001I call to order uh Wong Burough School District Board of Education special meeting for July 15th at 6:43 p.m. Um could we please all stand for the pledge of allegiance? 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. Welcome to a meeting of the board of education of the burrow of watch. Please be advised that this and all meetings of the board are open to the public and media consistent with the open public meetings act chapter 231 laws of 1975 and that the advanced notice required therein has been provided. This is a regular meeting of the board of education of the burrow of wong at which formal action may be taken.
002This meeting is being livereamed on the district website where a recording of the meeting will also be posted. The public will have an opportunity to be heard as shown on the agenda at points in the meeting meeting provided for the public to address the board. Recording or photographing other than for private personal use requires the consent of parents or guardians whose children may be included in the image. Have a roll call, please. Yes. Mrs. Maddox here. Mrs. Amado here. Mrs. Juette here. Mr. Fra here. Mrs. Alearo here. So, Mr. Mr. Gonzalez, Mr. Craft, Mrs. Harvey, and Mrs. Santos are absent tonight. Great. Thank you. First off, I want to say thank you to everyone for coming. Not only was it a special meeting that was supposed to be for yesterday and ended up being an
003emergency meeting for today, thanks to the weather. And I also wanted to just give a special shout out to Dr. Glazer and the administration and the staff yesterday for taking quick action to making sure that everybody got out of the building safely, keeping track of everybody to make sure they got home safely and my understanding is some staff also stayed and uh wrote out the storm here and made sure that the schools were secure. So, thank you very much. Thank you. All right. So, we are I've been advised that we need to change the order of the agenda slightly um and we need to go immediately into executive session because action may be taken. So, I move that we go into executive session whereas the open public meetings act NJSA104-11 permits the board of education
004to meet in close session to discuss certain matters now. Therefore, be it resolved, the board of education adjourns to close session to discuss pending or anticipated litigation or contract negotiation and or matters of attorney client privilege. Further resolve the meetings the minutes of this close session be made public when the need for confidentiality no longer exists. Action may be taken. Do I have a second? Move. So moved. Second. Any discussion? Second. Third. Roll call. A roll call going in. All in favor say yeah. I I moving to executive session. Expect it to be quick. Really? Yeah. I'd just like to make a point of order based on our discussions in executive session. I would like to make an addition to the end of agenda item C1, the outdoor learning commons contract. Added to the language
005is whereas the board has determined to proceed with the bid base and alternate GC number one and reject alternate GC number two, alternate GC number three, alternate GC number four and alternate GC number five. And now therefore be it resolved that in accordance with the provisions of the public school contracts law the be the board hereby awards the contract for the project to a tech concrete with a base bid of $894,000 and an alternate GC number one bid of $200,000 and be it further resolved that the board president business administrator and their design are authorized to execute execute a contract on behalf of the board with A Techch Concrete Co. for the project based on A Techch Concrete's base bid of $894,000 and alternate GC number one bid of $200,000. Second. No. Well, you're right.
006Not moving on. It's later, right? But do we have to vote to She's not Yeah, I'm just point of order to add it to the agenda. Your vote still later. Okay, fine. Okay. So now we are moving on to comments from the public on agenda items. We welcome input from the public. There are two times during the meeting when the public is invited to speak. The first opportunity to comment on agenda items only is now. The second opportunity for public comment is towards the end of the meeting. All comments are limited to 5 minutes. The total time allotted for public comment is 30 minutes. In the event it appears the public comment portion of the meeting may exceed 30 minutes, the presiding officer may further limit each statement made by a participant to 3 minutes
007duration. Before you make your comment, please state your name and municipality of residents. In the event it appears the public comment portion of the meeting may exceed 30 minutes. I've already said this, the presiding officer may limit each statement by to another 3 minutes. Our public forums are not structured as a question and answer session, but rather are offered as opportunities to share input with the board. In instances where the board feels a response is needed, the presiding officer or superintendent will address the comment. New Jersey statutes do not permit the board to discuss personnel or hiring in public session. Names of students should not be used. Members of the public should consider their comments in light of legal rights of those affected and identified in their comments and be aware that they are personally
008legally responsible with potential liability for comments that they make to the board. The board shall not be held liable for comments made by members of the public. Okay. Seeing as we have no comments, we will move on to superintendent remarks. So tonight um my remarks are only on um the personnel agenda item to um accept the retirement of special services director Nicole DTO. Um the full proclamation in honor of um Miss Dotto is um written into the agenda. Um, I don't think I need to reread the whole thing, but I do just want to point out that um, Miss Dakota began her employment here in the district in October of 2019 as the district's director of special services. She was the first um, director who was not um, also the superintendent. She was charged by
009the board at the time of um looking at our um special needs community, creating a community um in district, a welcoming community that was inclusive and belonged, everybody um belonged. Um she extended that charge um into the before and afterare program. Um the previous program was not as accommodating for our students that maybe needed um special services, maybe um even an aid or a paraprofessional or medical support. Um so that is again um under Nicole's leadership, Miss Dotto's leadership while she was here. um during her um six years here in the district, she and we tease about it, the language is is flowy, but while I have the opportunity, truly when we talk about her attention to detail, um the work she did with our extraordinary aid, the amount of money that um became available
010to the district budget because of those efforts, particularly not excluding any of the other characteristics that are listed in the proclamation um are notable. So, as we do for all of our retirees, now be it resolved that the Wung Bough Board of Education and the entire school community recognizes Nicole's retirement effective September 1st, 2025, and extend our deepest gratitude for her dedication, commitment, and service to the Wung Bau School District and wish her continued good health, much happiness, relief from the weight of wearing many hats, and a well-earned rest in retirement. Thank you. I will second that sentiment and thank Nicole Dakota for her service to the Watchon School District and um the changes that she was able to implement to our special ed program. Okay, moving on to action items. Um Mrs. Maddox, can
011you move action items under personnel? Uh B personnel approve retirement appoint extended school year nursing sta staff. Excuse me. Accept resignation of our librarian at Bayberry School. Just those two. A second. That's it. Any discussion? Roll call, please. Okay. Okay. Uh Mrs. Maddox. Yes. Mrs. Zamado, yes. Mr. Fra, yes. Mrs. Duet, yes. Mrs. Agliero, yes. And Mr. Gonzalez, Mr. Craft, Mrs. Harvey, and Mrs. Santos are absent. Motion passes. Mr. Fra, could you move uh items under operations, please? Sure. I make a motion to move um item one, outdoor learning common contract. There's two in I'm blind and three and two um the alternate move participation in Bergen bids and three authorized sale disposal disposal of shed at Valley View. Have a second. Second. Any discussion? So, so to clarify here, this.1 outdoor learning commons contract
012includes the addition that was read earlier and that there were five additional items for in like in addition to the base bid and we only accepted two of them. Is that correct? Or one of them accepting the base bid an alternate GC number one. So just one of them the additional change one alternate. So the other items what happens with those because I know we still want to do them. The other items we and the district we feel that we can get better pricing if we do them separately. So we can contract for those. We can contract. Yeah. Do them through a co-op or inhouse. What if we haven't cut enough money? What happens if we run out of money from the referendum cash? So they would well we would prioritize them and you would
013that's why they're called alternates. So we would be, you know, prioritize them and kind of do them one by one by one until we didn't have any money left. If that were the case, if we get down that low, that close to the end and based on where we are with our current referendum budget. Mhm. We have enough current. Yes. Currently, as the bid is because it's quite it's I wish it were lower. It it's a million 94. Um, we currently do have that. We're still we're still safe I in the budget and on the um in the in our accounting system. We've encumbered enough to keep us what we believe is safe. So extra over here, extra there, possible issues. I mean of course something can happen. So I don't want to say for
014sure but right now I feel like we have enough encumbered along with the balance that we should be okay. You know, I do I do feel that way. Unless something totally unexpected happens, but right now looking at what I have, I think we're good. Great. I think we're good going in. So, you're comfortable? I do. I am. I am. I'm just going to say no. Just not comfortable with it right now. Okay. Anyone else? Okay. Roll call, please. Okay. All right. Let's get another. Okay. Mrs. Amado, yes. Mrs. Duet, no. Mr. Frra, yes. Mrs. Maddox, yes. And Mrs. Aglaro, yes. Mr. Gonzalez, Mr. Craft, Mrs. Harvey, and Mrs. Santos are absent. The motion passes. Thank you. Um, we have no items under curriculum or policy. So, moving on to board business. Does anybody have any
015Okay, moving on to comments from the public. Hello all. My name is Salad Munoz and I am a resident resident of Waong Burough. Um, so I want to thank you all for making it out here on this treacherous after day. I think we've all had a pretty eventful uh, couple of days here. Um, I wanted to speak about today's um, retiree. Um, thank you for your your statement and I appreciate you not. Um, it's all online and it's all written. And, um, I think that after reading that today, tonight's proclamation paints a picture of a retiree as tireless and dedicated. But for many of us, the public and the parents of children enrolled in these schools, her retirement isn't a celebration. It's a long overdue departure. This district um appearingly seems to have a short
016memory, but families do not. In 2019, way before we got here, um community members publicly documented how special education students at Bayberry and Valley View went eight full weeks without speech therapy in direct violation of their IEPs. Parents weren't notified, administrators didn't take responsibility, and a certain retiree was called out. Excuseel. Okay. Thank you. Um the excuse then was keep it general then I won't have to interrupt you. Okay. Um the reason at that point was given that I just got here. So fast forward six years. Now we're new to WAN as you all know. Um fast forward six years under that same full leadership that and tenure the exact same failures happened again under the exact same failures happened again and much worse. Um, this retiree oversaw the declassification of students still in need
017of services, failed to implement promise programs. Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. Maybe like the program. Sure. Okay, you got it. Um, repeatedly withheld information about the parents. I can speak about the parents. I'm the parent. Um, while advising staff to do the same. The system wasn't fixed. This person became the system. Didn't protect the most vulnerable students, made them more vulnerable. The failures weren't fixed. and now after securing tenure and collecting stipens for extra programs conveniently retires. The program the program but it's too personal. You can't do it. The problem is when you can identify the person in your comments then we're discussing personnel in in public session and we're not allowed to disc I know okay understood. Got it. Just so I'll put I'll just rephrase it to the
018program like re rephrase whenever you say retiree just say the program. The program. Okay. So, we're not here to clap for departures from the program. We are not here to clap for afterare initiatives that the program was paid extra to oversee. We're not applauding hiring and supervision of unqual unqualified staff. We're not impressed by a system that routinely violated timelines, program that fails to provide services, a program that continuously gaslights families in trying to support their children. And we're certainly not celebrating someone who built their legacy celebrate a program who built their who has built its legacy on delay, deflection, and denial. We are here tonight to celebrate the exits because we're going to end up with we're going to get him. Okay. So hopefully let's let's change it to something more positive. Okay, that's
019that's the end. and put your I agree your comments if you'd like in writing to Oh, I absolutely to me instead of I will I absolutely I will send you a copy of this. Make sense. Um the issue is that the you know what Okay. Um so hard for you to finish what you're trying to say. What I'm here to say is that hopefully moving forward with accountable oversight, with actual collaboration, with actual transparency, with actual input and someone that a program that invites the collaboration with parents and collaboration with students and insight from people that have walked a mile in our shoes, so to speak. we can move forward to celebrate and mark the hope of what comes next. This these issues with this program have been happening for a very long time since
020before we got here. They weren't taken care of during this current tenure and we'd like to see that change without any more issues. This cannot continue not just for our family but for other families. And we have, as I said the last time, we're not going anywhere. We want to see this program succeed. We want to see the children thrive. We think that this county, this district has the ability to do that. It has the the um backing of you guys as the board. I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you guys. I'd like to speak candidly even when it's in private. that hasn't always come to fruition. But I'm not going anywhere. Accountability is not going anywhere. And hopefully moving forward with accountable oversight, the board won't be put in uncomfortable positions of having
021to dismiss children getting hurt as day-to-day operations. That was quite disappointing. And moving forward, hopefully we won't have to protect a program. We'll protect the children. We'll protect each other. the ones that come here and count on all of us and the program as adults to oversee what they cannot speak up for and what they cannot do on their own. Um, so without being able to speak much more about the program, I think um I speak for not just our family but many other families, we are grateful to see the program make its exit and a new program ensue in this coming year. So thank you. Thank you. Any other comments from the public? All right, I have a motion to adjurnn. So moved. Have a second. Second. Any discussion? All in favor say I.
022I. Thank you guys for coming out.