2.18.21 Scotch Plains-Fanwood Board of Education Meeting

001we're live on youtube and get to start okay thank you good evening welcome to the scotch plains fanwood board of education open agenda meeting for february 18 2021 mrs sarajaki will you please call the roll mrs bauer here mrs boroff here mrs brody here mrs mitchell here mrs zoriani here mrs williams here mrs winkler here mr murray here dr kulakowski here quorum is present thank you mrs sarataki please join me in the salute to the flag ready begin i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you okay we just had executive session prior to starting this meeting and in executive session we had a personnel report we had legal status report

002and we had a special ed case report we have some additions to the agenda that were modified after february 12th let's a total of 22 emails were sent to the board one s a request for approval for a tonight for bus the disposal or sale of equipment with information added and 16 bus the candom county educational services commission was added at this time dr mass would like to say a few words thank you dr kolakowski good evening all i'm happy that you're able to join our board meeting tonight i want to start by saying that the boe and i know the challenges and anxiety in our community one of the most challenging things as a parent is when you do not have control over the choices for your children navigating the pandemic the hybrid schedules

003and virtual classes hits exactly into that frustrating and stressful place so we do understand the strong emotion and feedback we have received we want you to know that the boe the district staff and i have the same goal of having our children back in school last week i was happy to share that we are working to solve challenges for elementary students to be in school five days single session in the spring with continuation of the 100 virtual option for parents who want that choice that begins march 15 for pre-k through grade four there are some challenges in bringing more students back many of our classrooms are not large enough to support a full six foot distancing for all students as stated in the cdc guidelines meals and spacing for lunch are problematic amongst other things

004we want you to know how we are trying to overcome these barriers for spf specifically we have visited an elementary school in cranford who has larger classrooms but implements five days of instruction with students based six feet apart also we have incorporated a good practice on providing transparency through communications regarding positive cases in schools in the district this informs everyone about the cases in our school community and helps us work together to keep our schools open we toured an elementary school in berkeley heights that has similar size classrooms to ours and saw that they have students less than six feet apart they are utilizing the individual plexiglas dividers they have managed to do this successfully for six weeks without outbreaks in the school this provides a local positive example and helpful data for our five

005day a week implementation in middle and high school the extra challenge is that students change classes complicating potential contact tracing efforts and increasing exposure to more individuals in order to give more students additional time in the building we are now putting in alternating wednesdays beginning march 3rd this will allow us to monitor transmission rates as we build to full student return we are taking incremental steps to bring more students back i will let you know the next step by march 30th air and circulation are critical for safety and we will benefit from the investment we made in our ventilation systems and the spring season where it's warmer and we could allow more fresh air through open windows we have heard that private schools are requiring parents to make commitments for next year now so we

006want to be clear tonight that we are working on a plan to have students back in school full time in september it is our intention to be fully opened in september of 2021. based on what we know now it will come with the same safety measures at minimum like health checks masks and social distancing we all know that we cannot predict the pandemic the virus in all of the outcomes however we will have a plan for the major scenarios that can be anticipated we are working through all of the current information so that we can have a detailed plan for five days full time full-time school in september we anticipate we will have that plan by may 15 which allows us time to incorporate any learnings from the five single session day schedule implementation now

007we are brainstorming ways that we will be able to accommodate lunch the unprecedented situation has created extraordinary pressure in our community parents teachers administrators are all navigating the hardest scenarios and it is polarizing our community we believe the next step in bringing our community back together is by having kids in school and continuing to move forward towards normal we truly have a tremendous school system and it is the students educators staff parents ptas that create something special for scotch plains and family we are working together to do everything we can to get back to the positive school community that we all love and value thank you all for your continued support and partnership thank you dr mast it's good news and now the new jersey open public meeting law was enacted to ensure the right

008of the public to advance notice of and to attend meetings of public bodies at which business affecting their interests is discussed or acted upon in accordance with these provisions this act the scotch plains fanwood board of education has closed notice of this meeting to be published by having the date time and place thereof hosted at the board offices located at 512 cedar street scotch plains new jersey such notice was also provided in written notice form and forwarded to the times the star ledger the township clerk of scotch plains and the borough clerk of fanwood in the annual notice of regularly scheduled meetings as adopted march 26 2020 at this time we will have our instructional update and we have a presentation on truth racial healing and transformation okay thank you dr kulikowski uh i've been

009talking over the last several months about our the listening tours that the truth racial healing and transformation group has been doing throughout our community um as most of you who have been attending know the truth racial healing and transformation group is um there are the school board is just a piece of that group um it's key stakeholders in our community involving community participants but the mayors of both towns members of social justice matters and the ministerium and we get together to make sure that we're creating anti-racist communities school system and engaging our community members in this work as well so as i've reported on in the past we held listening tours over the summer um which um you probably had seen advertised but we held those on facebook live and virtual sem virtual platforms and

010they were um ways for the community to engage and hold us accountable for continuing the work of um honoring our community's commitment to being anti-racist so those meetings focused on how we could do that in our education system how we could do that in our policing how we could do that in engaging just community engagement and the recreation and other opportunities that our towns provide so um the committee put together the findings which i i kept reporting that we were putting together a report on the findings that the listening tour generated as well as key next steps so right now you're going to see the report that the committee put together we put together a video presentation about what the listening tours taught us and what our next steps will be so i hope it's

011informative and what we're also asking is for community members to engage um ongoing in some of the next step efforts thanks mrs ceriani i'm going to share my screen just a minute [Music] we are the members of the scotch plains fanwood joint committee for truth racial healing and transformation we came together in with a goal of celebrating our shared humanities to ameliorate systemic racism and to move us toward becoming the community we want to be this presentation is our report following our 2020 listening tour it is intended to summarize what the members of the scotch plains fanduel community told us are important issues for the joint committee of truth racial healing and transformation to address in particular issues regarding our lived racialized experiences we hope you find the presentation informative and that you are inspired

012to [Music] join [Music] who we are and why we're here the scotch plains fanwood community is comprised of two municipalities with a shared school district the borough of fanwood is home to 7 600 residents and the township of scotch plains has 23 500 residents the two municipalities have a long history of cooperating on shared services and initiatives including the scottish plains family school district as a partner in 2009 a white supremacist literature dropped throughout the shared community and alarmed residents to the point of organizing this resulted in the formation of social just matters a grassroots non-profit committed to the act of inquiry into matters of race and to working toward an equitable community recently an uptick in racist incidents awaken a general recognition of racism in the community and spurred social justice matters to advocate

013among community leaders for adoption of the truth racial healing and transformation model in 2019 organization of the scottish plains family joint committee for truth racial healing and transformation was the response the township of scotch plains merle fanwood and the scottish plains family school district expressed their desire to institutionalize their support for efforts to promote racial healing education and community engagement against racism to provide you some background of the work the committee is engaged in the committee was formed based on the principles from the w.k kellogg truth racial healing and transformation enterprise the enterprise is a multi-year national and community-based effort to engage communities organizations colleges universities and individuals across sectors and across the country to address the issues of systemic and institutional racism in coordination with the association of american colleges and universities w.k kellogg

014along with newman zone and papa john's foundations funded the establishment of 28 national trht campus centers rutgers university newark was selected as one of the 10 inaugural centers in 2017 residents and leaders from scotch plains and fanwood contacted the trht center at rutgers to engage its staff and the committee members in training sessions focusing on a shared humanity approach as a byproduct of the unrest resulting from the murder of george floyd and the ensuing national conversation the spf joint committee for trht hosted five public sessions over the summer to allow our community to speak their truth and give the committee members insight into their experiences the purpose of these sessions was to introduce the spf joint committee trht to the community and provide a forum for our residents to voice their experiences with racism billed

015as a listening tour the spf joint trht committee was determined to speak very little and listen three of the five sessions were moderated by committee members two sessions were organized and moderated by alumni and current high school students topics of each session included listening to one another's shared experiences within the community within the schools and with local police departments on this page are the widely shared flyers for the five listening sessions held from june through august of 2020. we promoted the listening tour several weeks we used our local electronic newspaper the scotch plains fan with tap weekly e-blast from the school district both municipalities and social justice matters which reach over 6 800 email addresses we also promoted this on various school district social justice matters and municipal websites because of the pandemic we conducted

016all sessions on zoom or over facebook live they were also streamed afterwards on public access tv and fanwood and scotch planes we got over 3000 views during and after the program on our facebook pages both municipalities and the board of ed give updates on each listening session that their respective public means as the participation live we had an average of 50 to 75 people watching an additional 2 900 views of each series on the facebook page in the three months that followed two of the sessions the first two were open to the public without registration and we had an overwhelming response we did notice that some of the participants were uncomfortable with expressing their views in that wide open forum so if the remaining sessions the committee moved from an open attendance model to a

017safe space model where we required registration and limited participation online to 50 people the limitations of the meeting virtually we are aware that the data is not fully representative of our community but rather it was a sampling and a chance for us to learn there are listening tours we learned from our community that the top issues are with policing and education our minority parents see their children facing the same challenges in our schools as well as our community that they experienced in their youth discussions made it clear that there is definitely a need for change our listening sessions were welcomed as well as embraced by our community because it gave them an opportunity to speak their truth people really love this community and are really willing to work hard together to improve it residents of

018color wish to stay in this community as well as engage their families in activities across our towns and for that reason connections are very important with our police residents want to get to know our police and through those relationships with our police as well as our leaders we can make a positive impact in our towns what we learned as a committee we learned that engagement models matter and each has its value our first model facebook live streaming yielded wide participation and an unfiltered environment while this was ideal for some others felt uncomfortable discussing topics so openly and publicly our second model was limited registration zoom this approach allowed for a deeper dive into selected topics and yields richer results on the downside though those who are unable to participate due to limited registration may feel

019undervalued through these listening tours we learned where the focus must be emphasizing racial healing a representative curriculum and staffing in schools improved communication with police and building on our shared humanity the committee was pleased with the candor of participants particularly students and young people who might otherwise feel vulnerable to recrimination for speaking their truth during the listening tour several themes were expressed about our schools including one school climate was raised as an intergenerational issue parents expressed the same type of experiences around race that their children currently experience in our schools two the district hiring practices need to focus on actions that will produce a diverse faculty that is reflective of the diversity of our student population three the representation of history contributions of and lived experiences of people of color in textbooks and literature needs

020to be increased throughout the curriculum so community policing and we're going to work with the municipalities and the police departments on this during the listening tour issues of policing arose as a major concern in fact there's a lot of discussion about police the scots plains fanwood joint committee recognizes the need to do more research and we're listening in the community through both public and confidential forums before making concrete recommendations for how to address this issue the following subjects were amplified during the listening tour for review and possible actions police stops uh you know we heard a lot from the youth and adults about the way they feel when you're stopped by the police so we want to review hopefully the policies and the practices so that we can community understand it better residents especially students

021of color feel that are followed and targeted [Music] and finally do data collection the other suggestion is do a formal body for police review something like a civilian review board example we can look for examples in other towns advantages and disadvantages of establish such as a civil report that need to talk about and then finally training particularly in the areas of bias and community relationships you know what are the current requirements that the police departments go through on their training academy and service training you know how is that done the other things we have are community programming ex for example existing uh police athletically they have great leagues where the police interact with the kids coffee with cop meet and greets block party visits what are the effectiveness of these kind of interactions and how

022are they measured uh is community relationships intended to be the receptacle process through a two-way process and interactions mute stops interactions in the community issues of trust uh you know role of the resource officers in the schools how how are they interacting with the students how effective is it shifting some police responsibilities to other professionals for potential social workers and mental health professionals or any men to the police response team you know if a policeman comes across a situation that's really not a standard situation first of all they should recognize it and then be able to get help so that they can properly handle the situation one current youth program in and outside of the schools the objective of the listening tour was to hear the concerns of the community now we invite you to

023join us in bringing the community together here are some upcoming opportunities for how you can get involved racial healing circles which will happen soon scott plains fanwood community initiatives school and community as partners the school district's strategic planning process is slated for this spring community policing social justice matters initiatives and publicity and promotion for all of these events next steps community leaders are already taking action and making plans to address issues that were discussed in the summer listening sessions since the summer listening tours famwood police department has recruited and hired three officers of color due to recent changes in leadership the fanwood police department is undergoing a top-down review of practices and procedures which will include ensuring that all officers receive bias training and training and de-escalation practices the board of education and the superintendent

024of schools have publicly announced a commitment to a greater focus on equity including personnel and curriculum both municipalities have voiced a commitment to broaden the scope of their cultural offerings the listening tours validated many of the changes the board of education and the superintendent had prioritized including the creation of two new board committees wellness and equity and student activities and athletics as well as having an intentional equity focus within all committees personnel curriculum policy finance facilities and community relations this resulted in the superintendent and board of education establishing equity goals in line with the current strategic plan for the 2020-2021 school year including the formation of a racial equity task force with representation from community stakeholders please remember that only one reason for the listening tool was to hear from the community about concerns that

025the committee should focus on another reason is to get the community engaged in co-developing solutions so if you want to be a change agent contact contact us at spf truth and racial healing at gmail.com or call us at 908 [Music] 485-8343 thank you stay safe stay relevant you're muted thank you miss saranacki i was saying thank you stephanie thank you for bringing the presentation to us and asking if anybody had any comments or questions yeah so just to reiterate where we are right now is we have formed subcommittees to continue working on those next steps so again if anyone who's watching or anyone knows anyone in the community that wants to get involved just use that email address and or that phone number um i think that goes to social justice matters right right amy

026um i believe that that's a dedicated phone number just for trht okay um and we can get you involved thank you stephanie thank you for putting that together um that was really awesome to see and um i mean i appreciate all the efforts that went into it and i was witness to some of the um tours which were fabulous to to witness and and to be a part of but um just the effort and even communicating that out to the public and to us just on this you know what was measurable and such it was um really really very much appreciated and i hope that um we do get a large number of more interested people to join us in planning more going forward thank you any other comments or questions dr mast um so

027so two things i i think our partnership with trht is really helping us move the equity work forward so i'm grateful to the the support of that work with the board and the community and two on a much different topic i would just like to tell those who are listening tonight that we just received an update on the weather conditions and because of the iciness of this storm we are going to have another remote day tomorrow thank you dr mass that message will be going out but it will be somewhat delayed so if that helps anyone's planning karen mitchell i have a quick comment about the presentation one the whole thing was impressive but one aspect of it that i wanted to point out and congratulate the team on was the different areas of the

028community that you're reaching out to it's not just the school focus but the police officers curriculum which involves library that extensive focus will help bring in more people to give their opinion raise awareness and expand that change so thank you for that wide lens which is exciting and encouraging and so thorough thank you thank you miss mitchell any other comment or question i would just like to thank our representatives for all the time they invested as liaisons so thank you very much thank you miss power any other comment or question seeing none thank you again missouriani for doing the presentation for us and our next instructional update will be at our next board meeting on the 2021 2022 preliminary budget which will be presented by mrs saradaki the date there says the 27th but next

029week's meeting is the 25th good catch dr kulikowski all right wouldn't want anybody to be coming on the wrong date so this then concludes the instructional update and we move on to public comment so if you would like to make a public comment please go to spfk12.org for your zoom login information in accordance with the scotch plains fanwood board of education by le01640165 the meeting will be open for 15 minutes for public comment maximum is three minutes per speaker speakers addressing superintendent items business functions and other board business will be heard first if time remains speakers may address other matters so if you would like to make a public comment go to spfk12.org for the zoom login information callers when it's your turn please state your full name and the town in which you reside

030please note board members cannot respond return regarding concerns of individual students or staff members and such matters should be addressed by the superintendent's office so at this time i defer to miss broadbent to let me know who is ready in the line hi dr kulikowski our first caller is john denning thank you robin mr denning please unmute yourself yep i'm on muted okay mr denning when you're ready just state your full name and please give us the town on which you reside john denning from scotch plains thank you thank you i have two comments tonight first following the abrupt closure of the schools in august i was encouraged to see that the district intended to hire professionals to generate data to make informed decisions i attended the presentation by the board and was interested in

031seeing the reports however i was surprised to see that the room numbers were erased i checked the meeting recording and saw the presentation was deleted with a note that it was removed for safety reasons while the district has used the word safe to describe the schools there's always risk which is currently higher than normal in my mind the goal is to assess manage and mitigate that risk this is best done when all parties including parents teachers and students are aware of and understand the risk in this case the district has information related to risk that it has not released it must release this information the professionals assess the rooms based on airflow and area and recommended a maximum number of students for example mcginn averaged only four people per room every person entering a room

032has a right to know that information it should be posted so they can assess if that number is being exceeded and if they need to take additional precautions or avoid the space it will also allow the district to focus additional measures to reduce risk in higher risk areas with almost daily incidences of positive individuals entering the school and plans to increase the effective number of students it is more critical for the district to be transparent with risk and to release this information my second comment last time i had the opportunity to speak to the board i asked about the district's procedures for ensuring their policy on political neutrality is propagated monitored and enforced the board's attorney responded the district has an obligation to enforce the policy that teachers were aware of the policy but that

033there was no specific enforcement on it the attorney concluded by saying that we should bring any incidences to the attention of the board i don't want to put words in anyone's mouth so anyone can check the recording it was september 30th at three hours and five minutes into the meeting as a simple test to see if this policy is followed every parent should ask their child if they think they know who their teacher voted for if the answer is anything other than i don't know the district has already failed to meet the neutrality standards set forth by dr mast my kids are almost certain they know who their teachers favor i encourage other parents to come forward and to hold the district accountable for the events they have observed i will start by saying that

034my younger child's primary teacher did a great job discussing the historic nature of the election in a neutral manner so it is possible however that makes the failures all the more unnecessary due to limited time here are four of my observations out of many from things i heard just by walking past my kids or asking them how their day went our children were provided with five readings all specifically written by or in praise of members of a single party we'll call it party x there was no representation of the other major party or independence a teacher stated the outcome of an election again won by an individual from party x followed by the words which is awesome a teacher described their participation in a political protest and how they met other district employees there one

035of our children became agitated when we expressed our disagreement with a member of again party x when we brought to light some of the positions of that individual and the actions they had undertaken our child became concerned and thought that they should tell their teacher it then became clear that their support for this individual was built in the classroom this is only a small fraction of my observations based on a small sample size in a short period of time mr denny that's your time if you just conclude your comments and concluding right now more to say sir that uh i do recommend uh sending this an email to dr mast absolutely not my comments have been ignored historically that route i need to bring them into the public i will finish up in the your

036time next you could finish your comments i am i'd be done now if you didn't interrupt me extrapolating over 13 years that's what adds to hundreds of incidences i've spoken with other parents who are just afraid to speak out are so disheartened i'm going to ask is this district going to come with an enforceable policy or do we simply have to accept as parents that the teachers and administrations may use the school to advance their own political ideology thank you thank you for your comments mr denning dr kulakowski next we have kathy viscardi thank you miss broadbent my pleasure hi kathy please um mute yourself hi um my name is kathy visgardi i live in scotch plains um i'm wanting to bring up just a couple of items one is that i'm glad that we're

037talking about returning to school for five days i was curious why the high school is not being discussed um especially since there are a number of classes where there's only sort of you know one two or three kids you know my kid is a sophomore and she doesn't wanted to go virtually tomorrow and was happy to hear it was remote anyway because the weather is in two classes she was going to be one student because you know two other people she knows isn't going to be in person um so for me if the numbers are that low why not let those students take advantage of being able to go five days in person um by combining cohorts if possible um and then you know having to rethink that decision if so many students want to

038return um you know that's something to think about and then sorry that was it you know that's really all i want to talk about is just to get an understanding as to when the middle school and the high school are going to have the same conversations the elementary schools are needed i just feel that the older kids you know it's like they don't get to have snack and things like that you know they're still kids and they still have needs and they still need energy to get through the day and they still need the motivation um my daughter was excited to hear that they were going back on wednesday she she read the letter to read that it was five days so she was excited and then disappointed to learn we were only adding um

039the one day but the decrease in the amount of students attending you know which is fine for parents to choose what they wish but if the classes can then accommodate um more kids why not combine the cohorts for the high school or make decisions based on the individual buildings versus um you know district-wide per se that's all thank you thank you for your comments tonight thank you it's rick scardy dr kulakowski i'd like to just briefly respond to that by all means dr mast so mrs viscardi's point is is actually a very good one we know that our our neighbor westfield has done that where they they collapsed the two cohorts and now the high school students go four days a week what what i did learn in in my investigation because i think uh

040miss viscardi's idea is is one that we need to look at closely is that westfield has 25 percent of their students signed up for for the cohort and at our high school we have 50 percent um and whether all 50 percent are attending um you know is it is um something that i'll have to look into further as far as um i i know of today that in some cases we we would be exceeding the space where we wouldn't be able to social distance but we we will take a closer look at that thank you dr mast uh miss broadbent and do we have a next caller yes dr kulakowski amanda hughes thank you hi miss hughes please hi yeah amanda hughes scotch plans thank you uh it makes me really glad to hear that

041you're going to take a closer look at the high school because i've heard from several people that their child is the only person in the class and there were a few but that they don't want to go anymore because there's so few kids going so shocking to hear about the 50 definitely would urge you to look at that um middle school also very you know kind of upset about uh not hearing about when they're going to be going back i did hear the mention of 3 30 as the date to review how march went with the elementary schools so further plans can be made but i see this as very backwards and we should have the plans right now if this happens then this happens if this happens we'll be able to do this so

042going at 3 30 let's see how it goes and then making plans and then it's just this has been such a slow process and i think we should be making plans right now and not taking our time with it um also what is it going to be based off of the closings openings the facts the requirements by the government what criteria are we going to be looking at that we have to meet to open fully for those who want to attend and others can still remain virtual i also heard a date in may but you know may is too late for people who are unhappy with the plans to then remove their child and put them into private school so for every student removed from the school system obviously money is also removed and it

043looks bad for the school so everyone involved wants to keep the students in may is too late for people to make those decisions and many people are speaking about possibly having to remove their kids so i'm not quite sure about the may date why we're looking at may um if you can also clarify that several people also received calls last week including myself from dr mast which we were really happy about to be able to have these discussions but unfortunately we're all told different different ideas of what's going to be going on i'm really glad to hear that today the communication came to all of us just now that was very good um with the video last week i hope that you add in a button that we or some sort of way we can

044ask a question because there was a lot of we weren't sure we weren't quite clear from that video from last week and there are a lot of questions there are also a lot of schools open right now such as those in hoboken and homedale totally open and i'm wondering if you've toured those schools let's do as much as we possibly can to get these school these kids back in and as soon as possible not just planning for seven months from now september there's a solution for every problem and there doesn't need to be a problem for every possible solution that's it thank you thank you for your fall tonight ms hughes dr kulkowski can i just clarify because dr mask was pretty clear in the beginning um the march 30th was not would not be

045a date to do assessment the march 30th date would be the next steps in the process so it wasn't an assessment on march 30th the assessments results and the next steps are going to be march 30th and as for the may 15th date the may 15 feat is to have roll out the formal plan for september she already communicated that the goal is to be in school five days full days in september so i'm not quite sure where the confusion came in um it might be worth re-listening to the opening remarks because i think it was very clear in those remarks um the intention and the scheduling moving forward so um i just want to re-clarify that because i believe it was very clear in the opening remarks what the dates are and the parameters

046around them um so i just wanted to make sure that everybody understood that now that this is recorded we can go back and and re-listen to that so the goal is to work that september we will be with all things you know working moving forward we will be in a full fully open plan is what dr master communicated thank you thank you for your clarification mr murray mr broadbent do we have another caller uh yes dr kolakowski melissa ligouri hi melissa please mute yourself hi can you hear me yes thank you melissa ligouri scotch plains thank you for the opportunity to speak uh this comment is addressed to the board mainly to you dr mask last night you were very kind in reaching out to me we had a personal conversation and i appreciated the

047thoughtful and respectful conversation we had you allowed me to share my thoughts about the communications on the daily positive cases that we are seeing in the schools and we spoke about the need to change the hearts and minds of the community of the parents students teachers and staff who were unfortunately just seeing a lot of negative news right and we spoke about how those emails that are talking about and conveying important information about the cases the positive cases we're seeing in the schools really just kind of show one side of the story um it's not helping when people only see one side of the story and you and i spoke about the need to be more transparent and actually share in your words the best news ever that we have those are your words the

048best news ever i have to share that i was really disappointed tonight to not hear you speak about something you told me that you were going to emphasize and even reframe for the community and that is we have had no in-school transmission of coronavirus since our schools have been open this school year zero zero cases tied to school zero you acknowledge that is the truth and that you would emphasize that because it's important for the community to hear that schools are safe that the safety protocols that we have in place are working that those emails that parents like myself are receiving that talk about the need for quarantining classes and positive cases that no close contact has resulted in transmission of the virus i don't think that's something the community is aware of and you

049told me that you would emphasize that in the boe meeting tonight and that you would reframe the conversation so people were aware i have to share that i'm really disappointed that we missed this opportunity tonight to share that news and those statistics with the community and i i really would encourage you and the board to be very transparent when we have good news and in your words the best news ever i don't know why we're not talking about that and i i again kindly ask you to reconsider how you are communicating to the community it's great we're moving to five days i'm not sure who's going to be there if parents still think there is great risk in attending schools thank you for the opportunity to speak thank you for your comments this evening mr

050corey if i if i made dr kulakowski what's dr maska right ahead so we we did have a very helpful and productive conversation last night and um there were recommendations for the dashboard and concern about the covet notifications that go out and i explained the purpose of it but i did also acknowledge that um the trans it in identifying our cases and doing our quarantining it has been effective because there has been no in-school transmission and when when i say that um you know we're there there are so there are few cases where it was um it was questionable but not not to highlight that the overwhelming majority of the cases are are clearly reflective of no in-school transmission and what i did say is i would mention that tonight and in addition i said

051i would include it in the the future letters going forward that based on this report you know we we have not had in-school transmission or we've had you know minimal or insignificant in school transmission so so thank you for that conversation the meeting isn't over and you said it now and so did i it is it is the very good news very positive news that our mitigation strategies are working dr kulikowski if i may just i feel as the attorney for the board i should be the downer of the group so bring down the good news so i i do want to clarify for everyone that uh um while what uh the last caller and dr mast uh said are accurate that we have no known cases of transmittal in the schools we do have

052to emphasize known um there is a number of you know asymptomatic or low symptom uh cases of covid in the community and nationwide worldwide so you know we can't say positively 100 there's never been any transmission it is uh based on uh contact tracing and talking to department of health and for the known cases uh we've not been able to identify any transmission in schools i do want to make that point that while we do believe the mitigation procedures are working we're not aware of any transmission in schools um i don't want anyone to think that we're saying here that it absolutely positively has never happened we just don't believe it has so thank you thank you for that clarification mr sivastro okay um robin do we have another caller uh mr silvestro how much

053time do we have we have time for at least one more okay kathy oh excuse me sharon filler would like to make a comment thank you robin mrs miller please don't meet yourself hi can you hear me yes hi so two um couple things first of all state your name and the tana which you resigned please sharon fellers uh scotch plains thank you so to doug um i just need to clarify for you with your asymptomatic cases and we don't know for certain that the transmission is zero so i can say as a pediatrician we do recommend that every current that every child quarantined gets tested for covid five to seven days from exposure with that you would detect if there was a positive case so for that reason there any child who was quarantined

054because of a close contact in the school would have had a test five to seven days post exposure so that means that those kids you would have found out if they had coronavirus therefore their zero school transmission for that all your closed contacts who were quarantined are did not get coronavirus from anyone in the school that's the first comment the second comment evan murray you are saying i just want to clarify because i'm i think we're all very confu confused by what everyone says schools to be fully open for september specifically when you say schools to be open fully are you meaning five half days or five full days dr mass said five full days i believe what i just want to clarify this five full days means kids will be eating lunch so that's

055that's the question when we say five full days will kids be eating lunch in school and that's not just for elementary is that from middle and high school as well it's kind of a full day without lunch just okay so it's our goal for september to have kids eat lunch in school you can't have a full day of school without lunch okay so so just can you can you just say that then yes our goal is for kids from k to 12 to eat lunch in school i'll let dr mast confirm that again based on her opening statement okay it was her words so i want to make sure that her words are the ones that are used properly so doctor i'll refer over to you okay thank you that's what i have to say

056today thank you for calling dr kulakowski if i may so dr filler and i and darlene tomasula had a very helpful conversation and as we were talking about september you know she highlighted for me how very important it is that people hear that september we're opening and we're opening fully and there are a number of reasons for that first of all we all believe that our kids need to get back to school know that society needs to open up and we can't do that unless schools are open and things are looking very optimistic because we have the vaccine the numbers are trending in the right direction these are the things that i talked to dr filler about and i said you know the piece that's the biggest challenge is his lunch and she said but

057but you you have to move beyond that there's ways that you could do lunch and of course the administrators are also thinking about how can we do lunch um dr filler gave a couple of examples of things that to consider because there are kids for for example who have peanut allergies so you would have to have a rule in order to have lunch if kids were eating in classrooms that people couldn't bring in anything that would have peanut ingredients and um you know in that conversation she she had a good brainstorming of how we how we could get beyond um the lunch challenge it's it's something that is going to require um great planning different type of scheduling um but that that's something that we're working on now we're brainstorming and and dr filler was

058you know a pioneer uh in in in offering suggestions of how it could be done from a medical perspective and i very much appreciated that so yes september the intention is to find a way to have lunch safely utilize the space in a unique way to do that and to have the schools fully open and dr kulikowski if i may as well yes go right ahead just briefly i just want to emphasize to people that uh while we certainly hope that the community is following through with any recommendations about quarantining testing that this state doesn't actually mandate that people that are close contact get tested it does not mandate that people cooperate with contact tracers certainly we as a district the local department of health and the state certainly uh emphasize and encourage that as

059much as possible but again there's there's a reason why i have to throw that caveat on there about the the transmissions um we can't say with definitive authority because we can't force kids and their families to get tested we can't force the people who get tested to tell us if they tested positive uh and we can't force people who test positive to fully cooperate with contact tracing we're lucky enough that uh my understanding is that the community of scotch planes and fanwood have uh been very upfront and helpful in this regard um but to that end there's a reason why we can't state a lot of these things with uh absolute certainties because these are not state mandates these are state recommendations and there are the occasional few who don't follow through so that's the

060only point i wanted to make thank you thank you for those clarifications mr silvestro and do we have time for another call or is that it uh we've got about a minute and a half of the fifteen minutes left dr golingowski okay miss robert we have another caller um dr kolakowski uh i see no other hands raised okay then we'll close this portion and there is another opportunity for public comment later in the meeting okay thank you before we move on uh yes i i want to emphasize to um mr murray's point that my opening comments will be published on the website tomorrow so people can reference those details specifically if they need to thank you thank you for doing that dr mast okay that brings us to committee reports and i know we have

061several committee reports so if we'll just go down the list we have a community relations um report yes we do all right brody will you go right ahead um during our meeting we discussed the curriculum plans for black history month um there was a draft of communications to of a communication to the to uh the parents that we discussed and made edits to we also um dr mcgarry was there and he gave us um the curriculum guidance for all levels and within the report there are links to those but the um the the the big biggest takeaway from this is that that there is active teacher planning going on in school for this and and there's an organized effort for consistency for the content and there was also a list of activities and as we

062discussed the street teach excuse me mrs gg planning will be discussed at the next meeting get some water complete your report okay thank you deb i'm so sorry um curriculum okay my report is just a little bit longer than devs uh curriculum is always chock full of information um since there's so much to discuss so our committee met last week and we had a few agenda items number one was a special services update about the pets program which has nothing to do with pets but is prepare enrich transition and succeed and diane pineno from our special services department was there with one of um christine berlowitz of the child study team and they presented this pets program which is a program for our really exciting um i think opportunity for our self-contained special education students

063to help prepare them for careers across many fields um it's an initiative through the alliance center for independence with funding from dvrs division of vocational rehabilitation and our participation is free for this program through a grant it's offered to students with ieps or 504 plans ages 14 to 21 and specifically the students receive 45 minute to 1 hour group sessions on work readiness social skills independent living skills um and there are a total of up to 15 sessions that these students get and we had about eight students i think participate in this program and um there are guest speakers mock interviewing again to prepare them for career readiness so very exciting program for some of our students the second agenda item was updates from the science department from our science supervisor gita feria and i

064just want to point out that um unbeknownst to me i i always uh was aware of the fact that that our content supervisors are absolutely amazing innovators but i just want people to understand the leadership positions that they hold statewide um and county-wide and so i just want to point out the first is that gitafaria is the president of the new jersey science teachers association we found that out at this meeting and i wanted to let everyone know that and gita talked about a couple of different science initiatives one is the smithsonian stem summit and spf is one of 18 total teams participating nationally and one of three teams from new jersey chosen to participate in this stem summit which is designed to engage leadership teams from districts throughout the u.s who have identified problems

065of practice related to attracting and retaining a diverse stem teaching workforce so that advances our equity goals as well and the outcome of the summit is to develop a district specific action plan for recruiting and retaining minority stem teachers to leadership roles while remaining in the classroom the proposed action plan for spf is to identify a diverse group of high school students to become mentors to support middle school students in stem and we're planning for a combined virtual stem expo for our middle school students and to engage the selected high school students to be mentors for those middle school students that choose to participate in the expo in order to best prepare the high school students we're proposing to have training sessions for the selected students and involve teachers on best practices for teaching stem

066and again the team is led by gita faryar our science supervisor and includes brooke casca esposito the high school assistant principal matt ritter science teacher uh sarah kelly math supervisor and suman um tahiah shah who's a parent the second oh there are three science agenda items the second is advancing coherent and equitable systems of science education otherwise known as access and this project is funded by the gates foundation grant and the national science foundation and is focused on creating more equitable learning experiences again in science classrooms it's a research project based out of the university of colorado boulder and as part of the project middle school science teachers uh miss salinas our middle school science teacher miss salinas is participating in a virtual professional development series that she actually spoke with us about and is

067part of a small cohort of teachers from all over the u.s to develop and implement strategies to promote equity by looking at how students contribute to and benefit from others contributions to knowledge building in the class so there were suggested strategies that she shared with us which were aligned with strategies that our science department has already been implementing and focusing on and aligned with our curriculum so for example increasing student discourse through the use of talk moves uh the use of sentence starters and miscellaneous sharing strategies with both the eighth grade science team as well as the rest of the department during department meetings so we have some teachers doing some incredible things the third science agenda item was discussion of the eighth grade genetics unit and a new unit that shifts the way genetics

068is taught it's more complex and not oversimplified with a focus on equity again previously genetics were taught from a mendelian perspective that suggested problematic views on heredity from the perspective of race and genetic disorders and in this new way of teaching it removes the stigma and erroneous idea that biology is related to race and the unit will also address how biases and science appear and discuss the ethics of science so you can see why this was a long meeting the third the third agenda item was a music update from um our music suit and fine arts supervisor mr wayne millett and also just want to point out that mr millett is the president of the central jersey music educators association um which i think is is also very impressive and exciting um and mr millett

069talked about um the very thoughtful um thoughtful um the very i guess thoughtful guidance and um thinking that's going into the safe return to singing and playing instruments in our district um he cited two studies that were done during the coronavirus looking into the safety of instrument playing and singing and um so one is arts ed new jersey an advocacy group for performing arts in new jersey in partnership with the university of colorado studied aerosol spray in a room with singers and musicians of various instruments with different conditions in the room so determinations were made that the best conditions are obviously outdoor with a distance of six to eight feet for singing and playing instruments with a filter or bell cover over the instrument which could spread prevent the spread of aerosols masks for singers

070or musicians um with slits in it if they need to play their instrument and performance of up to 30 minutes with allowance for full air rotation um if they are indoors um afterwards in addition if indoors um doors or windows would be open to help minimize aerosol spread uh he then cited another study that was done from chop children's hospital of pennsylvania um confirming the colorado study findings so mr mullet has also thoughtfully consulted with the department of health in union county who were in agreement with recommendations with these recommendations of these studies and consulted with other districts including westfield and cranford about their plans and learned that they're starting to do indoor playing and singing again so mr millett then um has been actually when we had our meeting was kind of was in

071the middle of this of auditing all the music classrooms in our district to ensure all recommended distance is possible and in some cases um whether it might be necessary to move playing and singing into larger spaces like the auditoriums um so we plan to move forward and do demon he's gonna teachers will be you know taught how to do demonstrations for the students or teachers will do demonstrations for the students on safety procedures in terms of singing and playing their instruments um using them cleaning them using the safety interventions and there will be a phase-in approach the high school for example the high school might have longer periods to play and sing because the music room is larger while and there's more time for the air to circulate while the elementary might only be able

072to play or sing for up to 10 minutes due to this to the size of the rooms um for performances mr millett and the music department are working on how we can engage students in the community around music and and you know being that we're missing the concerts that used to occur and putting together virtual ensembles and considering using outside companies that coordinate these so we can continue to have these concerts and and enjoy the music that our dis our district um values okay and the last agenda item as usual we talk about our curriculum efforts toward race equity and social justice so dr mcgarry talked about um you know the we wednesdays he's been having there was a focus um there have been a few since our last meeting um so i think uh

073they focus on various topics different articles and videos um one was focusing on self-care one was how teachers can foster a sense of belonging in their classrooms um and one was about why do we celebrate celebrate sorry black history month um during february and culturally responsible teaching of black history um and then deb already mentioned um dr mcgarry and the community engagement group talking about black history month planning um communication that went out to our family our families in our district and staff curriculum connections that were provided to elementary and secondary teachers um and secondary social studies teachers receiving activities that they could do with within their classrooms um the only additional thing i wanted to mention was and i think i talked about this last time but spf participated in the african-american read-in which

074is a national program whereby during february schools churches libraries bookstores and community organizations are urged to make literary literacy a significant part of black history month by hosting this event in african american reading so um teachers and students were able to share a passage they enjoy or find um find a powerful piece of a text written by a black author and discuss that so we had a very um full meeting and our next meeting is march 2nd sorry for the length that's my report that's what we're here for does anybody have any question or comment about ms soriani's report ms mitchell i have a comment i'm sounding like a broken record stephanie after you read those um and interesting reports thank you for putting that together but again this month just like last month and

075the month before the curriculum is supporting the district goals namely what as was taking notes as um you were talking the equity and the real world applications and readiness so the career readiness for the special special needs students that's incredible and a perfect example of not just ap students having opportunities but all levels of our education being ready to take what's in the classroom and outside huge district goal and um the equity that you were talking about in the genetics classroom i mean that even that connection is so unique so cheers to or bravo brava to the teachers rethinking this way it is like you're saying it's not just the science how does the science expand and support what we're trying to do here and finally what i wanted to comment on is the evidence-based

076practices of innovative ways to manage during covid as shown through the music program and it isn't just let's think about what we want to do but the university of colorado and other colleges supporting these efforts so thank you for all that work to the teachers and administrators this is not easy and through your work supporting the goals we're trying to do as a district so thank you thank you for your comments ms mitchell this is bauer uh i just wanted to comment and say we're always impressed in the curriculum committee i think with the um uh often the supervisors who come with teachers and i two partic particular things i just want to emphasize that stephanie mentioned the caliber of people that we have working in our district and the continuing leadership that many of

077our supervisors have across the state uh in their areas of expertise and also um you see um the care with which they are considering all the factors of safely engaging students with different content areas in the schools safely thank you thank you for your comments mrs bauer so true okay thank you miss ariani the next committee on the list is facilities no facilities no finances this round we won't be reporting until next meeting okay thank you mr murray um i have a i have a partners committee meeting which is sort of like a sub of finance if you want me to go now or go right ahead mrs brown uh we met we had our first meeting since the election and president at the meeting which i think is important for everybody to to realize

078the group is um mr murray was there uh mayor mayor los ardo ellen zimmerman from scotch plains al mirabella anthony carter fred tompkins dr mast and debbie saradacki so it's members of the scotch plains and fanwood government and um the board of ed that we get together so this was our first meeting since the election and and for the new members we discussed the usefulness of the meeting with with those new members and and just how important it is just for us to get together and do this and some points that we discussed were the board of ed budget process we discussed the scotch planes budget the vanwood and scotch planes tax collections through coven the possibly doing garbage and recycling through shared services um and something that um that was a surprise to some

079of us is that high the cost of the recycling contracts have gotten and trying to navigate around that school opening plans and um mobile cova testing so those are the types of subjects we talk about we talk about all the both towns and the board of ed um sort of like as a higher level shared services but um it's it's a very good meeting and um that is the end of that report thank you miss brodie thank you much mrs brody i'm sorry sorry i said were there any comments or questions from this book seeing none thank you for your report then any negotiations discussion uh personnel report uh policy i have a policy report but would it maybe be better to read it when we get to that part of the agenda okay strategic

080planning we're still figuring out whether we're going to be online or wait till we go in person uh student activities and athletics sure we had a i can give that report so we met on february 8th um we had um three items that we talked about the first was we had some special guests we had three 11th grade students at the high school avery berman ariel berman and maron brace they shared with us their quarantine tutors presentation so the three of the three of those uh students created a tutoring service for students in the scottish williams family school district they wanted to find a way to help during the pandemic and they noticed families struggling with home school they had you know actually discussed the tutoring program um prior to the pandemic so basically this

081is now a club through the high school that started in april um they offer assistance to district elementary middle school students through google meets um they coordinate uh through uh miss esposito at the high school and um so far to date they've had over 450 tutoring hours over 40 tutors and over 50 students being tutored and some of their some of their themes that they've seen as um the services have helped academically and socially some needed help with projects staying organized having just an older friend to talk to or reviewing classwork learning new skills to get ahead of cla in class as well as some just to provide motivation so it was really it was a really good presentation it was really nice to hear and nice to see they're very motivated um it seems

082to be a really well received program the second um dr heisei pres uh discussed the pta is looking to raise money to purchase gifts for each member of the senior class to deliver it to their front porch so they had some artwork that they shared there was two pieces of artwork um that dr heisei shared that we were gonna give feedback on and he was going to bring that back to the pta and that committee and the last item was tree plenish so dr heisley discussed a tree plenish initiative it's a student-led effort to make high schools more sustainable so the organization basically helps student leaders plan annual tree planting events to replenish used resources and offset their school's paper usage so they support the student leaders by providing them with resources needed to unite

083their communities behind the cause and the ultimate goal is to promote sustainability and raise awareness about the environment so there's individuals in the high school that are looking to move forward with that as well so some really good updates of what's going on within the student activities arena and we're working to see how we can help communicate these with the communications committee to see if there's a way that we can make sure that the community is aware of what's going on as well as the rest of the district as far as things that are going on within just not just the high school but across the district so there's a lot of good stuff going on within the uh within within within our students so that concludes my report thank you mr murray miss mitchell

084you have a question or a comment just a quick question evan if any of the students or parents watching tonight are interested in that tutoring service is it on the website or where can they go through their school the building principle perfect so the building principles will then be able to help coordinate that effort is it just on the high school level all levels middle and elementary the high school students are tutoring the middle and elementary oh very nice so there's also the peer support factor fabulous okay thank you for that clarification and i believe and i believe they may be recruiting additional tutors moving forward too depending on the demand yeah i'm on that committee and and i was so impressed with the presenters the students who coordinated this effort it really is incredible

085you know they they um identified a need during this really difficult time and a way to serve the community and came forward in a very positive way and i mean we told this we told this directly to them when they presented to us but what an amazing job they've done and again like they said that sometimes the students don't have homework so they'll just jump on virtually and like kind of have a mentoring you know session with with the kids and just um you know they formed some great kind of mentor relationships and um but what a way to kind of um take lemons and turn it into lemonade so to speak absolutely and i think that shows the leadership too stephanie to piggyback on what you're saying taking this challenging time and creating opportunity

086that not only serves them but their peers so go raiders thanks for your comments everyone thank you for the report um wellness equity that's me good evening everyone good evening so the wellness and equity task force meeting met right before the board of ed meeting tonight and we addressed one agenda item what's nice about the wellness and equity committee is that it includes our partners truth racial healing transformation and social justice matters and our students and we had the pleasure tonight to have some of our students on this evening and i'm so delighted to to let you know that next week on wednesday and thursday there will be a virtual assembly which will be shared with the english teachers in the high school 9th 10th 11th grade and 12th grade and they will be our

087advisors from our student leadership from bsu black student union and also students for social justice um there's jo jaden naya miyaka chloe howell gabby pooglies and stella whitefield who've been very busy with this awesome presentation that they'll be sharing next week some highlights they will be talking about the historically black college universities and um also [Music] the black national anthem so those are just a couple of highlights that they'll they will be included in this virtual assembly and at the end of the assembly they'll also do um a little questionnaire assessing um the students knowledge and asking them what did they learn so a lot of effort was put into this and you know we said it earlier but we're so proud of our students and so proud of our youth how they stepped up

088during this time and um i'm so i'm so happy and proud of them that concludes my report thank you miss williams any questions or comments okay thanks again miss williams that's great all right that looks like all our committee reports so then we'll move on to letters for the board there were a total of 22 emails that were received by the board from the public and the appropriate administrator has responded and that brings us to the superintendent's report dr mast thank you dr kulikowski so the superintendent's report starts with two um out of district placements one we will be voting on tonight so i move that the board of education approves the following out of district placement for the 2020-2021 school year case number 20-07 and then case number 10-09 which we will vote on

089at the next meeting okay do i have a motion so moved thank you mr twinkler thank you mr murray any question or discussion all those in favor aye aye any opposed any abstaining motion carries next i would like to move that the board of education approves the proposed 12-month employee 2021 2022 calendar now we're voting on that next meeting or this one because it's not asterisk you you are correct which brings us to the personnel report and we will move that the board of education approves the superintendent's recommendation for personnel on the personnel report dated february 18th with a very special highlight of the decision that one has made to move beyond life as the business administrator of scotch plains fanwood we have been blessed to have the service of debbie saradaki for 12 years

090and we will have additional months of blessings through through the end of july which will very much um you know help help the transition and the search for that important role okay do i have a motion thank you mr murray seconded by miss boroff any question or discussion okay all those in favor bye under duress no i don't see it saying roll call that's why i did that personal miss saradacki will you clarify for me um yes mr murray yes mrs boroff yes mrs bauer yes mrs brody yes mrs mitchell yes mrs ceriani yes mrs williams yes ms winkler yes dr kulakowski yes but under duress thank you you're welcome okay motion carries okay thank you dr mast and now we'll move on to the business functions uh mrs saradacki when you're ready you're muted

091i'm sorry i'd like to group these if there's no objection oh right ahead mr saradacki uh one bus i'll be asking for the board to approve staff training on the uh based on the superintendent's recommendations on the report dated february 18th to bus i'll be asking for the board i'm sorry i'm trying to do this from my computer and let me see to bus i'll be asking the board to approve a special education settlement agreement uh and that's for um specific related services 3bus uh asking the board to approve uh various related services from orientation and mobility orton gillingham reading and physical therapy um services for from shore o and m david katz and carla de jort to join geo um for bus i'll be asking the board to approve disposable equipment these computer carts

092were advertised once before and we did not get a buyer and we're going to try once more before we look for an alternative way to uh dispose of them and the appliance the stove you see there is from the one stove that we took out of the uh foods classroom culinary arts classroom that was actually in good enough shape that somebody might want it and so we're looking to sell these items five bus is not being voted on this evening i think there is one more for this evening and i believe it's [Music] um i thought it was 16 maybe not no i guess there isn't any other for this evening so those are the ones i'm asking the board to vote okay on we have a motion for those items that mrs saradacki just

093read thank you mrs brody is there a second second wrinkler thank you mrs winkler any further question or discussion about the items that mrs saradaki would like to move seeing none all those in favor any opposed any abstaining motion carries okay the other items are i'll be asking for the board to approve on 5bus the union county stem scholar grant and that's a grant where they're providing five hundred dollars towards 3d print mirror holders for laptops and i believe those are going to seniors at the high school um 6b us it's our annual and this is the 2020 exxon mobil educational alliance grant um which the exxon station across the highway on route 22 he's very generously always puts in for our schools to receive that grant uh seven bus i'll be asking for uh

094from uh training in the amount of approximately thirty thousand dollars from the proposal of kayati joshi did i pronounce that right and this is for uh for teaching diversity and social justice program to achieve an inclusive cohesive community and institution free from biases at the cost of approximately thirty thousand dollars and they'll be teach they'll be working with staff students board of ed members and community members apus is a clinical affiliation agreement with kane university's graduate certificate in nursing school and this is uh due to an employee we've recently hired who at the same time she's working will be earning her uh student nursing certificate school nursing certificate um 9b us are the theater vendors that we talked about previously uh mr patooka had talked about and these are the ones that are not employees

095they have all worked for us previously though and this is for the drama drama play repertory theater and the park middle school musical 10bus is the renewal of our educational data services for twenty twenty one to twenty twenty two and that is a zero percent increase the cost is thirteen thousand three hundred and forty dollars eleven b u s will be the business reports that we have for you um for the next meeting and those are the reports for the month of january and 14 the u.s are the disbursement listings for the month of january 15 bus will be the bill list for the month of january and that's for the period january 16th through february 12th 16 bus will be asking for additional funds for camden county educational services commission um and this is

096for additional work on the communications uh and that will be in the amount of ten thousand dollars that's not a fixed amount that is just based on uh what we anticipate might be built over a period of time okay thank you mr saradacki thank you moving on to board policies amy wrinkler i think you said you had something for us yes i do thank you on january 27th the policy committee met um we uh we had two policies that we were looking at one of them is policy 3159 teaching staff members school district reporting responsibilities um the changes to this policy are mandated due to new legislation policies changed to state that a certificate holder must report an arrest or indictment to the superintendent within 14 calendar days also the policy is changed to state

097that if the board determines pursuant to a tenure charge finding or a disorderly person conviction that the teaching staff member has failed to report an allegation of child abuse then the board will submit a report outlining these findings to the state board of examiners which will then determine if this warrant suspension or revocation of the teaching certificate also code citations were updated and as i said the beginning these changes are are mandated due to legislation um the other policy that we looked at is policy 2431.1 for athletic activities the committee had continued discussion about this policy we heard from our business administrator about the financial considerations of the existing policy and the proposed revisions as well as some history of the existing policy changes to this policy include reducing the provisionary period from seven to

098five years for existing and new programs to be fully funded by the sponsoring organization and that new programs will be comprehensively evaluated annually instead of every two years and i'm asking that the board at our next meeting uh approved first reading of both of these policies and our next meaning is scheduled for february 24th 25th uh no no the policy everybody meets on wednesday okay i thought you meant for our next meeting excuse me my era okay any question or discussion uh for amy's policies mr murray so i'm just uh the the report amy that you sent out from seven years to three years you said five years yeah we we had some additional discussions since then the additional time is to ensure that there's a solid feeder program in place oh okay i'm not

099sure that changing from seven to five makes much sense to change the policy for that but i guess i mean that's my feedback any other comment or question thank you mr murray okay miss winkler we'll look forward to that for next meeting and that concludes the policies and we'll move on to new board business does anybody have any new board business seeing none move on to other board business uh obb one liaison reports is there anything for affordable housing mrs bauer i'm not affordable housing i was going down the list but if you want to go go right ahead i was just going to remind everyone that the garden state coalition of schools meets next wednesday at 9 00 a.m and that senator teresa ruiz who's the chair of the senate education committee will be

100the guest speaker so if anyone wants to attend thank you for the reminder mrs bauer so there's no nothing for affordable housing mrs bauer gave us garden state coalition of schools uh municipal alliance committee seeing no one new jersey school board association seeing nothing pta council seeing no one president's council meeting nothing spf shared services now one uh truth racial hearing and transformation we did have that nice presentation by missouriani for the group uh union county educational services commission no one and union county school board association no one okay then that brings us to two obb requests to attend workshops seeing no one three obb covid priority resolution does anybody want to make a motion to present this if not i will all right then i make the motion to move that the board accepts

101and adopts the following resolution whereas the scotch plains fanwood board of education recognizes that the united states the state of new jersey and local health authorities as well as the world health organization have declared a public health emergency regarding the coronavirus or covid19 pandemic and whereas the federal and state authorities have put in place guidance detailing the precautionary measures schools must implement to stop the spread of this disease and whereas public schools have a profound impact on millions of students families and staff and are charged with the care education nourishment of the students and are an integral part of health and safety of our communities and whereas our district has responded to the challenges brought about by covet 19 pandemic providing students staff members and technology and resources necessary to ensure the efficient delivery of

102instruction virtually and in person and whereas the board has a substantial public interest in protecting the health and safety of its students staff and community and ensuring that the district can provide staff and students with a safe and effective educational environment supports students achievement and whereas the covet 19 vaccination plan published by the state of new jersey department of health on december 15 2020 pages 36 and 37 prioritizes the availability of vaccines to essential workers in phase 1 b of the vaccine protocol and whereas the school district staff at all levels are essential to the day-to-day operations of the district and responsible for the thorough and efficient education of all students and their social and emotional well-being and are critical for virtual and in-class instruction are essential workers now therefore be it resolved that the

103scotch plains fanwood board of education finds a substantial public purpose exists to request that governor murphy give the appropriate priority to statewide administration of the covid 19 vaccine to all public school personnel and the coven 19 vaccination plan published by the state of new jersey department of health see uh and then there's a big long link there that i'm not going to read out and then resolve that a copy of this resolution shall be forwarded to assemblyman linda s carter assemblyman james l kennedy senator nicholas p skittari assembly speaker craig coughlin and senate president stephen m sweeney governor phil murphy and to the new jersey school boards association and i have a second second second who said it first i didn't hear yeah miss winkler i don't know it doesn't matter i didn't hear you

104all spoke at once was it miss boro for miss winkler i don't know that it matters all right miss winkler thank you for the second any question or discussion all those in favor all right any opposed any abstaining motion carries okay and then for obb youth art month which is march we'll be doing that at our next meeting so decide if you'd like to read that resolution and then next meeting we will be doing the approval of minutes for january 7th the organizational meeting er executive session excuse me the reorg meeting did not have an executive session we started that with just the meeting there's no executive session for that it says executive session remember we did not have an exec session that day for rework we go right into the reorg meeting i i

105think we had one after the meeting okay then we could flip-flop that okay um then january 21 regular board meeting and its executive session as well so we'll wait for those minutes and then this brings us to our second public comment session so if you'd like to make a public comment please go to spfk12.org for the zoom login in accordance with the scotch plains fanwood public schools by law zero one six four zero one six five the meeting will be open for 15 minutes for public comments with a maximum of three minutes per speaker speakers addressing superintendent items business functions and other board business will be heard first and if time remains speakers may address other matters so if you would like to speak or make a public comment please go to spfk12.org for your

106zoom login information please when it's your turn please state your full name and the town in which you reside and also note board members cannot respond regarding concerns of individual students or staff members such matters should be addressed by the superintendent's office so ms broadbent at this time could you please let me know if there's a caller ready sure dr kulakowski rachel nudell feldman hi miss feldman please unmute yourself yes hello good evening uh rachel new del feldman scotch planes thank you good evening everyone um i am uh just very happy to hear today and uh we heard last week that our youngest learners in grades k through four going to be returning to school for five days a week for single session days i'm wondering why we're waiting until march 15 which is almost

107a month from the time that the initial announcement was made last week if the goal is to get the children back to as much schooling as possible as quickly as possible my question is why we are not able to do this sooner thank you for your comments miss feldman dr kulakowski our next caller is michelle sergeant thank you miss sergeant please unmute yourself and when you're ready please state your name and the town in which you resign hello good evening my name is michelle surgeon and i'm a resident of scotch plains thank you good evening everybody um i've prepared a little something to say um it's a very emotional time for me but before i begin what i plan to say dr mast i did enjoy our conversation that we had last week um regarding

108the decision for my family to enroll re-enroll my daughter into public school or keep keep her in private school and what you said to me that the best case scenario for september 2021 start of the school year would be five half days so i would really appreciate at the end of what i have to say if you could just kind of go over that with me i mean i heard what i heard and i heard that the best you could do was that because the coronavirus was still here and coveted was not going away anytime soon so um hopefully we can circle back and talk about that again um everybody um again i'm michelle i am the mother of three daughters my oldest is currently enrolled in kindergarten at a local private school my husband

109and i decided to pull her out days after the announcement that everything was going virtual um we were all set to start hybrid with hopes that the school year would go in a little bit better direction that it has and the hybrid model lasted until the end of january um i cannot fathom what that style of learning would have done to my little girl and it's very upsetting that i have to think about kindergarteners and and what they've been going through and what their parents are going through um it's just absolutely terrible um it's now the time for private school enrollment and we have to make a decision soon i'm feeling anxious confused weary and insecure about what to do for next year um i guess i heard the date of may 15 that you

110were going to be rolling out the you know official plan for next year and unfortunately that is when all of the private school enrollments are already closed so i am hoping that you can reconsider that date and come to us with a little bit you know better idea of what's going to happen for september so that we can make the best decision for our kids and i i don't mean to sound malicious or or in a threatening manner but it is a very very important decision for many of us to make and may 15th with a plan we can't back out of the school if everything is going to go as planned in public school and we can't just add ourselves on so we really really need to know um if you can come up

111with something sooner that would be great i find myself questioning why do i live in this affluent town if i cannot utilize the public school system it makes me angry that i even have to speak on this topic and i don't feel that you the board of education is working towards getting our school systems back to pre-pandemic times if hybrid learning is such a hard challenge to figure out your good enough attitude is not good enough for me and i will not subject my daughter to mediocre education our children's well-being is at stake and while you fulfill your political agenda with the njea the private schools have had no problem being open and staying open and the only difference between private and public is they are not ruled by a union i have asked many

112times in emails and phone calls can you please provide the community with a clear concise timeline for the remaining school year and what we should expect leading up to the next school year as you know we have important important decisions to make that are not only emotional they are financial i find myself often thinking things and saying things that often sound so unintelligible because i am so angry right now and i cannot seem to think straight the whole decision-making of school has become toxic for me i feel as though my daughter has been robbed of what was supposed to be the first best year for school experience and while yes we all have kova to blame i cannot help myself from blaming the school district itself because you have could have done a lot better

113and you aren't this isn't six weeks since the start of school it's six months and you have failed each and every parent and student in different ways with your lack of leadership transparency and empathy what is a school board if there are none of the above your failure to follow signs and data is impacting the public school community socially mentally physically academically it is completely and utterly unacceptable because without a clear and concise plan on your part there is absolutely no end in sight in the words of maya angelou do the best you can until you know better then when you know better do better i am expecting better from you thank you thank you for your comments miss sergeant miss broadbent we have another caller sure dr kulikowski we have joyce walling thank you

114hi miss wallin please unmute yourself hi my name is joyce walling and i am from scotch plains thank you hi um the reason for my call tonight is we all just got the notice that it is a virtual half day tomorrow and i guess i can understand the virtual because it's very icy but what i would like to know is why is it a half day i feel like my kids are missing out on a lot of education to begin with and when you make it half day my pre-k 4 student is done with school 10 30 and my second grader is done at 12 40. he will not have reading recovery tomorrow and he will not have speech thanks to the single session day so i would love an answer to that and i'm

115sure that a lot of parents in the community would like to know as well thank you thank you uh miss broadbent is there another caller dr kulikowski right now there are no hands raised okay i'm just going to review the upcoming scheduled meeting dates which are next thursday february 25th for the regular public meeting thursday march 11th for the open agenda meeting march 25th for the regular public meeting april 22nd for the open agenda meeting and april 29th for the regular public meeting all to be determined whether we go in person or we remain virtual depends on how things go has anybody else raised their hand miss broadbent not at this time dr kolakowski so dr kulikowski if i could make a couple of comments based on the previous callers sure so so as mckergen

116said we did have a conversation regarding you know her disappointment of sending her child to um you know a private school and in that she she was concerned about keeping that spot and what would be happening in the future and i was speaking to you know the this spring and you know my best hopes for the spring um i wasn't speaking to the best hopes of september i would never say that that having half days in september would be our goal so if i misspoke or if somehow that conversation got convoluted i'm i'm very sorry um i did recognize that something went amok in that conversation because i started getting almost instantaneous um emails saying how could you be already saying that next year is only half days and it was right after i had

117that conversation with miss surgeons i wanted to um immediately correct um the mis communication or just the misconception of the communication and i tried to get miss surgeon back on the phone but she wasn't available and so we're resolving it now i'm sorry for any confusion but i know that we ended that conversation in saying we want your students we want your children in our schools um and and you said you you will they will be back you know so so send them back we're going to be open full-time next year um and as our lawyer tells us we we can't promise that beyond um you know an act of god or another pandemic but we are going to um we are moving forward to have our our schools open in september and we we

118want your kids in our school so so that's one um the single session for for the snow days we can certainly revisit that there was feedback that the afternoon sessions were also a hardship for families and also hardship for some of our staff who have kids who are also home and on different schedules and it was it was the compromise so so kids could still enjoy the winter weather and things like that but we will hopefully we're done with this weather you know that i i i'm a fan for that but um moving forward we will we will revisit the single session day and thank you for that feedback thank you for the clarification dr matthew thank you for watching dr kulkowski right head mister dr cool cassie speaks for us as a board but

119i can speak for myself as an individual i have two kids young children in the school district too i want them back in school i'm in the same boat as everybody else and so are many people here on the screen who volunteer countless hours every week not just in the public meetings but in committee meetings and related committee meetings to move things forward in this district and help all of our kids get back into school we read all of your letters we can't answer dr kulikowski and dr mast speak for this district but i read all of the letters i read all of the links i read all the research and the data that is is sent to me as a board member and i appreciate all of it but if we could all remember

120that we are all experiencing this and to to speak to each other with respect and respect that we're all stressed out we're all experiencing anxiety and you know and the difficulties of being working parents while our kids are learning virtually i think that all of the board members well again i'm speaking for myself would truly appreciate that because i do welcome public comment but i welcome it in a respectful way and a collaborative way and i i felt like i just had to say that thank you miss suriani anybody else want to make a comment okay i'll just say that i i appreciate stephanie's sentiments and um you know i think i i really appreciate stephanie that you're taking the time to say that and i agree with you and um i think that we

121all feel stressed as most of us here are parents with kids in the district or have been but we're all dealing with the same thing we're all putting in the same amount of hours we all get it we hear you we listen to you but respect is what we try and teach our children and i think we should mirror that as much as possible a lot of times it's not what we want to hear but we want everybody to be safe we want the children to be safe we want the teachers to be safe all the auxiliary aids all the staff and the schools uh that's the only reason we we do what we do we want everything to be the best and if we're ready to be safe doing it and thank you for

122your comments miss boroff okay uh any remarks for the good of the order yes um you know we we touch like it gets confusing on nights like tonight where we have committee meetings before this and so i don't want to confuse you too much but we had you know some of the committee reports tonight showing a lot of the initiatives that have been taking place in the district and i think what stood out for me that i hope um the district i know the district will see personally that we had a little glimpse of tonight though things like um the initiatives being taken um on behalf of the black student union the organizations i can't think of all their names right now but you know this community has really come together but what stood out

123to me today and i'm really looking forward to everyone in the district also witnessing it is our students the resilience of our students these students came together they're doing tutoring tutoring projects they're using their time to help benefit other people within the district they're community members they're seeing gaps that need to be filled and they're putting together assemblies and and these kids are just our students are impressive and so um i i hope everyone over the next few weeks really stops for a minute and takes a look at really what our students in the district are accomplishing and i think we'll all be really proud as a community i was really impressed with our students especially today that's it thank you for your comments miss borah anyone else for the good of the order okay

124seeing no one can i have a motion for adjournment thank you mr murray thank you miss winkler any question or discussion about that all those in favor aye aye and the opposed motion carries meaning adjourned everyone stay safe