001okay good evening and welcome to the july 20th 2021 cerro board of ed meeting please take notice this public meeting of the server 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 10 4-6-21 copy of this notice was also posted outside the board of sec but 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 of the united states with liberty and justice for all thank you miss hill roll call please mr balcony here mrs bloom here mr fernandez here mrs kenny mrs napolitano here mr cabone here mr john walsh here mr patrick walsh here mr esposito here missile can you please summarize
002executive force the board discussed personnel including but not limited to agenda items thank you i don't believe there's any correspondence so at this time could i have a motion to approve the minutes from the i believe it was june 19th 16th june 15th 15th i'm getting close 16th meeting for the executive and uh and public so moved miss bloom second uh go miss babone ladies first john all right she got it mr belka yes mrs bloom yes mr fernandez yes this is napolitano yes mrs pabone yes mr john walsh yes mr patrick walsh yes and mr esposito yes okay um moving along we don't have any student reps obviously during the summer um in the interest of time i'm going to not speak on any comments at this particular meeting uh john i don't know
003if you have anything we don't have any highlights no highlights okay so uh let's just move on to uh the presentation dr lobby the hiv presentation yes mr glock malloy this will be a very brief presentation and everyone should have a paper copy of it yes in fact most of this we presented at the last meeting we were unable to complete the presentation on the hiv scores because the state had not released the final version so we have two changes from the june meeting we have one additional hiv from the high school we have one additional other suspension from samsung those will go into those state reports that we spoke to and presented on in the june meeting and beyond that the state released the final hiv scores and they were um what we submitted
004in the fall no corrections so as as we have submitted them great it really only changes great does anyone have any questions on the board throughout this report thank you mr glock malloy and i'll just know too that the report is posted on the district website great uh where we post our agendas so anyone listening at home uh that would like to view that just go to where you get the agenda and then you'll find that report as well great thank you for that okay at this time we will have our board discussions uh mr balco you want to talk about finance yep no problem we had our meeting on july 13th and started with a tour of the high school led by mr obino who highlighted the areas he would like the board to
005address in the future the areas he had some great ideas were the media center guidance suite auditorium a teacher's room in the upper a-wing and the tv studio while touring i was also alarmed by the number of unsecured areas that house many of our vital switches and patch panels for the district's network infrastructure the committee will be touring each of those buildings at the upcoming meetings and i'm certain numerous worthy projects will be brought to our attention all the district lighting hvac boiler projects are moving along as scheduled and the solar ppa appears to be back on track the high school gym air conditioning is almost complete with just an item that needs to be con needs to be corrected by the contractor while the truman and eisenhower floor replacements are underway and bathroom work
006at the middle school is waiting on materials the committee was updated on the grounds department personnel on how they plan to hire the contractor who takes care of many of our fields and grounds to do the high school middle school and cheesecake school grounds as well we were then updated on the june 30th fund balance projections and it appears that we will have close to six million dollars conservatively estimated to transfer into our various reserves we then both broke we then briefly spoke about surplus obsolete equipment and the auction process to dispose of it and our next meeting is august 3rd 5 30 at the middle school great thank you mr balka just so uh everyone in in the public knows mr balka came up with a great idea he chairs finance and we are
007going to tour each school over the next i guess eight months and speak to the principal and find out exactly what needs they have for improvements so we started at the high school as mr balkan noted and uh it was very eye-opening anybody have any questions for us about the board thanks man appreciate it who's up next uh mr walsh personnel yeah we had a brief uh personnel meeting earlier today and uh the highlight of which was meeting three excellent uh candidates uh for our personnel services coordinator jillian flanagan our supervisor of elementary education um allison francis and um april magestro uh who many of you know were ready for our preschool principal position and they were they were outstanding uh very impressive candidates great thank you mr walsh any questions okay and always last
008but not least mrs bloom we have some counting news i think uh yes we actually had our first in-person hybrid meeting which was held at the mercer county community college we had a very nice turnout 23 people were in person i believe 38 people were virtual but it was encouraging to see people from the county come out and to be able to get together and discuss things face to face so moving forward for the fall they are planning to have most of the meetings hybrid as well so for those people who want to attend in person they can and for those who wish to remain at home they can do that as well thank you you planning on having another meeting in sayerville uh actually they are looking for places to hold meetings because it
009seems that the restaurant that we usually use is now out of our price range so that just came out today so uh if we can i'm sure we can facilitate a meeting here and i'll have a conversation with dr labian with the county people and we'll see if we can make it happen great absolutely sounds good um any questions before i open up the public for agenda items on any discussions final okay okay at this time um i'd like to open it up to the public for agenda items only eric do we have anyone no online doesn't look like anyone's here okay so uh or coming up so we'll close uh public for agenda items and uh dr labbe take us through your report sir all right thank you mr esposito and i'll try to
010be as brief as possible if i can bring everyone's attention to the finance portion finance and infrastructure portion of the agenda i'd like to to make highlight of several different motions and or resolutions beginning with numbers 12 and 13 where in which we're asking you to approve the speechless architectural group for additional professional services related to the replacement of the boilers at the silhouette school and accommodating accompanying that would be motion number 13 in which we're asking you to withdraw those particular funds from capital reserve to naturally pay for them number 16 and 38 which can be found on page four in the addendum we're asking you to approve the purchase of four 54 seat buses from truck king international we awarded them that based upon their quote and we'd also like to go ahead
011and pay for that through a lease purchase agreement that we would like to enter with municipal leasing consultants um and the financials are given there uh basically we would least purchase um in the principal amount of three hundred and seventy five thousand twenty five dollars at an interest rate of 1.365 percent and for a five year period number 19 uh we'd also like you to agree for another purchase professional service agreement this time it's with love literacy incorporated they're going to be providing to us special education literacy consultation which will include a program evaluation district-wide and then of course a number of different coaching visits to the level of 96 thousand dollars and finally number 26 which you can find on page four we're asking you to approve the submittal and application of the esea
012full year 2022 consolidated grant in the amount of 1 million 168 any questions or comments related to these items or any others on finance infrastructure i have a question about the buses um so what percentage would these four bring what percentage do we now have in-house we run ourselves with these four um i well i don't have that offhand but what we are using these for us to do preschool okay so we're going to have additional routes because of preschool sure so this will take over that and we're able to tier it with some existing routes as well as on the subscription bussing that we're going to be using yeah it's also going to help us greatly and remember that one of those buses is a replacement box there are three new buses but one
013is an actual replacement price okay i think we're we're inching our way close to 40 percent yeah i mean we've bought i want to say this will be i think 23 or 25 buses yeah in the last few years so close to 40. huh that's great i remember we were 28 when i first got up if you recall on the previous strategic action plan the goal was 50 so we're coming very close to that goal terrific any other questions or comments on finance and infrastructure seeing none can i direct your attention now to student achievement um i'd like to begin with number one we're asking you to approve some new curriculum guides um dr shediak and her amazing team of supervisors of instruction have been hard at work with our amazing faculty to revise these
014guides four of which are related to special education and i believe five of which are related to our spanish program at the high school including ap spanish numbers two and three which you can find on page 12. we're asking to approve both the district professional development plan as well as the district mentoring plan and these are annual approvals dr shetiak just signed off on the statement of assurance for both of those number four which you can find on pages 12-13 we're asking you to approve the 2021-2022 marking period back to school night and conference calendars any questions on anything on student achievement i have i have one um number five where it has about the middle school um what time is that going to be i believe that's going to start at around 9 00
015a.m okay because that's the same day as our meeting and i i am a sixth grade parent going into the school so it should be fine our meeting in terms of board of education yes oh it's not going to be in the evening it's going to be it's going to be during the day the the other thing worth pointing out if you notice just below that we are holding freshman orientation on the same day so that might cause a problem with some parents principles are extremely flexible and the the one unique thing that mr glosky is doing at the high school is not only is he providing an orientation for sixth graders um knowing that a good portion of last year's sixth graders uh were um hybrid or were they remote only he's going to
016give those kids an opportunity to come in as well to see the building they may not have seen the building they may have spent the whole year on remote instruction so i think that's a wonderful idea um and i do believe that he's going to allow the same thing for next year's eighth graders too so a magnificent idea in terms of accommodating kids that may be new to the building and may need that you know personalized touch when it comes to learning where their classrooms are going to be and so forth okay thank you i i have a question sure i noticed in the um under number six the following activities for the high school there is nothing about senior pictures here they do have pitches for nine to eleven but is there any date
017for the senior pictures because people might be questioning that because it's missing i can definitely find that out for mr robino good doctor i believe that they do those more by appointment the senior pictures the underclass pictures are done um more like a whole class goes down but the senior pictures i think they do a little bit differently i think they actually even do some of them over the season yeah they start i think they start in august with the senior portraits but i don't know the exact date they're doing it but dr shadyac is right because for senior portraits the kids have to dress up in a tuxedo um i don't know if they're going to be able to still do that you know with with you know we're still in somewhat degree the
018pandemic so um but they do provide a tuxedo an easy slip-on tuxedo an easy slip-on dress for the kids um for their senior portraits so that usually takes a little bit of time for the kids to get into those things so it is done by appointment only and i do believe they begin sometime in august but um i'll get you the date that they're going to start that all right thank you any other questions on student achievement okay um there is nothing to report on governance outside of the hiv report that you all have in front of you that mr glock malloy updated with you when he gave his report so i'm going to bring your attention now to personnel and of course we have another one of those bittersweet moments that we have to
019say goodbye to somebody you can find it um item number 34 on the addendum um we are asking you to accept the retirement of a beloved staff member that's been with us for 30 years for more than 30 years deborah golda deborah golder has been a mathematics special education teacher in the middle school she spent a number of years at sayerville war memorial high school and now has completed her teaching career at the stable middle school today we applaud her on her retirement serving the students of saverville community with such impeccability she has worked in both resource room and in-class resource center settings assisting students with special needs throughout her many years teaching our students she was known for her kind warm demeanor as well as her extremely pleasant classroom atmosphere her students enjoyed her
020delivery instruction through real life application and hands-on activities from the words of the parent of a former student of miss golder miss golder has made sure my daughter knows that an education is so very important when she teaches my daughter she not only makes it interesting most importantly she makes it fun every lesson that miss golder gave my daughter has a meaning behind it for that i will always be grateful deborah has been a hard-working employee with an enormous heart she has demonstrated her love for children in many ways on a daily basis we would like to congratulate miss debbie golder on her retirement and wish her all the best we will truly miss her so on behalf of the sayerville public schools staff and students as well as our entire community we congratulate mrs
021golder on her well-deserved retirement wish her nothing but the very best in all endeavors and thank her for the manner in which she served the sarava middle school the savior of a war memorial high school all our students this school district and our greater community i'd also like to bring your attention to items 9-11 as well as 38-39 which you can find on pages 20-22 in the addendum we're asking you to hire new administrators and certificated and non-certificated staff for the 2021-2022 school year and i would like to highlight the administrators that we're asking you to approve not only on these motions in these motions but also in motion number 12 in which we're asking you to transfer an administrator from a supervisor position to a principal position and mr walsh spoke about it earlier
022when he gave his personnel presentation but i too would like to say some very heartfelt words about the professionals that we're hiring to assist us in leading the school district and i'd like to begin with mrs april magistro and i know mrs magistro is here she doesn't mind standing and she's waving with my family you know mrs magistro it is our honor and privilege and i and i think that we are blessed absolutely blessed to recommend to you folks to hire miss magistro as our very first preschool principal in the sayerville public schools and when i met with the personnel committee i was pretty blunt as i normally am with them and i said when we went ahead and thought about this program um and we thought about a potential person to be the first
023principal of this program all roads led to one person and the greatest concern we had was whether that one person would want that immense responsibility um so we we crossed our fingers and our toes um we thought good things we meditated we did everything we could and fortunately mrs magistro um welcomed the opportunity to become this principal and if you've ever met or worked with miss majestro the first thing that you are completely taken aback by is her energy um i myself would like to think i have a lot of energy she can do laps around me she is one of the most positive energetic people i've ever met moreover she is the one of the most competent and expert leaders in our district and i couldn't think of anyone that i would want to
024lead our three four and five-year-olds at the cheese quake school than mrs magistro and we truly are absolutely blessed to not only had her in this district since the beginning of her career and by the way born and raised in sayerville graduated from sayerville war memorial high school again we are she graduated i think in right absolutely blessed so it is my honor once again to make this recommendation to you to hire april magistro as our new preschool principal moving can i get a moving long um we we conducted more interviews for more administrative positions uh obviously uh miss magistr magistro vacated her supervisor position so we had to find another qualified um incompetent leader um to to replace her and again um we we had a great pool of highly qualified and very credentialed
025applicants um dr shediak had more than close to a dozen people in for interviews and wonderful candidates however one candidate stood head and shoulders above the rest and i heard a lot about this person before i had the opportunity to meet with her and i was explaining to our personnel committee that normally when i interview a candidate it's usually 30 to 45 minutes i was interviewing this person for two hours we were engaged in such a deep conversation about literacy and how to improve the literacy performance of our students mathematics how to enhance mathematics understanding and most importantly leadership how to promote optimum level of performance of students by doing such with faculty and um it is my pleasure and honor to recommend to you to hire allison francis who is also here if alison
026could stand up please there she is as our new supervisor of instruction um to replace miss magistro and again it's the theme here miss francis born and raised in sayerville she may not have graduated from say of a war memorial high school but again she was born and raised in sayerville she is a a savable person a bomber at heart we are stealing her from another district and i'm darn proud of that again she will bring many many outstanding qualities to our elementary educators and i know working hand-in-hand with doctor shediac and her team of of supervisors we are going to make great strides in improving the outcomes of all of our elementary students in english language arts mathematics science and social studies due to the acquisition of this great educational leader that we now
027have so again it's my honor to recommend to you mrs allison francis for the position of supervisor instruction in the elementary school and lastly i would like to take the time to introduce to you one last candidate that we are recommending for you to hire and as you know during our last board of education meeting we asked you to make a revision to one of our job descriptions so that we could make room for a person from the human resources industry to coordinate our personal services um we've discussed this on many occasions in education the the norm is that you you take people that began their careers as educators as teachers and they advanced through in the administrative ranks and they work their way into human resources so you have someone that's dedicated the career
028to be a teacher that now has to learn and understand the occupation of you know human resources management and we just started looking at that and said you know that doesn't sound right we really feel that we need to hire someone that has dedicated their education and their experience the occupation of human resources management so we went out to look for a personnel services coordinator and again we had a nice pool of qualified and credentialed applicants but once again we had a candidate that far and above outshined all the rest and again we feel blessed that this person um you know fell into our district at just the right time and again it's the theme tonight born and raised in saverville graduate of sayerville war memorial high school we couldn't ask for anything better and
029her knowledge of human resources management is expert level her experiences in the private world but she demonstrated clearly that she has the ability and willingness to learn the education industry as it's related to human resources so it is with great honor and and great pride that i ask you that i first introduce you to um miss jillian flanagan jillian and i ask you board of education members um to um to appoint her as our new personnel services coordinator along with what i've just spoke about on items number 12 through 15 and number 40 which you can find on pages 22 through 26 in the addendum we're asking you to approve the transfer of administrators such as ms magistro as well as certificated non-certificated staff for the 2021-2022 school year and finally on number 33 uh
030we're asking you to withhold the 2021-2022 salary increment of an employment of an employee and mr esposito i'm sorry if it's a little long-winded toward the end of that but that is my report good stuff thank you dr labbe um any questions uh for dr labbe before we vote on his agenda okay seeing none i'd like to entertain a motion to accept the superintendent's report so move mrs bloom mr walsh p walsh mr balcon yes mrs bloom yes mr fernandez yes mrs napolitano um active state on um a number five check number one five three five two three rest yes everything else was yes yes okay mrs pabone yes mr john walsh yes mr patrick walsh yes and mr esposito yes okay at this time i'd like to open up to the public for any
031items pertaining to the district if anyone's here no no one online okay good evening good evening also just state your name and address for the record my name's nicole grasso and i live on 82 albert drive thank you i've been a resident of cerebral for 15 years and have four children that i hope will return to this district in september after carefully reading the road forward guidance for the next school year i have some major concerns and questions excuse me in the guidance section 1.1 vaccination states that schools are encouraged to have a system in place to determine the vaccination status of students and staff what does that system look like for our district and what will it be used for at the last meeting it was asked if our students would be separated by
032vaccination status the answer was no because the district had no way to know who was vaccinated with a system like this in place you would know will that in turn mean our children will be segregated based on vaccination status it also states that schools should consider school-wide vaccine coverage among students and staff what exactly does that mean will there be incentives for students or staff to become vaccinated or stu will students or staff be discriminated against if they choose not to be why are we continuing to be involved with having testing and vaccination sites on our school property when these things are readily available at healthcare facilities and other locations throughout our town and surrounding towns my next area of concern is section 1.3 do you mind if you're asking questions you want those answered
033sure you're moving real fast okay i mean i can let's let's just we don't have the same system in place that we had during the last meeting so i can take my time with you so your first question is um it's a recommendation of a system for determining vaccinations we're not in the business of violating anyone's civil rights there will be no system for that okay um so therefore there will be no separate separation um and so forth now okay if if someone is in close contact with someone that you know is determined to be positive it's that parent's opportunity or their right to disclose to us if their child is vaccinated or not and it would be beneficial to us to know that so we may ask that in terms of if if the
034child is vaccinated we don't have to close contact them we don't have to quarantine them but outside of that there'll be no system for determining who's vaccinated or who's not because we don't want to put ourselves in a position in which we could potentially violate someone's rights um that's not what we want to do um so there is not going to be a system other than if a child's put in close contact we may ask is your child vaccinated but then the parent has every right to not disclose that or to disclose it if they want to and that's questions only being asked to determine whether to quarantine that person or not okay um so there's no separation what were some other questions related to that um [Music] forced vaccination no there's no forced vaccination
035school-wide background yeah it's part of our safe return plan um it you know we we do have to we you encourage it so will we once again be holding vaccinations here for our students staff and even other community members yes because we want to make it easy access to people to get vaccinated if they choose to want them but again it's your right to choose whether you get vaccinated or not will we continue to do testing yes and those will be not during school hours no they they've never been okay um the only time we do vaccinations during school hours is we've traditionally done flu shots for our staff members during school hours we've done that since i've been here um you know they locate themselves in the clinic and the teachers that sign up
036for go down and get their flu shot that's about it we won't be doing anything like that for students okay when it comes to testing yes we'll continue with our testing program the same way we did throughout last school year uh i do think that it's important if you want to make sure that you're not infected to get tested regularly and there are other people that think that too however there are other people that don't by the end of the year only about 22 people were getting tested me included in that number but we're not that's nothing that's going to be forced all it's going to be is you've read do you read my talk soups tell me yes i try to okay so the verbiage will be the same it's there if you want
037it um it's free and easy access and therefore if you want to take advantage of it take advantage of it but outside of that that's as far as it'll go okay thank you and i think that that covered vaccination and testing so i guess i think that's all my questions now i'll go on to my next one my next area of concern is section 1.3 of masks as we see have seen since june mass guidance has changed several times and probably will continue to over the next few months i'm going to speak from a worst case scenario perspective on this topic to get some questions answered if and when they are mandated again this is a topic i feel strongly about because in my eyes this is not a mask or unmask issue this is
038an issue of parental rights since when is it okay to make blanket decisions on how or what a parent or family should do to keep themselves health healthy at this point in time anyone 12 years of age or older has been given the opportunity to be vaccinated should they wish to children under that age have virtually zero mortality rate for this virus so who are we protecting with those masks at this point a few years ago dr labby and i had a correspondence about another parental choice in a medical scenario his answer to me was parents should never lose their individual parenting rights so why is it okay for us to lose them now as i understand please correct me if i'm wrong in order to receive covet relief funding you must enforce whatever government
039decides will keep us safe at any given time to think that you will are willing to sell our individual parental rights for that is disgusting so i ask you why are you complying with these recommendations that are ever changing and make very little sense and what is the consequence if you don't there are several school districts in this state homedale lacey and monroe to name a few that made mask optional for the upcoming school year before the new guidance had come out i commend those superintendents and board of education members for standing up for their parents rights to make decisions on how to keep their own family safe i hope you'll do the same for us in all of our worrying about kovid you've forgotten about other worries for our children two of my children
040have severe food allergies if god forbid one of my children have an allergic reaction at school while wearing a mask who's going to notice before it's too late some of the first signs of a severe allergic reaction is lip and tongue swelling how would anyone notice that my three-year-old is having a reaction before she can't breathe since she can't verbalize those things and god forbid that happens to any child in this district who will be held liable i have another child who experiences horrible migraines before kovid she was in the nurse two to three times a week at least most weeks wearing a mask triggers her migraines therefore her doctor does not want her wearing one for any extended period of time it's safe to say six hours a day plus a bus ride is
041extended are these things going to be acceptable medical exemptions according to the district doctor who has never met my children how will a doctor who has not met in most of these children determine what is in the best interest of their personal health versus their doctors who see them on a regular basis a story i'd like to share with you that occurred in one of my children's classes this year is about a deaf child this child has spent the last year basically guessing what people are saying to her including her teachers if she even knows anyone is speaking to her because she can't read their lips if their mouth is covered not only does this put an obvious detriment on her education but how is she supposed to make friends kids don't understand why she
042can't hear them or doesn't respond to them so they ignore her this is a struggle for her when she can read lips what do you think that does to her when she can't the outcome of that is a lonely child who can't communicate with her peers what is that doing to her social and emotional well-being i'm not saying that covet is not a worry but i think for our children we need to look at the bigger picture of things past covet as well i heard a parent say at the last meeting we need to give a voice to the unheard which inspired me to tell this child's story and i hope that i've given her a voice if she can't read lips and learn how to socialize and communicate through watching people's faces and mouths
043she may never have a voice i myself having a child with a speech delay know the heartache of a child not being able to communicate this gentleman also stated that we are arguing about a piece of cloth and he's right but let's remember that this piece of cloth although may not have serious effects on everyone or even most but it definitely does for some and we need to consider everyone in these decisions my point here is that we as parents know what is best for our children's health and well-being i know i spend every waking hour wearing and weighing what is best for my children in all aspects of their life as well as most other parents why is it that you don't have the confidence in us as parents to make those decisions the
044next section is one point four physical cases let me say that by the way you're doing great oh thank you and i do recall our conversation so let me just say with masks um right now because the governor i know currently they are optional i'm just right because the governor's not requiring them while some districts may choose to we are not so it's optional however if the governor goes ahead and puts out an executive order requiring it we would have to follow that um and you you ask why why couldn't we defiantly not do that well i'm the superintendent of schools if i were to go ahead and allow it and defy the governor's executive order i would be in essence breaking the law and not only would i face criminal charges i would put
045this district at great liability especially if there was an outbreak so let's say um i defy the governor's order and um he doesn't shut us down because i defy the order but let's say i defy the order and i allow people not to wear a mask and there's an outbreak in a school because they're not wearing masks and someone gets sick seriously or even god forbid or heaven forbid dies um this district myself will first of all i wouldn't be able to live with myself but we would be incur total liability for that because we broke the executive order that said we were required to wear a mask so i i completely understand and i and i do believe that you know we're not in the business of taking parental rights away we never want
046to do that however when we're giving we're given an executive order by the governor we have to follow it um because we would face serious criminal civil um and liability issues if we didn't heaven forbid someone got sick and so forth and the district physician i know that you asked that question yes it's supported in you know i'm sure that because there's not going to be a remote only option that if the governor were to require masks there definitely will be that option for for parents that have documented medical reasons for their children not to wear a mask those would be sent to us and just just know that the scrutiny and the threshold for that is much different this year than it was last year because last year there was an option for remote
047instruction but there is no option for remote instruction so the way in which those requests through medical documentation are vetted by our district physician will be much different so if a parent does provide us with a medical based reason for their child not being able to wear a mask similar to some of the things that you pointed out by the way about asthma and so forth those would then just need to be documented in either an individualized education plan a 504 assistance plan and or an independent health plan and we would go ahead and that person would be exempt from the mass requirement based upon those medical reasons and like i said our school district physician is going to take a different approach this year because there is no remote option it's all in person
048options when you say vetted by the school physician what is exactly does that mean is that he just making sure that like someone didn't write that at home and or is and make sure it was actually legitimately from a doctor or does he have to agree with that doctor all above all the above basically it's a um is this a is this a physician um b is the physician giving a medical reason that supports not being able to wear a mask and so if he doesn't agree with say my children's personal doctor's opinion then they they wouldn't be granted an exemption um there is that particular case but i can tell you right now that would be an extreme case it might have been different last year because there was a remote option but there
049is no remote option this year so um those those this is my first time i don't know there won't be there will be some of those cases i mean for instance um for our summer programs we did we have received notes because believe it or not summer programs are not optional right now if you can believe the hypocrisy of that so the 21 22 school year is optional but summer programs it's not it's very hypocritical it doesn't make sense um but i digress um we have a couple of cases where a a physician wrote johnny should not wear a mask well that's not going to get accepted because it's not saying why johnny should not wear a mask so then we're going back and saying okay we need a medical reason so then he would
050look at the reason it says johnny cannot wear a mask because he has asthma well then our doctor would say well he has asthma that's a pretty legitimate reason not to be able to wear a mask there might be cases though where in which we say can we have a waiver for our doctor to speak to your doctor they would have a professional conversation together but i can tell you right now because there is no remote option many of those medical documented reasons are going to be accepted okay um okay so moving on to section 1.4 physical distancing and cohorting what does this look like for our young children i was told last year that our that children could not sit together to do a puzzle or build blocks for instance will that still be
051the case isn't socialization a huge part of public school education let's keep in mind that many of these students see each other plenty outside of school in sports or playing at the park or at each other's homes so why is it that they can't interact at school in our again return safe return plan and by the way our safe return plan is posted on our website pretty soon it will be in both spanish and arabic as well as english but if you want to look it's on our website i believe it's in the safety um it's in the district page and then you go to our restart school plan but it's there basically we are going to do the best we can um to maintain um three to six feet distance or maximum distance allowable
052in some cases we may not be able to you know keep that three foot distance um but we're going to do the best we can to socially distance the kids and i understand the importance of socialization and the intimacy of you know standing or being in closer proximity to someone however in this particular case and unfortunately we are seeing a rise in cases right now um the delta variant is the you know causing our positivity rate for the first time in a long time to go above two percent um and they're they're saying it's going to continue to rise that level so we're gonna do the best we can to maintain the three to six feet or the best that we possibly can in the classrooms so no they won't be able to like i
053have a first grader growing he's going into first grade so he won't be able to sit at a table with another student and do a puzzle until until we're at a safe place with the pandemic i'm afraid no okay the next section is section three parental screening exclusion and response to symptomatic students and staff i'm going to share another story that touches on all of these things and how they're playing out in our schools i want to be clear that i agree and support having protocols in place but we seem to be pushing these protocols into a place that's not okay we had a school nurse this year not once but twice questioned a young child about why their sibling was not in school and if anyone in their house was sick it just so
054happened that that child's mother as a front-line worker as an icu nurse manager on a covet unit since the start of the pandemic if anyone knows how serious this virus can be it's her and she would never put anyone else at risk if someone in her household was ill with possible coven putting a young child in this situation is wrong if there are any questions why are they not being directed to the parents our children have had to deal with enough over the past year and a half they should not be asked to report what is going on with their other family members or in their homes pitting children against their parents or making children feel like maybe their parents did something wrong we also know that a child's perspective of what is going on
055if say a sibling is sick may not be the reality of it this is the hostility that's been created now whether her child was questioned because they knew she was working with covid patients or whether with this was random both are equally despicable and unacceptable behavior so again i ask you why do you not have the confidence in us in parent as parents i'm sorry to evaluate these situations and and i don't know the particulars of that particular of that case um however what i what i do know is this is we have a responsibility and the per the burden of that responsibility for the most part um was on mr glock malloy during this pandemic um you know as you know our schools opened for in-person instruction in november and they remained open um
056for that to a certain level of degree throughout the rest of the year um which is not not you know the same a lot of districts can't say that and the reason why we were able to do so is because of our contact tracing and i get what you're saying that i know that um the vast majority of our parents would never do that but i can tell you that there were cases in which that was done and i understand that in households in households um kids that may be in a household with different last names where a child was positive and their sibling went to school the next day so those there there were many instances in which a kids were sent to school with symptoms and they should have never been um one
057of the classic things that we heard in the spring were oh my child has allergies um so we sent them only to find out that that child test is positive and then the problem with that is first and foremost that when when parents go ahead and take that risk they're putting the safety and and you're right the the virus may not impact you know younger children but it certainly impacts adults they're risking the safety of that staff member that that teaches that class and all the other children in that classroom and on top of that they have now when since they've come to that school and they shouldn't have come to that school the children that are in close contact with that child now have to be out of school and and i understand you're
058right the majority of our parents would never do that but i'm telling you right now on many occasions it happened and that i understand that my point here is is that why are the kids being questioned i don't know the particulars of that particular that incident but no we we don't ask kids um we we do have contact tracing maybe for our older kids we will ask who you were in contact with well i can tell you in this situation this was an elementary school child who was pulled out of his class and asked why his brother was not in school yeah and that's wrong it's that i don't you have a question and they both have the same last name and there is a question why one sibling is there i mean who there's
059i have four children sometimes somebody has a doctor's appointment or whatever so one kid might be in school or two kids might be in school whatever and that's fine you call the parent and say hey i noticed johnny's here but you know molly's not but this was a clear case of this child being questioned and again i don't disagree with you on that if that happened i don't know the particulars of what you're talking about yes but we we don't contact trace in that way we need to speak to the parent so i agree with you that it's not it's not appropriate at all to speak to a child about their their sibling especially at that young age okay could i add something can i sure i would just like to say that somebody if
060that did happen they should have brought it to detention without the labby so that it could be investigated at that time so i agree that that shouldn't happen but if it does just so everybody here knows and anybody listening in the public doctor labview is accessible by email and he will certainly respond and take action so please feel free to contact him about these kind of mrs pabong just speak a little closer to your microphone because there was a gentleman back there did you hear me at all yeah um i agree with you this parent did speak to the principal but as i stated she's an icu nurse who a manager who works in a coveted unit so you can imagine what her schedule looks like over the past 18 months um so she doesn't
061i know in times that i've had to reach out to dr labbing things those things take time and she maybe just didn't have time to go that far um i'm just saying that this did happen and questioning kids is not right i agree okay the last section um i'd like to talk about is 5.0 5.2 screening testing will our school district implement screening testing defied defined in the guidance as testing asymptomatic individuals without known exposure with the intent of making decisions based on the results for randomized testing if so will parents be able to opt out of that randomized testing for their children and who will be held responsible should a mistake happen and a child be tested when a parent has not consented as we saw happen in new york last year i know
062this past year testing was required for dances field day or other non-mandatory events will that continue as well after speaking with some medical professionals this type of testing does not show to be effective in any way children who are let's say attending a dance with their friends that they most likely are hanging out with or playing sports with on a regular basis anyway is pointless not to mention attending school with these same peers daily it also has no bearing on whether someone is actually ill at the time of the event three to five days later what is that what exactly is the logic of this type of testing nurses and doctors and hospitals are not required to do any type of testing to treat patients yet to go to an eighth grade dance or attend
063your child's field day it is that's it um with regard to that we will not be having any type of randomized testing or anything like that i know that that is in some of the research but no we're not going to do that okay however if um the per the pandemic persists as it is going um we might require testing for those voluntary types of activities and i will say this that you know we had close to 300 kids at the 8th grade dance 175 kids at the junior prom 150 kids went to the senior class trip and we had close to 400 kids at the senior prom and we didn't have one single outbreak and yes you could say that's luck or you could say that it's you know testing we did have some
064kids that were tested that came up positive that didn't go because they were positive so again we have to think about especially in those type of circumstances so an eighth grade dance when kids are dancing on the dance floor in a big group all close to one another they can't social distance they're eating together at the same table same with the senior in junior prom this senior trip same thing we couldn't we couldn't go ahead and you know enforce any form of social distancing at those events so we had to do the very best that we could to make sure that none of the kids there would be exposed to some that was infected and i'll go to one last point don't forget the dates that we had those events were within a week with
065those graduations and promotions so the last thing we wanted to do was expose a senior that was going to the senior prom to someone that was infected and they got sick before graduation or they got close contact quarantined before graduation and not be able to participate in that so that was the logic behind that will we exercise that same logic moving forward for other voluntary activities during the course of the school year possibly as of right now we're still in july i'm hoping that that things calm down again um and we don't have to do things like that but there is that possibility okay and i see your point i just also want to express um yes is it possible that they come to the prom and get exposed but it's also possible that they're
066at a sweet 16 and that they weren't tested for and get exposed we've had that yeah so i mean those those risks are everywhere and i think that everybody knows those risks going on going in you know anytime we step in anywhere at this point right we know we know the risk we're taking if we go to shoprite or wherever i just excluding somebody who maybe doesn't want to be tested um is i don't agree with well and i respect your opinion um but what would have broken my heart more is the child that got tested that was around somebody that turned up being positive and because we didn't test and then they either became positive or they had to quarantine and they missed graduation and listen my son just graduated from high school and
067while i think any promotion ceremony is is wonderful a wonderful milestone but as a parent it would have been devastating for my child not to be able to participate in his high school graduation if it could have somehow been prevented so i would hold myself responsible if i didn't do everything i could to prevent that and kids experience that and like i said you can call it luck or if you want but we didn't have one person get infected by going to any one of those events that had to be held out from graduation or promotion ceremony that happened after it do you know excuse me do you know by chance how many districts are doing that i don't know i know that some districts did it but i don't know by chance how many
068i know that our testing program um was considered probably one of the best in the area in terms of how many people we were testing particularly at the height of the pandemic at the height of the pandemic um we were we were testing close to 300 people a week um but that didn't do yeah i was more talking about like for the then event yeah well i know that there were districts believe it or not there were districts even in this county that were testing student athletes before they went to games every game they would have to test um we didn't do that um you know i live in the world of um moderation you know i think that they're they're they're a time and place to do things but i think that there are
069times when things are also excessive um but yeah i know a lot of districts some even in this county that were we're testing for reasons many reasons outside of the reasons why we required it okay thank you for your time thank you very eloquent nicole appreciate it one question great job by the way great job just a quick question uh the student you were talking about who was deaf that was a different district correct no that was insane okay because i do know that um you know as a father of a special needs student myself something very sensitive to and i know dr labbe fought really hard to get our kids uh with ieps uh i know we said regular students were back in november i think we were back even earlier october our kids
070with disabilities came back in october so i would say in most instances like that that we would make some accommodations for students right if there was a oh yeah so again in that incident make sure i don't know who that student was but uh my point just is is that she's in a classroom full of excuse me kids and teachers that are wearing a mask it's very hard for her you know she can't i totally understand and i'm very sensitive to subject because uh you know i'm obviously a follower i i feel our kids with special needs were hurt the most store in this panda all the kids were hurt hard but that was a extremely like that situation but i do know we felt really hard to get them back super early and i
071think that's another thing where we should really communicate that to dr lab because i'm sure we would make an accommodation in that situation whether it's having somebody without a mask or far more or whatever far more accommodations are going to be accepted for mask wearing because there is no virtual option but a great job thank you and the other thing i got to say too is i know that our governor tends to pivot and change his mind quite a bit but according to his statements yesterday he was pretty steadfast in continuing to make it optional okay doesn't mean tomorrow he can't turn around all right thank you so much thank you anyone else would like to speak on anything pertaining to the district good evening hi good evening everybody just stay your name and address
072if you could please sure my name is vinnie gambadella i live at six school drive which is the white fence that you used to be able to see before all those buses were there uh i'm here with three other families and some friends and uh we're here to address a serious health and safety issue um i did write a speech today i'm gonna have my friend rosemary read it because i forgot my reading glasses if she can come up good evening everyone good evening i am here tonight with my neighbors to speak of a serious health and safety issues that are a direct result of the placement of the school buses in the sayerville high school parking lot i have addressed our concerns several times with the dep and board of education i'm sorry with
073the board of education transportation department to no avail i have been living here with my family for the past 23 years prior to now neither i nor the previous owners of the home dating back to the 1960s have ever had an issue with the school all my three boys are graduates of saverville high school they have been student athletes as well as peer leaders our family today continues to show this the school our support and the opportunity we can i joined the seaville fire department in during my volunteer career i have served as lieutenant and captain for two years i received the firefighter of the year award and after 22 years of service i recently retired as a life member i pride myself always as a first responder therefore when i was told by the
074dep that the situation was temporary due to the pandemic i accepted that however it appears that the new placement of the buses is now permanent this is creating health issues and several safety concerns my house is the last one on the block next to the schoolyard my fence currently serves as a backdrop to the school buses as well as to the large rusted trailer filled with orange and white roadblock barriers that is stacked high many buses are currently parked right up to my fence this area is from the from the side of my front yard extending to my backyard the change in the issues began during the pandemic when the transportation department added 18 large buses to the fleet when they parked these additional buses they were now closer to my property last winter is
075when the health issues presented themselves the drivers would start the buses and the diesel fumes were being sucked into my heating and air conditioning system the schoolyard fence has a sign mounted from the dep citing new jersey state law that idle time is only three minutes and violators should be reported the phone number is posted on the sign i assure you many of those buses were running more than three minutes i kept awake i kept awaking to burning eyes occasionally bloody noses and constant headaches due to the multiple buses running as a result of 33 years working on the new york city transit authority buses and 22 years in the seville fire department i know that diesel fumes are our carrigen due to my previous exposure i have developed a severe sensitivity to diesel exhaust
076i contacted the number on the sign and i explained my situation and asked if they can please simply move the buses to a different location in the lot that was not near any of the homes a dep officer came out and witnessed that there were a lot of violations of excessive idling he was told by ms howell from the bus company that this was all temporary parking due to the pandemic and snow and that the buses were going to be stored on the opposite side of the school once the snow melted besides for the excessive idling during the safety checks and waiting to pull out which consistent consists of honking their horns i've been woken up at 6 15 a.m after the snow had melted not only the buses had not been moved to the
077other side of the building as they said but they also now had recently painted over the newly painted car parking spots and painted the lines to accommodate bus parking a school employee had told me they were parking all buses there permanently now parts as i'm sorry now parked are an arsenal of many buses that have been added there since school had ended upon updating the dep officer that nothing has been done and the buses continue to idle beyond the state law time i have an actual video of buses idling from just last week one ran 15 minutes and the other ran for 25 minutes the lack of proper planning of the layout of the parking lot and the placement of these large buses causing blind spots creates a serious safety issue to anyone driving in
078the schoolyard this is very dangerous the safety concern is real and needs to be addressed immediately i ask the school board as you leave here this evening to please drive your car in the way of school drive and see the menace these buses create to the safety of our community a few months back i witnessed the road department removing all of our resident parking only 6 am to 2 pm monday through friday signs that were up for the past 12 years as of today they still have not been replaced not only on our block but surrounding blocks as well a month ago i called the road department and asked why they took the signs away the answer was they had no record of the removal of said signs i was told that the road department
079supervisor turned this matter to the police department the police department traffic bureau had no idea of this but is currently looking into it now on top of the health and safety issues we also have six houses on this small street and we need access to our street parking we had student parking issues in the past now with another 50 to 60 spots being lost to buses and no parking signs and no parking signs removed we will be faced with new issues the school parking lot has its challenges with not being able to accommodate all the cars prior to all of these changes it will now be worse we respectfully ask the board of education to have our resident parking signs replaced prior to the start of the school year and address the health and safety
080hazards these buses are causing our families and our community thank you [Applause] i just want to say my name is patrick de pascal i live at three school drive i've been living here now for 28 years in sayerville i'm a taxpayer of course and i think this is totally wrong especially the health aspect we've got to open our eyes to health aspects i lead a very big operation with my employees and the first thing we talk about is safety every day so if you guys got to take a look at this this is serious mr vinnie gamber rudella is a very good person on our block and for him to have these kind of issues this is something that needs to be addressed immediately thank you very much [Music] hi my name is victoria benedetto
081i live at five school drive i lived here my whole life i went to cerebral high school and um there seems to be a very serious issue with when the school gets out at the end of the day they form two lines going out of the block if you try to turn in the block you can't you have to sit there and wait and there's no traffic officer or police officer at the school drive ernst road to direct traffic it's very dangerous and there's no supervision of that it's been going on for years and my son had an idea of possibly making one of the entrances an entrance only for school like school drive would maybe be the entrance and then the uh exit could be the two that go out to washington road so
082that's a suggestion i have it thank you um my name is sharon i live on one school drive i'm at the corner of school drive and the way these the way that the kids come out of this parking lot it's like raceway park every day i have a dad an elderly dad that lives with me my driveway can only hold two cars if they start parking on our street once again like they did years ago we're gonna have more problems again where we're not going to have anywhere to park i had gone to the police department and asked if a traffic officer could be there when they get out at the end of the day it wasn't even acknowledged these kids are crazy coming out of this parking lot every day i'm so happy when
083there's no school quite honestly when my kids were lit my kids graduated from this high school but of course they're grown up now so i don't have little kids to worry about running in the street but god for we do have families on our street that have little children you can't even play because they are zooming down our block you're only supposed to have one lane on our block one lane going out one lane coming in they're making two lanes going out the buses could barely turn down our street because the residents that don't have parking spaces and driveways have to park on the street your car is going to get swiped either by a bus or other or other speeding cars coming down our street and i've been living here since 1991 and it's
084never changed and those signs were protecting us so these children wouldn't have the access to park on our street we at least have the people that had no parking they were able to do that and if they parked their cars were towed now they took all the signs off our streets that's it uh we're just curious of what you guys can do this is getting uh crazy now if you don't mind me jumping in with regard to the signs we have no idea why they took those signs down um no part in it at all i physically saw the road department do it even they we don't we don't dictate what they do i don't so i don't know why they would do that that didn't that wasn't a request that came from us right
085well they they have no recollection no recollection of taking them down so which means that something something was done behind the scenes and when i called my neighbors behind me uh eric court jeffrey eric they had their signs taken down so all those signs are taken down to accommodate all these buses that are taking up spots and besides that besides the health health issue was the first thing that's the big one and whatever you you you're you're making that assumption but i'm telling you right now that no request was ever made for those signs to be taken down okay i'll go a step further i don't mind having our people in our district inquire as to why those signs were taken down i mean they did nothing but help the residents yeah and i don't
086have a problem with that we have no again this is this is caught me by surprise completely so we'll even go the next step in inquiring like why did the borough do that um because we had absolutely no part in that we have no i can't even share with you why in which they would do that okay and then the other issue was with these buses yeah you have 21 big bus spots on on this side of the school where those buses can legally be parked out of the way and no health and safety issues but it seemed like they needed to be against my fence we can we we have implant we have plans um you know to build a bus complex off those grounds can i help yes um it's going to take
087a little bit of time um but within the next couple years those those buses if all goes well we'll be we'll be off that area wait a minute what's gonna happen to this man in a couple of years he's gonna die and i'm listening i'm listening right now i'm listening right now and we'll we'll talk about um we'll talk about some things that we can do but i'm telling you in terms of the the permanent solution it's coming soon we have to be able to fund a complex we have to be able to ensure a location for there but um a solution permanent solution is coming soon as a district we'll discuss what we can do to alleviate um factors involved with the current situation okay as a temporary solution can we just drive them
088to the other bus spots like i said we'll as a district the problem is there's nobody in those spots as a district we'll we'll we'll make a determination as to how we can do that well i'm just saying i wake up every morning and my eyes are irritated my i get occasional bloody nose and i constantly get headaches from being around diesel my whole career with the new york city transit and i would appreciate you know as a taxpayer just getting a little respect level mind a pass first responder if you had an issue with your house i'd be coming to your house dropping everything but now i got the issue and it's like in a couple years right well and i am sorry about that i mean this is the first time i'm just
089saying that i've heard and by the way one of the first things that we're going to address is um you know the 15-minute idling and so forth but again i i hear you this is the first time i'm hearing you express this so as a district we'll sit down and we'll we'll try to determine a temporary solution until that permanent solution is viable okay now a temporary solution could be like a rough time frame i i can't give you that right now again this is the first time hearing of it so we're going to need some time to think about it in terms of how we're going to respond to it all right well i appreciate it because like i said i seriously got health issues being right there it's getting sucked into my heating
090my air conditioning and everything else and it's just it and with regard to the matter about students racing out of the parking lot just so you know i don't know if you're aware of it either um the number of students that have parked there has dramatically decreased over the past several years to the point in which last year we barely had more than 50 kids parking in that area and to extend to that we may not permit students next year to park in that parking lot great but but i understand your concerns about the buses and like i said this is the first we're hearing about it so we'll begin discussing um temporary solutions or tempora temporary relief for you um with regard to it and just just to give a quick example on on
091the speeding and stuff uh i used to run a cadet program at the firehouse and one of my cadets was a senior driving and he was in front of somebody in a pickup truck coming out of school that day and it was a light misty rain and he said the kid was driving crazy at a school so with with that now there's no monitoring of driving crazy out of school he continues to drive crazy he keeps going and in front of um eddie's valve grinding uh by walter's auto body around there that that craziness carried on into there he went head-on into a family and killed two people in a minivan that's terrible so what i'm saying is i'm not blaming for not blaming the school but it's like not being monitored out of here
092and just continued and wound up killing somebody yeah again and then that's a terrible you know story that you just told us this is this is why you know we're all here we're not all here right sharon just came home from work she i don't even think she did it yet everybody's everybody's you know nobody's here to bust your chops we're telling you about real problems hopefully you guys can help us thank you no i mean just the fact you're telling us this now we'll make sure that um we we get the message out loud and clear um i take your word for it i got one 15 minutes and 125 minutes and the state law is three three minutes i take care of it and that's summer school i want one when these things
093are going all together 50 60 buses going at once i don't like crazy i you might as well just come to my funeral thank you thank you thanks oh hello can anybody hear me good evening yes okay uh first of all good evening to everyone in attendance board of education members my name is rod murplanton i live on parliament on glenn court i'm also the board of education liaison so this is somewhat of a formal introduction to the board members as the liaison i anticipate working with you guys on a multitude of issues that exist here in cereville sometime in the near future but today i want to present an issue that's an underlying issue that i think is a severe issue that needs to be addressed and this issue is the current structure of
094white supremacy that exists here in cereville now be conscious that the demographic here in cereville is 50 minority 50 minority but in just about all of the public positions in syria are occupied by white people so as it's when it comes to like positions such as librarians um teachers uh track coaches i mean um yeah track coaches uh football coaches for the high school football coaches there's 19 football coaches all the white or even the props crew that helps sets up for these board meetings they're all away so as a taxpayer that pays a significant amount you know supporting a structure of white supremacy is a is an issue all right so i've consulted with um well epiphany didn't occur to me until one of my kids asked me a question and that question was
095are white people the only people that's qualified to be teachers now that question left me perplexed i contemplated on that question for a couple of days and what i've come to realize is that on the structure the system the environment here in saraville is subliminally educating the kids to believe that white people are superior and that minorities lack the mental capacity or motivation to obtain these positions now i've uh consulted with you know students here in cereville from elementary school middle school middle school to high school even alumni here from cereville and their testimonies are profound the multitude of racist incidents that they had to experience is severe so as a parent raising six kids here in cereville i believe that this is an urgent issue that needs to be addressed um the structure facilitates
096the numerous amounts of incidents of racism that that that occurs here i believe by dismantling the structure of white supremacy will mitigate or or mitigate drastically the amount of incidents of racism that happens here so in that i would conclude and just to hear feedback from the board members in regards to this issue that i'm presenting i have no feedback nor will i answer any questions i mean my deal and i won't i will never ever raise anyone's child but the answer to your son i presume it was your son or your daughter is the answer is no you can become a teacher if you'd like you could do anything you want that's the answer i would give right but given the structure you know where there's a lack of diversity within the faculty and
097staff here in cerro it does subliminally educate the kids to believe that you know well and again without without agreeing with your um hypothesis mr planton um i will acknowledge to you that um increasing the representation of our staff so that it mirrors our students is a priority of ours in fact promoting greater diversity equity and inclusion is outside of the safety of our students during the pandemic is our number one priority next year and to that effect we've gone ahead and created a diversity equity and inclusion officer and that person is dr edward aguiles and i know how passionate you are about this subject and uh he will be contacting you he's here today so maybe prior to you leaving you guys can make personal contact and he can begin working with you on
098ways in which we can go ahead and improve diversity not only diversity of our staff but diversity of our curriculum representation improving not only representation of staff but representation of minorities in our advanced programming like ap courses honors courses but also looking at negative representation in terms of are are more minority students being suspended are more minority students on you know being accepted into special education services for some reason are more minority students not graduating in four years those types of things that's what his position is going to entail and because i know you and i know each other and i know how passionate you are about this very endeavor and while i don't agree with you with regard to your assertion of white supremacy i do agree that there are areas that we need
099to work on in this school district and equity is one of them um we want all of our students um to be represented um we want all of our students to have the same opportunities um and and we want inclusion if you we're at our graduation you would have i don't know if you were there or not sir but you would have heard noah marcano who's not only a minority student but he's a student with special needs made incredibly passionate speech about how special we all are in very unique ways and how we need to embrace that diversity so that is a huge goal of ours this particular school year and will remain such for for future school years to the point in which we have made dr aguiles our diversity equity and inclusion officer
100and he'll begin working with our administrators and our faculty to improve many of the areas that you just spoke about and he will make contact with you if not tonight um later on so that you and he can sit down and you can begin to provide him with some insight some ideas on how we can go ahead and attract more minority candidates for for any position in this district how we can update our curriculum in how we can improve opportunities for all of our students particularly our minority students yeah but what about like uh teachers or coaches that's what i'm saying that how we go out and recruit um and and make attractive this district um candidates for any position including the ones that you've mentioned like such as like like let's say the high
101school football coaching staff where there's like 19 coaches and well there's there's there's there's going to be a change to that um even as soon as this year but but again um there are areas that we need to improve upon um and there are ways in which you know we we can do that however i know that that this is a passion of yours and i know that you have some great ideas so he's going to sit down with you so we can tap into some of those great ideas that you have okay absolutely thank you i appreciate your answer hey brad thanks and congratulations on being named the liaison by the council um are you you already liaison for the town council you mentioned oh yes is this uh are you speaking as the
102ladies down for the town council tonight oh no okay i just want to make that clear it's not the town council's uh you're allowed to talk as a citizen i just want to make sure you're yeah yeah at all good um totally understood i just wanted to make sure and um i know that um one of the big problems that we face because it is an issue we've talked about and we share that same goal of having a diverse staff here i think every you know i think everybody up here does um we have had trouble find the candidates and i know uh it's not just something that's happening serial i think lucy has mentioned new jersey state school boards actually has a program to encourage young black men to become teachers and they can't
103get people to come out and do it probably because the pay is not the best but there is an incentive program a scholarship program and we talk about it all the time it's they're just not getting the candidates so oh so so minorities are not applying for any of these positions i wouldn't say any but a very few i would say and i know our people into the program then they can't education just to be clear our football staff is not all white they're i don't think there's an african member on it right now but we do have some latino coaches on the staff too we have a woman coach on the staff now also so just so we know there's uh you know some diversity but i'm with you we we need to uh
104you know he's improving that more diverse we can be the better all right i mean i shared i i share that goal with you so we look definitely so dr aguiles is looking forward to speaking with you okay also is there a possibility because there is a possibility that within the hiring practices that it may be discrimination or nepotism is there a possibility that an investigation can be done in the hiring practices of whether or not you know minority applicants are being discriminated against and again that's going to be dr aguiles's his job is that diversity equity oh he does the investigation into the hiring practice this year that's part of it yeah he's going to basically audit all of everything that we do okay i will say this there's no such in terms of
105nepotism um i i don't know if you're aware of this but you know no board member um is allowed to hire or or appoint um a member of their family or a member of my family as a superintendent there are pretty strong nepotism laws with regard to board of education members and superintendents all right okay i'm dr labbe as a new board member i would like to know has there been any complaints brought against the board of education for failure to hire a minority like has anybody been complaining that they've been discriminated against never and and you know you know we we have representation but what mr planton is saying is that our goal should be that um our student representation reflects our staff representation and right now we are falling very short of that
106and we do need to improve upon that for instance if we have you know and not quite i don't think it's quite 50 but if we have um if we have 30 african-american students in our schools we should really be doing our absolute best to try to have 30 african-americans as staff members particularly as teachers just to be fair are we paying that same attention to our other cultures that we have our other groups yes yeah we we we are we're doing we we do we we recognize that we have an asian um you know indian community an asian pacific community yeah that's what we're the fifty percent consist of it's it's that yes he's talking about he's he's talking about non-caucasian i know what he's talking about my question is as a as a
107district because the board doesn't hire people so as a district are we seeking people of multiple different multiple cultural groups absolutely can we can we do a better job of recruiting yes and and dr agles you know has done that um but you know is there a way can we tap into different ideas and how we can recruit um potential candidates that happen to be african-american hispanic um arabic asian indian asian pacific yes we're willing to learn we're willing to to to look at different ways we can enhance and expand our recruiting process okay great thank you very much everybody appreciate it mr esposito you do have one person online that's okay um mr roman's coming up we'll have that person online in a moment real brief uh president esposito thank you very much good
108evening um since the last meeting that i was present here on june 15th can everyone hear me uh it was uh obviously we saw the amount of people that were here at the june 15th meeting since then i have been approached by numerous members within the community to include teachers coaches obviously everyone knows here that i'm i'm a coach within the district military veterans being a military vet myself and some of the things that were brought up i felt that i should address with the president of the board and it was the youtube so the board of education meeting is posted on youtube as a matter of fact uh we're live streaming right now the problem that the community brought up to my attention was that the comments are disabled so the june 15th meeting
109uh just so i'm not sure if everyone's aware but it has been viewed 1772 times in one month there are currently 341 subscribers to the board of ed for the youtube platform but for some reason and speaking with the social media uh person in charge of that at youtube was that the owner selected the settings to disable any comments so i can assure you right now that there are not 1700 people online within cerebral watching this board event meeting tonight uh i'm sure you're right i don't even know where those numbers come from or or 341 subscribers but well obviously the proof is in is in the pudding they're worth over 1700 views from the june 15th board of ed meeting and we saw what the standing room crowd was so the recommendation is to
110go ahead have your administrator uh turn off that restricted mode turn it on so that the community members have an opportunity to comment at whatever leisure they have because obviously we all know people work different schedules but at some point they should be allowed to go ahead comment on that social media platform if you're gonna if you're gonna put these board meetings and it's on there within the youtube there should be a platform now by all means you're gonna get negative comments we all know that but hopefully it'll be more positive than negative and someone's gonna have to monitor that because you should not have any obviously obscene derogatory or hate speech on there so i will reference back to your social media policy that i'm sure the district has in place but i would
111strongly request and hope that the board of ed will go ahead and look into that to enable those comments so that community members can go ahead and provide feedback to this board okay and one last thing i would like to uh just make it on the record public uh that i would like to thank miss hill for providing me with uh very i know i provided her a very lengthy oprah request which probably took a few weeks her life's off for her years and i want to thank you for getting that information to me and hopefully we'll have a comment back thank you thank you very much yeah the one thing about sayerville they're not shy about their comments on social media so uh i'm not do we restrict comments on our youtube page or
112on our i have no idea i didn't even know the number of views we had i don't even know none of our social media platforms have incoming comments we do that it's been that way since we started i don't think it's something we should start that the public comment is here and then you come to the border you can't comment on twitter which with with the platform that is not exactly accurate there are likes and dislikes and you can leave a comment on certain platforms within that district okay thank you no on our board meeting videos we've never had comments on the board me okay you should come and comment if you want to make a comment what's that well i think if you want to make a comment everyone's available come to a meeting
113the comment you should have to come in person and make your comment or yeah every option we have online now to call in to raise your hand yeah in my opinion this is the public you know democracy on social media i think we've seen where that leads possibly we could have a format where someone can email their their comments in and then have them right into the record if they're several residents because one of the concerns of having people when michaels was having people just comment online is vast majority may not even be several residents no and there's no trouble to the constituents and the stakeholders here and we're trying to limit our the comments here to the stakeholders and the the members of our community here so we'd have to monitor that somehow however
114i think there should be a method where people who can attend the meeting for for whatever personal reason can can send their comments in and maybe they call you summary of the comments we do because someone's online now right even though i think i think the gentleman's concern wasn't and correct me from wrong is some people can't are aren't available this time to come and make a comment perhaps then either either before the meeting they can send in their their their concerns via email or or any other method and we can address them here at that point that's just something to consider are all of our email addresses available publicly yes which is not the case for a lot of districts by the way in case people are wondering a lot of times they uh
115go try to get east brunswick's board members and i send numerous emails out that people can simply respond to right right but um okay um mr wrong to be honest with we'll talk about it a little more okay um what do we got we do we do have one person online i know they expressed they were having some audio connection issues so can they type their question or i'm gonna go ahead and mute them now and see if they're able to to use their audio ms brown please go ahead hi can you hear me very low can you speak a little louder yeah i can't hear you either okay i'm just going to type my question we can we can listen you're barely audible i mean we can we can kind of get what you're
116saying i think dan you could maybe help me you can go ahead please just state your name and address if you could um gonna talk if you can hear me great um my question is for the gentleman that was speaking prior to this one i'm not sure what his um role is he said something about being a liaison i'm not sure what but as the topic just came up if we can talk a little bit more about dr aguilesi's role and how it relates to critical race theory and teaching in schools i completely understand the need for diversity and hiring and including people in ap programs and all that and coaches and athletes and everything else but i don't agree with teaching that to my children so with relation to his position and that what
117what can we talk about well can can we please ask for your name and address one last time we didn't get it for the record did you hear me eric can you chat in there i just did it i can hear you on the audio feed so i believe that she can as well can you give us your name and address one last time so we can add it to the record she drop no no uh lisa barone 40 driftwood drive okay i think you got it thank you all right and and before i even answer that question to the to your comments earlier um there are not a lot of districts doing what we're doing right now um very few districts live stream their meetings while they're in person and very few districts take
118public comment remotely so we we are ahead of the curve with regard to both those matters but with regard to the question asked we've gone over this topic during the last three board of education meetings um so hopefully you know we can we can put this matter to rest dr shadiak spoke during the may 26th meeting as well as the june 15 meeting about this very subject there is no mention at all or whatsoever about critical race theory in the new jersey state learning standards period we are required and we have been required since march of 2020 by executive by executive order from the governor to make sure that we are effectively and appropriately teaching diversity equity and inclusion which we are proud to say that in um almost all of our classrooms particularly our
11921st century classrooms we have been doing so for the past five years um however dr aglee's position is to go ahead and ensure that we are diversifying that we are providing equitable opportunities for future employers employees current employees students and that we are celebrating inclusion inclusion of all of our students by embracing the differences that they all have as well as our staff members so with regard to critical race theory there is absolutely no mention of it in the new jersey learning state learning standards nor in our curriculum however we will continue to educate our students to the absolute best of our ability the importance of diversity equity and inclusion for all our students and staff mr mrs brown did that answer your question lost her no she's still online okay maybe she's saying make
120sure the delay it might be i i do believe that she was also watching the feed on youtube which does have a couple second delay okay we'll give her another couple seconds in the meantime is there anyone else who would like to come up and make comment about the district okay oh so if miss barone does jump in we'll just have her hold off one second mr eric you could such a long walk when you're back there and you're coming up um good evening long walk short little thing i wanted to share with you um your name mr spazado oh thank you dr lovey uh my name is anthony spozzotto and i live on washington road number 54. the house that is decorated for christmas in july so happy and merry christmas in july to
121all of you who celebrate um i wanted to come up and say thank you dr labbe for your commitment to inclusion dr shetiak for your vociferous defense uh last board meeting about the way that we are already incorporating inclusion diversity those things matter so much um i have very quickly become my son's sidekick so i am gabe's dad mr walsh nice to hear you talk very proudly about your son um there was a episode on television a few months ago and my husband reminded it to me today as we were driving back from salem where we celebrated my son's stuffed sixth birthday that's a real story we were watching television a couple of months ago and there was someone on television and he talked about having two dads and it caught my son's ear and
122he said hey that's like me it's a really really profound moment representation matters right as the gentleman from a few moments ago was saying seeing yourselves in places where decisions are made and where people are having real conversations that is really important and i am proud to be a member of this town and this district where that is so clearly and vociferously defended and explained um dr labbe i also wanted to commend you for the way that this meeting has been conducted having a real tit-for-tat and back and forth with residents is exactly the kind of functionality that i think we would hope for our board of education to have so so this board meeting sir i have no objections and i wanted to come up and say thank you specifically thanks merry christmas in
123july folks any other comments i probably miss baron is now lost yes okay okay seeing none we will close public portion excuse me mr esposito mr ms barone did have um another comment sure she is having audio issues okay she typed it out or she was just asking how uh i'm just gonna relay it directly thank you for your response miss shadiak did spend some time with me which i appreciate it very much i heard the last three meetings however i asked the question based on the comments today of mr rodmere so just to clarify um mr planton made it pretty clear that he came up to speak as a community member not as the liaison to the borough and to further comment um the liaison to the borough council is just that they're not
124a decision maker they're not a policy maker they're not a member of our board of education what their job is is to communicate to the borough council what occurs during our meetings and to come to us about borough council matters to communicate him to the board of education so um you know his comments were separate from his role as the liaison to the board but even if they were not he has no authority to make decisions or vote on recommendations as our board members do okay thank you dr abbey uh one more time just uh any board members have any comments or questions i do i have a question i've been coming to board meetings for a couple of years already um before being put on the board but is that liaison position new because
125i've never seen or had any liaison show up for immediately it's not new um but um i think mr walsh did you did you at one point i think did your dad my dad was for one point liaison so he would get information from from mr wall she would share it with the borough council i i think that the last liaison on the gentleman did come to meetings um he would sit in in the audience and he would take notes uh and report back to the borough council as to what occurred so yeah i mean some have never shown some have shown um you know mr clanton uh obviously is probably going to take a more active role um is he newly appointed in his uh in his uh position as that liaison i believe
126so i think that mr plan i think that you were appointed uh in january yeah no do we no no it's okay january right yep all right a lot we should require some sort of letter shouldn't we from the borough if they or somebody if they're going to appoint someone shouldn't it be official i mean it's never been a problem before well i'm just saying i think that this meeting is recorded and people see the meeting so if the person you know was falsely representing themselves no no no no i'm not saying that i think it's awesome to have a representative trust me when i say that i just you know they should say hey this is our person this is why we've never we've never received that i mean sure that would be a
127good idea but since since i've been superintendent that's never happened usually um the same way mr plant introduced himself is is the way other liaisons have not necessarily come into the microphone just coming up after the meeting and introducing themselves right i believe i'm actually a liaison from the board to the council you are but again we've only we've only in the past ever used that when the pilots were coming up and the board wanted to get our opinion across on something like we were concerned i think i spoke one time i met with them over one of the pilot programs and same thing usually it's only when they have an issue and most times uh they don't they don't cross paths you know we stand true although those signs on that road may be
128something that mr uh can take back to the council because that's i mean the signs are definitely a town we yeah and so we had no knowledge that that could be a good thing to bring back not to give you extra work that people were complaining that signs will be removed and the boe has nothing to do with it yeah that would be a good thing for the council to figure out well and i also think some of the council members are probably watching this too so probably you think but all right good i'm glad they have a liaison any other questions from anyone i got one comment if i can make it absolutely it's really just a comment my own concern i'm clearly not speaking for the board here um and it's a personal
129issue for me so i just wanted to express my concern and my support for all individuals who are fighting for the most basic of human rights throughout the world especially right now in cuba with their with everything that's going on and clearly i don't speak for anyone else here i'm just kind of speaking to the citizen like myself and uh make eye contact thank you hey you know what anthony i'm with you brother i mean i'm not a cuban but those people deserve a break that's a damn short appreciate it okay if there's nothing else i mean i think this is booming oh i'm sorry i would be remiss if i didn't say a few words about my dear friend debbie golder debbie and i worked together in this building for many years she is
130one of the sweetest kindest ladies she had the therapy dog before the therapy dog was trendy and she would bring her little dog in to the psych classes and the kids absolutely loved her we've had some good social times together and she will surely be missed but i wish her the best in her retirement very nice thank you very nice that's that we done adopt the lab you gotta ask you one thing sure are the parking spots for the seniors this year gonna be eliminated uh there's a great possibility of that ah sorry you need a spot they're gonna be disappointed okay it's been it's it's dwindled down so much and it's almost to the point where it's unfair because it's a lottery you've got 450 seniors and you're only going to be able to
131make it there because it is a lot not fair to the to the 300 kids that don't get it okay now i'm making a motion and i don't care to adjourn second mr walsh anyway this is nabolitana i haven't called you attack see you guys in august