Sayreville Town Hall Meeting with BOE Candidates - 10.23.2024

001for e of for e okay is it working now down for the record this worked 4 minutes ago good evening everyone and welcome to the Board of Education andand Town Hall my name is susany and I'm the PTO president at the S middle school and I'm also your moderator for tonight's event first I want to thank the five candidates sitting up here tonight we know it's not easy to do what you're about to do um your sacrifice that you're making to run these positions is commendable and that's about tonight thank you to all of you in the audience for coming out um maybe a short or long evening so thank you for um your participation in this conversation with these candidates I want to take minut to talk about the format for tonight count and

002run first we will have the five candidates as well as one writing candidate who is going to be um video G if technology cooperates they're going to each uh and statement then we were going to take questions from the audience when you came in the door they asked you if you thought you wanted to ask a question you were given a ticket we didn't know what kind of crowd to expect so we wanted to make sure we were fair and how we be calling people up to the podium it looks like based on the crowd we'll have time complete for all of your questions but what we'll do is we'll randomly pick them and that's how we'll be called up um to our shared microphone so we'll run back and forth if we have to

003uh the candidates will let each be given two minutes to answer your questions um the writing I Mr Anthony prepared topic points um for various topics so questions asked that not just one of this topic answers we will play a video with that answer they may not match perfectly to do an inv best then we'll finish with closing statements on after that you know we know that matters concerning I can speak as a mom here matters concerning our children and our children's education and their safety um bring out a lot of passion and a lot of feelings and we're all to that but I really hope tonight you can maintain an environment that is comfortable for everyone not only sitting here but also on that stage and that we can have a conversation of mutual

004respect and that's that's up most importance to me um I've never had to ask someone to leave a PTO sponsor event and I don't really want to start tonight so if we can just keep that in mind when we're asking our questions that would be amazing I hope this tonight you leave here tonight with a great understanding of what these plan stand for so you can make an informed decision on November the 5th best response you can have to what they say is your goal it's the most PR thing we have so let me move on before I take B more time to introduce the five people sitting on the stage we have har chy Anthony ESO P Hernandez Matthew leeski and lady malado and again we have a writing candidate Anthony so anybody have

005any question we started up here if anybody sitting here that wish they picked a BL ticket and didn't if you just raise your hand and we'll make sure you get a new ticket so that take when the questions start I can have a ticket for you and if you took one it doesn't make make you have to ask something it just gives you the option to so if you want to gra that's fine too okay comt CH okay just so you know this is also being streams hopefully we're working uh live on the board of education website good evening everyone thank you can you hear good evening and we do thank the for putting this together campaigning is one thing but coming together in an event like this to be able to dialog and answer

006questions is invaluable we do look forward to it so my name is kowsky I am running for a seat in the Board of Education U my husband Stephen and I seated right in front of me we've been married for 26 years we have two children they're in college now we've lived in cille for 20 years our son is a thir bom uh bombers all away uh our group's friendy here we love our town we want to see it right in every way most importantly the education of the children they receive I think as parents we all have that primary goal as we raise our children to ensure that they get an excellent education I've been a business manager for 20 years I taught art for 15 years for all grade levels I currently serve on

007two boards that entails managing a buget event Logistics Team Management working on a team as well as focus on results results Focus my family and I have volunteered for various roles that focus on local communities on children on education on family on Outreach programs and many other areas for the past 25 years we have never family um and uh I have heart to serve and running for the Cal board of education is a very natural step for me uh it's an area that I look forward to pouring myself into with the skill sets that I've developed in all the other areas that I've served uh my focus is on fiscal responsibility on mitigating tax increase uh working within a budget it's something that any board member any Committee Member is is tasked with is to

008work within a budget so something that I'm very experienced with uh restoring parental rights by resending policy 5756 and we've made a lot of effort to educate the community on what that means and what we mean by that uh getting back to age appropriate standards and curricula and I did post some samples online of what I mean by that as well uh just ensuring that our children are receiving age appropriate curriculum returning the primary whole Focus back to core subjects and not agendas not politics not ideologies promoting a safe learning environment is a is a sheared goal of everyone I do believe transparency communication and accountability is important to everyone and I do uh hope to join the Board of Education in ensuring that expanding the next the special needs programs we already already have

009a wonderful program in place we can always have that at the table to revisit and look to where we can do better uh and improve in those areas and offer more and offset learning loss is extremely important to a lot of parents that we've talked to uh and I know that that's a shared goal as well with everyone sitting at this table I thank you uh and I I hope for your vote on November 5th good job next we have the opening statement from Anthony ESO okay thank you uh first I would also like to thank the mle school PT for organizing this event this evening uh as well as Dr Labby and Mr bu husky to open up the auditorium for us this evening so let me introduce myself my name is anthonyy espito

010I'm the father of three children all products of the saal school system uh and I'm finishing up my third term as a board of education member so tonight I know we're going to I know we're going to talk about policy 5756 and and that's wonderful and I hope for the opportunity to answer any questions that you might have and uh possible misconceptions that you might have as well so I would like to take a moment and focus on what the Board of Ed has accomplished in the last n years not forgetting that of course there's a great deal of work that lies ahead it's it's been an incredible journey filled with challenges successes and I'm deeply grateful for the trust that you have placed in me to serve as your board of education member together

011we've achieved a tremendous amount so let's talk about things we did do uh how about American Sign Language so after speaking with a parent whose child had was hard of hearing uh what what I did was I began to ask if we could include ASL into our uh curriculum so it took a few years but we finally implemented it last year and as a result it was extremely successful and more students more students want to sign up so now we're bringing it down to the lower grades and and my vision when I first started this or brought it to the attention of the board was that when every at some point every graduate from the cbal high school would be proficient in sign language that's the goal how about free preschool uh preschoolers get picked

012up they get dropped before school they get dropped off after school at their homes uh saving families I think about $1,200 a month is what childcare costs now and they'll also introduced with our into our curriculum so they can hit the ground running when they hit kindergarten uh I'm not going to talk about security I hope somebody brings that up it's uh extremely important to us and we've done a great deal here uh other items we've increased Mental Health Services we've increased AP courses making other students making students more competitive when they apply for colleges we now offer opportunities to have our seniors graduate with an associates degree so they can come to a New Jersey college as a junior saving families tens of thousands of dollars post High School Readiness is extremely important to

013us and now we have career fairs in our middle school so we can expose them to uh opportunities that they may not have been aware of we're also trying to get Partnerships with companies so that we can offer internships to our high school students as well so determine what careers they may be interested in we've introduced the career acms uh for our students teaching accounting business engineering Etc extremely popular and we have students that have come back now graduated college and thanked us for it lastly uh I have to mention a passion project for our Board of Education and dedicated administrators the bombers Beyond Cafe is in my opinion the jewel of our district it took several years but we no longer bust our special needs students out districts when they turn 18 they stay

014here where they belong the LIF La coaching they receive is second to none not to mention the partnering with local businesses so these students can work and be independent once they leave us they're bombers and they will graduate at 21 years of age as bombers and added benefit not not that we did it for this reason I assure you but we've saved over a million dollars so far in tuition that we would have otherwise paid to other school districts so listen I can go on and on okay about all the things that we've done um you know but I you know I really want to focus on the things we can do not the things we can't do as a board of education and lastly I'll end with this I was given very good advice

015when I started on the board nine years ago the advice was whenever you're making a decision making a decision as a board ofet member okay the first question you ask yourself is how will this benefit the student it's that simple folks how will it benefit the student if you do that you're going to have a very successful tenure on the board of event thank you [Applause] good evening everyone my name is Kathy Hernandez and I want to thank you the middle school PTO to make this event possible and thank you for all you to come in um was very intered everything that Anthony said it is but I don't have that experience so I'm going to talk a little bit about me so you can know you know where I came from I'm originally from

016El Salvador and have been married for nearly 22 years years and I had called s home for the past 21 years I'm the proud mother of two beautiful daughters my oldest who graduate from serel in 2023 and my youngest who is currently in 11th grade for the past 18 years I have worked in a local preschool where I had the joy of supporting families and nurturing their children seven years ago I faced a difficult time in my life the support I received from this community was priceless with even those who didn't know me as stepping up to help my family this experience put in my heart the desire to serve my community I'm sitting at this table today because I care deeply about the education of all children I believe they are our future and

017I am committed to ensuring they receive the best education they deserve as a longtime resident of cbil and a parent I understand the importance of a strong Educational Foundation in shaping our children's lives and I want to give back by ensuring that every child in our district has access to a high quality education I believe that education is not just about academics it's about nurturing critical thinking creativity life skills resilience that will help our children in their future lives I'm dedicated to fering collaboration between parents teachers and the community to create an environment where our children can Thrive together we can address challenges celebrate success and ensure that our schools are places of growth and opportunity I believe in Practical solutions that prioritize the need of our students and equip them for a successful future

018that is why I'm excited to take on this role and okay for the best possible education for our children in cville my priorities are defending the right of each students so they can have the best education the district can offer to them defending the rights of the parents to be a part of their children's education transparency and education school safety ensuring healthy learning environment decreasing bully age appropriate health curricul improve students at achievement testing standards support Sports and art programs and very important to me is also support a special needs program and fiscal fiscal responsibility thank you thank you Pia now we have hear from Matthew leeski thank you sir hi my name is Matt leeski I've been a seral resident Going on 30 years um Sue thank you for this middle school PTO The

019District administration principal gusky council person Roberts who was sitting over there to our right and the members that of the burough residences that came into visit us today um I'm a veteran at the United States Air Force I hold a bachelor's degree in operations management and Analysis from the University of Arizona for 30 years I've been working for financial banking and accounting firms typically on Wall Street some of those are 100 companies I manage take part in and work on budgets in excess of $3 billion every year we have a global footprint that does not include real estate if you add real estate it's $20 billion just in budget the job of the board of education is very easy for you to find you can Google it the state of New Jersey mandates the laws

020we work under the three primary areas are policy planning and Analysis or appraisal my job involves policy planning and Analysis for 30 years I work for a financial institution and manages trillions of dollars and I've worked for JP Morgan that does more than that my goal in the district is the same goal as everybody else and everyone in this room to make sure the children of sville get the best possible education they can unfortunately they're not getting it you can look at the state test scores that we get every year we are miserable for since I was in kindergarten since some of you you're older than you were in kindergarten districts plannned every year they did the curriculum they trained everybody up they did it you wait till the test score hits at the end

021and you failed again it's too late you can't bring all those kids back and re-educate we need to get into a process of planning out that curriculum how it's going to be delivered measuring it at key points assigning people to those tasks measuring them adjusting as you go so you fail early by the time you ended you have no longer failed and you succeeded and then the final thing of that is appraisal who's responsible for the plan who's responsible for being a task owner in that plan where was the failure remediated my mission is quite simple as a veteran Mission came first the troops came second but they were the biggest part of the picture sville School District we need to put the students and teacher first we always need to wrap that around education

022thank [Applause] you thank you Matt now we'll move on to L thank you Susan um so first and foremost again thank you tonight to the PTO for hosting this this is really great we welcome the opportunity to speak to the community about who we are and what we come what we come from where we come from from my name is Le Al Donado I am a financial crime compliance professional I've been so for the past 20 years a little bit more I would say um I also hold a cert I'm a certified anti-money laundering specialist within the scope of my career I have focused on leadership and management having managed teens within 15 of those 20 years um I've worked in Risk change and um project program management I have been in due diligence research

023training government governance specifically in the areas of policy and procedures review Gap analysis resource and capacity planning metrics and Reporting problem solving issued mediation and budget however all that is great and I think Matt and I have similar um background there we both worked for jpa worked um for UBS and now I I currently started a new role within Morgan Stanley so always within Financial scope um all those roles have been great for me however my most important role has been as a wife and as a mother of five children who currently attend a school districts um they range between the first and 10th grade so I've seen different aspects of areas that I think that are great and areas that I think are areas for development like I think everybody um has mentioned here

024mostly everyone um academics when it comes to the test scores I think we agree that it's just not up to par it's not up to standard I mean for the past few years they we haven't met it right so we need to focus on that um as a mom I would say that my virtues or or what I would bring to the table is you know number one I've served that nursing and I think all the parents here right you nurse your children you tutor them you counsel them right you you're their confident so all that is great you know but that's coupled with my professional experience as well um during this process I was asked what makes me qualified to run the position of board if I haven't um had an experience or been

025trained in education and firstly I think we can all agree that board of ed members were not born into that role right it's one of those roles that is ever evolving and you learn as you go on the job so as a mom with children across different schools grades and programs in this District I bring that unique perspective um we know education starts in a home first and foremost right I mean that's from birth When the Children start you start teaching them how to walk how to how to talk how to you know survive for themselves how to clean themselves right so all of that takes into place so again education starts in the home but during the school years it is a continued partnership between the parents and the Educators so where schools and

026I strongly believe this should focus on the academics and bringing their you know preparing them from that perspective and the parents were focus on the moral social and religious upbringing at home among other things from my experience and observation during these couple of years of having my kids in the school system I've noticed that that there needs to be a shift to the core academics and we need to work towards redirecting and prior prioritizing that as a whole and that's where again the partnership comes in um because of those observation I have made the decision in the past couple of years to proactively get involved um obviously sacrificing time with my with my family so you know I I thank them for that um but I participated in division 2030 working group last year um

027I've worked in I've participated in the people reaching out and uniting with the district which is croud the superintendent uh parent advisory C Council um those are the meetings hosted by the superintendent Dr lbby and now to run for a chance to serve the community as a board of education member why do I do this because I realize that if I want to see change I need to be involved in the change I am also determined to model for my children what it means to stand up for your values regardless of any challenges or sacrifices presented thank you thank you and finally we will hear a video opening from Anthony spado who is one of the right writing candidates for the Board of Education Election good evening SEL and fellow candidates many of you know

028me as Gabe's dad my name is Anthony spado I'm running for cille Board of Education as your wrting candidate I'd like to start this evening with apologies for not being there in person and with gratitude for the efforts of the PTO to make a ComEd for me to participate this way as a PTO volunteer myself I know how hard it is to juggle our days and nights so thank you truly for all you do I wanted to take some time tonight to look back for just a moment with all of you I ran for sville Board of Ed back in 2021 against miss pyck Mr Walsh and Mr Esposito on the ballot I was placed in the seventh spot out of seven candidates the only way to get worse ballot placement than that is by

029not being on the ballot at all and running as a right-in candidate and here we are now in 2021 I was pretty new to the world of the barded I hadn't yet done the work in town I hadn't really been involved even though I wanted to be I I expected to earn people's votes that didn't work so after the loss I reached out to Mr Esposito and the other candidates and I told them that regardless of how we had finished our race they had my full support publicly and privately and if there was ever anything I could do to help to Lean on Me our mayor then was mayor Kilpatrick who was also a teacher here in the burrow Vicki called me on the phone after the election and she said take a couple months

030spend some time with your family and then we're going to get you back to work you're not done here there's a lot more good we can do together I was named to the environmental commission here in town I helped fund raise for supplies for our garden and I helped spread the word about meetings and green initiatives and educational sessions led by our Master Gardener I was also named to the Savo planning board where I served multiple terms until mayor O'Brien's recent election on the planning board I always answered questions and I got to help reshape our bur's master plan to include commitments to Green spaces and and open spaces and with an increased focus on cultural diversity for potential businesses I was proud to stand publicly with you and the other residents at Morgan and

031our military service community at burough Council to oppose the bus Depot's construction at the private first class Wayne Grant field in 2021 your voices became our strength and together we succeeded but I was also sure to listen to public opinion from my seat on the de and when the new bus depot was proposed in its most recent location without a traffic set without an environmental study I led the charge to have our planning board request that the state resend its approval of the current project I then encouraged the Board of Ed and the buau to sit together to find a more appropriate site it was always your voices that became our strength we have done good work together you and I now in my time since my 2021 election defeat I've dedicated myself to service

032speaking out against limiting the time our residents could speak against Pilots that Rob our school systems of revenue and four increased representation and visibility for our underserved communities I have volunteered with the Historical Society to help save our Firehouse this year by voting yes on this year's ballot question and I volunteer with my son's PTO at Wilson where I have helped Empower our kids and their parents to be the change they want to see in the world it is an incredible privilege I come to the table on the shoulders of those who have had to fight for and earn their place at that table there is never a moment where I'm not grateful for all that I've learned here for all I continue to learn here and I want to offer that same opportunity for

033all members of our community no matter who they love no matter who they pray to and no matter what their family looks like it is our differences in sville that make this place strong but it's our love for the world we create together for our kids that makes it even stronger I'm asking for you to look all the way to the right on the ballot and when you vote for Anthony Esposito a dedicated servant who has earned another term in the empty space next to him business as personal choice I'm asking for you to write in Anthony spaz together your voices will continue to strengthen our burrow thank you sville for understanding that you are never owed more than you've earned I hope I've done what I can to better our burrow for all of

034its kids their parents their teachers and our community I hope that tonight is helpful for you as you consider who has earned your vote for school board thank you toony spado for his video um thank you to all of you for your powerful statements a personal thank you that I didn't have to cut any of you off because that's my fear tonight that I'm going to have to ask one of these folks to stop talking so thank you for obeying the time limit um we're going to move into the questions now we're going to go as fast as we can because I just counted and there's 19 tickets and I know based on the math we don't have time for 19 questions tonight so we're going to pick tickets uh call you up here as

035fast as you can to ask your question each candidate will have two minutes to respond to a question some ground rules one question please per ticket so no Challenge questions no follow-ups no debates no screaming none of that question answers question answers if we have time at the end and you do have a followup you're I open it up to the floor and you can ask the follow-ups then but uh please keep it to one to one question and we will get started first ticket like calling a raffle this is know 153 448 yes do you mind to halfway we have to share since I'm broken we the taxpayers pay over 60% of our property taxes to the Board of Education the rest of our tax dollars go to fund the operations of the burrow

036so the taxpayers here put the bill for the Board of Ed the burrow everything the current Board of Education has filed a lawsuit against the burrow over the proposed location of bus dep this despite the fact that the board did not come before the planning board as it was required prior to spending dollar one on this massive Capital Improvement project so because of this lawsuit the board ofed uh file me and the taxpayers are essentially suing ourselves uh from what I can discern is only a lawsuit really to defend the superintendent who doesn't even live here my question to the uh candidates running for the board Position will you move to end this Civil War lawsuit in sville and my question for Mr Esposito is why should we reelect you to continue to pursue a

037lawsuit where we're suing ourselves and our taxes will go up thank you and I didn't mention um this isn't a formal Board of Ed meeting so you don't have to say your name when you get up but you're welcome to if you'd like to um but we can start if you want to start down the line answering the question so I go first he address me I don't however however whatever is easier you guys can decide me to open on this tough one listen it's a tough situation that we find ourselves in and I think that most of seille would agree that we would rather not have this lawsuit be happening right now especially because it's impacting our tax dollars uh it's not where we want our money to go we want our money that

038is allocated for the Board of Education to be used for the children and their education all the associated programs not a lawsuit I'm not for what is happening right now with that I think we can do better I think that better decisions can be made at the table that benefit our children first in the schools and then as far as you know projects that are outside of that immediate Focus we need to make better decisions at the table that's certainly are not going to hit the pocketbook of residents in Sable this is a tough economy and none of us are exempt from it we are all having to tighten in our belts in this economy so anything that the Board of Education decides to do that will impact the pocketbook of every resident sael has

039to be very carefully determined and I do believe the community needs to be more involved in those decisions as far as giving them more time at the microphone at the board meetings to be able to express their feelings on issues like this this is what we mean by more transparency this is what we mean by partnering with parents uh that which is what the Board of Education should be doing thank you Mr Muller for the question um and and I hate to start out my answers with a cop out but as an attorney you won't fully understand I cannot discuss the details right um listen we're nobody wants the lawsuit I don't think either side wants this lawsuit okay um if if you've look go back to March 2023 and look at the meetings and

040see what was discussed and and and everything that was decided upon um you can make your own judgments on what's going on um I would like to end this lawsuit myself of course who wouldn't um I I think we need to definitely bring both sides together and talk this out but you know like I said I can't speak to it too much I can't I can't give you much detail other than I hope it gets resolved quickly and I understand from your perspective where you're looking at it saying you know this is frivolous this is ridiculous and it's our tax money and you're right it's our tax money suing for addition for our tax money it really doesn't make sense when you when you see it from the outside but you know we're doing everything

041we can we have board members here tonight I'm we're doing everything we can to get this resolved and move forward because nobody wants to pursue this in the courts I could assure you that I hope that answers your questions it's really all I can say about it I think we are all agree that nobody wants a law suit and um but is it is happening and you know I know that they're working on it and and I agree that the the two parts should be together talking to get an agreement so we need to focus move from there and focus in in what is important our kids and our educations and yes we are we don't want our taxes you know it it's a hard time for all of us the economy it's everything so

042we don't want this to impact our um Pockets or raising taxes but I I I do believe we all agree that we don't want this L [Applause] suit thank you great question uh 67% of your renal taxes come out of the bo I think that's a closer number um $150,000 already we spent in board to bed just just done this lawsuit between us and the burrow you can probably ask councilwoman Roberts and she'll give you the number of legal fees that we're collecting as we have to represent ourselves on both sides of the aisle ridiculous as I stated in my opening statement policy planning and Appraisal goes on who planned the bus the bus depot who planned all this stuff how do you plan to buy buses if you don't know where they're going to

043go if you think they do and the plan fails who resp responsible our job is appraisal that includes people it's ridiculous we got sued cuz they were put by a house now you're going to put them in another neighborhood I don't know where these ideas come from there's laws that governed how we get property they didn't follow them and now we're suing $650,000 in engineering fees for the bus Depo that can't go where they want it to they don't know where to park the buses so they spread them all around the district they put them at the U brand new school gigantic parking lot because the buses were there the drivers were there and the AIDS were there for the buses 2 million on a new parking lot at the U right in front of

044the school you tell me if that money would be better spent increasing the state test scores or putting bathrooms in our Stadium where it's been an embarrassment with Porta jobs since my son was a freshman it's ridiculous Focus we're we're we're triming the bushes and the house is on fire it's horrible so I think I resonate with everyone who's answered um before me um to Mr Esposito's uh Point earlier right any decision that we make we need to consider how will it benefit the students so no one wants to have first of all from a community perspective no one wants already to include or increase our taxes if we already have high taxes here right so obviously that's something that we would want to review and and make sure that it makes sense if it

045doesn't then figure out you know speaking with the attorneys to see what can be done um to Matt's Point improper planning right lack of challenging because the problem that I've noticed is that you know things are recommended and suggested and there's a lack of challenge process right when whenever you suggest an initiative in a business field it goes through a vetting and challeng process to say okay what is the benefit what is the risk what are we implying here do we have already a set plan in place what is your plan a what is your plan B none of that I think was taken into account again to Matt's point so I think it's something that we would definitely have to um if elected and would definitely um work with the other members to figure

046out where do we go from here thank you thank you for all of your answers thank you for the great question we don't don't have an answer uh from Mr spado specific to this question so we'll answer our next question uh 53450 thank you Our Town Council and our mayor recently changed the procedure for public participation at our Council meetings uh public participation is limited to 3 minutes no questions need to be answered at that meeting and a big change people cannot participate virtually and folks can watch the live stream but can't make any comments now this new policy has been heavily criticized I would dare say vilified by many in the community um I'm not here to support that policy although I've seen some horrible abuses of the public policy period at recent meetings

047in fact the last council meeting some some idiot got up and started singing during the public portion uh But the irony is not lost on me that the board of education has this exact same policy in place for public participation at its meetings and in my view the difference between the council and the board of education is the board of education is dealing with much much more important issues that affect our community's lives than the council I believe I mean not only does it control as Mr meski said 67% of our tax dollars but they are responsible for educating our most important resources being our children so my question is um where I I assume we know where Mr Esposito stands he's a current member of the board but for the new folks who are

048running will you do anything to change the public participation portion of the board event meetings to open it up and make it more friendly and accessible to the public thank you for your voice question I'm going to jump in okay um I I I don't control what the council does I I don't really know and and it's their prerogative we when I was board president I used to give around five minutes we limit it now to three it's totally up to whoever's in charge but I I I don't understand that we can you can come to any board meeting and ask any question and we always answer the questions and if we don't have an answer and it's very rare we don't have an answer for you we we look it up and and Dr

049lab will email you the next day so I'm not quite sure I would love to know a particular instance where someone was shut out but anyone who comes to that microphone and I've see some people here that have been there we listen to them we listen to them with respect and if we can answer we answer and if we can't we can so thank you that's all I got all right so I do want to share a couple of um notes on this topic uh if it were a situation where the board of education did actually respect every every opinion coming to the microphone this wouldn't be something that we need to talk about um unfortunately it's just not the case uh we have seen meetings where uh Dr Labby would put in earbuds turn

050his back start on his computer other members of the board have been seen doing this as well um you know this isn't when when someone takes the time out of their evening out of their work schedule out of their family time to come out and share about something that they're concerned about uh we should absolutely give due respect for that time give them our attention making eye contact it's common courtesy but it's also the responsibility of the board to take every opinion into consideration uh it's it's just not something that we've seen um so that's something that we would look to change lady and kti and I it is important to us that the community know that as elected people in these positions on the board of education we represent the entire community and every

051voice in that Community matters and is important so that is something that we would like to see change I don't feel personally that two or three minutes at the microphone is sufficient for someone who is coming out to take the time they have to wait until the end of of the meeting to be able to share they should be allotted a little more time to be able to express their concerns um and that's that's our position on that we do hope to see some changes with that so one of our you know the things that are important for us is the communication with the parents we are a team so it's very important that the parents feel welcome to the meetings you know let them know that their concerns and opinion are valid we can

052hear them with respect because they took the time to go there to you know talk about their concerns talk about the the kids and they have the right to do it so I think we you know we should listen be respectfully to them and we we are going to create that communication with the parents it's a they're going to give us feedbacks too and things that we as a board of education we're going to take in consideration when we are going to work in you know policies curriculums we need to listen to what they say so I think is very important that every p parent can you know have to say in the in the meetings um I I I love that question as a veteran I took the oath to defend the Constitution United

053States no less than 30 times I believe the First Amendment right to free speech says right in there the government cannot appr Bridge Free Speech technology guy Zoom we have people that are infirmed submitting questions beforehand via email some kind of submission process that they can go through I don't care how long your question takes answer to ask I really don't care I'm running for the Board of Ed I'll sit there for 12 hours in one meeting just to get your stuff done you can't pigeon hold people down to one minute two minute timelines I don't think there if you have 24 people it gets mous after a while so after a while we teach people how to answer answer their questions give them more than two minutes five but I don't care if it's

054a 25 minute question as long as you maintain the quum because president will have so I myself have uh suffered this I have gone to board ofed meetings voice my opinion ask questions and I haven't received a response um so I would say I definitely would support um increasing the time limit number one because to car's point you know we take time out of our day to go there because we care because we we you know we we want to make sure that we're listened to and we're on the same page it's a partnership right um You can look specifically on the board of ed meetings on May 21st and June 18th those were particular ones that I went to and that that will also give you an Evidence of Dr labby's um unacceptable Behavior

055which I also called him out on um via email so since I didn't get a response um personally um when I attended the board of bed meetings I followed up with questions via email didn't receive any responses either from I received maybe for one or two but not from most of the um board ofed members so again it's definitely something that is very near dear to my heart and we would definitely consider realizing that and again with this question we don't have an answer from Mr specific to this this question so we'll move on uh 153 one hello um most of you don't know me I used to go to the board of Ved meetings pretty religiously about every month um I've kind of stopped my kids have gotten older proud mom of a queer

056senior just so you know I will do everything I need to to protect my child and all children like that in 16 years working with this Board of Ed with these teachers with this Administration I have not had one single communication issue so I have had in my experience on PT I have had parent participation issues where we would beg parents just to be a member of the PTO you don't have to actually come to anything but just help us Finance what we're doing for your kids so my question to you you sit here and you talk about parents rights I want to know what you're going to do to increase parent participation you can't communicate to a parent who isn't answering the phone or answering an email or you even have the right phone

057number so I would like to know what you plan on doing to increase parent participation for this communication that you feel that you are being left out of thank you thank you for your question I'll start at the beginning here start car I'm sorry yes thank you for that question so when we talk about parent commity communication and transparency I think the the first example that comes to my mind is when we three candidates uh Kia and lady and I did community events to meet the community to start to talk about what's important to us and what we're running on uh one of the issues that it's not the only thing that we are looking to do on the board of education but it certainly has become a Hot Topic is policy 5756 one of

058the things that we have seen is that of the hundreds of parents that we have talked to where we've brought up this policy I can say and my husband can confirm we did not meet one parent who was aware of the gender ideology that was included in adopting that policy and the health curriculum that was adopted as well not one teaching staff yes some other staff at the school yes Board of Education yes they're aware so when we talk about transparency and communication that's the example that we're basing that on and that we're looking to if all the families in seille were aware that with adopting policy 5756 which was not mandatory by the state of New Jersey it was optional when we adopted that policy in SBO we brought in the curriculum uh that

059was written by Planned Parenthood uh Health Smart it's included on the sble website parents can see that it's listed Health curriculum as one of the sources um this curriculum includes lessons that families weren't aware of when I quoted the curriculum to them they weren't aware of it so transparency includes if you're going to consider adopting a policy that is going to bring in an ideology and it doesn't matter what the ideology is this one happens to be a gender ideology then that is something that we are you know we're not for an ideology but parents need to be made aware of what that is going to mean the changes that are going to take place because no matter what you say none of the parents we talk to were aware of that thank you Karen

060and if if we just got some feedback from the audience did you guys I can follow a little closer to your mouths when you talk as you move down the line just that folks in the back are having a hard time hearing thank you um so let's let's get into this 5756 before you can I just interrupt you one second sorry I do believe that the actual question was about increasing the parent involvement to keep as well as we move on you if you can one more minute just to reiterate the plan to have parents be more involved is more communication If the parents were aware of what was for example in policy 5756 it would have motivated families that would have had a concern about it to attend the board meetings to voice their

061concern about it and play a part in the decision that was made to adopt the policy I believe that if we're not fully transparent with big big policies like this that we're adopting it doesn't give the community an opportunity to be involved in that communication and to express their opinions and their concerns so I think it starts with being transparent with the community which will then then prompt them to come out and voice their opinions but if they're not aware that there needs to be a community voice about a particular issue we're not going to see them at the board meetings in the microphone thank you two minutes on I'm going okay all right's so let's get into 5756 okay let me explain what a policy is for people that don't understand basically it's nothing

062more or nothing less than codifying a New Jersey state law for the most part okay it makes it easier for non- lawyers to understand what laws need to be followed okay so we by the way we adopted this in 2017 I don't know why seven years later we're talking about this but fine Board of Ved is required to create policy okay for staff it's a guideline for our staff again to more easily understand what's required of them by law the law was created is my understanding so no student in the district is faced with a hostile learning environment for any reason regardless of religion race gender doesn't matter okay so stable residents I know you've always preferred to hear things straight out so here it goes okay you can decide to resend this policy at

063any given point perhaps you want to tweak the policy the state law requires Public Schools follow everything stated in 5756 let me repeat this again for those of you don't understand this the state law requires public schools to follow everything stated in 5756 what you're advocating for is simply not permitted and something you cannot do regardless of how you feel about it whether you like it dislike it if people like it or dislike it in order to change this you must run for the state legislature or you must run for the governorship that's it ladies and gentlemen it's really that simple you have 35 seconds do you want to throw in a line about incre increasing parent involvement all right so answer your question about how can do to you know to get the parents

064more involved and I think it is true a lot of the parents are not involved with in in activities in this school and I think it's we're talking about partnership between parents and teachers so I think we have to my glass we need to build partnership with them open Communications they need to have a lot of information about their kids uh from the beginning of the year where the kids are going to study what are their goals for these years to the end of the years you know if for example if the the student is not doing behind it the teacher can call them and ask so that communication can bring the parents H bring more attention to be you know it want to be involved in the in their Student Life with the kids

065going into community activities is very important that we can talk with the parents you know ER the teachers can go so you know things like that but I but I know what you said about you know the parents need to go more um involved I believe it we can do use better communic Channel communication set up online platform that they can ask questions about their kids that will be easy sometime they cannot do it because of work but it is a easy ER platform where they can come and ask question it's a way to do it too May um commun events I I as I talk about it make communication easy to understand you know a in other language too we have a lot of languages in here and sometimes you know there emails that

066again um it it's a lot of people that doesn't speak English the parment so maybe we can get to them with their language [Applause] to great question and I know you from volunteering in athletic leagues across the town look around the room this is kind of an important day there's 40 people here you're not going to get it it's not going to happen you got the people will show up that care those that don't want so that's as far as that Sue's been volunteering and I work with her for sports thingss she's always doing something we need more of that no one wants to do it it's time effort and commitment to take away from your family I volunteered Cel for 27 years softball baseball hockey soccer basketball that you name it I did it

067for my kids growing up I ran the basketball league in the town for I don't even how long my wife hates me from so I just was never home was Monday through Thursday Saturdays it's ridiculous you're not going to get it I don't think there's a magic button there's no Silver Bullet that could engage Parents try I don't know quite frankly some of them most of them don't care if they didn't we'd be at the pack house so I don't know we tried in the league you can't get coaches for volunteer for for they're they don't care 5756 I agree with Anthony look it up on the district's website you can see it count the number of references to New Jersey state law and federal law there all it does is summarize we can get

068rid of it we still have to follow those 17 other laws that's in there to simplify it because they went to the Christie Administration and said we don't know what in the hell to do when something like this happens give us some guidance and that's what it is and if you want one parental notifications the Supreme Court New Jersey 2001 overturned the rule that said your minor daughter you need to be notified if she wants to get an abortion they overturn that your 12-year-old daughter could get an abortion without your consent or without your knowledge so in the state of New Jersey if you think anything of that thing's going to pass it's probably not it's got to go to the Circuit Court at a minimum and then the Supreme Court if you don't believe

069me you can look back on up 2001 New Jersey Supreme Court was disgusting so I don't agree that all parents don't care I think we have to take into account the demographics that we have um the accessibility to maybe online quarters right this was announced via different social media platforms bomber blast or what have you not all parents have that access to those social media not all parents know how to use them I think K has pointed about the language barrier is another thing that we we need to take into account um I think another thing is again work commitments right not everybody works the same schedule a lot of the people here are working class that means that you have to work crazy hours so what I would say there is also think about

070other creative forms of doing it for example um in my business setting we have office hours via Zoom for people that can't make it to inperson meetings we have certain meetings so like for example not all meetings have to to be in person you could have them virtually you can say you know certain day we're going to have it here for the people that cannot go in person other items is maybe recording meetings right so that those people that cannot attend in person and are unable to go in Zoom you know can watch it at their Leisure and then come back and ask questions there are other Creative Solutions to be able to get more parent involvement um so I just think we have to sit down and really analyze what the issue is and

071and hit it at the heart there um for po7 policy 75756 just since we brought it up um so it isn't mandated by law I think it was a misinformation as far as it had to be rolled out um that's why a lot of districts have prented it um there are other policies that we have in place 3280 8462 5750 which is equal education opportunity 2260 affirmative action programs for school and classro practices there are other um policies in place that don't um have any communication regarding the parent involvement that is the issue that we had with policy 5756 and happy to talk about it more that question comes up or offline with anybody else thank you thank you for all your answers we do have um we have comments from Mr spado about parent

072involvement and 5756 so I was going to just play the one for parent involvement if that's okay with all of you unless we should play both at this time both both are you okay if we play both of his answers since it came up with both all of your answers so Mr spado submitted videos um answering parent involvement and 5756 so we were going to play the parent involvement one they're saying to play both is that okay with you all okay so we'll start with parent involvement but I see that our Tech person is staring at the machine staring at the little view that's not above your heads any longer we died the video died I believe fundamentally that the education of our kids is not the responsibility of parents alone nor teachers alone it's

073got to be a partnership and throughout this campaign and for years before I've heard the same feedback parents want more involvement but not all of us are able to make it to a Board of Education meeting or a PTO meeting because the demands at home are too numerous get laundry done pack lunches check homework run kids to sports cook dinner and actually have a moment to sit on the couch and exhale something other than screen so I've reached out to our current Board of Education all PTO leadership our teachers union and others about the creation of what I'm calling the SEL schools Community Coalition a group that would hold a virtual Town Hall once a month that would allow parents to participate virtually from home to hear from our PTO teams about upcoming events New

074programs fundraisers and more it would give our commity community and parents chance to ask questions directly to board members it would extend our rights as parents to participate more fully in the education of our kids now I would like to incentivize participation in the Coalition by offering incentives to parents who participate like discounts to our bombers Beyond cafe or on merchandise through your respective PTO or even reserved seating at saille supporting events now I have said this a lot in this campaign because I mean it fundamentally it is your voice that makes us stronger and it's important for us that those voices don't all sound alike and that they don't come from people who all look alike as a district we achieved our goal for the 2023 24 school year of increasing staff minority representation

075through the creation of an action plan developed by a diverse Coalition of Administrators faculty and support staff kids have to see themselves represented in education and I'm proud of our buau for making that so and for creating an educational community that actually looks like the community it serves my goal for us as a burrow more voices less [Music] shouts in regards to policy 5756 I need you to understand there has never been a time when a parent has been kept out of the loop regarding their child under 5756 not once Dr lbby has found that the specific parents whose children are actually governed by 5756 have been completely informed at all times regarding their child and furthermore that those parents have been incredibly supportive any claim that information is being withheld from parents is untrue

076this policy was created by psychologists and students and psychiatrists and Educators and it is working because it seeks to provide and does provide the life-saving support that some of our most vulnerable kids require please understand our Board of Education will not receive this policy because it provides necessary guidance on already existing law so that our Educators have clear guidelines to uphold the existing New Jersey law against discrimination our superintendent will never support the recision of this policy not only because of the legal liabilities that removing it would create but most importantly to our superintendent our Board of Education and the dad speaking to you at this moment because of the high rates of suicide and self harm that flow directly from the lack of support for our kids the risk that those kids are going

077to engage in self harm is of Paramount importance to all of us here and I am so grateful for the superintendent and the board of education for their leadership trust me I am the product of that support and might not be here if it hadn't existed for me when I needed it the most I will let the experts speak about the policy but with my time left I want to make sure that the kids in the burrow who need to hear this hear it clearly and without any doubt you are safe here you are loved here you are supported here and the adults in this burrow will continue to learn about who you are thoughtfully and carefully and we will do everything in our power to keep you safe you are exactly who you are

078supposed to be you are enough thank you for that question and for all of your thoughtful answers move on to our next question 53444 53444 are you still here and if you if you decide not to ask a question that's fine just wait to me okay last call 153 444 okay we're going to move on to the next one 53 46 7 1 53 4 6 7 last call 153 467 153 445 hi candidates uh since you as candidat state that you respect every member of the seral community how will you as board members plan to protect and affirm the rights safety and Humanity of Cal's LGBT students irrelevant of policy 5756 thank you for your question can we do from the start thank you for that question I think that I'll begin by saying

079that although we are for resending 5756 just purely based upon the fact that it's a gender ideology that's forced on kids from kindergarten up it does not mean that we're not for every student in srael before 5756 was adopted our school system already had in place discrimination rules and policies so resending 5756 is not removing a safety for the lgbtq community what we're looking to do is remove the IDE from being taught to children who have not yet visited that thought process especially starting at 5 years old that is our goal we're not against children receiving an excellent education in a safe environment but prior to this policy being adopted Cal schools did have discrimination policies in place and we are for that we're not for any child being discriminated against bullied harassed or intimidated

080but the fact of the matter is that since 5756 was adopted looking at the statistics of HIV harassment intimidation and bullying in New Jersey increased by 400% to date 400% this is what we mean by Common Sense policies when you adopt a policy and you see numbers like that for a policy that was supposed to create a safe environment for our students that is a failed policy saying that it was required it was not required is there a language in there that we need to create a policy that includes that yes we can do better than a policy that when put in place has actually increased The Bullying rate we can do better than that so we need to look at the numbers and the statistics and let's look at those and let's look to

081improve so uh to answer I guess to answer your question I I or or touch on this again um again you can resend the policy it's fine if you have the votes it means nothing you will adhere to everything within that policy and if you don't we will be sued as a school district and and believe me state aid anything could be affected by this okay it's just to codify the law so if you take it away new teachers coming in they're not going to understand the law I mean they're not lawyers okay so it just gives a guideline on what they can and can't do and I can say this to you and I can say this to you with 100% assurity okay there's been about four instances where some someone has gone to

082a teacher with an issue whether it's this or something else and we've and four instances and four times that we've gone to the parents we want to include the parents teachers do not want to hold anything back from your parents I assure you they don't okay the only time we hold back is if there's imminent danger to a child and then we're required by law to call dcpn P and get them involved okay so again resend it all you want have a burning the policy party have fun great the next day you've done nothing nothing unless you're the governor of the state of New Jersey and you change the [Applause] laws I I current told parents to create the policy go to the stour and make your own conclusion so I wait it in um

083these are my conclusions and my concern the policy said that school district shall accept a student ass certained gender identity a name change parental concern is not required a legal or coure order name change is not required school have no duty to notify parents of their child identity change so as Anthony mentioned there have been cases and the parents are been they been talked with them but this policy says in here that it's they they're not required to do it so in any case can happen can happen that your child isn't you know feeling this and confusion they talk to a a teacher and the teacher goes to counselor and they're going to decide not to it's not necessary to inform the parents and that is not right we have we need to know what

084is going on with our kids so this is the part that I you know we're taking the right of the parents to know and it can happen in any moment what is this my concerns we are assuming parents want support their child's important life decision which break trust between families this is what this policy bring you know break trust between families by uh leak of communication but excluding parent from critical conversation the policy weakens the family's ability to provide emotional and psychological um psychological support so I strongly believe in protecting the right of all the students the safety of all the student including the lgbtq the students is it's important to abolish this policy does not dismiss lgtbq protection but rather ensure parents are informed what is going on with their kids I I ask

085question irrelevant [Applause] so she she want to reate she asked her question irrelevant to the policy it's not about policy what do you how will you keep them safe regardless of the policy the district's charged with the safety and wellbeing every student in it that's why that guy's standing back there and they're in every school in the district State mandate laws that we have to protect certain children certain RS they provide that it's mandatory so to answer your question um these are the policies that I mentioned earlier policy 3280 which talks about liability for student welfare 8462 talks about reporting potentially missing or abused children 5750 talks about equal Educational Opportunity 2260 talks about affirmative action program for school and classroom practices ultimately all children need to be protected and that's you know we're not

086opposed to that at all this is why we're doing it because we want all children protected thank [Applause] you thank you for your answers there's no additional comment from Mr spado about can I clear one thing up about the name because that's an interesting topic it's an interesting question about the name okay and yes okay so technically the law does not require a teacher to disclose to a parent if a person wants to be called Joanna instead of Joe okay that's a fact however what we do here in s just so you know we devise a plan with the principal and the teachers and everybody to bridge that Gap so the student can speak to the to the parent we know it's important for the parent to be involved we know it is but technically

087the law states okay as you're reading it we don't have to but we do do it here I just want to assure everyone that we do sorry to thank you for that oh and there is a video I apologize there is a video one of our goals in the district is to decrease violent and substance abuse related student behaviors that result in suspension particularly long-term suspensions as well as to reduce the numbers of chronic absenteeism we haven't done that yet I know this is important to our Board of Education our superintendent and our community my hometown in Upstate New York was ravaged by the opioid crisis as so many were I saw it RI through friends and family and while addiction is a disease that can be treated we have to be able to speak

088out loud about what we're seeing in order to offer support to those who need it according to the board members that I've spoken to today's substance abuse issues do tend to lean more into the availability of recreational Cannabis with kids sneaking in gummies candies and lozes I do believe that these are conversations that need to be a full partnership between our parents and our school leadership teams I do support our Beacon alert system which flags School administrators when a student has searched for something harmful on a school laptop multiple lives have been saved by our staff who reached out to parents of children searching for things like a suicide hotline or after a student posted about ingesting a substance with the intent of self harm our administrators dispatched police officers to the residents and that

089child's life was saved as parents we have to receive those types of calls with open arms open ears and Open Hearts it is possible believe it or not that our teachers and educational staff might ask actually love our kids too additionally I would like to see an expansion of our districtwide effective School Solutions program which helps students in acute distress with counselors available to our K to2 students including Psychiatric Services for our students at no cost to parents with financial hardship we have to invest in our kids and their mental health and while that does start at home some parents need a partner our schools should be here to run with that baton when parents trust to hand it over to our schs okay we'll move on to our next question thank you spado 153

090472 hi uh my question is about cell phones um what cell phones in the classroom um my child has doesn't have a cell phone he's too young for it uh what I'm curious about is what is the policy for cell phones uh in the middle schools and in the high school are children allowed to carry them into classroom I do know some states have the child lock them up I'm just wondering if um what our policy is on cell phones uh I personally believe that cell phones are made of existence and a a treasure at the same time but in students hands I think they cause much more problems and I I feel that they should be you know left out of the classroom yeah I can s absolutely um I I would be lying

091if I said I know the exact policy what what it states however I'm relatively sure and anyone can correct me as students here you're not allowed to I think you're allow supposed to keep them in your locker um and you're not supposed to bring them into class for obvious reasons had legislator's day the other day and I spoke to the kids about this cuz we're potentially we're potentially going in right policy to officially disallow them from using cell phones in the classroom bringing them in the classroom okay I personally don't think there's a need for it okay our security measures are in place believe me when I tell you you guys will know God forbid anything happens to one of our students or if there's an issue there's an alert that goes out you guys

092will know we don't want them on their phones we don't want them distracted we want them following the protocols and the safety regulations that we put in place so to answer I I really don't know I think they're supposed to keep it in their lockers and and if you certainly email me tomorrow and I'll find that out for you and get you the right answer but uh I think we're going down the road of no cell phones allowed at all that's I think we're going in that direction you know it is a it's important topic because we know that students that have their cell phones near them are on them in class are going to be distracted even if they silence their phone they're going to feel the vibration from the notification um I remember

093seeing a a you know one teacher uh in a district not here in Cel had done an an experiment where she had a poster at the front of the room and every time a child received a notification of any kind on their phone whether it was Facebook or Instagram or text or whatnot they were to go to the front of the class and put a tally mark under that category of what type of notification it was and for that one class for that one hour it was over 1,200 I think the number was I don't have the exact number but it all that was all the distractions and the interruptions to those students during that one hour that she needed their attention I personally am for disallowing cell phones in the classroom we know that

094everyone uses the logic that our child should have their phone on them what if there is any emergency there are security measures here in place in SBO our schools with our metal detectors unfortunately we did have 16 weapons get in last year uh so I think that we do need to revisit our security process and see how those got into the schools and what we can do to better uh improve those numbers to a zero it only takes one student one weapon to have an incident uh but as far as you know the phones being used as a security measure I think it's more important that we develop a policy that the students do not have them on their person or near their desk during school uh during class time so that they're not interrupted

095because it is hard enough for teachers to keep the students attention so I think it's an important policy to develop absolutely I agree with K and it shouldn't be SS in the classroom I know my daughter is a it's a unior in here I know that she has it on her backpack so I don't know if they're supposed to have it in the locker but they have it in their backpack so the teacher doesn't allow in the classroom I think that's about something like two years ago three years ago that they implemented so for me it should be like that it shouldn't be cell phones in the classrooms [Applause] yeah I agree um I also think it might be beneficial to look at look at it from a high school perspective Middle School perspective and

096Elementary School perspective seniors in high school walk into their classroom and put it in a pouch inside the door so they can go to school I may be okay with that um I would guess we'd have to look at the upside downside of that decision towards me can we just speak up a little bit on the mics we just getting some feedback from the back below um so regarding um the cell phone policy in the middle school and the high schools they're not supposed to have him on them um especially in the High School uh principal gusy is great about enforcing that and that applies to both students and staff right so that everybody is fully focused on the education here and I think it's to Matt's point I think it's something that we need

097to evaluate across the board so that in those instances with the middle school and in the um elementary schools those children that do have it we Implement something similar thank you for your question thank you for your answers we don't have a cell phone answer so we'll move on to 153 474 please close hi everybody thank you uh I just want to thank you guys for for coming and doing this today um I have a two-part question actually my first is um when something is presented to for a vote on the board of education by the board of education do you have to be present at the meetings in order to vote on it my second question is um going back to the respect of the people who do approach the podium um we're all

098diverse and we're all going to have different points of view it doesn't mean one person's worse than the other are you all willing to listen and respect the speaker ERS as long as they're respecting you um I I I just it goes back to the communication there's lack of communication I think a lot of people are reluctant to come to the podium because of the treatment that we have had me personally and Mr esposo you looked confused when you know people were saying that you can go back and look at the videotapes at the public portions over the last year and um you'll see that people disrespected um and I just wanted to also follow up with will you all be available to attend the Board of Education UNS okay so want to start Carrie

099that was you know we're trying to stick to one question so I think that the bulk of that middle question certainly um it sounds like that first question could be a yes or a no um maybe Mr espaco can just answer yes or no to the do you have to be present vote yeah well I mean you have to be present to vote officially however if it was a situation where a board member couldn't make it due to illness or something and it was something important to be uh voted on they would certainly table it for the next meeting I don't that answers your question over it does um can I just go back since I'm here about the respect part listen I I don't know you know I I'm going to tell you how

100I feel okay I listen intently you can watch every meeting I don't care if if I agree or disagree with what you're saying right that's what free speech is all about okay and not only do I respect everyone that comes up I encourage them to come home and and I've I've met a few people outside leaving the meetings and I was very cordial I said thank you so much uh for coming and I appreciate your time because that's what you should do I mean we should be welcoming there's no doubt and how you get participation of these meetings you got me we've been trying for nine years I mean much more than nine years you know but we do have meetings available online they're live streamed and we can go back you can go back

101to 2012 every meeting since 2012 is is on uh is is taped and on on our website so you know it's it's available for people and we also have we we send messages out and I think my memory serves 11 languages so if you respect if you um request Arabic Spanish Italian whatever the case is your parent Square your Talk Soup goes out language so uh I I just wanted to just touch on that so we have talked about it you know a little earlier about uh the Board of Education meetings and and residents feeling welcome and encouraged to come out and share their opinions their concerns their victories um you know their stories because it's important that regardless of you know a family's background their faith their morals their values their children and their

102choices Cal schools are about education and that that is for every child you know there there are some you know misconceptions with uh kti and lady and I and what we represent and what we stand for we're not against any child we are moms we are for every child getting an excellent education and parents should feel welcome and not intimidated you know to come out and speak I mean we're trying to cut down on the harassment intimidation bullying amongst the students in the schools we certainly don't want parents to feel intimidated to come out and be treated disrespectfully um even if those opinions of the microphone are contrary to my personal position uh it's not my my single vote that changes the policy it is it is a team effort on the board of education

103so all the opinions of the microphone matter and they are things that should be discussed by the Board of Education even if they are contrary to what we think you know we should do we need to take all those into consideration it is what policy planning is about it is about taking you know what matters to families and students into consideration you know we we might present a policy that we think is great and makes sense but we could hear from an entire Community saying well this is actually what we would like to see happen that should change the conversation at the table for the Board of Education and that's what we hope to bring to it just say that we have three readings for every policy three public readings for every policy so it's

104out there people could and this is from 2017 so in seven years I haven't heard one instance or one issue but we do put it out there it's it's transparent everything's transparent everything and I we talk about that later so for voting for a policy for you know I think for going and and talk about a policy before the voting we need to be respectful of everybody's in listen respecting with each other because we are not going to have the same uh views values so we need to be respectful and um so this is going to bring Communications and we can it's important before you know um approve a policy is it important the the feedback that we have for the community we are working for them we represent of of them so we need

105to and be respectful and I guess for me everybody should be present when they're going to voted for a a policy unless it's something you know extraordinary but if not it should be pressing everybody in in before a voting for a policy I look at my job of position of member of Board of Education and know that I serve as part of a representative democracy which is what we have in the United States and people speaking I represent so it would be like being angry with myself sometimes people get up to speak they have a bad issue they want to talk about get it off their chest happens to everyone any Walk of Life work personal life Board of Ed orl counsil as long as we can maintain the right to Corum it's fine so

106um to answer your your three part question question um what I'm hearing from Mr espacito is yes um if it's you know the members have to be president in in order to vote because he mentioned as far as you know if they're if it's something extenda and they need to vote on it they table it for the next meeting so basically yes we have to be present in order to do that vote and what we're doing right now is a commitment to serve the community and as such if we're going to have that commitment I I myself tell my children if you're going to commit to something you better make sure you bring your a 100% so yes we're committed I'm committed car's committed C is committed 100% to coming and and and attending all

107the meetings to be able to do that right um using my professional experience as far as the treatment of individuals in those meetings I myself like I said you know have witnessed that and and have not been very impressed um I in my professional experience have always have to deal with different personalities I've managed people for 15 years um you have different um personalities different viewpoints um challenge sessions right but ultimately understanding that we do respect each other we are we are humans and we are coming from the same place we all care about our children and their future and that is our Common Ground so respect is utmost warranted and necessary for every single individual regardless of the beliefs or Viewpoint thank you thank you for your question thank you for all your answers

108and'll move on to our next question 53476 1 153 476 last one 153 476 before we pull one 153 475 153 oh hello um so first of all I wanted to say this the first time I ever attended one of these and I want to just throw that out there that it's not because I never cared um I'm a single mother of two children my time is so limited I still try to make the PTO uh the football gates and everything between so it's not the lack of caring sometimes it's just the lack of trying to find the time so learning experience for me so thank you um the policy I'm not familiar with my child's a little bit more familiar with it and I have to say I have two children in the district

109my youngest is now in fourth grade he has never came home and told me that he learned anything of that sort we have those conversations at home if he has any questions but it's not something that he has learned in his class same thing with my daughter now she's in eighth grade um part of the policy from what I have understand here and read a little bit about was the protection they feel going to the counselors the teachers and not that they don't have a safe environment at home and in my case I hope both my kids feel they can but for those scenarios where maybe some students don't have the safe environment at home if this was taken away and the transparency becomes too much where the parents don't agree what would be your

110take on a followup with those students to make sure they're in a safe environment at home considering it's out of the scope now of the school thank you for your question want to start with Carrie with the answering it's a great question and it's a concern for parents that are hearing that we want to remove a policy that we want to resend 5756 because again it was introduced as a policy uh that would you know make the school environment safer for all children um first I want to restate that if we resin this policy if we succeed in doing that we already have policies in place for the protection of children those those that feel that they don't have a safe place at home have always been encouraged to talk to their teacher to talk

111to the nurse to talk to the guidance counselor those things have always been in place so removing a policy because of we want to remove again the gender ideology we're not for removing protections we're for removing uh teaching and ideology to children that may not line up with what their parents are teaching them at home that's not a right that I feel like schools have you know uh so separating that out there's already programs in place and policies in place to protect children children that feel unsafe or threatened for any reason in their home are taught by the schools that they can go to any staff member in the school the teacher the guidance counselor the nurse the principal and share their concerns and the staff will act on that and due diligence and if

112you know Social Services needs to be brought in that's part of that whole program it doesn't remove that we're not for removing those safeguards teachers and staff are trained to recognize signs of abuse whether it be physical abuse psychological abuse emotional abuse when a child's great start plummeting if there's evidence of physical abuse staff are taught to recognize those red flags and to act on it we're not for removing any of those safeguards that are in place the child who's being mistreated at home abused feels threatened will always have a place in the school to go to and and share that with them we're not talking about those scenarios that will always be a protection we're just talking about removing an ideology from being taught to every student under the guise of creating a safe

113environment for all well Carrie's right we have uh protocols in place in case a student is uh fearful in any reason for at home okay and I can tell you firsthand I know you know we live in a great Community but you know when you hear uh when you sit in student discipline committees and you sit in some HIV uh meetings and you actually see the home life of some of these children it's it's it's unbelievably awful okay you don't think it no because we walk around and and and everybody's happy and nice these kids there's there's a lot of kids out there that are suffering and again I say you know I'm not quite sure about the gender ideology I've never heard of this but I know this okay if you you have a

114teacher that says again I'll use Joey and Joanna oh you want to be Joanna fine and she calls the parent and says oh you know Joanne is this and the parent says what you know you know what's going to happen it's going to cause chaos and it's going to set us up for possible lawsuits that's why the policy is there it just codifies with the law state somebody get rid of it it doesn't matter you have to adhere to it okay I'm sorry but we do protect children she's right there's protocols in place and um you know and it's it's you know what there are a lot of children that are in need okay and we do recognize that and we do try to be proactive in certain instances but it is number one their

115safety and their concerns is is really what we're focused on and I I have I've been talking with some teacher that as my friend and I asked this questions and they are training to recognize you know if the kids are in danger so the policies that we had before 57 is because of that so they are you know they they're protected um so I don't know in in Anthony mentioned about you know the name and everything and the pattern is going to know about the kids change the name but if we don't communicate with them with the parents for example um kids talk someone can ask tell the parents um outside of the school and if they find out it's going to be very it's going to get worse for the kids you know so

116this is the things in the policy 5756 that I personally don't agree but answer your question yes I know there you know there other policy that protect the child in in in the school I agree I agree with what you're saying as a parent I want to know everything I mean that sincerely but I'm telling you it is against against the law for a parent a teacher to call a parent regarding a name change we do everything we can we have four for four okay to bridge that Gap but legally you cannot as a teacher tell a parent if a student wants to be buy a different B whether you agree with it or not and I'm not saying it's right I'm not saying it's wrong you just can't do it legally you will set

117us up for a lwuit I'm telling you you will set us up for a lwuit it's it's just the policy just tells you you're what you should be doing to follow it's okay now we'll move on to Mr lees's answer thank you thank you for clarifying the policy I got it yeah I I'm in a 100% agreement with Andrew with uh Anthony I'm sorry yeah the Rule's there for a reason look at it it's a short it's really not a big thing to read count how many references to New Jersey state law and federal law are there they' taken those laws and summarized them in in a piece of paper for staff to use the chrisy administration did that just a look you up and if we take it away they still have to follow

118those laws because we can't resing the New Jersey Law we can resend a policy they still have to follow the law it'll just be hard and then your line will add on to the $150,000 plus dollars for wasting illegal Lings against the bar so when I initially reached out to the board um and I mentioned I I received uh one response via email regarding this what I was told was this policy is in place because you know in those scenarios where the you know they fear for the children's lives and you know that they feel like they're in abusive home and you know to protect those children that's a very small population and again to Mr Espo's point to car's Point um there are other policies in place that already protect children in these scenarios

11930280 liability for student welfare 0.9 States a teaching staff member must immediately report any instance of substance abuse violence vandalism accidents or suspected child abuse in accordance with policy numbers 8442 8461 8462 policy 8462 again is reporting potentially missing or abused children so again there already policies in place for these edge cases so there's no basis for keep 5756 because if it was long then other districts wouldn't have District um wouldn't have uh resined it already so let's start understanding that it was implemented under the misinformation that it was a requirement it was not a requirement to be placed it was guidance by the New Jersey Department of of of Education thank you for your questions thank you for your answers I don't believe we have anything to add from the videos 53473 153 473

120I think unfortunately we no since they're no longer here we'll skip that question I'm sorry next one 153 446 thank you thank you for taking the time out um lifetime seral resident graduated from this school 51 years ago um wasn't as I wasn't as involved until my grandkids started coming here um my kids went to private school and to be honest with you I wasn't involved and I'm getting there now um I'd like to thank you all for your opening statements and all of you did a great job telling us a lot of things that you are for and that's that's wonderful my question to each of you is what do you see as the most pressing challenge facing seral District right now and how would you address it thank you for your question we'll

121start with Carrie first thank you for that question and again you know you know KY and lady and I there are a lot of important things to us you know if we do win these seats on the board of education we are talking a lot about policy 5756 but there's a lot of other important things one of them uh as has been mentioned already are the test scores uh so let me share some facts with you this is something that we we will look to talk about as board members if we win these three seats back in 2012 and 13 I'll go back that far okay the target goal in New Jersey uh was for language arts 90% proficiency math 88% with targets saal schools 96% we more than hit the mark we exceeded it

12288.4% in math we exceeded the mark 2013 and 14 again 90% for language arts was the Target in New Jersey 89.2 for math was the target sayal school's 94.4 in language arts we exceeded it 80.1 I beg your pardon I wrote over that line it might be an 86.1 but still uh to my point we did very very well what happened when did it happen content lady and I did our research we wanted to find out when did it change and why 2014 and 15 the new standards were um the the what common sense or what was it called lady Common Core thank you I beg your pardon Common Core was instituted new curriculum in sville very next year New Jersey for whatever reason lowered the standard it was originally the in 20134 90% language

123arts was the goal 89.2 for math they lowered it 51.3 for language arts they lowered the target to 40.1 for how did we do in Sahel 50.4% language arts 23% and it has not changed it has actually gone lower since then this is an issue we are targeting as God willing members of the board education if you vote Us in we need to address this it's more important than anything else it's raising these test scores we need to go back to the curriculum we were using before which did well with it just as an FYI we we work within the curriculum that's given to us by the board uh the education department in New Jersey so you know we have to stay within what their guidelines are but here's some of the things to answer

124your question that we we're still feeling the effects believe it or not and I am almost embarrassed to say it from covid-19 the learning loss there okay was incredible incredible here are several I mean look we're into m implementing a ton of strategies okay here's what we're doing okay we do diagnostic testing okay which is like the pre-test so teachers can evaluate students of their strengths and weaknesses before the instruction even begins okay engage we we've expanded our tutoring programs uh we we have one-on-one availabilities group tutoring okay uh people who fall behind the subjects for subjects math science reading we offer tutoring at lunchtime when you finish your lunch you can go and get tutoring on the subject that you are interested in or having issues with um let's see what else sorry okay

125uh one last thing I don't want to take up too much time on this we we're we're we've implemented and I don't know if any everyone's aware of this I hope they are uh this year a 247 tutoring uh line that you can go call and talk to a subject expert whether it be physics history geometry Etc any day any time of the day and get help that you need okay so and and we're doing this and we're doing a 100 other things to to try to bridge that learning loss Gap um you know and and we don't stop okay we do have to follow the curriculum and the guidelines that are set by by Trend you know we don't make those determinations unfortunately so the student performance I think is the biggest challenge the

126the board of the district has the Board of Education we need to see how we can help them um according the New Jersey Department of Education when we find this information I personally was I wasn't expecting that we were to win like B like this it's been seven years so it started before Co so what else we're been doing what are we doing to help this kid there's a learning loss what are we doing as a district there's a problem in there I know we doing um as you mentioned uh tutoring and their H extracurricular activities that's great it should be available for all school but what if we study this data that we have in here we can understand where are the learning losss why are these students struggling with how can we help

127them this is a reality we're not doing we're doing good as a as a school our schools are not doing good so what can we do I believe that we can even see other District that are good are doing good what are they doing they have the same curriculum but what are they doing for example plb I think Princeton Livingston those are we can study them we can study and see whether they do and so I think it's very important that's the biggest challenge that the the district is you know facing now we really quick we can all sit up here members of the board education can sit in in the meetings and tell you that we need to get better at the test scores and do all this do all that at the end

128of the day it comes down to teachers we're not competitive Sero lowered their standards to hire teachers because no one wants to work here cuz we don't pay enough it's not competitive but we can buy buses we can spend millions of dollars on AC it's a mess when you build a house the foundation needs to be proper or your house is going to fall the foundation of education is a teacher I defy anyone to come up with any other scenario talk to the teachers pull them aside ask them we're hiring people that don't have the GPA that we normally want they sit here for 1 to 3 years get that experience and then move for five grand South Amoy pays more East bronw Woodbridge ber Amway Edison go look it's easy to find on the

129internet talk to the teachers they'll tell you we cannot attract Talent we're not competitive enough that's quite I don't know how they afford houses in those six C I don't know how they do [Applause] so I think I I share the sentiment here academics is number one right covid was 2019 these test scores that we talked about the lower standards were 5 years prior so learning loss from covid is just not enough to say yeah that's the reason why so there's more right we have to go down to the core part of it is is the teachers I think the teachers are I mean we have amazing teachers from the experience I've had with some teachers are great teachers right they want to do the work they want to be a to help the children

130succeed but again it's what resources are we giving the teachers in order to do that pay I agree it's 100% our teachers are not paid enough the other aspect of it is what resource what resources are they getting what curriculum and can we tweak the curriculum can we look creative ideas in what other districts have done so again the question about you know what else what is the substantive answer as far as what we can do is do our due diligence figure out other districts that are working and what are they doing that is different from what we're doing and start modeling we don't need to reinvent the wheel we just need to start modeling what is working the other aspect that I wanted to say there is the special education because that one is

131near and dear to my heart the resources that they have is not enough he um it was mentioned about the tutoring that is applicable for the middle school and high school what about from the upper elementary and lower elementary I have children in special education and they get you know they get help there's cies to help them out by invitation only but there's other resources out there speaking again to other districts other um parents of special education kids in other districts that they're using uh special immersive reader pens special you know up uploading the soft uh uh book into the into their um into their Chromebook so that they can read it from there and help that from that perspective so again it's being creative looking at what works and doesn't work from other districts

132and seeing how we can Implement that here thank you for your responses we do have a video that addresses the now the bus board we've heard for years has been learning loss I'm speaking to this directly because my son started his educational experience here in sville public schools during the pandemic the most important years of gab's education from learning to read to navigating the world of social emotional learning those experiences began on a laptop in my dining room in this house and at the table at my mother-in-law and father-in-law's house in Spotswood but we did what we do best as a burrow and as a community we came together and we got our kids through it our teachers and staff built the plane while they flew it and I'll never be able to adequately express

133my gratitude for what our teachers did for our kids however State learning assessments do tell us that Black and Hispanic students English language Learners economically disadvantaged students and students with disabilities still score below the Statewide average these families are still struggling to attain pre-pandemic achievement levels I would absolutely support increasing funding for those instances so that we can evaluate where the need for support can be made better by the work of our board and our superintendent I don't believe that throwing money at problems solves them but using funds to onboard additional tutors support staff and educational services that is certainly money well spent especially in a district like ours that is as racially ethnically and culturally diverse as sville and having Educators who look think and feel like our families will only better help accomplish

134these goals together thank you for the question and thank you for all the responses we have time for two more questions um I know there are there are many more than two questions in this bucket uh we'll see if the people are here as we call them I'm thinking on the Fly and I don't want to put anyone on the spot but I you know I am certainly um aware that some of you have sat here the entire night waiting to ask a question and if you want to think about the five if you want to think about if the people that are unable to ask live tonight could leave their questions if you'd like to respond at a later time um it may not serve everyone's needs perfectly but it might be a happy

135middle so if you want to think about that just while we finish but we'll go as fast as we can uh 153 1 good evening candidates thank you for being here this evening uh I'm going to ask uh Mr anono to tell tell us parent employment is crucial is essential for the success of students I'd like to know uh how you went about uh proposing adopting 5756 with the parents adequately informed that you were going to have a vote on it I'm sorry I missed that last part how were the parents informed were they involved in the process of adop in that policy did you have an invitation for all the parents to be present and for them to participate because you are saying that the parent involvement is essential it's imperative in the education

136of children were they um involved did you were the parents make sure I quot you correctly were the parents involved in the adopting of 5756 were they made aware of that it was being adopted instead no I don't think there's any hello okay so what we do is we we discuss these at board meetings Okay openly we we have first and second and and a final reading to adopting okay we have 586 policies does anyone have an issue with any of them have about no nobody okay this is 7 years old this policy we anytime anyone wants to talk about it they can certainly go up to the mic and they have talked about it okay it has no teeth because we can't change the law but I guess to answer your question no we

137don't go out and individualize and say oh we're having this policy today please look at it what you can do is if you don't look at the come to the meeting or or or view it uh afterward you can read Talk Soup okay and what Dr Lobby does is he summarizes each meeting okay and what he does in that also he he summarizes the policies that are adopted so you could probably go back to a talk suit from 2017 and whenever this was adopted by us 18 and uh find out that we did actually talk about it present it and um and there were no objections at the time so does that answer your question if not please I'd be happy to okay I know the question was specific for Anthony but do you have

138any comments to add to that or you want to move on yeah so I think again just circling back to um the fact that you know of and and you can read this as you will of all the parents that we talked to we have talked to hundreds since you know the summer uh we didn't meet a parent who was aware of the specifics of this policy now the board can say you know what we gave opportunity we let the public know that this was on the do to for consideration to adopt and that's fine but I think that the more important thing is that parents may have been aware that this policy to create a safer environment for the children that's what it was build as um you know was introduced but they were

139not told of the ideology that was included in this policy the the curriculum that was adopted that brought the ideology in is what parents were unaware of so I want to just clarify Anthony said that by law the school cannot tell parents about a child's gender identity that's false the policy states that if the child expresses they that they feel threatened that they feel like their safety would be threatened if they if their parents were told then that's when the the school steps in and they should if any child feels unsafe for any reason the school would step in that child could then talk with the counselor nurse they would bring in possibly social services and a case would open we're not talking about those cases to say that by law the school cannot tell

140parents is not true the policy says that only if a child expresses that they feel unsafe if their parents were to find out and then it would go from there the school would react appropriately it does not mean that if any child uh you know expresses um a different gender identity or what not that the school cannot tell parents those are the cases we're talking about parents should be aware of what's happening in their child's life that's what's important to us so parents aware that this kind of change is what was included no they were not aware and that's that's not my opinion this is fact it's based upon hundreds of parents that we talked to in say well those that are watching would say the same thing some may have known most did not

141we're looking to resend it more than 30 school districts in Jersey have already resed it we to move down that shows you that it's not re Ed by law to have this policy in place right it's not required it's not required by law have the policy but everything in the law has to be adhered to there's not even a question about it I know spent a great as far as as as very passionate policy but I do want to also make sure we address the question and have time for one more yeah you have to understand that it's not required that the teacher tell them okay it's recommended it's and even the state says we recommend that you do it and of course in s we do do that okay we make every attempt to

142do that so you know the law you have to go to a lawyer we did it does not require a teacher to tell the parent off and I know again this is a passionate topic and I'm sure everyone has questions about it and I know there are resources to read the policy and certainly ask questions to the Board of Education through email to clarify some maybe some misconceptions if there are any um does anyone have any comments specific to the question so to answer your question a lot of the pents aware about the the polic 575c I was one of them I learned in this year and when we went out and talk with a lot of the parents we asked questions we were like do you know about Poli system see they said no

143what is it so we some sometimes have to explain to them what it was and we always tell them you know read it you need to read it you need to you know take your own conclusion that I wasn't it wasn't you know I'm going to say wasn't enough information of this policy for the parents to know yeah of course the parents did not know look around there's 40 people in here most of these people go to board of gun meetings the rest of the burrow doesn't they don't know meeting minutes are on the Burrow's website the district's website I should say videos of the district's meetings going on that you can see for the public on there and there's email links that you can email School administration District administration and each member of the

144board of AD question it but to Anthony's point we say it again if I ripped up 5756 right now the school district still has to follow the New Jersey and federal laws that are in 5756 it just simplifies it it's like doing your turbo taxes versus going to the library and taking out the 17 Volume 7 of the United States tax code because you can't do that you just use this it's the same thing okay so I'm not going to be that point uh what I will say is to godan car's Point most parents didn't know that we spoke to um they didn't know that existed now I understand that Dr lbby has a talk suit I don't know if any of you seen it it is overwhelming with the amount of information in there

145what I typically do and what I've seen that gets done in the business environment is that when there are policies of significant change it gets its own dedicated email notification out that's number one number two giving people the information readily in that email for them to read up on it and then number three including an invitation to a town hall so everyone can come and discuss it and get further information to make sure that they're on board and give the community an opportunity to voice their opinions so that's what should have been done um another thing when it comes to the translations and I maybe um K will talk touch on this later but the translations are not always the best there has been a time where we've seen something saying in Spanish the translation

146was to the parent of terrorist and there's evidence of this so again we need to make sure that when we're offering these translation tools that we're making sure that we're not relying fully on AI and that we have someone that is anme in that language to be able to provide those translations thank you thank you for your question thank you for your responses this will be the last Live question so we have time for closing statements 53470 well thanks everybody for being here my name is Jeff I'm a board of ed member now but I want to express this as my personal opinion not that of the board of eved we talk about policies that are mandatory by the State not mandatory by the state recommended by the state the funny thing about the state

147is whether they recommend it kind of like when your boss recommends you do something they don't really recommend you do it a lot of State funding is tied to policy when you take policies away that the state wants you do run the very high risk of losing State funding you talked about managing budgets earlier how would you make up for lost St funding for any reason in the budget where 80% of it currently goes to pay our faculty our staff our administrators there's only about a 20% wiggle room in that budget the same way South Orange is doing it they just laid off 37 people we can start here we can start start at the end of carry and work down the the line I'm going to start with you to reest the question if

148there's any Finance um comments in your responses okay so just in response to that when we're talking about State funding resending policy 5756 would equate to a fourpoint loss on the metric that they use for State funding it is not I don't think that it's reasonable to say that only a loss of Four Points by resending this policy uh we would be at risk of losing substantial state aid if losing those four points on their metric would result in the loss of State funding if we were at that borderline on that number I think we need to look to where else we're not meeting uh the standards of New Jersey uh that would impact that I don't believe that four points should put us in a red zone for losing State okay so let's talk

149about the discretionary Revenue in the budget after bills are paid let looking at last year's Bud budget not this year's there was approximately 16 million discretionary Revenue so that's what we're talking about you're saying well what would we do if we lost the state funding look when we're looking at the budget for sville education is our primary focus when looking at all the projects that are going on you know uh purchas purchasing buses and you know building a Depot for the buses all those things are great but we we would need to refocus it's like a family that you know loses one source of income and now they have to live on the one income it means restructuring budget it means tightening the belt and it means focusing only on the absolute Necessities for sville

150that's education that's security you know the things that are the most important to the residents in sville is the education of the children so all of those ancillary projects that we have invested in are the things that we would pull back on in order to fund the things that are the most important just just to make uh something clear to everyone when we purchased our buses we did a cost analysis okay cost benefit analysis and we're now nting about 250,000 more than if we Outsource them so kudos to the board of education and Dr Lobby and our business administrator because as a result of them buying our buses we now have a quarter of a million dollars additional okay and look you know what there's there's so many things to the budget you're right the

151number is 18 million that's our discretionary money we 85% of our budgets for for our salaries okay and and our benefits so what do you do we increase grant opportunities we we energy safety initiatives solar panels uh LED lighting okay better insulation we've done it all okay we conduct annual review of our contracts so we can ensure that we're getting the best value for our money when we buy something from someone okay you know I don't so the bus is another example we also save o approximately over a million dollars by self-insuring okay which other districts don't do we save money we saved the million dollars there plus we gave the benefit of the cost savings to our teachers okay who need it most okay so we're doing a million in one things and we

152had budget presentations from December to March and nobody goes Nobody ask any questions the budget's online you can look at all the questions that were asked we're doing a tremend can we do more yeah I don't know what you're going to squeeze that at that 18 million I don't understand it but I I would love to hear the the the specifics to it okay I could tell you what we're doing but I like to know what you think we're doing wrong and I mean that sincerely because I've never heard from anyone regarding this budget never once ever in nine years and I'd be happy to I love numbers I'd be happy to but I've never heard from that and it's transparent when I chaired the finance committee several years ago I brought the budget process

153public to the public we had used to do that you know in a committee and then vote on the budget now every single line item it's right here I have it for you guys tell me where you want me to turn tell me what you want to cut and I'll and I and I will take it to the board and we'll discuss it any line IEM give it to me I know this thing inside and out as do all the other board members so you know it's easy to sit there from a perch and with all the respect I mean this sincerely from a perch and say you're spending erroneously yeah I I don't know if we're spending our $18 million erroneously I really don't but if we are I'd like to know I really

154would like to know With all sincerity so my opinion personally I never manage a budget of millions of dollars so it's something that I'm going to be learning but I do believe whatever is left after we pay our bill should be going to the education of the kids so um I hear for example they have the Esports that is with video games and program with video games but is that really necessary is that helping the kids you know students that aren't athletes really way they are they are other you know and and it's it's like a carate as a family you have it's you're going to lose something you have to you know tight your belt what are we going to do so I think that I as I say I have to learn a

155lot of this is this is not my expertise but I really I'm willing to learn and work if I'm elected with the Board of Education and see what else we can get with the leftover monies after with our bills that it has to go to the K the children's education not what I what they want is what we need to help them to succeed in in their future careers or in the path that they choose it's not a matter of typing belts it's not a matter of where where this money shows or what that is talk to any government official and they'll tell you how profitable the government is it's a joke Anthony just said we have $250,000 in Pro in profit from lossing that we saved I love Anthony he's passionate you can hear

156him we spent $150,000 in legal fees already where's that $650,000 in engineering fees there's close to a million and evidently we're still showing 250,000 plus that's government B it's a shell G over here over here over here we bought depreciable items for millions and millions of dollars the state is going to come out next just like they did in New York and say your buses need to be electric how much is that going to cost us then we have to build the power station maybe like the solar plants they can sit out there for 3 four 5 years and not work work cuz that was another plan of be just free money L we have to not even tighten adults ask questions why do we need our buses we have complaints who manages the complaints

157Transportation direct what did they do I don't know what's their job to manage the complaints to this they let the problem fester and if you know anything about maavan terminology you let the problem Fester you sleep in as the hero you buy the buses you come in everyone loves you that shows more responsibility and allows you to dictate I want more money so is the transportation Direct that's why we're paying the district $250,000 a year to run the school district failing grades but we got buses and Porta Johns in case you need to use the bathroom so I agree with you mat 100% um I understand that you know when balancing a budget you have to really again go back to the priorities right we as parents know what in our own household or as

158you know head of households or whatever we need to make sure that we're balancing our budgets accordingly and that's where you know you have to you know stop something here that is a nice to have versus what is necessary and for us bringing it back home it's the academics that Esports great to have for those kids that don't have sports what we have the unified program and the kids participate in that and that's even better because you have the Gen and population as well as the special end participating together so again going back to the to the test SC they are atrocious we have not met standards in I will tell you right now s years let's focus and prioritize our budget towards getting our kids and setting them up for proper adulthood that is

159the that is it [Applause] I want to sincerely thank everyone who came here tonight with their questions um there were a lot of excellent questions again with a lot of passion which I would expect because we're talking about I would say some of our most important humans in this community our children so um thank you to all of you they were tough questions and thank you to the grace that you all showed and the the preparation you came here with tonight I do know we have some questions that are left U before we finish tonight if we could just address if we'd like to handle them um later and how and I'm happy to help facilitate that through the the emails or whatever we need to do to do that but for now um we

160did ask the candidates to prepare a closing statement for all of you so if you'd like to begin Carri with your closing statement oh okay can you hear me okay all right so obviously there are are some some really really big issues that you need to think about with your vote this November 5th uh in years past meet and greets for candidates um you know were probably not as as heavy as this year you know this these are heavy heavy issues I just want to encourage you to consider you know Kia and lady and I are for every student in s we are not against any student in s we want everyone to succeed s Board of Education uh is in the process of finalizing really coming to the the finish line of vision 2030

161when we look at our test scores being uh as low as they are uh for the past seven years I don't look at that as reaching that goal we would like to come to the table and help in that solution process help in that discussion with the Board of Education you know like lady said let's look at what other districts are doing that are succeeding that have overcome learning loss let's look at that we are here to help the children that is our number one primary focus is to help these kids academically to shift the focus ultimately and solely on academics and let's support our teachers and our schools and create a solution because what we're doing is not working it's just not not with these test scores that's the evidence and we're not looking

162to point fingers we're looking to join the conversation and to help develop a solution that's actually going to work to help these kids succeed truly with the vision 2030 thank you so as the election draws close I want to thank each of you uh up here okay for taking the time to engage in this process okay so over the course of my tenure I have had the honor of serving our district with I Feld dedication transparency and a clear focus on ensuring that every student is prepared for Success Beyond high school together we've expanded that opportunities whether it be allowing a student to graduate with an associates degree AP courses uh 24-hour academic support hotline etc etc I've always believed that responsible stewardship uh Financial stewardship and goes hand inand with quality education we've invested

163wisely to meet the needs of our students while maintaining fiscal responsibility and I committed to continuing this approach in the future as we look ahead my vision remains one of progress to help students to help give students the opportunity for Success listen I understand the challenges that lie ahead guys I do and I remain ready to meet those challenges at on and while not losing sight of the unique needs of our community this election is about our future and I asking for your trust and your vote to continue this important together we can move forward providing the best best possible education for our students as a parent and a Community member I know how important it is to send your child to a school know going there in good hands hot button issues hypotheticals used

164to divide the community do nothing to move our district forward ladies and gentlemen I assure you that every decision we make as a board of education has one core priority ensuring that our student our schools are places where students feel secure supported and ready to learn the trust you place in US protect to protect and nurture the children of this community is an immense one that is not taken lightly by any of us I ask for your vote so that we can continue moving our District forward I would also like to thank you for your trust over the last 9 years and I hope I am fortunate enough to continue serving you and your children in the years to come together we can ensure our schools remain places where every student has the opportunity to

165succeed in [Applause] life as the pr our community I understand how crucial good education is for our children's future education is not just about passing tests it's about giving our kids the skill they need to succeed in life this include strong abilities in Reading Writing math R thinking and problem solving if I'm elected to the Cal Board of Education my primary focus will be on making sure our childr get the best education possible so they are prepared for whatever come next the Board of Education plays a vital role in making decisions that impact our children's learning experiences each year we Face difficult Choice choices about how to spend our resources we have to decide with programs to support which ones may need to be cut and whether we should introduce new initiatives to help our

166student learn better if elected I will take the time to ask important questions about these decisions I want to make sure that we all understand how each choice will affect our classrooms and most importantly our children I believe that parents and teacher need to work closely together when we join forces we create a strong support system for our kids teachers know what student need to learn and parents can share their insight and concerns by working together with other or members I hope to create an atmosphere where everyone feels valued and heard I want to encourage everyone in our community parents teachers and students to share their thoughts and suggestions listening to the voice of our community is key to making informed decisions and I assure you that I I will reflect your concern and ideas

167in our discussions and decisions my vision for the C district is to be recognized as a top performing District where every students grad graduates fully prepare for success in their chosen path whether that be in higher education vocational training or the workforce my goal is to help our school become places where every child can learn and grow to their fullest potential I believe that by prioritizing our children's education and building strong partnership we can make a real difference I want to thank again the midle school P for coordinating this event and it will be an honor to serve in the Board of Education and I can assure you I will work hard for all of you I can asked for your both on November 5th thank you for your time and your support thank you

168thanks again Sue and the rest of the ladies from the middle school PTO wonderful job seral PD thanks for being here Security Guys from Saran District awesome thanks my wife and my two sons are here today to support thank you um you got a big decision decision coming for you for no on November 4th federally at state level local level and with the Board of Education um take the time between now and then and really research the issues you heard a lot of opinions you heard a lot of talk about blls you heard a lot of talk about 5756 it's easily available on the Barrow's website go look at it all those laws can be researched in the state of New Jersey simple search gets brings it up for you the same thing with the

169federal government use that do some research you may learn something new and then you get to make your decision on November 4th my pledge is to represent you in the best possible way I can that's it so once again I want to say thank you thank you to Susan and SMS PTO for coordinating this event and allowing all candidates to engage with the community and answer these important questions I want to thank my family and my friends for the love and support towards kadya car and myself I want to thank you um my husband my children because I know this has been a sacrifice for them as well but I understand that you guys know why mommy is doing what we're doing right we're trying to serve our community a special thanks to all of

170you in particular for taking the time to come out here ask your questions and to make an informed decision to mass point it's an important decision this November 5th this is only the first step I encourage you to continue to research policies programs and curriculum not only in our district but like we mentioned earlier around other districts in the state in the country see what has worked what hasn't worked bring this up to your Bo representatives and be an active participant in driving the change our children are way too valuable not to do so so I urge you please please please continue to stay plugged in there's an idiom that says it takes a village and I have seen that firsthand in my own upbringing when I was raised by two working parents we had

171a great support system comprised of family friends and teachers but at the Forefront where my parents with an active voice every step of the way I hope you have been able to relate I have I hope I have been able to relate my genuine love concern and dedication to our community and our children as we established a background in education is not a qualifier for school school board membership my vast professional experience isn't is leverageable but it's not a qualifier being a mom it's great but it's not a qualifier either all these things are nice tohs however the main thing I would say that qualifies me for being uh on the board of education is that I have a heart for children I want to see them Thrive I want to protect their innocence and

172I want to ensure that they are properly equipped for adulthood whatever path that may be to conclude kak carry and I believe all diverse viewpoints have a right to be heard if elected we vow to promote an environment where all opinions are allowed no one is shouted down no one is called derogatory terms every Viewpoint is respected this is an example that we look to show to provide our students we will ensure that all Boe policies support transparency all parents will know what is taught what resources are used and what mental health guidance is provided to the students if you agree we ask for your support in strengthening education through family collaboration so thank you and go 1 23 on November 5th as we wrap up this evening I want to thank Sue and the

173entire SMS PTO for giving residents an opportunity to learn learn about the people who were seeking your vote once a year we gather together as a community to pick our leaders to select the people whose history have showing up ought to count for something no leader or candidate has everything you are looking for but some of us have a history of working for the residents of this burrow over the years never running when the conversation gets too heavy too hot or too hard those people whose names you know I am not a stranger to you anymore s now I know there has been a lot of misinformation out there at this election cycle and I'm sorry that that mudded the water about the things that are being taught to our kids the rights we will

174always retain as parents or the partnership that our district seeks to have with us I was grateful to Dr lby as well as many of our board members who at our Board of Education meeting on October 15th took the time on a late night to clear the air regarding much of that confusion to those who have disagreed with me challenged me or argued with me I want to thank you because I love a respectful policy to beate I always have I believe that when people sit in a room together and genuinely listen that we can do real good for each other we just have to remind ourselves that a mutual respect a common care for our community and basic human empathy those are the touchstones against which we should measure our conversations I'm so grateful

175to have seen the support from so many of you from Democrats and Republicans council members military sitting Boe members parents non-parents I didn't plan on running in this election but as neighbors we are trying to do things a different way and I hope that you know I've done my best for you and for us because I believe believe like you that working together is the best way for our kids to learn about cooperation and collaboration and Community we have to teach our kids and sometimes our adults what leading looks like leading is listening now some may choose to talk about the things that they will take away the things they will remove the things they will resend but I think most residents would rather see us talk about what we can build and create and

176give our kids what we can leave behind and also talk honestly about what's realistic for a board of ation member to actually accomplish you can find all of my policy proposals and answers to questions on my Facebook page spato fors now as Gabe's dad it has been important to me over the years to give you access to a two dad family because I know that even in 2024 there are still people who may not have interacted with a family like mine a family who needed other people to advocate for us to be able to enjoy the same rights as our neighbors and so my games dad hosts have been in part to remind you that even though there may be areas where we disagree on policy that I am still someone's someone I have people

177who love me like all of our kids do our kids are someone someone and they deserve to be represented by people who have been here who have never backed down from a fight and have taken the time to listen and learn over many years I am not a rubber stand for any organization or person or party I haven't accepted any endorsements or funding in this election and my seat on the board wouldn't be mine alone it would be ours owed to a burrow who came together to choose a new way forward I will never stop listening to you I will never stop learning from you and I will never stop advocating for all of Saville's kids all of them to have access to a smartly funded diverse and culturally Rich educational experience where they can

178challenge themselves to grow into our next generation of leaders who are led by the best teachers around and a board that cares deeply about us and the community that expects them to get it right on November 5th I'm asking for your vote again we have unfinished business sarraille and I am here ready now for that job if you have any questions you feel need Clarity please feel free to email me at spaz forville gmail.com or call me directly because I'm asking for you to write in Anthony spado SP o s a to be your next Board of Education member tell your friends your neighbors screenshot my name and bring it into the voting boo to ensure youve got the spelling right because listen we need every vote we can get this is a without us

179and this is for us this campaign is about turning your voices into our strength thank you sville now let's get back to building the sville our kids deserve Breck by break so like I said before on behalf of the PTO I first and foremost want to thank the candidates this was no easy feat you had to prepare to come here tonight um I don't take it lightly the commitment you're making to serve our community and to put yourself out there open to the public so thank you to all of you uh and to all of you for coming out and sitting sitting here through this almost 2 and 1 half hour evening um preparing your questions standing up communicating this really important conversation I hope our goal was accomplished and that's that each of you

180left here tonight with more information about our candidates than you came people asked how did this ever become a PTO thing right and I got to be honest at some points in the last few weeks I said how did this become a PTO thing and then I realized first and foremost as a PTO president and as the largest PTO well the biggest PTO and the biggest school this in the town right now um we have a commitment to all of you to bridge a gap we realize we had voices and many of you come out to our meetings and get involved in our things and um we're so grateful for that but that means that we can be a link between the town and uh groups like this and we don't take that job lightly

181so we're proud to have hosted this tonight we know it wasn't perfect we did our very very best to be as fair and Equitable to all the candidates as we could we're sure we did things wrong we're sure we're going to hear about them my apologies in advance if anybody um has you know had concerns or questions we welcome them we'll be doing this again in a couple years I won't be there at the time so there'll be another PTO president up here but uh we'd love to to hear some feedback for sure um the candidates we have at least five or six questions that were not answered uh would you be willing if those folks submitted them to us that I can email them to you and we can be sure that that they

182get their answers does that seem like a fair way I'd love feedback from the audience is that seem like a fair way to get your questions answered so we can do we can do the parents Square SL bomber blast we can do social media absolutely um if you want to leave your email addresses so you personally get the responses I'll be happy to send them personally to you does that seem like a we're cover on our basis as best we can any place I'm missing so we can do social we can do emails I did also email the P presidents and have them advertise this I can also email the PTO presidents the responses um and try to get it out there as best we can Fair anybody hate it okay and everyone's okay with

183it up here okay and the responses will be you know copied um right into the to the document all right thank you again I'll be here for getting home have thank you to your