesome creations the prizes will be announced next week we also had a clothing drive and the
075sixth grade hosted a very successful home run derby the pto celebrated all the amazing staff and teachers during teacher and staff appreciation week last week uh food and gifts were provided including falcon umbrellas if you would like to own falcon a falcon umbrella we are selling the leftovers please contact the smith school pto for more purchasing details the pto purchased three new coding robots for the media center these robots will be used to teach the students how to code in three dimensions the pto will also be purchasing new equipment for uh recess as well the next pto meeting will be thursday 5 19 and we'll be discussing the end of the year events and celebrations and thank you miss carberry and let's see any correspondence old business can i just um say in a reminder
076that schools are closed friday may 27th and tuesday may 31st the day after memorial day or two give back days from not using the snow days so as a reminder school just all school buildings will be closed and also isn't there a concert tomorrow spring concerts it's concert season so spring concerts are in session i know our middle school concert will kick it off tomorrow night thank you okay new business okay open to meetings for cub public comment anyone wish to speak okay residents are requested to state their name address and subject matter in the event it appears the public comment portion of this meeting may exceed 45 minutes the presiding officer may limit each statement made by a participant to five minute durations issues raised by members of the public may or may not
077be uh responded to by the board all comments will be considered and a response will be forthcoming if and when appropriate the board asks that members of the public be courteous and mindful of the rights of other individuals when speaking specifically comments regarding students and employees of the board of education are discussed discouraged and will not be responded to by the board students and employees have specific legal rights afforded by the laws of new jersey the board bears no responsibility nor will it be liable for any comment made by members of the public members of the public should consider comments in light of the legal rights of those affected or identified in their comments and be aware that they are legally responsible and liable for their comments uh motion and a second to open it
078motion thank you and i hope that was good enough for mr uh taylor hi my name is jennifer savolsky i live at 135 herbert terrace i am a lifelong saddlebrook resident i grew up here and graduated from long memorial school when it was k-8 um a very long time ago i dated myself my son is currently a student at long memorial school both of my daughters also graduated with um from long memorial school i have two daughters at parochial school now one is a senior graduating and starting college i am a fan of our little town i thank all of you for your service stuart we volunteer my husband and i in the town a lot a lot of different things so i just want to come here to say that i am raising a
079concern but um you know not because i'm disappointed in the district as a whole just you know there's something that i felt we could do better and i wanted to raise your attention to something that was concerning to me um i'll start uh briefly with a story of how this kind of came up on january 14th we were out to dinner um with my son my husband and i and he had mentioned to us that he was upset at school so we said hey what's going on what happens and he said you know i'm reading a book and i was really upset about the content of the book so much so that i had to leave to go to the bathroom and i didn't want to read it anymore and i came you know and
080i came back and i was trying to avoid reading this book because it was really upsetting me and we said to him mikey what's going on what you know what was in the book and he said oh also for context i'm sorry let me back up a little bit um i am the wife of a police officer so i am transparent um and you understand where i'm coming from so my son said to us i'm reading a book and in the book a black teenager gets shot by police and it was very upsetting to me to read that um and i said okay mikey that's interesting um you know what is the name of the book and he said to me you don't know everything jilly p so so of course you know being the
081mom i am and how fast we are to google i looked up the book to see what it was about um and this parental warning is um what i found what parents need to know parents need to know that alex gino's you don't know everything jilly p deals with racism police violence deaf culture and trying to talk about big issues without hurting someone's feelings jilly age 12 welcomes a baby sister into the family and watches her parents struggle with the news that her baby sister has a hearing impairment she also sees the struggle her aunt alicia who's married to her aunt joanne has with the racism embedded in the extended family violence perpetrated by police against black teens is highlighted and hits very close to home when one of julie's acquaintances is shot by police
082when she's jogging at night so you know being the wife of a police officer i was very upset by the content i was also very surprised that something like this was in my 11 year old's hand so i approached via email the teacher and the principal and i said listen you know mikey was very upset he was this was a small group reading session where they're meant to read a book as a small group deep dive into it and discuss it amongst themselves so i came to find out when i brought this to the attention of the principal and the teacher that the teacher never read the book um they gave it to my son without knowing what the content was now the principal shared with me that the book was purchased because it was
083flagged as a book that would be good um to talk about disabilities to give kids an awareness of disabilities so um i said well i'm not really comfortable with my son reading this book he was very uncomfortable he was upset by it um you know i'd like him pulled off of it and you know i really don't think it belongs in the classroom so the principal referred me to the director of curriculum who you know we kind of played email tag back and forth and i had a conversation with her and we agreed to disagree because she felt like the book belongs in the curriculum in in the class libraries and i feel that it doesn't and i will read some excerpts from this book so you can understand why i have the position that
084i do um there are many themes in this book too many i feel for an 11 year old's a process some of the failures of the district was that the book wasn't discussed with my son either before or after he was upset by it i told his teacher his principal and the director of curriculum that my son was upset by it no one in the district offered my son any services speak to a counselor speak to the guidance counselor nothing so to this day no one has approached my son about this book at all or given him any type of voice so that he could express how it affected him or even the opportunity to to offer a counter opinion on the contents of the book i personally think the book is extremely politically motivated
085you will see why after i review the excerpts and i don't think that adults handle the subject matter that's being addressed in this book effectively so it's extremely inappropriate for an 11 year old to be able to process something that i feel that grown adults can't effectively process because of the political error that we're in where everyone is so politically charged so paragraph three in the book if you'll allow me a photograph of a black teen in a blue tank top fills the television screen she is smiling and mickey mouse earrings dangle from her ears the news anchor introduces us to ella davila age 15 fatally shot in an incident with police in santa rosa california details at 11. so this is a book that's supposed to be about disabilities and paragraph three a black
086teen is shot by police officers page 54 a black boy was just shot this time in philly he's in the hospital now his name is james dupree they haven't found the guy who did it yet but a witness says james was pulling out his wallet to lend her a dollar and then someone from across the street shot him she swallows he's 13. on page 59 the young girl who was the main character of the book tries to speak about the boy in philly with her parents and the parents refused to talk about it and change the subject which in my opinion is you know displaying parents that are uncaring about things that happen in the news then the aunt says when she's talking to the 12 year old about the incident black parents in this
087country have to talk with their kids about being around police but until white parents can talk about what's happening to black kids too nothing is going to change so villainizing police again on that page then there's some racist things that happen that i'm kind of skipping through in the interest of time because i know it's late and i'm trying not to take up your whole knives all right there's a few more incidents that i really want to just point out to you so bear with me this one is of interest this uh the the main character of the book goes into a chat room to discuss a book series that she likes with some other friends who are also a fan of the book theories and and you know to make a long story short
088in this fantasy world of the book series that they're talking about people have auras and the aura tells you whether or not they're a good person so if you have a green or you're a good person if you have a red or you're not a good person you know yellow and orange auras are kind of in between so the kids who in the chat room need to be between the ages of 11 and 14 are discussing the auras and whether or not they would want people to have them in real life so um you know one of the kids in the chat room is um black and deaf and they're just talking about you know whether or not they think it would be aura so they asked him the question you know would you want
089to have auras in real life so he and he's talking about how it's not real so he said in the real world people think they know me because i'm black but those are live they took in at lies i took in and i have to fight every day but it's fiction because the real world is racist if you try to have auras here white people would abuse it to keep black and brown people down like they always do so again like posing black people and white people as opposing forces i don't think is a positive message to give to kids page 177 black kids get shot all the time i say and it keeps happening because no one does anything about it page 196 shot last night in fremont california at approximately 10 p.m she
090was unarmed jessica johnson 17 fatally shot by police in fremont it's sad beyond sad that the cops shot her for just running down the street so in the book this girl was 17 years old and is deaf and she was running down the street and the cops tried to get her attention and she couldn't hear them because she was deaf so the police officer shot her seven times in the back while she was running there is no other context in the book for any of the shootings other than the kids were black and they got shot by cops it doesn't give you the situation doesn't tell you why it doesn't see the officers position whether or not they were committing a crime how they got there there's in all there's seven incidents of black teenagers
091being shot by police with zero context in this book i'll give you the others police killed jessica johnson in fremont deaf black and alive is what this kid did for his profile name jessica johnson was my math tutor i wouldn't know fractions without her because of police she's gone derek's right it doesn't matter whether jessica was wearing hearing aids it doesn't matter whether she was at out late at night she should have been safe derek should be safe everyone should be safe but they're not especially people who are deaf or black or both ella davia who was killed by a cop in santa rosa three months ago when she was walking home from school in the corner store this is incidents of people that they're talking about at a vigil for the 17 year old
092girl that was shot a man speaks after that and then a woman both of them also have family members who have been killed by police a daughter and a nephew his daughter was hanging out in a mall parking lot with her friends her nephew was driving to an early shift at work she reminds people to stay quiet for the full seven minutes of silence they chose seven minutes because of the seven bullet holes in the girl's back not to sign and not to leave their phones in their pockets she encouraged people to think about jessica and other victims of police violence they were killed because they were black and police the very people who are supposed to protect us killed them it makes me wonder who us is because i can't imagine being hurt by
093police but the black people here can any one of the black people could be killed by a cop i'm glad we're here to support jessica's family derek and everyone who knows someone who was killed by police jessica johnson got shot by a cop and she's not the only one black kids keep getting shot and it's awful police are supposed to keep us safe and i worry about justin and jamila all the time those are her cousins who are black why don't we talk about this stuff more it talks about how you're unsafe from cops again so those are all the incidents that i highlighted in the book as again like i said have no context of police violence against teenagers with no absolutely no other story besides they were black and they got shot and
094their kids being shot so obviously my son at 11 is going to relate to a child being shot at all much less because of their race and because of a police officer you know i'm sure many of you know that uh a lot of times little boys you know think their dads are heroes my son is no you know different than any other little boy and to read a book that paints a picture of his father as someone who would murder someone else just based on their skin color a child's no less was really upsetting to him and i really can't blame him i do not think this is appropriate for an 11 year old to read i don't think it's really appropriate for anyone to read unless maybe it's a political science class in
095the high school and they want to talk about the politics that's in this book i'm very upset that the curriculum director refused to pull the book from the classroom she admitted to me that you know the process was not followed properly that the book wasn't read before it was given to my son no discussion before or after there was no adequate training on how to process this material with the students for the teachers either i think they have since addressed it um which is good but i do really think that you know we can't pull up a book that's supposed to be about disabilities and have it this politically charged and have it available i was disappointed when the curriculum director told me that she felt this book would speak to people and she wanted
096to allow it in the classrooms for kids to read independently which would mean they would have even less support than they would in a small group setting because they would have no opportunity to speak about it to a counselor or a teacher or their peers and i don't think it's appropriate so i am one here because i want to say that i feel like saddlebrook can do better than that and that this was you know handled very poorly and even though that was acknowledged i would like some reassurance that it's going to change in the future and two i would like your support to have this book pulled from the curriculum in the acknowledgments they talk about white supremacy which i thought found was also very over the top for a book that's geared to
097you know grade schoolers um i just don't think it has a place in our district so that's it what's the name of this uh the name of this book and i invite all of you to read it uh you don't know any you don't know everything julie p by alex gino it was shocking to say the least and you know i i'm disappointed that i had escalated to be with you here today and that my concerns were not addressed at either the school level or at the level of the director of curriculum because i i feel like it really should be removed thank you thank you mrs cebulski and i apologize for having you wait so long to come and speak i know it was a longer meeting than usual um you know i do
098know that it is not in any curricular documents that we have it is part of our classroom library so it's a choice of the students to pick it up and read it i understand your point about you know the lack of guidance with that it is something i i can't change the past i can apologize for the way it was handled moving forward it absolutely i can reassure you that there is a process in place for that i do know that our curriculum director did meet with this all sixth grade teachers um she did have pd with them on book clubs on they reviewed the books together that are part of the curriculum and how best to move forward so i can reassure you that that absolutely did take place and then you know we
099will discuss um you know i have to i i didn't have a chance to look at our policy so i do need to see if we have a policy on a process um on removing books and it would definitely be a further discussion it's not a quick removal but i will follow up with you perfect thank you thank you thank you so much okay anyone else okay i would like to make a motion to close the meeting for public comment motion okay make a motion to well we will be back well one second miss out or ellie you crazy at the end of this okay our next meeting will be june 13th at seven and june 15th at seven okay can i get a motion to close the meeting second sec all in favor okay
100thank you so much everybody have a great night