001boys that was a good dodge all right and we are back for the public portion of our meeting uh next item on the agenda is board correspondence i think we were maybe we were just going to mention that we've received um an email uh inquiring about the updated guidelines which i'm going to speak about in my superintendent's report excellent and we will move on to report some presentation and start with the superintendent's comments okay so um the one of the items listed under my superintendent's comments is something that we're required to report on each year and it's our hib school self-assessment and this is where uh it's a rubric that we use it's from the the doe to assess our implementation of the anti-bullying bill of rights act and there are a lot of components
002to it not just our implementation of the law and the policy but professional development surrounding it and education of our staff and our students and so last year i had reported that you can get a maximum of 75 78 points rather and last year we did not give ourselves the full 78 points i want to say we scored i believe it was 75 i don't have last year's score right in front of me i believe that's what it was uh and we did not give ourselves the the full value in two of the areas that we felt we could improve upon our director of school counseling is our anti-bullying coordinator and he's done a lot of review of the work that we've done around this in the district and since we've brought in the rutgers
003behavioral health folks that have not only been counseling our students but they've been providing a lot of professional development to our staff so the two indicators last year that we did not give ourselves uh full points for had to do with giving providing instruction and suicide prevention that included information on hiv to our staff uh and so and to be provided by a licensed healthcare professional and prior to bringing rutgers and we had not done that before so that we have taken care of and then also in terms of doing our own self-assessment of our school climate programs and as you know we gave the mlecs survey last year the molex rutgers survey on school climate and we're actually now looking to give the newer version of that the nj sky this spring so that
004was another component that we've added so as a result of that our score is 78 out of 78 so we submit that to the state for approval and we post that on our website so that is part of the report that i'm required to give one other thing i do want to mention actually along those lines related to that is mr sabino did share with me that we had a great parent turnout and active participation at our rutgers school-based mental health program understanding teen anxiety anxiety last week we had 80 plus parents on the zoom who were actively engaged in asking questions and making comments via the chat so that was a really successful evening event one of the practices that has come out of some of the restrictions that have been placed upon us
005over the past couple of years and how we've had to to get creative and being able to still offer some of our informational evening programs is that we've realized we actually get better attendance for some of them via zoom uh for parents at night who you know a lot of the time it's difficult for them to get home from work feed their their families or do whatever they need to do and get back here so uh offering these via zoom we've actually gotten some better attendance so i'm glad to hear that that was well attended uh and then the last thing that i'll provide some additional information on so last week as you're aware we sent out an update on uh trying to get back to full days of instruction and a little variation of
006our normal full-day instructional schedule um if you recall and i believe it was directly quoted in the paper that i said at the last meeting a lot of the the initiatives that we're putting into place since march 2020 um are not ideal situations for for anyone we're we're really looking at all of the the possibilities a lot in a lot of cases you know i think the quote from me was that we're looking at all of the worst case scenarios and trying to pick the best of them um because you know unfortunately the ideal situation where we're in school nobody's testing positive for kovid we're not quite there yet um but as we had said at the beginning of the year when we were returning to school that our goal was to try and make
007this as normal a year as possible for our students within the guidelines and restrictions that are that are placed upon us and within the guidelines that are being recommended to for us to follow by the new jersey department of health and by our local health officials and so that is exactly what we are trying to do and we had gone to a an early dismissal schedule for several weeks given the the rise in cases um and the the staff attendance issues that we were having not due to necessarily our staff testing positive for kovid but a lot of them had child care issues because their daycares the daycares for their children had closed or their own children had to quarantine because they were close contacts so we did have some staffing issues that caused us
008to make that decision and then another benefit of that decision is it allowed us to avoid having lunch for several weeks and the issue with lunch is that it is a it's the best opportunity during the day for close contacts to occur and a close contact is when you are within even whether you're masked or not within three feet of somebody for 15 minutes or more and as for the guidelines then you know if you're not vaccinated and you're close contact you have to quarantine if you are vaccinated as long as you're symptom-free you do not however as everyone is aware from what you've seen in the news the omicron variant is very contagious so even vaccinated individuals have been testing positive what has been good in all of this is that we haven't seen
009staff members and students for the most part getting very ill they've had minor symptoms however we still have to follow the quarantine guidelines and so it was causing a lot of students and staff to be excluded from school and our goal as i've reiterated is to keep or keep the school open for in-person instruction uh and and provide a safe and healthy environment for everyone here that is why we're taking this intermediate step um right now it is just for the next nine days um or eight days after today where we're back to a full day of instruction but we did not want to put the full period of lunch back in place um given that the you know fortunately if you saw the uh transmission rate is now down below one for new jersey
010which is which is great um so it seems like things are starting to slow down but we were concerned that if we went back to the full lunch period we would have that uptick again in close contacts and in positive cases and we would end up excluding a lot of students from school so that's why we are temporarily putting in the snack period instead of the full lunch period with a plan to go back to our regular full day with a full lunch in in two weeks and we are we're going to re-evaluate it at the end of this week you know it's possible that we will change things for next week we really on thursday we'll take a look at everything and see where we are see where we are with students that are
011out for covert related issues staff that are out for covert related issues i can tell you that that has gone down significantly uh in the three weeks that we went to early dismissals i shared that information with bob we went from nearly 400 students that were out for code related reasons to less than 90 as of friday and we went from almost 30 staff members to two staff members today for covert related reasons so you know that is moving in the right direction i know there's been a lot of talk about the the snack period um and the fact that you know that's not an ideal length of time for lunch for students and for a break for students i i am fully aware of that i'm not saying that this solution is the best
012solution you know the the best idea in terms of a schedule but i think it's the best solution we have now to get us back to a full day safely and while keeping kids here we didn't pull the the plan out of thin air we've been talking about it um for several weeks while we were in the early dismissal mode looking at other schools models and there is another school that has been implementing this since the beginning of the year we have a 15 minute snack period plus five minute passing time they they just call the 20-minute break or 20-minute snack time so it's the same amount of time and it's been working very well for them the reason for the 15 minutes is because if it's more than 15 minutes then we have to
013contact trace and so we're trying to make it so that we keep kids here and that by students eating in school it doesn't then cause an uptick again in students needing to quarantine or students transmitting covet we're evaluating it you know we we i talked to mr labrera today to see you know do we need to add um any kind of additional uh uh changing time for it um you know we there we we did give everyone a heads up to that you know that ideally um it certainly would be the best for you to bring your own food just because we weren't sure what lines were going to be like but we will be evaluating it and you know we will make changes as we need to prior to kovid when when we would
014be planning for for something in school for a schedule change we've been talking for years about trying to start high school later anything during covid we find you know we learn about and we basically have to implement it almost immediately this is very very different than the way you generally operate with schools in terms of being able to pilot something work out the kinks um we are you know trying to do what we can to make sure we keep this as the safest environment possible with all of our students here the other thing just to keep in mind part of the reason for the longer lunch period that's when students have science labs so if a student has a lab on a given day the amount of time they have for lunch including passing time
015is only 23 minutes compared to the 20 minutes that they have now so it's not that it's significantly shorter than it is for for students on a given lab day again that being said we're not selling it as a long-term solution we're looking at as a short-term step to get back to our normal full days and again we'll be looking at you know sitting down to look at everything again at the end of this week to see if we need to make any changes um and even making any changes before the end of the week to the particular schedule so i just you know continue to thank everyone and for their patience and understanding and flexibility the students have been tremendous as have our staff and i feel very very lucky to to work here
016and to work with such a talented faculty um and with such outstanding students the students have really kept such a positive attitude during all of this um that i i commend them for it uh because i know this has you know certainly not been a high school experience that they expected when they were in middle school coming to their high school orientation so that is where we're at right now we did send out the updated guidelines last week as well so uh thankfully that that has been the quarantine timeline given that you meet certain conditions that you're not symptomatic has been shortened from being able to return on day 11 to being able to return on day six so that is certainly moving in the right direction and we're hoping that the numbers keep getting
017better and so that we will be able to get back to normal and also have a lot of our events that are planned for the spring so hopefully that provides some clarification uh and i will keep all of you posted and i really truly appreciate the board support as well and patience and um collaboration through all of this because i think that's what's really helped to keep us be able to keep school open and maintain our in-person instruction so thank you any uh board members any questions dr chan so my question is that these students who are quarantined do they have virtual classes or there is no class for them yes we have zoom zoom is opened up zoom's actually opened up um for students who are absent for any reason right now all of
018the teachers have their cameras turned on oh i've seen a couple of letters you know which are addressed to you by the mothers or parents you know complaining about that their kids are suffering so could there be some makeup classes for them that some students you know in the school they're 20 30 40 students that for them maybe your weekend or something some makeup classes so that uh any concern you know they have so the teachers one of the things that's happening during the schedule right now is the teachers in the afternoon because school is ending at 1 40 and then we're providing lunch for the students who have to stay for athletics and activities um that's also when the teachers get their their allotted lunch period so from 2 15 to 2 40 every
019day is support it's virtual support for students that need additional help and then as you know the board actually approved the after school tutoring sessions in the learning commons those are open to all students as well and as a reminder of that that's how we use some of our esser funding from the federal government was to actually expand the student supports that we had available for them sure catherine um so i'm hearing a lot of complaints from parents that the lines to get the snacks are very very long even if they get their kids there at seven in the morning to buy the snack ahead of time they still aren't able to to do it and they just they're getting upset and it's mostly males you know that we need to eat you know or
020want to eat a little more um so what do they do then how do you how are you are there more places they can go buy them i know you only have a limited amount of so it's kind of i mean we have expanded it and it's similar to you know every year when we start school the first couple days of lunch are always a little um crazy because the students are figuring out where the best place to go is we actually i know during the snack period today the lines were not there were no unreasonable lines there was nobody waiting on lines you know once we got into the snack period so i'll touch base with the principal about the morning but that is that is why we said in the letter that we
021recommend you bring your own snack again it's only for nine days um so we're hoping that people can work within that time frame and and you know bring something for those nine days until we get back to our normal full lunch period um because on any given day the you know the lines depending on on where student goes might be longer but i will look into that tomorrow to see what the morning was like okay because that's what they're saying it's just that and then once they get the snack they don't have enough time to eat it because you're finished with the waiting in the line so you know and kids you do need to eat be able to learn absolutely oh yeah we'll make sure you have a microphone for your presentation thank you
022hey thank you dr jewett the only comments i have for president's comments is you know one of the things that i wanted to reiterate in this process is when you hear that the state has changed some sort of guidance in the newspaper or on the television it does not necessarily mean that the guidance has been clearly defined for the school districts and what happened last week when the department of health came out with the changes to the quarantine issues on wednesday there was contradictory information in the way that that guidance was written so we couldn't just immediately come out on thursday and go here's what we're going to do because as an administration looking at the information there were so many contradictions that they needed to go back to the state and to the county
023superintendent to get clarification because what we didn't want to do is come out with some sort of guidance for the community and then have to change it and pull it back because of the lack of clarity so the reason for the delay sometimes from when you hear something to the time you get it from from the administration is making we're making sure that the information is correct is clear so that we're not having to send out multiple confusing emails about the guidance it is confusing enough already and we're doing everything that we can to try to keep the confusion from coming to you based on what we're getting from some of the state agencies so i appreciate your understanding on that and i promise you we are doing everything that we can to be as
024clear and prompt as possible with the information as it comes down to us and with that i'll turn it over to mr size mr president i just have two things one is the uh the bus driver shortage is still here um we're kind of limping through the winter season we don't require as many buses our fear is the spring season again bus drivers still shortage in our and we only have two full-time drivers one driver uh retired so we're down to one so we will continue to search for drivers and get other avenues where we can get these kids to where they're going but the spring season we know it's going to be a challenge coming up the other thing is that the budget season is starting to switch into high gear so we're going
025to be employing the operations committee to do a lot of review and the other committees will be looking at some of the budgetary items as well mr president uh any update on how they're doing uh i don't know we'll see brenda sometimes gets empty the math team defeated developing virtue secondary school girls division 25 to 7 on friday december 3rd to advance the elite 8 of the erie math tournament the team also defeated oakton high school from vienna virginia 33-25 to place in the final four of the every math championship from there the math team beat the berkeley carroll school 13-12 but lost in the championship game to crespy carmelite high school from encino california the team finished in second place in the erie math competition which was a 64 team elimination bracket the team
026is currently second in the state and first in the county for the new jersey math league competition andrew mcausland a senior was selected to attend the economics for leaders program in the past summer where on average there is one spot for every two applicants each week-long program helps approximately 30 high school students from around the world gain a better understanding on how to integrate inter economics and decision making we're excited to announce that three of our students were accepted into the region's ensembles this year stanley liu violin orchestra shiv goal horn symphonic band joshua rubin bass clarinet wind ensemble and orchestra the future business leaders of america had 27 winners announced at the regional competition all 27 students who placed will move on to the state competitions sofia fish a sophomore applied for the internship
027at the league of women voters and has been asked to be an ambassador of the great greater new brunswick area as one of the student ambassadors sophia would work with other ambassadors to spearhead gnba's outreach to larger audiences build alliances with their chapter and other organizations shine a light on youth issues and perspectives on hot topics and to help and help enhance civic education through service this is an important leadership position as sophia would be representing the greater new brunswick area chapter to various organizations senior student reagan miller has been named the facing history new york upstander of the year on march 8th she will be presented with the 2022 upstander award for the incredible work she's done in the school and the community's stand up to bigotry and hate a presentation by students from
028ap computer science cyber security computer science a an introduction to mobile app development and ap computer science principles took place in the two day hours of code on december 5th and 6th in the learning commons as the winter athletic season continues we would like to say a special warrior thank you to our nursing staff and athletic trainers for their dedication to keeping our student athletes coaches staff and spectators healthy during these challenging times we would also like to send a special shout out to our buildings and grounds department and transportation department for keeping up with all schedule changes spring sports paperwork is now being accepted and is due by february 7th to ensure that all student athletes are cleared to participate in time for tryouts each student's genesis account will allow them to see what
029forms are needed to register for your spring sport additional information can be found on the athletics page for our website and speaking of spring sports senior lorenzo mayola was one of the 12 baseball players from the northeast that was invited by the baltimore orioles for a winter hitting invitational while there he showcased his offensive talents in front of the oriole scouts and members of their front office way to go lorenzo here are current winter athletic highlights in sports as of january 15th girls bowling six to three congratulations to rachel rager class of 2022 who set two wachong hills girls bowling record so far with a high game of 227 and a high series of 628 we're so proud of you rachel winter cheer thank you to our cheering warriors for the spirited presence at our
030home basketball and wrestling events fencing kudos to the fencing team who take home the four top three spots of the summerset kind tournament will margulise was the boy's saber first place winner girls basketball five to two if you want to add some excitement to your day watch the lady warriors and they put on a show for you on the court boys basketball eight to one once again this team does not disappoint with their warrior fans and an impressive record to date wrestling finished third in the country tournament harry liu was the 157 pound somerset county champ committee reports operations uh yes uh mike bernberg who can't be with us tonight has asked me to give the uh report of the operations committee meeting which we had yesterday uh normally at this time of year or
031maybe in the february meeting we would be having gary vincy from our accountants come in and giving us the full audit report they have completed all their work for our audit of our business office this year the audit however cannot be completed because as has happened in each of the last four years the state is still again behind in providing the information that they want fed through our reports having to do with the amounts that are owed to retirees those amounts while funded by the state there was a change four years ago that requires us to report some of the results on our financial statements it ends up being a pass-through but it affects a large number of accounts and can't be done until the state provides the information gary vincy met with the operations
032committee yesterday that he's done with the all the work he needs to do for the report except getting this information from the state the highlight though is that once it once again his report will have no recommendations for things that need improvement and that i think is at least four if not more years in a row with that result and and i can also say that you know in almost every year tim's uh kim sties and his crew brings us a report with with no recommendations at all for improvements from our auditors i can think of one year several years ago where there were one or two recommendations uh and most importantly for for board members there was never a recommendation that was repeated at any time something needed to be addressed tim and his
033his crew got on it and took care of it and i can't tell members of the public and my fellow board members how lucky we are to have a such a diligent and thorough business administrator and his staff and they're a credit to uh to themselves and they make it easier for us to come up with budgets so thank you tim for that thank you uh the other uh what and uh tim has provided in each of your uh folders at your desk the three pages that we looked at in the operations report yesterday the first was the agenda the second is the comparison of fund balances and it is worth noting that uh in this most recent year-end the fund balances are significantly higher than they they have been in the past there's two
034reasons for that and the two reasons being one that uh during the covert pandemic uh the state has increased the amount that you're allowed to carry in your fund balance instead of a two percent it's a four percent figure so that that allows us to carry more you still have to have it broken up in into various accounts that have various limitations on them but the other and even more significant reason is there's been a law that's been on the books in this state since before i got on my first board of education in the year 2000 that requires the state to pay the boards of education the amount of excess tuition they pay which is defined as tuition greater than forty thousand dollars for every student while that's a law the state has never
035complied with it because they adopt a budget each year which in which they decide what percentage of that they're going to fund typically it's it's only on the order of percent or less that they fund last year with covid and and schools being in need needed they funded 90 so our that's the extraordinary aid that we get and it went up from about 200 000 a year to a little over a million that's the other big reason why our fund balances in this year are bigger than they had been in the past gary vincy spoke with us about you know how long that's going to be permitted to uh to have the higher amount in the fund balances and basically it expires in two years and and we'll need to do some planning and operations
036and on the board as to how to address that issue the other thing on this the bottom of that page uh indicates that we did have a loss last year on the uh on the cafeteria and and that's because uh even though for the most most of the year we weren't serving any lunch to uh to the students and weren't selling any lunches we did still have to provide free and reduced uh students lunch students with with lunches which meant we had still had to employ comptonian and their staff to prepare the lunches and we had volunteers delivering them but without any revenue coming in we didn't get revenue because we're not part of the national student lunch program we had a loss but it as you can see there was about 150 000 but
037we had already built up in savings in in the last few years profits from that that were approximately 430 000 so there's still a net net net profit in there because you have to as a board run something and not be losing money at it constantly so last year was an aberration and i think we're you know even with this closing in in january we're still likely to at least break even i think if not make money with it this year then we get to the major reason for our meeting last night we've got on tonight's agenda the approval of some bid openings uh an award of contracts for work that we've been planning since last year to get done over this summer it's renovations and improvements to a science lab and the ceramics room
038and an adjacent classroom to the science lab approximately 2 600 square feet in the science lab in the adjacent classroom in another large area with the ceramics room and the other project that we're doing is the renovation of the not renovation excuse me replacement of the wood gym floor in jim 3 4. both of the bids came in over the uh anticipated budget amount which we have been prepared with in consultation with our architects and it's a reflection of of uh not just supply chain issues but but contractors are busy and the prices have been going up but even more importantly than that uh more asbestos was discovered in the mastic underneath the wood floor in the gym and that's a large like 5 000 square foot area and uh it's it's an expensive proposition
039to to remove the asbestos and and after discussions with the architect the members of the operations committee uh agreed with tim that rather than do a piecemeal job and and not fully remove the asbestos you'd be better off spending the money now for two reasons one if we wait and do it later it's likely to cost more and two if we only did a piecemeal job and had to do repairs on this floor we'd we'd then be facing more asbestos abatement each time we did that for these reasons uh the the bid the bids on the two projects which were about 290 thousand dollars more than uh than we had anticipated we're recommending to the to the board that we approve awarding those contracts we tim had also looked at going to state state approved
040contractors and those prices would have been higher so given these circumstances that's the reason we're recommending to the board prove these were able to take the money from some of the uh excess extraordinary aid that we got that you can earmark for for things like this we still have to get it give notification to the county and that county ba and the county soup but we're we're free to do that once once we decide to do that and that's what we discussed in operation we're just going to interject for one moment and let ryan know you're more than welcome to stay but you are more than welcome to leave no that was on us so brian thank you have a great night are there any questions for mr fallon and and these are resolutions d10
041through d12 the bids are five and six i'm sorry five and six and d i think it's d10 and eleven are the um moving the money correct thank you great thank you mr fallon uh this is the first uh public comment period uh first opportunity for public comment the first public comment period will be limited to agenda items for this meeting only the second public comment period will be open to any topic all comments are limited to five minutes if when you come to address if you would please state your first name last name and also the town of your residence and seeing that we have a good turnout this evening unless there's an objection from the board i would open it up for any public comment at this period is there any objection okay
042so any public comment is available now hello good evening board my name is janan and i live in wachong i'd like to welcome the two new board members daniel and catherine welcome to the board i'm going to become a familiar face today many celebrate what would have been the 80th birthday of muhammad ali the boxing legend civil rights leader humanitarian and icon as i reflect on his life i consider that he came to his chosen faith islam as an adult he chose god over popularity faith over conformism and pleasing god over material wealth of this world his belief in the oneness of god led him to his belief in the oneness of humanity how could he enlist in a war to kill he would say quote i will not go ten thousand miles to help
043murder poor poor people why do i bring this up here at the wachong hills board of education meeting in 2022 i bring it up because legacies matter muhammad ali fought for equity and inclusion long before we ever called it that martin luther king whose day we celebrated yesterday would call muhammad ali courageous how do we honor their struggles for equity here at the wachong hills board has yet to move towards equity from the request from the muslim hindu jewish coalition for nearly a year now students and parents have been petitioning the board for a day off for eid and diwali so they would not miss a day of instruction after looking at the calendar for the next three years the net days off would be one day one day each year yet the board's only
044response has been to give no homework on that day we don't send our kids to school to receive homework we send them to learn and if there is instruction on the holiday then these students are at a serious disadvantage the muslim hindu and jewish coalition again requests that there be equitable access to education for all students we have provided the board with a petition with over 600 signatures to continue with things as the way they are suggests a prejudicial and biased approach to education this past week history was made dr mohammed muhiadin performed the first pig heart organ transplant in the world i asked the board if dr mohiddin was sitting here as a 15 year old student asking for compassion what would you say to him what would you expect of your doctor if
045you were on the surgical bed would you not expect mercy and compassion so i ask you board what do we want to teach these future leaders of america it's a really important question you have a fantastic road map we're just asking that you fulfill it give eden diwali off for students these students are going to continue to honor the struggles of dr king and muhammad ali and his and in his most famous words float like a butterfly sting like a bee your hands can't hit what your eyes can't see thank you and again first name last name and town of residence my name is danny curran and i live in wachong i'm here tonight to speak before you again i empha i emphasize on that word again because the coalition has been coming to these
046meetings for almost a year now we appreciate the effort the board has made to do something but that effort was not in the right direction after many months of the coalition petitioning the board we received no homework and no tests on the holidays yes tests are important not to miss but one of the biggest factors is the lesson missing one lesson can mean not understanding 10 future homework assignments or failing on a part of a test so what would you do if there was no lesson no homework and no tests what would the school day look like what would be the point of attendance sure no homework or no test is great but a lesson is important and i can tell you from experience and feedback missing lessons can be stressful for students before new
047year's my family visited charleston south carolina if you did not know south carolina was the first state to secede and was the site of where the civil war started which ultimately killed thousands south carolina had a troubled past and they wanted to put it behind them some disrespectful confederate statues were removed starting a process of healing thereby recognizing the problem and moving to solve it recently the high school's logo was seen as disrespectful and was asked to be removed it took about two years for the high school to finally change it after receiving pressure from the community and media please don't let this be a repeat board of ed it has been almost a year now and the holidays have still not been given off i speak for many kids in school who are too
048shy to speak or too scared to tell their problems and i stand up for them it may look like i'm one kid up here but i'm really representing hundreds of kids please board event take give the holidays off and listen to those hundreds and thousands of adults and kids who are affected by these holidays thank you for your time and good night thank you mr kern hi my name is nora curran and i live in huachong with the arrival of the new year we inch closer towards the end of the five-year strategic plan of the board of education the plan features four goals one of which being diversity equity and inclusion as written by the board your goal is to number one foster a culture of acceptance respect and support for all members of our
049learning community two enhance spirit collaboration and positive relations within the school community number three grow social responsibility empathy and awareness through a culturally responsive curriculum and specialized extracurricular activities number four partner with constituent districts in support of a k-12 developmental approach as students grow in understanding of diversity equity and inclusion a huge milestone for the board on their path through the five-year plan would be granting the communities that make our district diverse the opportunity to celebrate their holidays without having to miss out on any in-school learning and review on behalf of the religious minorities in our district i again ask the board to please accept and respect our community to nurture positive relations between the community and the board to show empathy and awareness through a culturally responsive curriculum and to partner with constituent districts
050in order to both reach your goals and respect the minorities of the district thank you for your time thank you mr other comments hi my name is jaya dave i'm a sophomore here and i live in warren new jersey i'm here to speak again of the need for the inclusion of dance and the arts curriculum here at watchung hills dance is a requirement by the new jersey student learning standards and states that public schools need to offer sequential arts instruction in all four arts disciplines with the inclusion of dance students will be able to learn creativity independence and leadership skills this is also an amazing opportunity for the inclusion of the social and emotional learning standards such as social awareness and relationship skills that will enhance a student's education dance can offer an outlet for
051those who are kinesthetic learners which could aid them in other areas of academics the dance program would not just be a mental break for students but it would include an opportunity for students to approach learning in a different way our previous dance program allowed for students to use teamwork and collaboration in the arts while also being able to refocus for the rest of the school day it would allow students to express themselves in ways that they have yet to explore in other arts mediums that are offered at watching hills the dance program would also provide the opportunity for students who are interested in dance but don't have the ability to afford classes outside of school as a public school we should be able to provide for these students anything that would help with their learning
052and growth our previous program also included leveled courses to allow students new to dance the ability the ability to learn the art this course was included in previous programs and it also taught diversity with the inclusion of the world dance course previous watching hill students who were a part of the dance program stated how much of the home it had created for them at their time at watching hills they believed that it had helped them find their place at watching hills and connect with other students of similar interests some students have the opportunity to find their place in academics or sports and for dancers the dance program could create more motivation during the school day in a petition there have been 200 supporters of the dance program who may be interested in participating in it
053as well this illustrates that there is interest in dance and students support a full arts education i believe that having a full arts education would be extremely beneficial for the whole school enrollment in this program would also be encouraged by cheer gymnastics theater and other athletics watching hills has an amazing and thorough arts program and has a d has done a great job including different aspects of music theater and visual arts i do believe however the dance would enhance the arts curriculum to make it full and include all interests great thank you other comments hi my name is sarah assad i currently live in warren um i don't have a speech preparation for tonight i came in support of my fellow peers and students who follow the same religion of me which is islam i
054am a senior at wachong hills and i can confidently say with my four years of experience of attending the school that there has been no representation of my culture or my religion throughout the school there has been a neglect to my holiday and there has been a failure to attempt to achieve some sort of understanding in students who even don't celebrate it and even the teachers and i can say that my absences for my holidays whether it be two times a year or even for the month of ramadan for fasting have affected my attendance record and my education in the walmart children in the school are generally uneducated about anything outside of their comfort range or anything that they see at home which is why our job as a school and our job as students
055is to teach each other is to learn is to influence each other and give each other aspects of our culture that we enjoy with the students in the school being one myself i can again confidently say there is no understanding of me being a muslim when i explain it to my friends with that said the least i can ask for is for some sort of understanding from the teachers or the faculty the school claims to be in support of all sexualities of all genders of all cultures but there is no act upon it so um i'm sorry i'm like not it's okay yeah you're fine go ahead but um yeah so they claim to be in support there's stickers all over the school posters all over the school saying like support all sexuality support all
056cultures all genders there's no act upon it there's no we're only taking off for christian holidays and jewish holidays and it caters to such a small or such a segregated community in the school and doesn't reach the wide range of students that are multi-cultured that are celebrate multiple religions and who acknowledge at least the second largest religion in the world which is islam thank you other comments seeing none i will close this opportunity for public comments all right moving on uh for board discussion uh the only item that i have uh again call your attention to um ding ding ding ding ding board self evaluation so please get your board self-evaluations in um like to have them done uh hopefully by the next meeting please pretty please uh that is exclusive of our new board
057members that's so dan and catherine you were excused from that you're doing a great job um and then the other thing is just a a reminder of our board goals uh for the year that are in your blue notes uh you're welcome to review those and if you have any questions we can certainly discuss them later there are a few addendum items on tonight's agenda so at this point in time i want to provide an opportunity to see if there's any uh board discussion on any of the addendum items that were added to the agenda from our last meeting yes dr chand i don't know it's a typo a7 hiv is to incident the incident number for the hiv yeah yeah it's just it's we 2122 was the year it occurred in and then this
058is the fourth case that's that's how we link anything else mr president i'd like to move resolutions a1 through a7 second is there any uh discussion on items a1 through a7 seeing none roll call vote please miss barone dr chan yes mr fallon yes mr gaelic yes miss lee yes dober otter rasa yes mr president i'd like to move resolution a8 second any discussion on the a8 seeing none wrong call exercise ms barone dr chand yes mr fallon yes mr gaelic yes mrs lee yes rasa and mr morris yes mr president i'd like to move resolutions c1 through c12 discussion we'll call mr stein ms brown dr chan yes mr fallon yes the gaelic yes lee yes silver yeah otter rasa mr morris yes mr president i'd like to move resolutions d1 through d12 any
059uh discussion yeah i have questions clarification yes sir item d9 yes sir i was about to comment on that but go ahead so when somebody is making a donation does it come with some strings attached to it you know i mean when somebody making money it's just giving money just like that or they expect something in return no there's there's no expectation in return this is a this was an outreach by our teacher our wood arts teacher who had found out that someone was trying to get uh to get to give away some kitchen countertops that were not acceptable to a homeowner okay so being that we're at school this is a good thing to work on so he asked if he could take it they had us fill out a form and gave us
060a bunch of wood that he could work on so that's a that's a good thing so then the value attached to that you know 5830 correct so that is the value given by who i mean because that would be the cash amount right yeah that would be the donor um okay they did that evaluation correct and our the teacher did tell me he said honestly he felt it was that's a pretty fair price okay now i have questions for item d10 you have the phase contrast microscopy and transmission electron microscopy on jim floor as well as the science room so question is that what are these microscope doing in the gym floor so there's it's a there's asbestos it's not it's microscopy it's not not equipment it's not a microphone it has to do with
061the asbestos no no it's a microscope you say transmission electron microscopy it's a microscope our consultant is having to employ microscopy as part of his evaluation that we have completed the complete removal of the asbestos that's the charge he pays for access to the microscope item would be sent sample will be sent to outside company and this is the service charges yeah and it's got to be checked for 22 days for that okay now next question is the air monitoring what is the air monitoring here what is involved same thing so to remove the the uh asbestos literally have to ground you know our sandblasted or powered out so it produces the cloud so to speak and in that very very enclosed area that air has to be monitored until it's completely free oh i
062see yeah so daily yes it has to be okay thank you great and i just wanted to uh on behalf of the board thank uh john boos and company for the very generous donation to our wood arts program any other comments uh mr yeah i not only echo that but also like to thank our wood arts teacher for being proactive and finding that and getting for us that that's initiative that greatly appreciated excellent any other comments on the d items if you're ever here early for a board meeting and you walk down to his room he has some wooden puzzles hanging on the wall that you can occupy yourself with and challenge yourself with maybe next time if you don't have pictures of quinn i'll bring those all right roll call mr stein ms barone
063dr chand yes mr fallon yes mr gaelic yes miss lee sober otter rasa mr morrison yes this is the second opportunity for public comment do we have any other second public comments seeing none we'll move on to other businesses is there any other business any board member would like to address mr chan mr fallon so i believe there will be a new jersey science fair in march as every year are we participating in that i wouldn't know i'd have to check with our science supervisor okay uh mr fallon yes uh given that we've again had more students come coming to address us i'd like to ask us to consider at some point whether there is a way to have people who are participating in our meetings remotely be able to participate in public comment i
064realize that would probably mean going back to zoom rather than youtube but i asked the administration to explore the feasibility of that so we can have a board discussion as to whether or not we want to do that just so you know we did ask the attorney about that and he strongly recommended against that but we can that doesn't mean i'm just passing that along i will ask that you tell us why the attorneys strongly recommend it against it there are some districts that do it there are some districts that don't yes yeah i'm not asking for it now i'm not asking for you good because if you have a comment is no no and i understand that generally what i'm trying to partially address also is we've now received multiple requests to change our
065agenda to accommodate students coming to to meetings and asking us to move our agenda around i don't sense that there's generally board favor for for changing our agendas to move it before all the reports and i don't support that either but i'm trying to find some way because we're going to be having these partic some particular uh comments coming for the next couple months and it may be worth looking at have we received any other requests though than this one no we've only had one we've only had one consistent request to change the agenda uh any other items dr chan one more question tim is for you you know during the virtual classes we had the zoom licenses right quite a few one four i guess for each teacher what the status now do we
066still have so many licenses or the zoom zoom licenses oh yeah we do so each teacher is still having one license because you have um which is quite expensive because we have you know in person classes right i think it's a limited amount yeah we haven't well we have enough for them to all be on i see all you can eat i mean we still use it extensively we do in our in the administrative offices i see but question is that they can be shared also right because it's quite expensive right so if each teacher has one license it would be quite expensive the teacher has a license i don't think that's the way we do it i think we have a district okay all right any other things any from any other board member
067the only item that uh mr fell one last thing i'll express a hope that our administration will examine whether or not we can hire a dance teacher i think that would be good to explore an education committee yeah that's the thing we do have the teacher we just don't have the students okay she's an instructional aide are you talking about the students yes the student that's welcome here the issue is when it comes to actually registering for the class maybe maybe we can look at possibly offering it next year we can we'll talk about a net committee perfect only item i have is a reminder that this thursday there is a somerset county school board association meeting that you can attend by registering at the school boards association is just virtual i'm sorry attend virtually
068um the topic this week is board's role in um setting curriculum or assisting with curriculum interesting that the person that is presenting happens to be the director of curriculum and instruction for warren township who also happens to be the board president of somerville so he's coming in with a perspective of mr gimmick so uh i think that will be an interesting presentation to hear you're encouraged to attend and if there's no other items i'll entertain a motion to adjourn there we go thank you all mean they're worried about you know somebody gets out of there i agree i agree with that yeah