001good evening everyone and welcome to our january 18 2022 servo board of education meeting excuse me please take notice that this public meeting of the cerebral board of education was transmitted to the home news tribune and the star ledger in accordance with chapter 231 pl law 1975 further in accordance with njsa 104-6-21 a copy of this notice was posted outside of the board secretary's office and a copy was also filed with the clerk of the borough of sayreville please rise to salute the flag [Music] of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all roll call please mr belka mrs bloom here mr fernandez here mrs napolitano here mrs cabone here miss carlock here mr john walsh here mr patrick
002walsh here mr esposito here miss hill can you please summarize our executive the board discussed negotiations related to the cereville education associate association and matters falling under attorney client privilege personnel including but not limited to agenda items was on the agenda but it was not discussed thank you very much uh we do have a correspondence we have a letter that will be on file at miss miss hill can they have it at your office is it on our website in my office in your office if anyone chooses to look at that um and at this point can i have a motion please please to approve the minutes from our regular and executive session from our 1-4 20-22 meeting so move mr walsh j mrs bloom uh miss hill uh yes there is one correction on
003the january 4th minutes which is on page four paragraph three it should read motion by mrs napolitano second by mr patrick walsh to affirm mr j walsh for the office of vice president of the board of education uh mr belka mrs bloom yes mr this fernandez napolitano yes mrs pavone yes miss pilot yes mr john walsh yes mr patrick walsh yes mr esposito yes uh and then mr especially was that december 21st and january 4th was that just january 4th you would mention uh we need to do both right we didn't do it last time yes excuse me we're going to do another december 21st yeah and our january 1st of 2022 meeting just december 21st okay so we have to go through i have a motion please mrs bloom second mrs napolitano okay mr
004belka mrs bloom yes mr fernandez yes mrs napolitano yes mrs pabone yes miss parlov i abstain mr john walsh yes mr patrick walsh yes and mr esposito yes okay okay one of our favorite parts of the meeting we have our student representatives who wants to go first you want to go first mrs castellito good evening at the beginning of this month the high school announced the students of the month for december who in order of freshman to seniors are lillian heidelberg yasela tavares gerber garcia and celia rosario the theater society has recently started rehearsals for the spring musical mamma mia which will take place in march in addition the variety show auditions were held last week and the show will take place on february 5th the student council has put together an anonymous survey asking
005students for issues and concerns in the high school they wish to be addressed the student council hopes to use this information or to improve those concerns that the students the students have last week sophomores and juniors were in who were interested in applying for ap classes were able to attend a virtual ap night to help them choose if ap is right for them last month the student council held a door decorating contest students could decorate a teacher's door with any holiday decor and or design mr alvarez's door was chosen as the winner of the contest and tomorrow that class will receive a bagel breakfast party in addition mr alvarez's robotics classes competed in his annual road rally robot challenge the students built robot race cars to compete this year's winning team included andrea cruz paul
006piotrovsky andrea maslowski ariana also the r o j r o t c cadets visited the lakehurst national naval air station and historical society finally the rutgers university businesses for youth or known as ruby attended a virtual meet with the students and staff at rutgers school of business in sports the boys bowling team finished the season with a record of 14 wins two ties and one loss last week the team won the gmc white division championship in individuals player brian finished second place the girls bowling team finished with a score of 13 wins three ties and one loss the team reached the finals of the individuals championship tournament the boys and girls basketball teams both won their most recent game against carteret high school the wrestling team won their last three matches which put their score
007to seven wins and four losses the winter track team attended new jersey group four relay championships where anthony botto and jd mcgraw won the bronze medal for shot foot and zamir wright and ryan donna maria won the silver medal for the high jump lastly the boys and girls swimming team went against skyway last week and unfortunately lost that is all that has happened in the high school this month thank you for your time thank you so much excellent how's uh so i i think i asked you this a few months ago i'm gonna i'm gonna ask it again normal you go to school it's as if it was yeah what do you see big difference it's much more normal than it was in september good we're getting back to our normal routine that's terrific that's
008terrific thank you are you in the play guys is it guys and dolls um no which is mamma mia [Music] and by the way i've had an opportunity to listen to some rehearsals and they sound great but um the variety show i actually had a chance to listen to some of the kids audition for that and i can't wait for it because some of those kids sounded great and finally in mr alvarez's class if you if you didn't see the video of the robot challenge you got to check it out it's in this week's talk soup it's amazing they have their soccer tournament coming up next with their robots so great jobs great job any questions for stephanie great job good job thank you this is rakio good evening board of education members and administrators
009my name is jada branchio sms student council board of education representative i wanted to begin with the community service club community service will participate in a day of service activities on january 17th and throughout the month of january members will be encouraged to share their activities via our google classroom activities such as helping a neighbor doing a cleanup or participating in our middle school food drive the sms pto school store is open every tuesday and thursday during lunch periods the pto is selling bomber spirit socks the next pto meeting will take place on january 18th central middle school student council executive board is meeting this week to discuss upcoming events for february the archangel raphael's mission drive will begin in february where homerooms will be collecting toiletries and other hygiene products that will be donated
010to the arm branch in new brunswick the products will be used throughout shelters and their mobile unit we will also be hosting events to recognize blast black history month as well as discussing upcoming events now on to the saverville middle school sports the sms lady bombers fought hard against a competitive monroe middle school in our first game of the season although the lady bombers tried their hardest we came up short at the end of the game sophia motulu was our leading scorer and some great defensive attempts were had by karina cardozo and kaylie chalene we look forward to our upcoming games this week and we are enjoying our time together learning the fundamentals of basketball the sarri middle school cheerleading team is looking forward to their first competition with their game day team on february
01112th both teams will be competing at states at the end of february the saver middle school boys basketball team is 2-0 on the season and is hungry for more coach provenza believes that this team can win it all due to their hustle and commitment to the game the wrestling team is three and two moving into the county tournament this thursday the 20th thank you very much for your time great job thank you excellent jada anybody have any questions from us right here no did they steal your thunder again mr wall as always they do such a great job but we got a couple other any questions no okay thank you so much guys for being here appreciate it thanks jaden stephanie it's going to be a long meeting tonight so if you guys want to
012get home and start your homework you're more than welcome to do so okay um i'm i'm going to be brief there's a lot of people here this evening i just wanted to just let everyone know i want to thank everyone even though it was a 5'4 vote last uh last month or a couple weeks ago i just want to thank everyone um i i tell you what being you know one i'd like to think one of my traits is being humble in that you guys have spoken and told me that you need a little more communication from me and i've heard you and you know i uh will do my best to make sure i'm a little more communicative to all of you you know and don't hesitate to reach out to me either but
013i'll do i'll do a better job going forward okay thank you yeah my word thank you um mr walsh president uh yeah we have uh some highlights like you said the student council reps always do such a good job so some of them be repeated but congratulations accommodations to the cerebral war memorial high school air force junior rotc cadets who presented our nation's colors during the football game between the washington football team and philadelphia eagles back in december congratulations to cerebral boys winner track and field athletes anthony voto won first place in the shot put sean wilson who took first place in the 800 meter race and ryan donna maria who came in second place in the high jump during this during the spiked shoe holiday festival meet at the new york armory back in
014december congratulations to the entire sale of a boys winner track and field team for winning the murley invitational large school division earlier in january anthony votto again won a gold medal in the shot put while zamir wright won gold in the high jump the 4x800 relay team also won gold congratulations to cerebral boys track and field athletes anthony voto again and j.d mcgowan who won the bronze medal new jersey group four relay championships in the shot put as well as zamir wright and ryan donna maria who won the silver medal in the high jump congratulations to the cerebral boys bowling team which finished the season with a 14-2-1 record and won the greater middlesex conference weight division championship congratulations to brian pavleck who came in second place in an individual championship tournament special accommodations to
015george orzo the lead day custodian at the arlett school who heroically jumped into action last week to swiftly apply the heimlich maneuver and possibly save the life of a choking staff member great job georgie orzo by the way was my catcher on my uh freshman baseball team when i was coaching uh many years ago he's a great kid so a great great man now so uh congratulations to him being a hero what's that are you trying to take your thunder and say that you caught them behind me no i did not see them i'm like but uh very proud of them very proud of them uh congratulations accommodations to the following members of the cerebral future business leaders of america club who were crowned champions during the new jersey regional fbla championship ram budi and
016sam budiri enter entrepreneurship isabella jakowski and savvy sanderford business management reba barbaria gargey gupta and sri amira entered the introduction to event planning shaquille esrari jay desai shrikar gandashiri ranit luthra and rohan vaidya parliamentary procedure ram budi and sambudi also qualify for the state finals so agree so proud of all our students again every week it's this every meeting we have uh more and more uh students doing great things so we're we're all proud of them that was an outstanding job on those names too yeah very impressive thank you john no problem dr labbe we have several presentations tonight yes we do we have a very big evening when it comes to presentations as you all know we're um getting into the nooks and crannies with regard to our 2020 to 2023 budget development in
017fact in accordance with our budget development calendar which was approved by you back in october we have four special presentations this evening the high school is going to present their proposed budget the middle school will do theirs as will all of our elementary schools combine and finally dr shediak will finish off with a proposed curriculum and instruction presentation too finally mr glock malloy will also share our student safety data information from period one with you and that will conclude our presentations so without any further delay i'd like to ask the high school administration since they got to get up early tomorrow morning they can start us off first so if mr rubino and his administration would like to come on up to the podium so that they can present the proposed 2022-2020 high school budget
018and mr rubino is joined by mr salem mrowsky and miss romero for those in our audience if you see the big screen we have that illuminated for you unfortunately we did not have enough uh copies i don't believe for everyone so hopefully we're sharing at tables good mr serbino good evening everyone uh thank you very much for having us again i am here with my amazing team uh behind me vice principals as dr labbe uh just introduced i do want to go over a couple highlights before we get to our goals and things of that nature that we want to move forward with at the high school but just some highlights i mean we could go on and on about the highlights at the high school just because it's such an amazing place but here
019are just a couple that really stand out this year one of them was the high school was recognized by next gen personal finance as a gold standard school for financial literacy education so next-gen personal finance is a provider of financial education curriculum and teacher professional development it's recognized our school as a gold standard for requiring all students to take at least one semester of personal finance before graduation so with fewer than one in five students nationwide receiving this level of access to a comprehensive financial education our high school is one of those so it's absolutely amazing thing that you know they have put forth for us and not only that but being recognized as that and and really goes to the teachers it doesn't you know it's not the administration it's absolutely the teachers and
020the supervisors and we just appreciate them so very much with that aspect the creation of our student of the month recognition program this program has been highly successful which it gives all students an opportunity to be recognized for their achievements in and outside of the classroom so each month four students one from each grade level are selected as a students of the month and to be eligible for this award you need a couple things in the criteria and that criteria is significant progress in the classroom academic achievement leadership notable considerations towards others outstanding attitude community involvement and service at a school personal development and exemplary character so each month our staff members put forth students and nominate students that they feel are worthy of this award it's been absolutely outstanding thus far um and with
021your approval and dr labby's approval i would like to present each student of the month for the entire year with a plaque at the end of this school year at the last board meeting um so with your approval i would love to absolutely do that and recognize them um so they get the um the recognition they they so deserve um we also had and i can i'm speechless talking about this program that we had here um at the high school this ceremony uh wreaths across america this visit was probably a highlight of this of this high school for years to come and and like i said honestly i still have chills after that program it was absolutely amazing i think i could talk on behalf of my team that we couldn't be more proud of
022our students school and community uh and again it really was just an amazing event um and i think it's gonna be cherished memory of of our high school for for years to come i'm just i'm just awed uh with our community and school our school-wide theme this year we actually have a banner over there it's together in flight that's something that we wanted to put forward that our team came up with this year you know the traditions and values that you know come along with being a cerebral bomber is just so very important it's the heart and soul of our school and you know the high school team wanted to put something together that it really made a difference something that really brings forth the amazing pieces of our school and we wanted something that
023had together in it because we're already a family at the high school so um we work together however we wanted this theme that would educate recognize individual student and staff successes and can be used in a multitude of ways and we thought at first like maybe this is just going to be a yearly theme and you know it absolutely caught on um and i think it's going to be something that we're going to move forward um you know for years to come and you can see it around the school it's posted around the school we have banners around the school um i really think that the students the staff have really moved forward with it it really is it's about having a positive attitude and we we hope to keep the entire school motivated and
024positive throughout the school year we've been through a lot in the last couple years and we really want to energize this high school so we're again together we want to soar uh you know the great accomplishments hence together in flight and and we're very excited to put forth that for our high school we also have a we we've well we've been selected to receive this comprehensive dating abuse program um for the high school it's called power back it's provided by an organization called a partnership for change we're so fortunate to have it we were selected as a grant through the department of education it's no cost to the district and we were selected for two years so it involves student assemblies which we've already have we have one in november with that disgusted healthy and
025abusive relationship abusive relationships and prevention strategies the assembly is to call the action to participate in peer leadership programs so all 10th and 12th grade students were attending so we're going to alternate next year as well so all students get to be a part of this program we also have an after school peer leadership program that goes along with the power back program that's been highly successful we have so many students have been involved so far so we're very excited about that so they've become leaders and advocate on this topic so we're also going to have staff education and training we've already started clinical staff training with our our school counselors parent information seminars so this is a very comprehensive program and something that quite frankly i think every school needs um and we're very
026excited about it i'm not sure if the board have seen some of the data i know i i send it to dr labbe but i can tell you it's eye-opening and overall we hope that it's going to help reduce dating abuse by stopping it before it starts and as the data suggests that uh you will see teens are not aware of the early signs of dating abuse and we put forth this program and we're really really excited i can't take credit for it all it really is the school counseling department and mrs ali katina who has been heading this we're so proud of that moving on uh to our goals for this year for the 2021-22 school year one of his one of the goals that we want to continue um and with the help
027of dr aguiles is the idea council that's our inclu inclusion diversity equality and awareness council it's such an important council this high school it's new uh we just recently started last year but like the mission is to work with staff and students to promote a positive school culture of equality equity inclusion and we want to continue that um we were not able to have a lot of staff meetings in person right now a lot of them are virtual but we would like our students to be able to come to some of those staff meetings um and do some training with our staff and i think that would be very beneficial to hear from our students and how they feel and just put forth some of their positive positive vibes to our staff into the school
028community so that's a that's a goal that's going to be a continued we also have for our culture and climate goal is going to be focusing on creating and updating the high school mission statement this is a huge feat um and we've already started um in a small aspect having a committee come together but it is is going to be huge um that we update this the goals and creating and revising our mission statement so that it really capsulates uh the core values beliefs of the school define its goals um and objectives and really emphasize its commitment and purpose to the community um so that's something that we're going to be updating that's one of our goals this year we're very excited about that but it is a it is a big feat because it's
029so very important for our high school also for our academic goal we would like to improve upon the rti our rti program and process at the high school that directly correlates with student learning outcomes so you know leveraging using the irs and rti programming process to increase the percentage of 11th grade students who satisfy the new jersey high school graduation requirements prior to entering the 12th grade as evidenced by the percentage of 11th grade students who satisfied graduation requirements prior to 12th grade in the 2020-2021 school year so we're moving forward with that as well um mrs katina who's you know in charge of our rti committee we just have so many uh teachers that are been been at every single meeting and been really committed to uh to working with our students so and
030finding interventions for each one of them that are struggling so we are excited about that as well and we also had a virtual mental health day assembly in may of 2021 and that was you know highly attended highly rated and i think our students got a lot out of it and it's something they could go back to every single year we had a lot of unbelievable presenters guest presenters we'd also like to update our our library media center so moving forward we want to make that space the hub of the school where a lot of things take place so we're going to be updating not only the painting of it but we're going to ask for your approval for not only just some furniture but supplies and things of that nature so the budget for
031the library has increased a little bit so but we want to make that a place where not only just our students our our staff go um but the community as well when you have you know who knows maybe board of education meetings at some point will be in the library because we really would like to update that so it's a amazing place for everybody to go and enjoy and students want to go it's not a place where they have to go it's a place they would like to go and study and enjoy um you know their studies so um in terms of of that as well uh moving forward we'd like to update our staff facilities um in terms of staff facilities we're talking about what we started this year um with one of our
032you know staff prep rooms but we'd like to update the rest of our prep rooms as well um in areas so we were going to need some furniture um we are also going to need some you know things that would be more in we want to have an inviting environment for our staff to not only just teach in but to learn in as well for for professional development sessions so overall we'd like to update our staff facilities which we've i've also put forth um with mr coleman's burger and in his budget so um with that um i'll take any questions that anybody has uh would you like us to sit over here dr lobby or sure okay i don't know if anyone had any questions good well i'm sorry i'm sorry sir or um you
033can come up um for agenda items when we open up to the public which this is a one of thanks dale i'm what's that you didn't hear it he couldn't hear you oh did you understand what i said you want me to repeat it sir no i understand what you're saying sir we'll open it up to the public for this agenda item is when everyone's finished with their presentations in a few moments thank you so dale i just want to uh one of the things that stood out for me was and i'm glad you emphasized it was the wreaths across america you know from the moment those gold star families walked in and and anyone who was there and there were a few board members there they saw our students they had this and this
034is not hyperbole they had this pride and this this like they got it like they got why they were there that day and it wasn't about them it wasn't about our schools about those families right so i just want to thank you it's probably one of the most proudest moments that i've seen in in in six years here probably you know what i'm going to say it's number one you guys did an amazing job you dr lab and your teams so i want to thank you again i know we thanked you that day i want to thank you again thank you i appreciate it we i think we could all agree it's definitely definitely a highlight of this high school moving forward most definitely thank you i have a question sure um what does rti
035stand for responsive response to interventions yeah i just want to pay you back on what and what anthony was saying i was at the event um you guys did a great job i also want to want to thank roc and our student body who participated in that i think you all did thank you board members if you're going to speak with your masks on just get a little bit closer to your microphones dale i have one question sure if we remodel the library we're going to keep the student artwork are we not absolutely i'd like to update the artwork i would like to keep what we have but i'd like to update it because i do think over the years some of that artwork has been kind of breaking down and i just think we
036need to update that just a little bit i don't want to take it off the walls i just would like to update it maybe we could touch it up a little bit sword needs to be fixed yeah we've mentioned that maybe you could help us with that can we find some stained uh art stained glass i would be more than happy to donate some stained glass to the library i've said it in public there you go all right good questions what else dale just uh not so much a question is a comment i i know you mentioned the rti in here and i'd assume uh from everything i'm hearing the you know a lot of our kids have had a hard time after a year virtual and coming back in school and you know it
037seems to me this is really important are we seeing a lot more kids in need of these services yes as years go on yes not only that but luckily uh maryland and her team of supervisors we now have tier three tutoring at the high school which is absolutely amazing um which is one two tutoring once you go through the rti process um but i mean we are seeing a lot of students that are struggling um especially you know over the last year or so i mean that's why you know this is one of our goals that we would really like to hone in on for those students that are struggling i just wanted to read comment on it because i know sometimes you know especially in the weeds it sounds boring and it sounds but
038especially now after this year of remote learning and kids being out of classroom this is this is an extremely important uh thing and you know again i commend you guys and making it a priority and helping as many of our kids as possible and i'll add that mr abino in his administration has made this a priority for the past several years however it is most notably needed now um you know as many of our parents are learning from the start strong assessment results that they received recently um we desperately need to provide more interventions to some of our students who have struggled with virtual learning thank you thanks dale okay anyone else thanks mr rubino thank you very much thank you so much everyone have a good night mr salem mr romero mr owski thank
039you very very much for everything that you do mr esposito i'd like to now ask mr glahuski and the middle school administration to join us at the podium to give the middle school 2022-2023 proposed budget and mr glensky is joined by mr jagu and ms rago vice principals good evening well first the administrative team at the height in the middle school still stuck in my head that i was at high school i would like to thank our board of education previous as well as current for all the budget support that you've given us in our time at the middle school you will find a couple themes in this presentation tonight bias administration one is educational spaces two is instructional methods three character education and four working to improve chronic absenteeism we saw a lot of
040improvement throughout the school not just academically but more facility needs and we got a lot of highlights that we can uh discuss first the goals from last year were in to increase our sixth grade assessment scores which was accomplished uh we did increase by twelve percent of the fifteen percent of the students that were on the bubble in our grade 6 form c assessment and second our chronic absenteeism was another goal that we did well in uh in reaching nine plus activities to support uh the decrease of chronic absenteeism and team meetings parent student correspondents in school meetings with families mr jagu and his team did a great job with that moving on uh some goals and resources for last year and school improvement creating educational spaces which contribute to engaging motivation and motivating instructional
041strategies very very key to language arts and math and throughout the building was new furniture white boards whiteboard activity tables technology etc professional development grade level team meetings furniture again instructional supplies our dedicated professional development room which is completed and established thanks to the board of education and their support of furniture and technology we specifically had a focus on our grade six students and i'll get to that in a moment sustained student engagement through instructional coach we have an instructional coach as many of you know which is ms rose griggs a couple highlights for her and what she does for our teachers bi-weekly professional development sessions which she calls tips with the coach virtual and recorded professional development sessions provided by her she also visits classrooms for teacher visits she does a monthly newsletter and
042maintains a website for instructional coach resources continue to implement instructional methods which focus on centers and stations when i came into the middle school a few years back uh that was a focus that we implemented right away and we are school-wide currently with the support of dr milo and mathematics as well as our other content areas cerebral university also supports us with that and the last two for last year were positive character education programs which we still uh implemented as well as continue and sustained uh for our medal of honor program as well as our pennant program at the moment and then chronic absenteeism once again a few highlights for parents staff and students our attendance team again focuses heavily on that coffee with the principal meetings where i meet with our parents uh in
043the morning one one day a month as well as in the evenings to discuss uh chronic absenteeism and many other topics moving on to 21 22 this year our main goal again is grade 6 mathematics where we look to move our students and to grow into meet or exceeding expectations followed by again building strategies for chronic absenteeism and obviously uh it's been a little tough with the pandemic going on but we do well continuing improvement here are the the items again this year that are a part of that theme creating educational spaces implementing instructional methods and sustaining our character education program and a focus on chronic absenteeism a few highlights for the 21 22 school year so far focusing on the use of data to drive instruction through our data team our rti data and
044key department data discussions um specifically today i met with mala maharana our supervisor of mathematics and kim grossman where we talked about tier 2 services as mr walsh mentioned before about having more help for our kids we're constantly looking at that mr walsh second kind of undefined but identified academic goals in language arts we tend to lean towards math but uh this year we've implemented an instituted new program and vocabulary which is on going as well as achieve 3000 across all curriculum we did do and worked through science and social studies textbooks and digital licenses for this year our unified elective program is in full swing in our second marking period ms rhaego had a lot to do with that with dr defina and that's going very well with our regular ed students as well
045as our multiple disabled students really great to see mark and perry one was really really nice to see those students working together and just in addition to this working with supervisor carolyn o'connor we implemented the junior rotc in the middle school for grade eight we have about i think it's 12 to 15 students that are are a part of that program it didn't make it in our course catalog course catalog last year but this year it will and we're way ahead of it uh implement uh social and emotional learning last year we started working with a sel team i do want to mention that uh part of that is again sixth fifth grade to sixth grade transition into the middle school and i do want to acknowledge uh mrs coghlanis and rich toa for spending
046time with us working through with the ues to bridge the transition gap between grade six students entering the middle school from grade five a few other pieces to that we've implemented a focus and recharge workbook that sixth grade staff members have which implemented brain breaks into their school day and then second which is coming shortly i know rose griggs our instructional coach has been working on the power of words which focuses on teacher language uh to support student learning computer science we had discussions this year in regards to adjusting our elective program uh i'll mention that uh when we get to 2223. our makerspace stem steam science and math lab is up in and running in the media center to the left of the media center and walk in we just about put in our
0473d printer to the right in the media center which is going to go along with that makerspace and new elective course discussions took place for the 22-23 school year which i'll get to in a minute a couple more 21 22 highlights again classroom needs furniture whiteboards etc has been implemented there and working well we're going to continue to do that in the next few budgets um updating the faculty bathroom thank you to jim coleman berger and his crew all the faculty bathrooms have been completed and they look phenomenal update of main office bathrooms i did recently speak to mr collinsburger about that and we talked about moving those funds to student bathrooms rather than the main office bathrooms but we'll see how that works update existing audiovisual in our gymnasium systems in place the only
048piece left is to tie the the sound system and the gymnasium to our bells and pa system which will help with safety and student management utilizing uh our display monitors throughout the school we've had a little snag there i know mr glockman-loy and his team are working on it similar to what you see here in high school and utilizing technology department to install external internal security cameras and pa systems outside which we really need that was coming and is coming in the summer of 22. right around the corner um creating a work wellness area for our staff members in the d-wing if you recall a couple years ago we put in a really nice work and wellness area for our teachers workstations and nice logoed couches in our c1 area now we're working on our
049d-wing for another area for our staff to get into and have a nice comfortable area furniture appliances and paint we're all implemented there and last year's 2122 part of the budget was looking at b8 which is the old wood shop at the middle school which we're trying to make into an all-purpose room and i'll just plug that a little bit during our pe sessions when we have inclement where there a lot of our classes have to be in the hallway of the foyer of the the uh the gymnasium uh with classrooms right down the hall which is a little disturbing i'd like to work through that and get into the v8 area also adventure based uh curriculum we're working with mr padami our supervisor on that if we can make that happen kind of low
050level adventure based curriculum mr uh fisher our adventure based counseling media space he's uh in various parts of our school and that would be great in the gymnasium hallway window tempting for temperature control was completed the upper foyer is no longer extremely hot when we get that sun blaring into the foyer area upstairs which actually makes a big difference going down the hallway so it's fantastic 22 23. uh we're going to continue with uh continue working on our educational spaces again grade 6 focus continue working with instructional methods to focus on centers and stations with the which the staff has really grasped upon we're continuing doing that school-wide other and and other offer and implement new electives of interest to our students i mentioned before computer science we've changed and added a computer science seventh
051grade elective course uh and we just changed the name of our eighth grade course so we're going to have a little bit of a process there of grade seven computer science and then grade eight computer science along with the cte grant that we um we uh receive this year through uh the hard work of donna secola and mala maharana we're offering a career exploration course which donna so coldwell came up with career ostity um we've we decided when we were together that uh we need to name our courses that uh of our interest to our kids so uh that will be uh in the eighth grade correct um and uh we're looking really excited about that another one that we're excited about with with uh a business and math related area is called tech tank
052one of our math teachers mr donegan ryan donegan came to me and and said he would love to teach an elective and i said well would it be mathematics and he said well yeah if that's what you want um so he came up with something along the lines of exploring career paths and entrepreneurship which is kind of a shark tank kind of feel um so we're going to be working with our kids in career exploration offering them exploring career paths and entrepreneurship as well as new those two new electives are put into our course catalog and again character education and improving chronic absenteeism is a part of our theme at the middle school climate and climate and culture continuing to promote the theme of the bombers throughout cerebral middle school many of you already know
053we've started working on that we would like to continue doing that with window lamination many of you see schools that have uh their front doors covered with logos and and positive sayings uh we would like to do that uh opposite the uh it would be on the outside of our windows rather the inside because of the security film that's on there we like to do bomber logo type team uh items where we can see out but nobody can see in so that's part of something that we would like to do on the front four areas as well as hallway bomber theme design designation signs so instead of having the c-wing as a designation or the d-wing as a designation we would like our kids in the spring to choose what each hallway is going to
054be and then we're going to hang kind of like street line a street sign type of um apparatus that uh for example could be the bomber way or blue and gray street or so and so and so forth so again going along with the bomber theme and then finally under climate and culture there bomber themed hallway decals positive message and accessories throughout the school we've done great things with paint throughout the school so we're looking to cover them up just a little facilitywise b8 renovation all-purpose room is again on the 2223 request list we would like to take a really hard look at that as we would love to have that space again for our pe and other areas that we can work on through there uh the painting of the gymnasium is part of
055mr coleman berger's budget as well as our hallways we have one hallway left furniture for our media center we're looking to do to the way far right a reading an instructional lounge where it's not your typical furniture i was looking at lounge chairs and bean bags and so forth that our kids can go in there either scheduled class and do some reading with a language arts teacher or utilize that space as a reward area for students on their lunch were they if they wanted to go uh read uh some books or text in there or listen to music or other um we would allow that so we're looking to spruce that up a little bit personnel we need a school counselor and these are the reasons social and emotional well-being has been um very high
056and you know a lot of people already know that um and it continues to be high but before covid and before the pandemic hit i realized that our counselors are doing so much work for our students that their their caseloads have gotten pretty large this year's grade 8 is 497 students this year's grade 7 is 438 students grade 6 is 454 students and that's for three guidance counselors we would like to spread the wealth a little bit the things that they are doing right now more than just counseling our students is that they're working through uh our alert system systems which is called line wise and or beacon where these uh technology alerts come to administrators and we have to filter through those to see if someone was searching something that they shouldn't have been
057searching for or alerts us to a student that might be depressed or having issue uh and that comes across often so our guidance counselors are being given that information and then we check them within probably 30 minutes okay that's either here or that's outside of school and then they're trying to do classroom lessons they're trying to do abc groups they're trying to do groups on their own they're trying to do individual counseling they also are are hiv specialists when i first went to the middle school i broke it down instead of just one person doing it we decided to do all three of them and and one fourth as an alternative because at the time when we got there i got there that the hiv cases were were much higher than they are at the
058moment so to give you an idea for this counselor our high school has seven guidance counselors and their caseloads are about 275 to 300. the middle school is about specific to grade level so the numbers that you see in front of you are the numbers that they try to to work with uh daily weekly monthly and for the school year that would bring if we had an extra counselor it would bring us down to uh three and about 350 per counselor so we're looking for a school counselor donna sokol and i uh spoke about that pretty heavily social studies teacher we have 11 total social studies teachers at the middle school uh in comparison to 25 math and 24 language arts and i understand those are tested areas however those 11 social studies teachers teach
059six periods a day and those class sizes range from 24 to 27 give or take depending on how the the numbers fall throughout grades six and eight seven and eight so with the cte grant uh we're looking for a social studies teacher to actually teach the cte exploration course and then we could pick up four periods of social studies or history to help those class sizes and that's everything thank you for your time thanks mr glover i have a question with the counselors yep 375 is that 375 students yes in their case that they they need help 375 in their caseload so that means the whole class okay so just curious do you have a percentage or a number of how many people they actually work with i'd have to ask donna and or the
060counselors themselves they try to hit every single student often sure sure i hear that um how long are you with the middle school this is my fourth year then then i want to thank you because i know four years ago we had a conversation the whole board did you know and i still think it's a difficult transition from fifth to sixth grade uh to me you know maybe i'm a softie but they're still like babies in fifth grade you know and it's a tough transition and i know you spoke about it then and you're still working on it now yeah we are still working on it again i like to as i said i uh miss cogliones mrs kagalinis and i talk often about it uh we did have uh two or three meetings so
061far with our team in the sixth grade and her team in the fifth grade and we talked about a lot of different things do students get involved i'm sorry do the students ever get involved we talked about mr conglomerates and i talked about a little bit but we're talk right at the point right now of either sending teachers from the sixth grade down to the ues to to check things out and work with with kids if we can and then vice versa uh just a more observation um and see where we go that was the last conversation that we had um we're just trying to help each other help the kids absolutely thanks it's great that you're still doing it it's impressive to see thank you anyone else have any questions for mr glue i
062also had a question on the counselors because these numbers do seem really high is there an industry standard or benchmark for a ratio uh caseload per counselor i did have that conversation with donna segold but i forgot the number of my apologies okay i'm just i guess my question is is one enough right i mean is that the right number well uh you know if you if you ask for five you might you know we we'll take one you know but it it's it's ultimately to help the student population we have a crew um you know the guidance counselor the three plus dorian consummator our student assistants counselor that are working non-stop with children and it's awesome to see however um you can see the drain in them you know often so and we try
063to help out as much as we can to expand a little bit upon that i think part of the problem is a the number of of students now that are experiencing some form of social and emotional distress has raised significantly due to the pandemic but you also have counselors who are we we've given them other tasks for instance one of our counselors you know mrs consummagno who mr glosky just referenced she's also our substance abuse counselor and unfortunately we have quite a few cases of students in the middle school using controlled substances and so forth so they require a certain number of substance abuse counseling sessions with her but then you have harassment intimidation and bullying that also requires more time of our school counselors and all three of them act well both mr fisher
064and mrs consul magno are the hiv specialists so they investigate all hiv cases so we keep adding responsibilities onto these people so when you add that with the you know increase in the number of students that have social and emotional distress right now i can certainly see why mr kolowski would be asking for at least one additional counselor yeah no i completely agree i guess and not to answer right now perhaps but my question uh really is how far away are we from meeting that need because it seems like the needs are you know increasing i think one personally i think one it's comfortable it'll make them a lot more comfortable than they are in terms they can get out more they they enjoy the classroom lessons they enjoy the one-on-one you know you know
065we we constantly work with them as administrators um through each each case that we have um and and they're so valuable and having that one other uh it would just spread them out more you know most middle schools you know with the at the size of about 13 to 1400 students have about three to four fact a lot because we have a possible floater so that each school could share the uh cost um case each school meaning was that each school meaning like uh well in other words it say the middle school and the high school share this counselor so it would be 50 percent take take a counselor an existing counselor from the high school no no we had one a floater oh yeah i'm not sure if there's a need right now for
066an additional counselor at the high school okay um i think we're hearing is a need for a counselor at the middle school and no other areas need one so the elementaries they're fine um you know we we you know i'm mrs coghley and east the principal of the samsung upper elementary school um may may feel you know there might become a time when she needs that but right now they're they're below a thousand students um they have two counselors gotcha because that's all you hear on tv now right i mean and it's true right these these kids need help so yeah and we're doing it like i said with the increase in social emotional distress also the increase in the number of kids at the middle school level you know using substances has increased and
067you know i think it's an all of it's a byproduct of the pandemic and you know what all of us are going through is including our students anybody have any questions yeah i would like to state that i also second danielle's concern that you know you might need to look for two people especially if we have all these substance abuse problems and you know these people are really stretched and maybe they're not they then themselves might need some counseling you know you should consider looking at two people maybe we we do appreciate that and we are we would be a little bit more comfortable with the one but we do appreciate that thought yeah you're only getting one [Laughter] just uh i thought about that and i just have a quick comment not a not
068a question but uh again i see the the unified elective program and you know that's a a huge issue for me and i love uh people people know previously we've implemented as a sport you know each season and now that we have the whole elective program as a father of a student with special needs who's participated and a father of a student whose general education has participated in i always say i don't i don't know who it helps more it helps all our kids and it's a great activity for anyone who's not seen our unified program it's uh i love it you know it became a unified champion school uh a year ago and i just i'd like to see that it's growing it's not we didn't stay still with that now it's actually a
069uh elective program so yeah we uh we spent a lot of time on that uh and it it it was fantastic to see um and and see in front of us the marketperiod one elective and the regular ed students taking such pride in working with the multiple disabled students and just as an example the regular ed students wrote letters to the special education students and thanked them for putting a smile on their face every day yeah you know how great is that it's great it's great there's hope out there is that what you're saying there's always hope is that where the the first like during the gym when the general students are with them is that what i was telling you about that my daughter was doing in school she goes to school she goes
070to gym but she doesn't she takes the unified studies yeah that's separate from the unified there's kids who are mainstreamed in the you know maybe not in a regular class but in a physical class yeah same same idea though that the kids are working together and you know in the same universe together so it's good stuff yeah i just got two two quick questions so what grade do we start um substance abuse count uh not much counseling but prevention programs um is there like can we start this at an earlier grade to maybe prevent some of these problems before they get through the month we start very early the substance abuse counseling that i'm talking about is when a child is caught under the influence or when a child is caught bringing in a controlled
071substance we're required to provide them with a certain number of substance abuse counseling one-on-one counseling sessions but with regard to educating our students about substance abuse we start that very early and then you know dr shetiak's moving in to talk about that so go ahead and comment on the doctor well our our elementary schools baron through the borough and um it's about making good decisions and so on it's an after-school program that begins in our elementary schools so um we are approving those facilitators at this evening's meeting so no it's an after-school program do we have anything again it may not be something to answer now but do we have any programs or we consider any programs that are that would be given to all the students in terms of prevention in the year right
072well well our our guidance counselors in the elementary schools work and and push into classes and talk to the students about decision making and so on about 21st century on skills and decision making we have at the um ues we have the lead program formerly known as dare right which was dare back in the day and all the students um participate in that program too and i just got one another question for mr glahuski i'm a little concerned here in the four years you've been there you've done an amazing job of reducing the hiv cases and really turning around through the morale in school i just you know i'm i'm a little concerned that you're too amazing you're making the other day mr fernandez you know i appreciate that um but it it comes back
073to i was i was asked by one of our students a couple weeks back to give her a quote uh for a language arts class and i said and i think mr jaguar had to do the same um and i said it's really giving back to the community that gave to me okay and you know what that means and mr walsh knows what that means and many of us know what that means and it comes down to taking that and spreading it throughout the school inspiring it to my administration mr jagu's been here forever as everybody knows and miss rhaego's been here for a while as well but there's that sense of understanding what cerebral is all about and i'm not going to give up of what we do you know as far as that
074bomb or pride is concerned you know and and that's that's all it is it's it's it's about giving back to the kids that um that are from our community and and where i came from you know so and and if we could do that i think our kids are going to be on a on a great path thank you you've been doing the job i also just want to say i thought it was a great idea that you integrated the students thoughts on naming the hallways yeah that'll be coming up in the spring and uh that's one of the things that the kids don't know yet and i think it's uh great it'll change the look of the school and and how they feel about it you know absolutely engages them in the process thank
075you i have a request can mrs uh senora rego give this presentation again now in spanish we could do that thank you very much everyone great job guys thank you mr jagu thank you mr ago thank you mr klulhoski and now mr esposito i'd like to invite out all of our elementary school principals up to the podium so that they can jointly share their presentation to you and they are led by miss coglionese from the samsung upper elementary school her vice principal mr tola as well as mr nuremberger the principal at the eisenhower school mr byrne the principal of the wilson school ms stuber the principal of the truman school and mr preston the principal of the arlith school and i believe someone's going to be the spokesperson i'm hoping it's not mr byrne i'm
076only kidding mr byrne good evening um yeah we're here today uh we appreciate the opportunity um to talk about our budget and uh we're gonna break it down into three components just as everyone else did a little bit of uh reflection on the past uh looking at the present and then looking towards the future so the first slide we have for you today is looking at the past just uh some of the accomplishments that we had for two thousand twenty twenty one i'm very proud of some of these accomplishments as you know we started virtually so we were able to implement hybrid instruction putting in those cisco room kits that we were able to obtain thank you to mr glock malloy and creating some professional development opportunities for those teachers to create new instructional practices
077and really implement the instruction the best they could another one of our goals was diversity equity and inclusion we created committees some of the creative names that they came up with was secret agents of change up at the ues tide which stands for team inclusion diversity and equity and and other names as well we created some libraries with diverse titles so we have books with characters that look like our students with diverse backgrounds and some presentations one of them specifically being the holocaust presentation up at the ues as you know we needed to really take a look at some of the struggling learners from the previous year we were able to implement tier 3 and flex support which again was just some individual tutoring for students who struggled from the year before with with covet
078we continued with our academies both math and literacy academy and over the summer we were able to have our summer acceleration program in addition we recognized that social emotional concerns were high we were able to implement some programs for both the students and the parents because we recognize that they struggled as well in our second slide one of the things that we really tried to do last year was to try to keep things as normal as possible so we continued with some of the programs that we always had but tried to make them uh you know with the current conditions so we had some new things that we tried with the communications club and stems club we had a stem fair lead continued to support that law enforcement against drugs except it was virtual this
079year we implemented the kids heart challenge let the children lead as you know and we continued with our family fun nights again they just looked a little bit differently this year there were virtual paint nights and some different fun things held virtually for the students this year we had or last year we had the pumpkin patch was kind of like a drive-by um activity for the um students to celebrate halloween since we weren't able to have our uh big events that we usually do and virtual assemblies again rather than having large gatherings we did some virtual assembly so keeping things as normal as possible and trying to you know keep things moving in the in the right direction for this year we set some goals they're under two million umbrellas um the first one is
080instruction the other one is culture and climate uh under instruction some of the things that we're looking to do is um bring in uh some more leveled readers fnp for grade five that's our fonteson panel program and shared reading in k3 uh we're continuing to implement our envision series uh in in mathematics and again trying to address learning goals as a result of the pandemic with all of the interventions that um you know we're going to continue with tier 3 flex support in the academies and training professional development in language arts and math uh continuing with our rti program as mentioned earlier in the night it's response intervention really trying to identify students who are struggling and give them the interventions and supports that are necessary and continue to build digital resources and strategies for
081remote instruction again it is one of those things that we still have um and we're just continuing to get better with it and support our teachers with it culture and climate we continue with our responsive classroom we were able to get i believe 10 more teachers formally trained through the program over the summer we continue with our play works program and other character education programs that each school has their own individual program you know whatever they call it it is aimed for character education again we're continuing the race for equity and harmony and we're trying to continue to support students social emotional needs so far this year the accomplishments are continuing to add to those classroom libraries um so each individual classroom has its own little library for students to book borrow and read and
082find a comfortable corner so we're adding to those libraries making those libraries more diverse as well providing professional development to the teachers not only for remote instruction but um again we were able to bring in our district was able to bring in for the love of literacy which is specifically aimed at our por teachers for literacy achieve 3000 lots of work being done with that lots of training being done with that trying to really target specific goals and use data to to help us achieve those goals and then some other presenters such as dr milo our support for students continued this year we were able to bring in effective school solutions ess each of the elementary schools now have a counselor that comes to us and supports students with their needs for that which is
083really really nice to have this year nurtured heart is another program that we brought in in addition there's in-person support for ell students and students with special needs some extra support there and again using our data to identify those learning gaps for our next year looking at the future same umbrellas apply we're still looking at instruction we're still looking at culture and climate we're just getting to the next step with that there's another component we'd like to bring in for literacy is implement the interactive writing component for fontes and panel again continue to implement and support our staff with the fnp components phonics guided reading shared reading mini lessons interactive read alouds and then again continue with our envision math series and st math which the kids love and more math supplies science kits more
084training and professional development in language arts and math just continue it it's um you know we continue to have new staff when we have to sustain that professional development uh and continue with our rti programs make sure that our interventions are up to date and we're providing the best interventions possible for our students with culture and climate again we are really starting to roll with responsive classroom we have quite a bit of a number of teachers that are formally trained which is a really great program that happens usually over the summer we'd like to continue with that and with our play works program which is a structured recess program that the kids do enjoy and really has been providing lots of benefits for us during recess we see the number of incidents of behavior and
085hiv going down during that time with this new structured program continuing with our character education program continuing with the race for equity and harmony and again making sure that we have programs in place to support our our students as a result of the pandemic and that is our goals for 2022-23 yeah i'm going to have one i really think only one question this play works if i remember correctly this was implemented a few years ago excuse me in order to i don't know to refer for them to um what's the word for two people that got into a scuffle in the in the schoolyard right so they would resolve their differences in a different way isn't that because we had structured games that they played and how to do it am i mixing the two
086up it has benefits it does have conflict resolution built into it um so there it presents different ways for them to resolve arguments i one know i won you know so they it gives them opportunities to do rochambeau to really talk about it gives them sentence starters so it teaches them alternate ways but it really provides structure to be successful in recess and it gives them you know things to do how to play how to talk how to act and it's really been successful eliminating uh you know some of the behaviors that we saw out on recess that was going to be my follow-up do you really see a difference now is it making a difference because at first when we implemented this i was like this is ridiculous i mean how kids we're going
087to tell kids now how to speak and what they should i mean sometimes you just have to work it out yourself right we all know that but if you find there's there's tangible evidence that says it works we did the numbers the first year and they were astounding um and we're just continuing with it because it was so effective that first year that's great thank you anyone else who mr preston or any one of our principals i have a question preston oh i'm sorry um i'm very happy that you accomplished your stem club and your stem fair however you know i would very much like to see steam in both those places in all of our elementary schools preferably she'd like stained glass art not necessarily thank you i have a question as well um
088is this inclusive of the preschool program the goals no that will be the next board the next meeting thank you um i just want to make a comment um i did tour all the schools um and was able to see all your needs as far as facilities and different things go but i do have to say they've all done a good job in keeping those old facilities looking bright and engaging for our students so thank you very much amen and just um i just again want to comment i like seeing all the support for students highlighted here i think you know we all forget you know our elementary schools i guess third graders are the only ones in those schools who had a real school year yet and that was as kindergarteners yeah so really
089so much of what we're teaching socially and and the kids who are in rue yes they've never had a year of ues you know a normal year where they were there for a full year and we're you know again we're only now learning how detrimental you know some of this virtual learning has been and again you guys are doing an amazing job being there for our kids and and and keep it up and it's important to me see that that's the support is part of your budget and probably the main part of your uh budget to support our students who quite frankly have taken the biggest toll in the pandemic they've made the biggest sacrifices more than adults you know and um again thanks for just being here for the kids and keep up the
090good work thank you terrific well thank you guys mr burn would you like to give us one big visgazian [Laughter] actually i'll mix it up a little bit i i would just share a little peter sengay in terms of systems thinking in regard to what we're doing with play works mr esposito so i'll just put that out there so i can talk about that in the future thank you dr lobby for your time you are the best mr burns thank you mr burn thank you miss coggly niece thank you mr tola thank you mr nurnberger miss stuber and of course mr preston you guys did a great job mr esposito to conclude our budget presentations i'm going to ask dr shetiak now to briefly share with you our curriculum and instruction proposed budget for two
091thousand twenty two thousand twenty three great thank you okay hi everyone um so much of what i'm going to talk about has been talked about by some of the principals because my budget impacts everything that they do at the schools as far as their curriculum and instruction goes but i'll start off with talking first of all about some of our accomplishments from last year and we know last year was a very interesting and challenging year but we did have some really important accomplishments and some things we were able to really do within the curriculum and instruction we were able to improve students overall literacy skills we implemented fonteson panel classroom parts of it in grade five we had our benchmark assessment system in kindergarten through fifth grade to gauge how our students were doing as
092far as their literacy levels we were able to purchase some new novels vocabulary books which was for words their way at the middle school and some new writing materials for the middle school we revised some of the curriculum guides in language arts literacy we also with our math assessments we concentrated on helping the students to meet expectations there we were able to add last year two additional academic support map teachers in the elementary schools those two teachers they split their time going between two schools one teacher goes to um wilson and arlet the other teacher splits their time between eisenhower and truman and they work with our students who are in need of additional support in 2021 we were able to purchase some new math texts in grades six and seven a number of people
093reference dr milo who is someone we use from the outside he was one of the authors of the envisioned textbook and he's a professor at rowan university he's come in and he's done professional development with our teachers we work with st math and they provide some professional development for our teachers and we did revise some of our curriculum college and career readiness we implemented the stem academy at the high school which includes strands in engineering computer science in the biomedical fields we introduced some new courses for um this year intro to tomorrow's teachers a business capstone essentials of marketing 2 and managerial accounting in addition to the unified electives that mister kulhusky referenced at the middle school for english language learners from we were able to add last year a an additional ell teacher so
094that now each of our schools except for um truman and wilson who share an ell teacher every other school has a full-time ell teacher in dedicated to their students we were able to provide more psyop training for our general education teachers and psyop is sheltered instruction observation protocol which helps the teachers with strategies to assist their el students in their academic endeavors within the general education classroom um another one of our goals last year was ongoing and sustained professional development our cerebral university has grown um to a huge undertaking at this point we including a summer learning series where we provided online learning for our teachers over the summer and through the use of grant funds we were able to compensate them for for some of their time in engaging in those important activities and
095a lot of that was focused on remote instruction and online tools they could use with their students we continued with the math professional development and our middle school instructional coach mrs griggs who last school year was 100 funded through our title one grant okay so that's what we did in 2021 now this year we're continuing to to work on many of those same things because given the situation with our online learning and the hybrid learning it was difficult to accomplish all those so we're continuing to work on those but in addition this year we're adding new courses statistics pre-algebra basic skills we added a number of new textbooks at different grade levels we expanded our fontesimpnell classroom for grades four and five we piloted the interactive writing program in kindergarten in grade one um we
096had again more novels and classroom libraries and we revise more curriculum we're in the process of we're just finishing up the fourth grade language arts and we're working on the fifth grade language arts to go along with those new materials for our english language learners for the school year we have some new textbooks for kindergarten through fifth grade we are continuing with our psyop training for our general education teachers we have spent a great deal of time and grant funds on addressing our student learning gaps we had our summer learning acceleration program where we had almost 300 students in grades kindergarten through sixth grade who were provided with a summer program at camp xl including transportation these students were students who were identified as needing additional help we had an ap boot camp for our
097advanced placement students we had a program which took place in august for several days where they met with their advanced placement teachers to help better prepare them for the rigors of the ap courses we were able to offer our students at the middle school and high school credit recovery programs at no cost through the use of the esser funds where students who had failed the course in math science or english language arts were able to work to recover their credits and as everyone else has mentioned we expanded our tier two and our tier three interventions we had programs throughout last school year and we are continuing them this school year and through the summer tonight you're actually approving another teacher here for tier three at the high school and so we're working to support our
098students in every way we can to help address their learning gaps so we also want to provide our students with 21st century learning opportunities so we expanded the business academy we added advanced placement computer science class at the high school the middle school career exploration grant which mr glewhuske talked about which mrs ciccolo and mrs maharana applied for which i think we got about 68 000 for this year and it should continue over the next two years so that will help us to implement some of those new courses at the middle school and we have a part-time person that we hire to work with those students mr gluckowski mentioned the rotc after school program at the middle school for the eighth graders and that's going very well we're able to attract almost 15 students i
099think who are coming after school to work with our rotc instructors in professional development we um again they mentioned love of literacy new jersey teacher to teacher you're actually going to be asked to approve tonight a contract with new jersey teacher to teacher to come in and provide 30 days of sustained professional development for our kindergarten through fifth grade teachers and again cerebral university so some of our goals for next year again we want to we we are going to be requesting additional academic support instructors we would we really think that we need to have one mathematics academic support teacher in each of the four k-3 schools right now we have two language arts asi teachers and again we have basically a half math teacher at each of the schools so we are going to
100ask requests to additional teachers there to increase our students literacy skills for next school year we are asking for additional funds to expand the fontis and pannell shared reading program what we have right now this year we were able to purchase one or two kits per grade level for each school we would like to provide each of our teachers with one of those kits in kindergarten through third grade on the fontes and panel interactive writing program it's being piloted this year we want to go full full out for next year and purchase those materials esl students especially our newcomer students the ones who are first learning to speak english we we recognize the need to provide them with some phonics-based materials and um we want to continue with our cycle of curriculum revisions to address
101student learning gaps we're hoping we're planning to do the summer learning acceleration again this summer the ap boot camp credit recovery and even more tier two and tier three interventions throughout this school year and the summer and and next year too um for 21st century learning opportunities we are planning to have up and running in september a here at the high school a visual and performing arts academy um we have the new middle school electives which mr husky discussed we have a new course and we're actually asking um i think we asked for your approval the last meeting for an aviation ground school course for here at the high school which would lead students to be able to apply for their pilot's license and this would be taught by our rotc instructors um in the
102budget we're requesting new textbooks for high school and middle school social studies classes and replacement texts at all levels so some of the more specifics in the specific line items so district instructional supplies [Applause] in this line item um this includes classroom supplies for all courses and includes things like art materials for the art classes the supplies for the science classes things like that it also includes things like the fontes and panel materials it includes envision math workbooks and the esl reach phonics for grades k through five we um if you notice it's a decrease of about seventy thousand dollars from last year because these things run in cycles and some some years we need to purchase more than than other years when we purchase fontes and panel materials it's not something we do every
103year they're um they're good for a long time they don't need to be replaced so there's actually decrease in that particular line item textbooks again happy to say that it's a it's a slight decrease we are still asking for um we would like to replace a number of our high school textbooks including history ap biology ap environmental science pre-calculus calculus ap statistics computer science geometry honors algebra 2 honors and ap spanish a review of the materials and with the new standards makes us realize that our advanced placement textbooks need some updating and replacements we're looking to purchase new middle school textbooks for social studies for grades six and seven for geometry and some english elementary texts for esl students and again replacement text at all levels with the textbooks more and more what we're doing
104is we are purchasing class sets of the actual textbooks so that each teacher let's say for example who teaches sixth grade social studies will have a class set of 25 textbooks but we also purchase digital licenses to go along with that and those digital licenses are usually anywhere from three to five years so um so that's how we're handling textbooks textbooks the textbooks are they're very expensive and um you know they're using the classroom as a resource and as we're going more and more to the one on one-to-one devices and so on we we don't we don't need the textbooks for the students to take home okay and then the last item that i included here is our professional development um again this has remained as you can see pretty steady for three years in
105a row and includes things like presenters for saleville university which is our in-house professional development department we many of our people many of the presenters for cerebral university are our own staff members and at almost every meeting including tonight's meeting you'll see where we will be approving some presenters for that it's staff development day presenters some out of district workshops and conferences ongoing sustained and in-district professional development such as what i mentioned about new jersey teacher to teacher and the our grant or esea grants are really the primary source of our professional development funding and they're really supplemented by our local budget so thank you dr thank you i i just have one i don't know if it's a comment or question um a couple years ago you and i had a discussion at slover
106after a finance meeting about coaches and how important they are i know asi you're right for the students but wasn't we we had talked like your dream thing or your wish list right was to have one coach isn't it per school up to i guess middle school maybe sure i i i'd love to have a coach at every school have we dropped that i mean it's because i've talked to other board members from other districts and they they were like you know they had started with say full false array okay then they went down obviously to save some money and they're all going back because it's that important the teachers are really looking for those different angles on how to get the kids right and teach them are we dr lavine dr we thinking about
107bringing this back to that level yeah i mean but it's it's a matter of you know budget of course personnel is very costly so especially new personnel i think decisions like that will all depend upon if we get additional state aid how many do we need like how many do we need to get to that point how many what do we need like say we have coaches right do we have floaters somewhere that or is it no we um we only have coaches one at the preschool level and they call them master teachers and that's part of the preschool expansion aid agreement that we make and we have them at the middle school we have one we have one at the middle school that's funded through through the title one grant okay so we'd have
108to get four more at our expense for elementary right so i mean plus it's the ues i mean yeah the research on you know consultative professional development which that is is very strong but it's it's costly so if we're in a position in which we can provide that type of professional development through a staff member like that that that's all they do we'll we'll definitely try to do that but again it is costly we do have asi teachers academic skills improvement teachers that do quite a bit of consultative professional development crossover however that's not their primary responsibility their primary responsibility is to work with our at-risk students but they do spend some portions of their day working with teachers in a perfect world we would love to do it but no it's all a matter
109of money of course but if you could do me a favor please just if you can just keep it on you may do it anyway just keep it on your budget every year so it's important okay okay and that that's why we end up you know bringing in a company like new jersey teacher teacher to to work with with our scale because it's much less costly is it is effective no probably not but it's we're compromising a little bit there well in dr milo as well as i've been losing the um the doctor that works with it with our special education literacy doctor dr coons yes with the love of literacy right you know so we are doing all of those but you know as compared to what a full-time staff member would cost and
110and always money and that coach it would be very at the top of the salary guide they will yeah okay understood so thank you so much not that we don't want it no trust me either we'll get it one time she's constantly asking for them i i try to be realistic her wish list is quite large how about anyone else any questions so you actually just touched on the nj teacher to teacher just to clarify so that's a program only for the new teachers and does that only go up to a certain grade level no new jersey teacher the teacher is an outside company that comes in and they customize workshops for us and we basically tell them what we would like them to do and they do it in any area you would like
111them to that they have a whole group of professionals who work with them we tend to use them a great deal for the language arts in the k through age group we do have a through our cerebral university we have a new teacher institute which we use primarily people from in districts sometimes depending on the the topic we do use outside people for that and the new teachers during their first three years here in sayerville they're provided with release time and they they are provided with specific topics and workshops in fact i'm teaching a school law course right awesome thank you and uh one additional question and uh reference to the stem academy and also the new academy for next year yes um can you comment a little bit on do we have enough capacity
112in those academies to service the students who are a interested and b meet the qualifications to be successful in those programs yes so so far we do have the capacity i mean some of the academies are you know they're growing they are growing we've started out small we've only we started them you know a few years ago um you know we're working our way through them and we are look we are looking to expand them we do not we plan not to turn anyone away from from any of these academies and we are like i said i think someone someone just recently reached out to us to talk to us about partnering with us for the engineering academy so you know so we're looking for outside partnerships we're trying to expand it like the capstone
113classes in some ways will um in some cases there'll be externships involved in their senior year we're looking for for experiences like that we've worked in our business academy mrs maharana is very proactive with that the high school student council rep mentioned about the ruby program through rutgers so you know we're we're looking to partner with with people outside of the school so um okay and expand it as much as we can that's great thank you yeah this uh comment well and that's a great opportunity anytime we bring anyone you know outside the box from the school you know it's great resources that we haven't you know that schools haven't used in the past but i just wanted to commend you on on this it's a uh you know this is probably the boringest one
114to give it's the this is not you the uh the information i'm gonna hear about that i'm gonna hear about that tomorrow morning not you marilyn you were dynamic but the i i understand this is you know come across a little boring but this is really so important i like i keep reiterating with the with the learning loss that we know we have had this year and you know to me this is a again your budget expresses what we know we need to do where we need to go and everything we need to make up uh for the children which is uh great so you know again i just want to commend you on a good budget and uh you know whatever flex the needs that we have for our students so thank you and
115we we have been very fortunate honestly in the grants we've received in the esser grants that we've been able to do so many of the things that that our students need and to provide them with things so you know and then at the next meeting i'll talk a little bit about i'll do my start strong presentation so you can see up close what some of the needs are it's quite sobering yeah yeah i mean what i received absolutely so thank you thank you any more questions for dr shadiak well outstanding job as usual dr shedyak we thank you very much thank you and mr esposito to finish us up we do have a mandatory presentation that we have to make it's the school safety data system report and for cycle one so mr glock malloy
116is going to take us through that quite quickly certainly dr abby um school safety data system cycle one runs september through december we do have this again running from january to june um principals building administrators will also have the ability to edit reporting period one if they need to you can see on the second slide the categories that are encompassed in the ssds system this includes violence substance abuse weapons offenses vandalism as well as hivs and any other situations that lead to removal from the school on the next slide you can see our breakdown by school and category for reporting period one followed by a year-over-year comparison back through 17-18 and again keep in mind that um for some of our years here we were virtual either all or part of the year so that
117does um create a skew on the numbers to some degree in addition to the ssds system and the incidents that we report we also report trainings and programs related primarily to to hiv training these programs take different forms throughout our different schools and different grade levels some of those you heard tonight from our principals you can see a list of several example training programs as well as several exam several other examples in the program category and if you go to the next slide with tables you will see a breakdown of our hiv trainings and programs for this year within our buildings and in the district as well as a comparison year over year back through 1718. and this will come up again when we do reporting period 2 in june so anyone have any questions
118for reporting period 1. is it i'm just looking at the report that it says there was a weapon at eisenhower that's like 8-3 that seems like crazy there was i don't remember the specifics of the incident but there was um a disciplinary uh item that was yes classified as a weapon that yes that may not be the typical instance that you're thinking about okay since it is a student matter though yeah we can't get too much into it but it was more um child brought it to school to show people oh okay okay any other questions for eric thank you as always appreciate it okay so unless i'm mistaken we'll uh go through our board discussions real quick for our committees mr fernandez would you like to kick off finance please thank you and infrastructure
119excuse me the committee met on january 11th we reviewed the budget for the upcoming referendum we also reviewed the updates on the esa projects the lighting the roofs and the boilers are pretty much complete with just a few punch list items remaining the solar for the bpa is moving forward additionally the committee took a walk through through wilson school to assess the future potential needs the hvac system in in the high school is pretty much completed the contractor is just finishing up a few leftover items the annual single audit report is almost is almost complete i'll hold off on disclosing balances until that's completely finalized i'll let the order to do that but that's all that's almost complete and should be presented to the board shortly and aaron did a great job she got us
120quotes for multiple buses including electric so i want to thank you for that aaron i know i best review a lot of that i was a pain but thank you that's pretty much it great job thank you mr fernandez any questions no and i agree michelle does a great job uh personnel mr j wolf we had our first meeting earlier today and we talked about just some possible open positions and budget positions for a 2022-2023 school year that's it any questions from wall no thank you sir and president of our middlesex county school boards mrs bloom okay the only thing we have coming up is our next meeting in february will be virtual they've decided to do january and february virtual because of the rise in covid we are going to try and get past
121president dan sinclair from the new jersey school boards association to speak on the non-college-bound learner he was part of that committee that was put together to make that study and we have also been informed that the executive director of new jersey school boards dr larry feinstein will be resigning his position at the end of this year so they are in the process of doing a search for an executive director thank you mrs bloom any uh any reason given for the resignation uh i think it's it's his time he's ready to go you've been there a long time does a great job he has done a great job and did i say that the meeting was february third third okay middlesex uh if you don't you know get the email let me know thank you any
122questions for mrs bloom thank you so much and uh lastly mr fernandez anything on the uh sayerville south amboy rotary club yeah so cyril's south africa rotary club has moved the father daughter dance from the usual february to june due to the pandemic and the rising cases if anyone has school-aged children of that age i've never been there i suggest you really go it's a lot of fun it's a great event it's i think we're on the on the 14th annual uh exact date and location will be announced shortly but it's been it's been moved to june great thank you very much it's funny i went to the took my daughter once she loved it i was like a hero the next year i forgot it i was dead how quick it changes so enjoy
123the moment any questions mr fernandez i'll say thankfully my daughter still want to go even there you go them and all their friends are still going good for you we're still there every year good enjoy it okay so no other questions excuse me at this time i'd like to open it up to the public for any items that are on our agenda only so if i know a lot of you guys are here for the second one wait one second if you if and i know a lot of you if not all of you are here for that for the bus depot uh it's not on the agenda so you just gotta we got to take you through the agenda real quick it's not a long process and then it'll be your turn i'll open
124it up to the public for any disrespect okay all right i'll repeat it again this is for items that are on the agenda only okay the bus depot which i'm sure that most of you are here for that reason is not on the agenda what we have to do is go take you through excuse me listen excuse me excuse me please let excuse me he's going to explain it to you just please listen so what will happen is we'll serve you through please okay go ahead okay go ahead okay so we'll take you through our agenda uh once we finish that then we will open it up to uh any of you for any items for the district which would now include the bus depot okay 10 minutes tops dr lobby so i appreciate your
125patience but we have to go through we have to follow the agenda as is thank you though in other words hello is there anybody in the back that says has anything to do with the agenda itself that's on the on the record no good evening board of education jessica garbowsky polowsky avenue i'm going to make this quick so we can get to everybody that's here for the bus depot i'm going to speak on behalf of a lot of people who couldn't make it out tonight their stu their children either had practices or they had other things going on i'm going to be speaking about the emails that have been sent out by parents multiple parents and there's been either refusal being answered or anything ma'am this is this is this about the agenda oh it's
126about the agenda yes i'm getting to my point yes um pretty much the emails are going out unanswered about the esther funds you guys uh last meeting beginning of the year said that you couldn't go against any of the mandates which aren't laws by governor murphy because it would affect the funding coming from the uh federal government you guys respect man what which agenda item does this relate to i'm getting to it sir it's about students wearing masks that's not on the agenda it's i'm talking about all students no that's not on the agenda you can go back during public comment okay that's that's that's the point anything that's well we want to know and we want to know why we're not getting i understand but is there anyone in the audience that wants to
127speak about something on the agenda we want to know i'm sorry listen you know what we went back that's all we want to know because we want answers you're cleaning up their time right now is there somebody here looks like there's somebody here who wants to speak about something on the agenda three hours i've been here for three hours and you still don't want to answer anything everybody's been here for three hours okay ma'am do you have something to say for an answer you guys have wasted our time again for another year [Applause] hello i'm heather smith um i will save my comments for the bus depot to the end just but could you give your address please also yep grove street morgan section of cereville you guys went through a lot today and i
128wanted to just hit on a couple of things first i want you to know i'm a social studies teacher i'm also the department chair at my school so that's the perspective that i come from i also taught during this pandemic i published a book on hybrid education and then published the real story the following year in the second edition so i want you to know that camp xl was a wonderful program both of my children participated in it and it really helped with the loss of learning so i do hope that you will continue that program going through the the summer of next year one of my children is in the ues the other one is in the middle school the additional counselor mr glahuski and his team is doing a fabulous job there the
129additional counselor really is necessary he also asks for an additional social studies teacher i am biased that's my subject matter but civics just understanding the world around them incredibly important just reinforcing their understanding of the world social studies textbooks are incredibly heavy and expensive so i do want to say that the digital versions are incredibly important and just to go with the a in steam it's important to have art in stem steam education if we truly want to be a differentiated 21st century educating school thank you so much thank you thank you thank you [Applause] thank you very much for that i appreciate it anyone else for any agenda items eric do we have anyone online uh we do have one person online but i don't know if it's for their agenda or not okay
130um so we'll just go on if they uh raise their hand at some point we'll speak to them uh back to lobby oh well at this time i'll close uh public portion for the agenda items dr lobby could you take us through your report sir yes quickly if i can direct your attendance to uh attention to finance numbers 15 and 16 we're asking you to graciously accept the donation from the four an everlast climbing industries river rock traverse wall that was graciously donated by the pto at the eisenhower school we'd also like to thank the dupont company for once again graciously donating expenses for our teachers two of our science teachers to go to the national science convention this year it will be i believe in houston texas on april 3rd you can find all
131that on page three number 17 at 18. which you can find on page three and four we're asking you to approve a contract with u.s bancorp government leasing and financing to provide purchase financing to the board in a principal amount of 201 684 dollars at a rate of 2.0887 percent and that is for technology and security equipment it is a lease purchase agreement and if you look at number 18 we're listing the technology equipment and security equipment that we are going to purchase through that lease purchase agreement number 19 which you can find on page four we're asking you to approve a contract with aspire and that's our district's phone service and that is beginning february 7th of this year through february 6th of 2025 you can read more about that on page four number
13220 very similarly you can find on page four we're asking you to approve a 60-month contract with active internet technologies and that's actually going to be our new website that mr glock malloy and mr woranowicz are working on number 23 which you can find on page five we're asking you to approve a contract we've discussed this previously with the new jersey teacher to teacher program to provide 30 full days of sustained professional development and training and coaching for our teachers in grades k-5 and again you can read more about that on page five and finally on the addendum numbers 29 and 32 are asking you to prove the revised spring 2020 rates for j's bus service as well as george dapper incorporated which is a bus service as you might recall board of education due
133to the um stoppage of school back in uh march of we did not need our buses to our contractors to transport students so we have been in contract negotiations with those companies in terms of how much to pay them for services that were not rendered and i thank miss hill for her work as well as our board of education attorney in terms of negotiating the rates that we were able to negotiate with them and of course we thank jay's bus service and george dapper incorporated likewise any questions on those or any other items on finance board of education hearing none student achievement we're asking you to approve new middle school courses and course title changes you can find that in page eight and nine numbers five and six which you can find on page nine
134as we always do this year we're asking you to approve 29 middle school students and six high school students to participate in the 2022 virtual middle and high school arts program we're upset a little bit that it's a virtual program still most of our schools are in person but this is what they're offering us this year and i think the fact that it's virtual lends to the reason why only six high school students are participating this year where in previous years you would have about the same number of high school middle school students any questions on those or any other student achievement items seeing none on governance if i can direct your attention to number two on page 11 we're asking to approve the revised director of human resources and professional development job description number
135three which you can find in page 11 we're asking you to prove the english language learner three-year plan any questions on those or any other governance items finally i can direct if i can direct your attention to personnel we'll begin with number 26 one of those bittersweet moments we're asking you to accept the retirement of a beloved staff member in this particular case it happens to be a social studies teacher mrs margaret fallon mrs margaret fallon has been teaching for more than 30 years and has been with the cerebral school district for all of those years while employed in sayerville mrs fallon taught grade six social studies as well as all grade levels in reading she has always assisted the middle school staff with informal mentoring yet she has also served the middle school as
136a formal mentor in our mentoring program mrs fallon has been a member of the class act committee and has supported the school's community service committee club in various ways particularly the casa program and clothing drives and i believe the casa program is the giving tree where gifts are donated to children in need she has notably added a great deal to the middle school staff and to the students whom she has taught so so diligently and with such dedication she can be found early in the morning and late in the day working hard at the middle school to make her students experiences a truly rewarding and meaningful one she is also known to staff for her dessert recipes and her amazing crumb cake mrs mrs fallon needless to say has much to look forward to in
137her retirement years she has said she's willing to spend a lot of time with her young granddaughter during her retirement we congratulate mrs fallon on her amazing 30 plus years in education all of which again was at the cerebral was in the cerebral public schools and at the middle school and we wish her nothing but the very best in retirement so on behalf of the central public schools all of our staff and our students we thank mrs fallon for everything that she has done for all of her students over the many years that she has serviced this district with such dedication and such excellence and we also thank her for all that she's done for the middle school this school district and the greater stable community [Applause] moving along numbers 10 and 11 which you
138can find uh as well as number 32 which you can find on pages 15 and 16 and the addendum we're asking you to approve the higher new certificated non-certificated staff record please note with the bus driver hiring of um zayola de jesus she's a bus driver she is actually replacing replacing uh yajera medina and not miss hernandez okay so i just want to make sure that's on public record you can note it in your agenda as well once again um miss zayo miss dejos is replacing miss medina not miss hernandez numbers 11 and 17 as well as 37 which you can find on page 16 in the addendum we're asking you to approve the transfer of certificated non-certificated staff for this school year number 17 in 1933 which you can find the addendum this was
139talked about a lot today we're asking you to approve staff for the special education and general education elementary and middle school math and literacy academies as well as tier three tutoring number 20 which was also talked about a little bit we're asking you to approve staff for the unified sports program you can find that in page 18 and then finally on page 19 as miss as dr shediak referenced earlier we're asking you to approve staff for the willoughby's program which is that um substance abuse education program that missed dr shetiak spoke about that we have in collaboration with the borough through elise barone mr esposito that concludes my report thank you dr lobby before we uh vote to approve does anyone have any final comments or questions for the good doctor anyone i thought somebody
140said something okay uh thank you excuse me then i would like to make a motion to accept our superintendent's report this is boom second ah mr walsh um this hill roll call please mr falca okay a number 34b on addendum i'm gonna abstain on yes on all our items that was a34 letter b yes mrs bloom yeah mr fernandez yes mrs napolitano yes mrs papone um i'm abstaining from item 34b as well all yes on all other items okay miss pilot yes mr john walsh yes mr patrick walsh yes and mr esposito yes thank you all uh okay so at this time now what i'd like to do is open it up uh to the public for any items pertaining to the district um so i just have a couple of requests and it's starting
141with me we got a little tankers before so i'm going to keep it civil from this end and we will also please do so the same i want to give you guys every opportunity louder is that what that means sorry okay so starting with us i really want to try to keep this civil there's a lot of you out there and i'm telling you now we want to hear what you have to say we want to hear your thoughts um you know what every idea is you know what it's a great it's great to hear from you and we really want to hear what you have to say but please let's again you know what let's just keep it civil so you guys get a chance to talk and i'm going to pass it uh
142one thing our attorney jonathan bush will give you instructions in a moment but i think at this point i just want to say dr lobby i don't know if this is a good time or not um i know you learned some information recently and very recently why don't i share that after mr bush uh says what he has to say thank you all right uh everybody hear me back there okay so there's a lot of you out there and the board has expressed to me how important it is to to hear from as many of you as possible but in order to be able to do that um we're gonna limit everybody to three minutes so you have three minutes to give us your thoughts um obviously you don't have to take all three of
143those minutes but if you want to you can and then we're not going to be answering questions because we want to give you all we possibly can for those three minutes until you're done so when you ask a question that's great that's fine we're going to write those questions down and then we're going to answer as many of them as possible at the end so when you ask a question if we don't answer it right away it's not because we're not answering the question it's just because we're taking stock of it and at the end we will answer whatever questions you have asked in the best way we possibly can but this is so that everybody can have the most fair shot possible at giving us what's on your mind okay dr lavey did you
144want to say something first yeah okay thank you mr bush first of all i just want to start by saying that i know many of you have reached out to me and emailed me and i thank you for doing so i just want to reiterate though for those people that may not have emailed me that what was approved at our last board of education meeting in december was for our architect to begin concept planning that's all that was approved it was concept planning the other big piece of news that i have to report and i'm very happy to report to you is earlier this morning i had a great discussion with borough council president maher who told me that that she and the council at their next scheduled meeting which i believe is this monday
145will be discussing and potentially approving a motion for the borough council to work with the school district to find potentially an alternative location those those of you that have emailed me know that that's what we are in fact looking for so i i could not thank miss uh mar enough for contacting me and for sharing with me that was something to the purpose yeah so again i can't thank them enough for being willing to be able to collaborate with us in this endeavor so uh with that being said mr esposito mr bush i think it's time to allow people to um give comment yeah so if you uh are still interested in asking a question please come up uh your name and address for our record and um if you can keep it to three
146minutes please we'd appreciate it we also have one person online eric are they uh raising your hand one many online okay we'll get to them right after the first person speaks how's that you're up sir hello just your name of the dresser my name uh i'm the brother of pfc wayne grant k.i.a october 26 1967. it was killed with multiple combat and shotgun wounds throughout his body this is what our field represents to myself my family and morgan please do not un dishonor his name and that as that's what is what i will leave at that as far as that goes doctor i would like to invite yourself and the whole board if you can arrange a bus i will drive that bus at no expense and we could all do a little education of
147ourselves and go down to the vietnam memorial and we can all walk through the education center down there and get educated and i will be more than glad to drive and i'm sure we can get security for everybody here so that's my invite to yourself and the board now as far as morgan had taken the fields down feel free to bring that up mr grant as far as taking the fields down we can't do that morgan needs these fields you're they're taking the cla moving it to border town avenue we got minor kids or their parents both work how are these kids gonna get to these ball fields in the summertime right there bicycles down board in town avenue when they can go to the morgan fields and play they can't go to the babe
148ruth field the babe ruth field is surrounded by woods that is very unsafe for young children correct can you all agree with that yeah well it is unsafe sir not when you got two fields that are wide open with when you have morgan people constantly riding by that can observe that we need our children protected too our children do also need a place to play [Applause] thank you mr graham good afternoon good evening dr labbe board of education my name is jeff smith i live on grove street in the morgan section of sayerville like charlie just said the memorial at the end of the street at grove street is a reminder for all morgan residents in all cerevilles of the sacrifice of a cereville resident given in honor of his country in vietnam i would
149hate to see that disappear my bigger not my bigger but one of my concerns with a bus depot in morgan morgan is a small neighborhood morgan is an often forgotten about neighborhood in sarahville our our streets our streets are smaller than the area between your two tables here even bayview street that dr lavi has mentioned in some emails is not the biggest street in in sarahville the possibility of putting dozens and dozens of buses in a quiet residential area generating noise generating pollution generating parking issues generating all the issues that you're experiencing here at the high school moving it from one area to another area is not accomplishing anything there are other options out there for the school district and i'm i'm super pleased to hear that finally there's interaction between the board of education
150and the borough council if not i would have invited all the board members who are sarahville residents come out to the council meeting next week you're several residents you have the right to speak there if they're not talking to you talk to them so there's plenty of up there's plenty of options out there that are not going to pitch the av guy against the speaker sorry there's plenty of options out there that aren't going to pit the residents of morgan against the residents of other neighborhoods in sarahville cereville tends to be a very confrontational town we pit fire department against fire department first aid squad against first aid squad we don't need to pit neighbor against neighbor for what neighborhood we're going to put school buses in there's plenty of industrial area in this town
151where idling isn't going to be an issue where drivers standing around at 5 30 in the morning talking and smoking a cigarette aren't going to cause issues so i'm happy to hear that there may be options out there i'd be more than happy to speak at this meeting at any time to discuss some of those options but i just ask that the entire board of education keep their minds open and don't destroy a great neighborhood in sareville thank you mr smith hello kenneth ruggiero south pine avenue and morgan saver um to reiterate some of the stuff said one of the main concerns is the safety of the children there was recently a child run over by a bus i know it was not in sayville but nevertheless that's a concern for me having three children
152the green space the air pollution that we're getting we're getting enough from route 35 coming there to take down trees and stuff that help clean the air just from that i think the air pollution is going to be extremely worse with 20 plus busts being there goes without saying about the dishonoring of the veteran just it just that's just appalling that they would do that the noise pollution obviously is is is going to be excessive it's going to affect everybody in that area it's a close by area we are a small community we are a form a family oriented community and it just isn't fair to do it to us and just and it's not a big thing but something of concern is also decreasing home value um to have it there um it just
153makes no sense when there are other areas in sayville that can be used for the buses so i thank you for it and i i hope that you guys will uh do what i said tonight and speak to the board the council and have this have this thing placed somewhere else thank you [Applause] if i could just remind speakers as you come up if you can keep your masks on we're required by law as a school building to to have all everybody yeah it's i know it's a pain uh especially when there's not many people around you but we're required by law to make sure that everybody's wearing their mask at all times thank you okay my name is derek logan and i represent not just myself but also my wife camille logan we are
154proud owners of 190 bayview avenue in south amboy new jersey which is actually that's our mailing address we're actually in morgan and we've lived in morgan for 22 years now we put a lot of hard work and sweat into buying that home and keeping that home my taxes in this area just to live where i live is over twelve thousand dollars a year it's a hefty amount not only that i am a licensed real estate agent i am licensed in the state of new jersey and i am licensed in the state of new york i specialize in working with properties for the banks so that way i understand values where others won't and one of the things that i have to say is that with a bus depot and with the traffic and you're telling
155me that the traffic is going to be coming down bayview which you call the bayview street it's actually bayview avenue so you got to even know the area but with the traffic with the traffic that's going to come down there every day and then not only in the morning but at three o'clock as well baby that street cannot even handle that type of traffic we already we already have had to repair the street several times so i just think that um i just think that there's a lot of different a lot of other areas that you could look at to kind to and hopefully hopefully i get i think you gave us a lot of hope today you know that you're looking into alternate locations and i'm sure if you look hard enough you'll be
156able to find them you know find someplace else for where this uh this depot could be but in terms of our values they're definitely going to go down there's no doubt about that nobody's going to want to live at the end of a street where there's a depot where there's school buses coming in and out and you know what i i i value the department of education and what you guys do for the community as a whole and i know that you know i know that it's time for not just not just the department of education but also also the city itself to kind of talk to each other and work this out and i know that's part of the problem so uh hopefully you'll find a solution and that's pretty much it i speak
157for not just myself and my family but i also speak for all of my neighbors and friends [Applause] [Music] uh [Applause] we all care about what happens to each other you know and we've all worked hard to keep morgan dissect that section of morgan and morgan itself a really fine place for families to reside and that and we all have done that together thank you sir thank you mr logan i appreciate your time and your thoughts um if we if you can give me one moment sir sir sir just one moment i get this is someone online you could stay there but we're just going to go to them real quick you have two actions two we'll just all right we'll see how quick they are maybe okay uh hi uh could you please state
158your name and address for the record please no you want to go to number two all right okay hi this is uh iran with the board of education um could you please state your name and address for the record and your question walk away chris can we turn that up at all i just wanted to voice my support uh removing the uh the proposed bus depot um i am a newer resident uh you know part of the reason why we did choose morgan and taylorville were those fields it just the community it would look like a wonderful place to raise a family and certainly that would um that would change with the best teachers yeah hey hi ma'am we can't hear a word you're saying we're trying to fix it on our end we'll get
159right back to you okay thank you you might as well we'll go here thank you for waiting give us a minute please sir yeah hi my name is eric cutts 123 madison street morgan new jersey dr lobby board members thank you for allowing me the time to speak today i'm here to make comment obviously on the bus depot and the grounds of the pfc wayne grant fall fields in the morgan section of cerroville i hope to bring some information to this board that may not be aware of i would hope this information would allow you to understand why it would not make sense to work with our mayor and town council to find a better location as stated previously most of the streets in morgan are very small the the section of morgan also does
160not have sidewalks laced throughout the town so most of the people that do walk on the streets walk their dogs or walk for exercise have to walk in the streets most of these streets are only passable by one car at a time up and down the streets also you know we would then have increased commercial traffic this would also bring heavy traffic into the residential area four times a day 182 days of the year these drivers would be parking their their cars within our neighborhood or within the bus depot but also would be a naive of this council and dr lobby to think that they would only use bayview they would be using all the other streets that are coming in off the highway and and create this traffic up and down morgan is on
161the outskirts of cereville and cost taxpayers additional funds every year in gas and maintenance fees for the additional travel that they would have to take as well the high school as we know is the center of town which is why obviously they're currently here and we know there's currently litigation to move those buses which is why the bus depot is necessary once again that litigation would most likely be happening in the residential area of morgan as well costing taxpayers money this would also eliminate our primary outdoor space for our children used by both in games of play and just playing in in the fields fields that i grew up on fields my dad maintained through clia which sorry which has maintained these fields free of charge from the board of education and fields that future
162generations will look to me to guide them as director of player development for softball and baseball for the cereville aaa as far as the fields on board of town they were always considered an expansion for cerro vallea which they're currently not under development so those fields that we're looking to expand on the board in town are not there yet they're not going to be there yet we look to have them in the future but we never looked to not utilize the fields in morgan and that's speaking from myself as director of player development thank you sir you just wrap it up thank you all right thank you thank you thank you how are we doing eric can we lose him well we can give it a try yeah let's try one thank you mr especially
163what do we do we had these two gentlemen invincible there's only two yeah yeah let's let these two gentlemen go and then we'll go to the person at home hi how are you um my name is bruce i live at 155 madison street in the morgan section uh first i think it would be an absolute disgrace to it would be an absolute disgrace to take away butchy's memorial down here where the buses are for years there was just a little plaque there a little metal sign now he got a nice memorial there and to and to take that away for what he sacrificed for all of us that that would be a shame number two i grew up in those fields those fields have been there for 50 60 years now and to take them
164away there's got to be other places to to drive there to put your buses even now i live on madison street there's cars parked on both sides of the street every day three o'clock now there's three four buses that come through there already now this is a little tiny street it's not made for buses to for bus traffic to go down i really think everybody needs to take a good good look and find another place to put these things all right thank you thank you very much [Applause] good evening my name's al piller i live on morgan avenue been a resident for 67 years my family's been in several for over 124 years i think i'm the last pillar left so a couple of things one off topic who's ever joining down questions i just
165have something off topic and i'll get back on topic when we first walked in here we all stood up and we pledged the flag my question is i don't know the answer to this do we still pledge the flag in our schools and is there an american flag in every classroom in the bureau of cerebral that's the first couple questions number two several is 18 square miles okay it's a lot a lot of territory out there i've watched my town pretty much go downhill because of over development uh things that you guys are going to have to address in the future because where you're going to put all these new kids coming into the area so along the lines of this site it really doesn't make a lot of sense so here's my first four
166questions i know you're doing feasibility now my first question is would there be buildings built on this site number one would there be fuel gas dispensed on this site would it be standby generators and what would be the hours of operation if this thing is the past not the greatest place everybody behind me said everything that you need to hear i'm not going to repeat it but this isn't the place for this building so i i would appreciate an answer to all my questions thank you thank you thank you very much oh please thank you board uh sean hart 191 bayview avenue a lot of the problems that are things i came up with thinking i was gonna mention today were already based on by uh my neighbors the only thing i haven't heard that
167hasn't been brought up is a lot of people that have been spoken before are quite a bit older than myself and don't have kids that are or may not have kids that are in the district at the moment the bus problem we're having at the current time like in this school year personally has been a nuisance with getting the buses on time getting the kids picked up when they're going to get there being consistent across the board now we use a lot of the buses here based out of the middle school like the person said prior that's a very main central portion of our town easy for us to access all corners of where we physically are at the current moment now as also was mentioned morgan's very off the side and i'd like to
168say maybe forgotten or just very far from all other means for our township how is moving the buses from here all the way to another place or moving it to a farther section of our town gonna make the egress or the kids during the school year be picked up and become more consistent throughout the school year because so far i've dealt with delayed openings so far this year only because of the buses no weather clemency or anything like that at 90. it was 90 minute delay opening for arlith just because there was a bus problem so other than what i got out of this i just wanted to know how if this could be answered how is this going to make any uh anything easier for the parents picking up their kids and how the
169buses are going to be put through thank you thank you [Applause] dan macron 312 stevens avenue and morgan all the folks from morgan here can tell you and pretty much agree that two buses cannot pass simultaneously on the overwhelming majority of the streets in morgan due to their narrowness all these people can tell you that the majority of the streets in morgan have no sidewalks so people park their cars they walk their dog and they ride their bikes in the street and this thing looks like it could create a public safety nightmare none of the people in morgan want to lose the ball fields they get used all the time every time every weekend i go by there and there's a mom pitching batting practice to her daughter and there's pickup games in the in
170the afternoon on the weekdays there all the time and it's just part of the neighborhood and it's really nice to have also the only playground in morgan is going to end up adjacent to the transportation complex which is less than ideal all the people from morgan here all agree that they don't want the light pollution the noise pollution and the emissions from these vehicles in their neighborhood which is almost exclusively residential starting at six a.m in the morning probably nobody wants that the explanation that the transportation complex needs to be relocated because of uh litigation by the residents of school street here and then moving it then creating a nearly identical situation in a different neighborhood before it makes no sense at all to me as far as questions go i was wondering if there
171was a committee formed to look into viable places to place this uh complex and what other locations were considered and are on that list if if in fact the list was created the uh working together with the borough hall thumbs up for that and it's great that that you can get that together it is really awkward that the people of the town can expect for the different branches of the leadership of their town to work together to solve problems and that it's it's a miracle that they got together on this thing that's a funny situation to be in and it's not very confidence instilling but hats off to you guys for that and i hope you get that thing out that you use whatever is available from the town the fire department the first eddie
172we don't see it as separate entities when you live in the town it's all cereville and all of it should work together to meet the needs of the people and if you guys can get that done thumbs up to you [Applause] good evening everyone um my name is karen bailey bieberts i was not going to speak tonight i live at 9 burlington road not in morgan i live in berlin but i love our neighbors in morgan my family's been in this town since 1863. i am here in full support of our neighbors in morgan but after hearing mr grant speak i felt compelled to come up here and reflect on something that we've already heard those words in this meeting wreaths across america mr grant offered to drive the bus to the vietnam memorial well
173the buses came here i was here you were here many of you were here so some gave all and all gave some so i wanted to thank mr grant's brother for his service thank the borough and the board of education for putting that memorial there i hope it will remain there as a reminder of what the price of freedom really is and i know that other things will be considered so thank you to all our veterans for their service god bless you all good night thank you [Applause] good evening again um jessica garbowsky polowsky avenue i just want to restate what i was going into before that i'm up here speaking for a lot of people who could not make it out tonight and one in particular has sent an email many of times that
174has gone unanswered so that being said i'm just going to read it out loud good afternoon dr labbe hope you are well i have two issues i'd like to address first is the lack of response to my email a few days ago as to adding an agenda to the board meeting secondly i would like to know and see the medical data that you have provided that has been provided to you to further your decision pretty much stating she wants to know why within the last 24 hours you felt the need to send out another email changing the quarantines again for all the students because last week a parent like myself was told my daughter had to go on quarantine i go to the school i pick up the device for her i set her up
175for virtual only to sign her on to find out that her class was in school she didn't even need to be on virtual and the days of the number whoever tested positive they were all mixed up so her class never even had the quarantine so i had to sign up for a device i had to do all this for nothing because all these quarantining rules whatever is out now is is confusing half these kids don't even need to be on quarantine half of them do pretty much what the parents like myself like every you know other parents who couldn't show up tonight we just want to know why after two and a half years we're still beating a dead horse and we can't get a straight answer we want to know why it's so hard
176that if you are sick like we've been doing i'm 38 years old now my parents knew to keep me home if you didn't have a sitter you had to stay home from your job and you had to keep your sick kid home if your child has an underlying condition i feel sorry for that my children are both diagnosed with severe autism i as a parent if i felt that it would you know affect their educational um well-being i would look into virtual auction home schooling option whatever i need to do we have parents online that are making parents like me feel like morons like my children are going to harm their children because they're not understanding like it's literally all over the place in this town right now they want us on full virtual half
177these parents don't want these kids in school but these kids have these kids aren't even sick like my daughter my son they have no symptoms testing negative but they were told they had to stay home because one kid was positive in their class yet that one kid was allowed to be in school last week and that one kid was sitting in the classroom yet my non-sick children no symptoms negative tests had to be at home it's making no sense two and a half years later and somebody like me is not going to lose their job i'm a single parent i don't have another income to rely on if i have to miss a few days of work and if these days of work are over something that's absolutely ridiculous i'm sorry but a 192 safe
178return back to school plan that is so confusing still again two and a half years later makes no sense we just want some answers that's all i'm getting at flat plain and simple this is my third meeting i've been to saying the same exact thing it just needs to be taken care of already because we're tired of getting the run around we're tired of getting no answer we're tired of not getting everything else and we're tired of getting or having iep meetings where it looks like it's our fault our children falling behind thank you very much to finally give us an answer that would be great and finally figure it out after two and a half years that would be great thank you [Applause] i'm just here for moral support okay okay get me nervous
179no i don't like public speaking good evening and thank you for giving me this opportunity to speak my name is dorothy mcgrain i live on 206 lincoln street in the morgan section my first thought of this whole thing was appalled to this man's family i come from the family of four generations who have served under our flag in the military and to have this man's family's memorial just torn up and just taken away is just it just breaks my heart second of all as i said i live on lincoln street i get your employees for this school that work there oh they come down my street to go to work i get buses that already come down if you were to come into this neighborhood in the springtime and summertime you will find in that
180whole area in all of morgan this is where everybody walks their dogs this is the only place the children have to play there is no other place for them to go to they can't go running around down to south they aren't going to the park there and that other that other end where you have to go back down to the big hill i don't go down there if there's nobody else down there because i don't find it safe it's too open for whoever could get in there and get anybody so that's a little bit but um it's just it is all we have and our roads like the people so many people upset are not wide enough when the buses come down the little buses that usually come through there you have to move out
181of the way you have to get out of the way for them or they have to get out of the way for you um that's it all right but i thank you for listening thank you very much [Applause] hello heather smith grove street in morgan now i'm going to talk about the bus depot so um i thought it was probably more important for me to tell you what the bu what the morgan fields mean to me i've been a resident of morgan for 41 years um i have four children two of which are in college two as i spoke about earlier are in the cereville schools right now those fields um pfc wayne grant's memorial fields are not just baseball fields to us they're a place where we do play baseball we also play every
182other sport football soccer you name it we run around we train there we train our dogs there [Music] it's it's just it's the place to go it's our open space it's also the place that we meet our friends we've had halloween parades that start and finish there we have rallies there so it's it's the heart of morgan it's also pfc wayne grant he died at 21 years old my baby is going to be 21 this year he is the symbol for not only past generations but future generations he's what we want our kids to emulate we we want them to serve our country we want them to serve our community my baby he did he served our community while he was here he's away at college but he he volunteered with the first aid squad
183volunteerism isn't a thing anymore how you know how hard is it to get people to come out you have all of these people out right now because this this means something to us so please definitely preserve the pfc wayne grant memorial baseball fields thank you thank you good evening good evening my name is shelley greenhouse i too have been in several all of my life in morgan for 63 years and i agree with everything that was said tonight in addition i have just two questions one question is are there going to be fuel tanks dangerously close to residential homes and if there are no fuel tanks where and that's all i have to say thank you thank you [Applause] good evening good evening my name is galip syed i live in parliament 3 sophie street
184i'm here to just express my support with the people who are here to preserve their park and also memorial place the reason i'm going here also is to state that the freedom has a price and mr grant a sacrifice for the nation and when i walk there and i have taken my kids who are now 27 30 years old uh some of the three of them uh it brings a great pleasure to remind myself that what a wonderful place that is and also want to make sure that we have this continuous joy to see that how this freedom was made for us as a new comer although i'm not a very new been here for 20 years but that is what the freedom is and that's the price was paid for from the family of
185mr grant and i salute to his family and himself as well and i urge and request to collaborate with the uh the city uh of several uh council men and women to find a better solution for their satisfactory satisfaction and also for our satisfaction so that we still live in harmony and peace and enjoy our freedom thank you thank you [Applause] good evening hi good evening i'm judy macron morgan resident for about 30 years now live on stevens avenue two issues going on here this evening and i'm in agreement with what my neighbors have brought up in regards to quality of life in morgan should a bus depot be considered for that neighborhood i see it as a disaster with traffic noise pollution safety so i echo all those points that my neighbors have made
186and i have to say when mr grant made his speech first and opened this forum i was really moved i was moved to tears from what i understand there was a resolution passed in 2016 that that rededicated those fields not the monument not a flagpole those fields that that that complex was rededicated to uh pfc wayne grant in perpetuity the resolution was passed and i'm not quite sure how that gets undone so i just wanted to put that out there i don't know if my my neighborhood my neighbors behind me are aware of that or whether the board is aware of that so i would just like to go on record as the morgan resident as a good neighbor that this bus depot is a bad idea for morgan and that i hope that at
187the council meeting and the meeting with council and the board of education that some um agreement can be made as far as an alternate site for a bus depot that will have um the least amount of impact for for my neighbors in saraville thank you [Applause] good evening hi my name is patty trello i currently live in east brunswick but i was born and raised in morgan new jersey lived there for about 30 years my sister still lives in our family home on woodland avenue and my family ran a business on route 35 for over 50 years we have roots in several my one of my great-grandfathers was one of the first mayors in in cereville i went to jesse slover elementary school i played softball on those fields i've played on those playgrounds like
188everyone has said here it's the only recreational facility in that section of town it's really important to to maintain that and the bus depot is going to bring like everyone else said traffic on those streets my best friend lives on bayview avenue it's going to bring down the value of the homes there um there is no sidewalks as everyone said so there is a safety issue as an environmental issue and i am so glad to hear that you're going to be looking into other facilities locations rather because i was going to say on board town avenue between sunshine biscuit i worked at sunshine biscuit for 10 years they donated those some of that property next door and there's those uh soccer fields there there's there's property between there and the s curves down by the
189preserves where the horses are there's other land on journey mill road that would be more appropriate for that also on cheesecake road backed by duponts that spaces back there there are so many better options so i just you know i'm glad to hear that you're going to maybe open up to that and look into that thank you thank you [Applause] good evening good evening everybody my name is nicole hawley and i am a resident of west coast street i am actually the resident of the new construction on west coast street um it's probably one of the newest houses in the area and i grew up on bayview street bayview avenue my bad um but i grew up here i've been here since i was 12 years old i grew up playing on those fields my
190children play on those fields on a regular basis i have a four-year-old and a six-year-old they are playing outside all the time my nanny takes them there every single day so the idea that that play area for my two very small children would be potentially taken away is heartbreaking but what's even more heartbreaking is i served five and a half years in the united states air force my husband served five years in the united states army i'm still in the new jersey air national guard and i serve every single every single month two weeks a year i was deployed twice in the last two years in response to covet and the idea that you would demolish a memorial field that is dedicated to one of my fallen you know men in arms i might be
191an airman he might be a soldier but we are family is absolutely unfathomable to me so besides the fact of all the other reasons why this is a bad idea the fact that you would even contemplate demolishing something that is a memorial to someone who gave their life not only fighting for this country but to give you guys all the freedom to even think about putting up a bus depot is just unbelievable to me so i appreciate everybody's time i understand that you're going to look at other areas and that's great but i really want you to take a moment when you're looking at other areas not to put another development or another section of cerebral in this same situation so it really needs to be put in a very specific place that is going
192to have no impact on a residential area there are as stated industrial areas in terrible that could be utilized for something of this nature so instead of just saying okay well morgan came they said their piece we don't want to put it there really think about where you're going to put it take the time we've got realtors back here work with them so i think it's definitely something that you guys need to take a minute take a step back and think it through thank you for your time [Applause] thank you and thank you for your service um i don't see anyone i'm just going to make this nice and sure it's just i opened i would like to close on behalf of our residents here uh doctor as i said earlier we can plan a
193field trip with your for the bed i'm very serious about that and taking a trip to the vietnam memorial down off the arts by the arts center okay i'm very serious thank you and on behalf of that uh you have my phone number we talked once i will be looking to put together a committee here amongst ourselves so that the board don't have to deal with all these meetings because it's only taken time from everybody here and yourself so i will put a committee together myself as a and an attorney too if needed okay and then we can confront as the board of ed and morgan against the borough council thank you thank you he said she said or he said she said let's get this resolved thank you but most of all let's save
194our fields all right thank you thank you thank you okay no one's online at this time i will close the public portion oh i apologize is this thing can you hear me can you hear me okay all right so there was some concern before just for the people at home we're gonna try to see if we can hear you this time unfortunately we were unable to hear you last time so if you could just um let's see if you could say their name and address for the record well jessica was the person who started before so we'll start with yesterday thank you this is jessica layton of madison street much better confirm you can hear me yes we can hear you thank you so much i just wanted to speak quickly i am a new
195resident of sayerville i'm here just two years ago i did choose my house specifically because of that those fields that playground i have a two and a half year olds who very literally learn to walk in that playground it means a lot to me that they stay there it is not acceptable to me that that playground will be next to a bus depot that is not somewhere where i would want to take my small child and i just want to reiterate uh what many others have said here that i don't want this to be put in another residential area either i want to protect the residents of sayerville and make sure that an industrial build like this is placed in an industrial area and we keep our neighbors safe thank you very much [Applause] one
196more we do we have at least one more okay uh this will be stephanie hey stephanie can you give us your name and address please can you hear me yes hi this is stephanie peduto i live at 184 jersey street um i've been teaching in sayerville public schools for just over 20 years but i only moved to sayerville 10 years ago and i chose the area of morgan because of the type of neighborhood that it is at the time when i moved here my children were in second and third grade they're now junior and senior in high school but at the time i chose it because it was a great place for them to grow up in it was a great neighborhood for them to grow up in with the fields with the park they
197could play baseball there are a lot of kids for them to play with in the neighborhood without me having to worry about them moving around on the streets at this point living just a few houses in from woodland avenue in the morning when i'm walking my dog just before i'm leaving for work i feel that i'm at risk just from the few buses that are already pulling out of the silver area and coming directly onto jersey street especially now when it's dark out in the morning i literally sometimes have to pull my dog out of the street when we're coming off the sidewalk because it's not a complete stop when the buses are coming out and they just jump across right onto jersey street even pulling out of my driveway when i look back and
198forth before i come out all the way out there isn't anyone there but if i'm pulling out into the street all of a sudden there's a bus right behind me i really can't imagine what it will be like what it would be like if there were a ton more buses there and you know aside from that i haven't i didn't grow up here with everybody else but i i still understand the loyalty and i still have the dedication to the field and to the memorial as a citizen of this town and as a as a citizen of this country really i do feel that there are other options just from the amount of time that i've lived here the short amount of time i see plenty of other places where this could where this could
199exist i really don't think that anybody would want this in their neighborhood including the people who are sitting here listening to me today on the board of education and the administration no one would want it going down past luke street no one would want it going down their neighborhood their streets where they live so i really think that that needs to be taken into consideration wherever it's put just like everyone else said including as someone else mentioned the depreciation of the value of our homes in the entire neighborhood so there's a lot to consider not only putting it here but as everyone else said in other neighborhoods around town thank you for your time [Applause] we have one other call-in user i it's from a phone so i'm unsure who it is okay let's bring
200it on last last but not least go ahead hello can you please give us your name and uh address for our record and uh state your commenter question going on that's it okay thank you everyone at this time we will close the public portion right public portion um dr lobby what do you have anything uh you want to start answering the questions at this point yeah at this point i'll answer the questions that were posed the gentleman asked do we pledge the flag uh pledge make the pledge of allegiance to the flag every uh every day in school and does every classroom have a flag the answer to both those questions is yes morning exercises are performed at every school in every classroom and there's a flag in every classroom to which all of our
201students make the pledge thank you thank you next question that i received was the um is the building complex the the plan for it to have um a gas pump and somebody else asked that same question would it be a fuel pump the answer to that question is no will there be a generator there answer that question is no um the hours of operation for our transportation department i think our drivers probably arrived to work sometime around 6 15. they start out on their morning runs at about 6 30. they return from their morning runs at about 10 o'clock leave come back sometime around 1 15 start their afternoon routes at 1 30 and roll in sometime around 4 o'clock how is moving the buses from the high school to morgan going to improve the
202efficiency of busing i'm putting that in my own words that one gentleman asked that basically the problems that we've been having for the past five years with busing have nothing to do with our buses and our drivers they have to do with the vendors that we use and that's been the greatest motivator for us to purchase buses because of the extreme problems we've had with the performance of privately contracted buses so to the gentleman's question this year 500 students 500 students were late to school for more than 30 minutes from the first day of school to the middle of november and they were because of a private vendor didn't have the staffing so eventually we purchased buses leased buses and hired six new drivers to take over their routes in total we took we took
203over eight vendor routes to solve this problem because we can't rely on the vendors anymore so the delays were caused by the vendor but those delays were remedied by us through our buses and i'm sorry sir but the 90-minute delay of the 90-minute delays those were due to hazardous weather we had it we had him 90 minutes delayed earlier in this month and that was due to well they would they would get they would naturally get out to their spots earlier so they would our bus drivers are excellent they they're they're they're incredible professionals who i have the utmost respect and reverence for um they would get they'll get there on time no matter where they are and with that question also someone asked um you know we'll we're going to continue to fuel our
204buses where we're fueling them now which is over by uh borough hall correct so that's where we're going to continue to fuel our buses that's not going to change and i believe that those were all the questions that were posed with regard to this uh the the bus depot matter i know that mrs garbowsky asked a question about an email and that that email uh was from a parent i know the email that she's requesting i received the board of education i received an email a couple of days ago requesting that we make a motion during a board of education meeting to basically defy governor murphy and his executive orders particularly the wearing of masks in school and that's not my place as superintendent to answer to a question like that if the board wants
205to make a motion like that then the board can go ahead and recommend a motion like that but as a superintendent of schools i'm not going to recommend to the board a motion to defy governor murphy's executive order as well sure there's been quite an issue with this around the state because there's been some news here it's not working it's working this thing yeah it's working i'm sorry i'm sorry everyone i know it's the long room but there's there's been an issue of this around the state i just want to jump in with dr labby saying it's beyond the board of education issue because the board could vote however it wants on any matter but if the board were to vote that way dr labbe and the other professionals at the school district would not
206be able to carry that out if they were to carry something like that out you could lose your certificates for it it's that serious this is an executive order of the governor of new jersey so whether we like it don't like it whether this board likes it or doesn't like it it doesn't matter because it has to be enforced which is why even though there's no one even close to you when you're speaking the microphone for example six feet away it's still something we have to enforce because we're still as much independent as we have as a school district we don't really have very much independence at all we have to do what the state requires in that regard so i just want to jump in on that and and to make more make to
207to punctuate that point even more we all know we just went through an extreme surge in cases far greater than we've ever experienced during this pandemic so for for this board of education to go ahead and defy that executive order when so many of our students and staff are becoming ill from this virus it's not something that that i was going to respond to the next question that was asked that mrs garbowsky read in that email was what is the medical data that the school the school district possesses to support the new jersey department of education guidelines which exclude p students or people 18 and under the age of 18 from having to quarantine if they are close contact to someone that's infected and they've been fully vaccinated i don't have medical data to support
208that we are educators we do not collect medical data on those subject areas there are plenty of pharmaceutical companies there are plenty of researchers out there that i'm sure are doing it i'm sure the department of health health is collecting that data we follow the guidelines provided by the department of health as well as in conjunction with the department of education so the department of health gives us guidelines that say children 18 years of age and younger that are fully vaccinated when they come into close contact with an infected person they do not have to be excluded from from school and quarantine that's the guidance we received that's the guidance we're following lastly about the new quarantining guidance well again the cdc came out with new quarantining guidelines five-day guidelines everybody knows that two weeks
209later the cdc recommended it for schools several days after that the new jersey department of education and new jersey department of health recommended them for schools again we follow the guidelines that are provided to us by the department of health and the department of education so when those guidelines came out we implemented them as we are required to do so that's the answer to that question so you know what i can answer your question after i'll be happy too but yeah we're almost done you can get them as soon as they're done and i can answer a question if you have one when the meeting's over sir that's it all the questions that's it doc can i ask one clarifying question anthony yeah absolutely just to clarify dr lobby what you said in the beginning
210the borough council what they'll be deciding or voting on is whether or not they're going to engage the borough engineer to work to identify additional locations right correct and if they were to so approve that i know that this board would agree to split the cost of that study okay thank you my question was just based on some of the questions that folks were coming up with okay wait wait hold on guys doctor if this is a question like in other words if you answer the question they want to you know rebut or ask you another question based on that i mean it's a sensitive topic i guess but we just can't have people yelling i don't know if you want to i'm not talking you closed you closed public comments we closed well because
211all right well everybody's engaging ladies and gentlemen i'm sorry we closed public portion you can you know on our way out grab us if you have any questions dr lappy but you know at this point we can't i'm sorry can i just make a statement here dr lavi okay so i wrote down every question that's i guess that's the question what was it addressing what were the two questions you asked oh you're right you know what uh you are correct i am very very sorry about that i read over that i'm sorry about that sir yes um so originally when the concept when we began discussing the concept of building the transportation complex i had discussions with the borough about potentially placing that complex off of cheese quake road so for the longest time in
212fact we even engaged in discussions with the architect we share cme prior to the pandemic we were supposed to have a meeting to begin developing those rough plans however the pandemic took over and those meetings never happened so hold on listen sir sir i'm answering your question i'm answering your question sir sir okay answering your question sir in november i reached back out to the the borough and was told that that was no longer an option so our board of education finance committee then looked at and we had been looking at three possible locations that are board of education owned and those were the truman school property the eisenhower school property and the salover school property so i believe that fully answered the question so again sir the committee was our finance committee and the
213three options that our board of education property owned for the truman school the eisenhower school and the salover school and i again i am very sorry for missing your question dr labbe can i just clarify something that was said at no time was this board's intention ever to remove the memorial that's correct and i did communicate that to mr grant when he and i spoke on the phone our intentions all right listen everyone i know this is sensitive but the the public comment period is over mr grant mr i understand mr grant please listen everybody knows how serious and sensitive this is but we public comment period is over and then the meeting's all the meetings sir please the meeting is almost over and as soon as it's over all the board members are going
214to be leaving and dr labby's going to be here too and you can speak to us about that at this point but the public comment period is now over okay this is not a point counterpoint everybody understands what you said we heard you okay because the public comment period is over sir thank you mrs bloom did you finish what you were saying did you finish or okay mr grant the public comment portion's over so mr grant you've spoken on three separate occasions does anyone else have any comments um yeah i just have a quick comment and because let's not leave here burying the headline that we are going to work with the borough council and i'm extra you know i live in morgan corner of luke and stevens i have three boys who play on
215a field all the time i'm sure many of you see me there i got a rotator cuff to prove how much fat and practice i've thrown there but that being that being said i i know eileen's a morgan resident danielle is a morgan resident i think you all represented yourself extremely eloquently today i'm proud to be from morgan i think everyone came up and made great points and we listened and i'm telling you right now whatever it takes for us to work with the council no one here cares who gets the credit who or who the good guy is we we want to find a better location we re i'm telling you right now i know eileen feels i i think everyone on the board feels the same we we were happy with the original
216location we had on cheesequake and i'm extremely thankful to uh council president maher who did reach out today and that's that again should be the headline we're you know again i get it people don't trust government and i don't either for the most part and i don't know why in the past we've had trouble working together but right now i think people on both sides are have heard the people of morgan and want to to find a better location for this but understand this also it would be a dereliction of duty of this board if we didn't address the bus problem right my kid and and i'm sure anyone who's on bus five the ues and morgan knows their kids didn't get picked up for the first couple months of school this year like doctor
217stephanie we're late we you know and and and again i think you know not that it's my place to call governor murphy but i think they should have done something about the price gouging that the bus companies are doing and it's a national problem i understand it but that problem has been kicked down that can't been kicked down the road for a long time i believe i am super optimistic about it getting done but we have to you know and i'm promising you i will do whatever i have to do to work with the cat you know anything that has to be done we're going to fight to find a better location but we just have to be honest with you that we we also can't we need this this but the town needs it
218not us the town needs a transportation hub because it's hurting our kids and hurting our children's education i understand that thank you i i also want to say i do live in morgan and um i really did not and i admitted it publicly on facebook i did not realize the impact it would have on our neighborhood i live in morgan i'm on norton street you know over right down the block from the highway so you know after everybody started all of the citizens started saying things it dawned on me hey wait a minute and i started driving up and down woodland to see from the beginning of the property to the end where the parking lot behind the snack shop ends how would it affect the neighborhood and it would affect the neighborhood so i
219have um asked my fellow board members and they all were ready already to be engaged with the council because that's really where it lies is to find an alternative spot and i will do my best to help you guys get that spot as a private citizen and and work with you so it does not wreck anybody's neighborhood and i was in the same thing as it you know if you go to eisenhower you go to this school everybody's going to feel the same way so we need there are there is land available there has to be land available in a more commercial spot that will better fit this bus depot [Applause] but honestly we have to work together the board and the council and the citizens we all have to work together to make it
220happen somewhere else and not ruin somebody else's neighborhood but put it in a spot where it really belongs and all i could say is i am sorry that i didn't think of it originally i didn't realize the impact but you certainly have my attention and i have changed my uh support for the slay i can't even say the name of it the grant fields [Applause] anyone else from the board have any comments before we close this out i'm going to end it this way if i could and i'm going to and miss and i don't i please no comments no yelling you you have mrs bloom's son is a combat veteran my son's a united states marine i don't think we can possibly understand what mr grant has gone through you know we hope we
221never find out but please please look at us up here do you really think that we're going to dishonor him private first class grant do you really believe we would do that after reits across america after hearing us speak i i assure you and dr lobby's we've spoken about this it's never going to happen right dr lobby am i we would never disrespect this man's honor you're absolutely right i i don't know what else to say but please please don't even think that please thank you good well ladies and gentlemen yeah so at this time i'll uh make a motion to a gym oh hold on a second you want to speak that again i'll give you everybody uh okay that's my person i've done this one no please but i would like the board
222to consider approving um an rfp for commercial insurance brokers for property and casualty and employee benefits for the 2023 plan year the only way to really gauge competitiveness and to make sure that we're getting the best deal is to put them up side by side and do an rfp to get pricing i also would like the board to put a salary freeze on all non-contracted members of the administration until the sca negotiations are finalized i also want the board to consider establishing a technology committee for the board of ed and obviously find a new place for the depot that's it i don't know right he gave emotion so moved uh motion to return he wanted to just go and once each we'll go each individual okay so if unless unless i'm doing this wrong i'd
223like to motion excuse me if we could just keep it down on your way out thank you very much many still going on thank you like a mo make a motion so our 2023 insurance company broker uh that we go out for an rfp versus using uh the current uh broker we use now we'll actually be comparing the current broker to anybody who responds to the understood yes can we ask aaron to address that before we take a vote we can table that till next meeting if you have questions for myself yeah i would i would like to hear from eric okay with you from the table are you looking for what aaron's position is on that and my position is on that oh yeah i'd like to get some information yeah well i mean
224my position is first and foremost our health benefits insurance broker has been incredibly helpful to us um look at how far we've gone since we've we've had gallagher we we went from having major problems if you don't recall back in 2015 16 to now we're self-insured and i believe that our gallagher is a very nominal fee yeah so their fee is 200 000 a year it gets paid out by horizon sorry it the fee for gallagher is two hundred thousand dollars a year and it's paid by horizon and it's paid by horizon but that covers our medical our prescription and our dental but you have to go out for a comparison before you pick one correct so we health insurance is a little bit different it's called an eus it's an extraordinarily extraordinary unspecifiable service
225right thank you um so you don't actually have to do an rfp for that you certainly can and i believe the board did a competitive rfp before i got here in 2000 if not 2015. when when we had problems and an extraordinary an extraordinary unspecifiable service is exactly what it sounds like it's it's it can't it's it's not a it's not a bid per se it's a description of something that can't really be replicated something specific to the what is you're looking for and the way that you award us extraordinary unprecedented services to prove that in fact it is extraordinary and unspecifiable so um aaron uh as needed works with our office to to to put that together properly and while and while we do i mean i do respect the request for this motion
226again our broker has been nothing but incredibly helpful to us in growing as a school district with regard to our health benefits program we are now self-insured in everything with the exception of one dental program i believe two dollars yeah just one self-refunded so by going out for rfp well yes it's really not supposed to it's it's not supposed to be something where people get their noses out of joint or upset but if we're going to go out to rfp we're going to send a direct message to gallagher that we're not happy with their services and and that's why i respectfully oppose it but if the board so chooses to do that then then we'll do it it's also you know that takes time hill will have to go ahead and prepare those rfps we'll
227have to interview everyone that answers to the rfp again why are we doing this when we have been nothing but absolutely pleased with the performance of that broker similarly with regard to our liability insurance broker i mean some of you were on this board during the football matter we would never have been able to do a lot of things we did without their great assistance and the continued assistance they provide when we're being litigated against case in point we all know that that that there was a case back in 1985 that was being brought upon us if it wasn't for our broker we would have never found the insurance company that was representing the school district back in 1985. so and one last thing about gallagher that i have to say there have been countless
228staff members that joe our broker has gone to meetings with health care providers to get our staff members the services they need we just recently had a staff member who had a family member with acute psychiatric problems and at the final hour our broker was able to convince the insurance company to provide that staff member with the with the services that they deserve to get and he does this on countless occasions so again while i certainly respect the request for a motion mrs bloom if you're asking for my position on it and that of miss hills that's it thank you if i may what exactly if if we're not paying for this well that's the first policy service let me just say that's the first falsehood we are absolutely paying an administration fee whether it's
229bill through horizon and horizon pays the broker directly that's the way it is i'm an insurance broker 20 something years so i know how it works we're absolutely paying and the fact that we don't know what we're paying per person leaves a lot to be desired that should be known um two the only way to determine if your broker is delivering your competitive pricing and giving you the best deal is to compare them to other companies and you're not just comparing the broker but you're also comparing the insurance products they'll go with the broker so the fact that you know all the components of the plan are self-funded is more reason for us to be true to our taxpayer who ultimately are responsible for and make sure that we are paying the cheapest and uh
230most competitive pricing and that doesn't mean that gallagher is going to be insulted gallagher goes through this every day they're an insurance broker they're used to competing they're used to defending themselves and if they're the best broker they will not lose and that's really all i could say so if we're so sure that they're the best then they will not lose the bid they'll retain their business but we still should make sure that we're being charged that we get the best rates we can but don't you think versus that do you think you could within the next probably a year right right yeah what could you possibly work and try to find out what if if what we have right now is excellent i mean i know you went through a quick run through last
231year with it you seem to be okay with it but even during that call i mean there was many things that i brought up that were not in the contract that should have been from day one so again if they're so good why didn't they include them from the beginning you know what i mean i i i'm i'm just spitballing here but is it something that we might want to just talk about not i don't even know former committee yeah we could talk about it just see if there's a you know we can always go put it put this on but but as a board we are responsible to the taxpayer to make sure that we're paying the best things and the only but the only way to determine that is rfp that's it we're
232gonna do it now and someone has to make a motion or we could talk about it i think i just think we should just see if we can talk about it yeah we could do it and then that's fine we'll do it next month if we wanted to yeah we could table it yep okay yep so uh salary freeze on i'm not contracted yeah non-con like non-union because it's not fair that we're still negotiating with the the teachers and you know that i must say we're giving races out but no one really that's not like a you know a non-contracted administrator shouldn't get a raise when the teachers are still waiting that's my idea what is that who well i don't know who's coming up down the pike who's the non-contractor mrs babone is referring
233to any administrators that are not affiliated with a collective bargaining unit right so we have some non-certificated directors that are not in assistant directors that are not affiliated with a union and we also have some confidential secretaries that are not affiliated with the union and we have of course mr glock malloy dr shediak and miss hill who are not affiliated with the union however you need to approve their employment contracts by the end but by june 30th every year that's a statute right it's required and it's also this discussion is probably better suited for personnel uh in a closed session discussion because it could impact some of their employment status so you'd have to have it you have you can't just approve salaries for the contract employees you have to approve a contract that would
234have the salary all right so we could put that on the next person the next day the next executive session you can discuss it yeah whatever you guys want but just i'd rather you not have that discussion publicly if possible okay perhaps we can do it in uh executive sessions so that the other members that aren't part of the personnel committee because this sounds like this is something that when i say that's why men actually people are yeah that's right man personnel exception to the open public meeting exactly right yeah yep that's fine others would want to participate in that discussion perhaps that would be the very time and the third thing was establish a technology committee i think that's important because we have mr glock mcloy doing a lot of things he has a
235whole team now and you know we don't really i'm not saying he keeps us in the dark or anything but we don't really have any specific committee that's you know dealing with technology and what are we doing and updates and all that stuff and i think it would be important if we did okay do you think um i'm trying to think if we can incorporate that in the finance infrastructure was with technology infrastructure technology is included in infrastructure so would that be amenable to you if we do something yeah you're on that team right yeah eloy is actually uh very interested in technology as far as i know so he's on that committee as well so would work so i guess we can do it but technology technology has always been a part of finance
236right but we don't really separate it and talk about it specifically what we do when when major items come up so we can certainly make sure that ms hill collaborates with mr glock malloy to add any agenda items on that that that you know might pertain to well i'll leave the technology chair to decide what he thinks i can't take this sorry i think some some some some of the ideas is to not just as we're purchasing but perhaps looking at ways to improve our our technology and infrastructure um i know at the last committee meeting i kind of kind of mentioned it but um i was online really but perhaps yeah if that's if that's part of that committee then then maybe that's where we can bring that up we also talk about technology
237during student achievement so technology is talked about in both committees one in finance and infrastructure technologies talked about mostly as it relates to the fiscal impact of it and in student achievement it relates more to the student educational outcomes from it yeah technology is a big part of everything so yeah i think we can do it i think we can put it on the agenda and you know we'll tweak it as we go because you know we'll start next month and you know but you have to you i think you guys have to give you know specific like i want to speak about this or learn about this right because yeah sounds good uh anything else before we close this up look good make a motion to adjourn this is [Music]