001okay we're going live good luck thank you uh welcome everyone uh this is the board of education meeting for which adequate notice under the open public meetings act was provided by written notice on april 22 2021 to the courier news the echoes sentinel the star ledger tap into warren and the clerks of the borough of wachong and the townships of greenbrook longhill and warren uh roll call attendance please mrs brown here mr burnberg here dr chand mr fallon yes mr huntsinger yeah mr morrison here this is over here it's potter ms prasa here and dr schabelski here uh please rise for the pledge of allegiance i don't know if we're going to see a flag or not i don't seem to be able to share my screen oh there's something that's happening it's enabled now
002the words don't change [Laughter] i pledge allegiance [Music] justice overall uh thank you uh in accordance with the provisions of the new jersey open public meetings act did hereby resolve that the board move into executive session to discuss confidential personnel matters in a student residency matter after which action may be taken it is expected that matters discussed in executive session will be made public as soon as the need for confidentiality no longer exists may i have a motion to move into executive thank you a second thank you thank you we will be back in about a half hour just there i'm reminded that we are still live even though we're waiting for 7 30. so it is uh 7 30 and we will return to public session and our next item of business is the
003presentation of the 2021 2022 school district budget and i will turn it over to ms scheiderman and mr sties good evening and welcome to the final 2122 budget presentation for this evening we are pleased to be able to have reached this point and move through the timeline as smoothly as we have um thank you of course to the board of education for all of your support during the budget process and for sharing information and thoughts and feedback as you know the strategic plan for the 2020 through 2025 is the primary driver of the planning that we do as an administrative team in developing the budget and our four strategic plan goals that we have kept at the forefront of this process student wellness equitable opportunities and personalized educational goals enriched innovative ethical education for the
004students and goal for our diversity equity and inclusion the budget that the board provides and the community provides bears wonderful fruit and the students continue to make us very proud by making the most of their educational opportunities here at watchung hills 92 percent of students earning scores of three or better on the ap exams 110 students earning recognition for ap performance including 29 national ap scholars and 11 national merit finalists for the class of 2021. the students are just wonderful um and making good use of this budget and the services and programs um some accomplishments the girls soccer conference co-champions football division four champions boys basketball skyline conference first place a winner for international medicine olympiad the usa biology olympiad semi-finalist from the high school 28 students competing in the state tournament for the fbla
005which is an incredible increase from previous years two dramatic productions for the 2021 school year despite the pandemic and current situation that we are in we're headed into having our musical in the spring at our outdoor um outdoor theater if you haven't seen it yet um stop by to see it it's really incredible and 63 seal of my liver by literacy award recipients in six different languages we did open up this school year for in-person instruction we were under a hybrid in-person schedule and we now as you know have expanded to offering students five days a week in person instruction financially a very fiscally responsible and healthy school district triple a bond rating a clean audit again with no recommendations three years in a row and being a regional high school with four sending districts
006we are making the most of our shared services opportunities transportation insurance buildings and grounds and always looking for additional opportunities for shared services i know you turn it over to me thank you it's smoother in person so uh thanks to the board to the public and and um the communities uh for uh support that we've been given in the budget um as you all know this is an opportunity for the public to review the budget uh it's the public hearing so we'll go through things that are drivers in the budget we'll go through a little bit of a detail into which where they are and then we'll talk about some of the expenses and we'll go through some of the details of the budget uh that we have for next school year so some of
007the drivers for the budget uh include as ms scheiderman correctly pointed out strategic plan is always at the forefront um it's what drives most of the decisions we make obviously there's other ones like for example pandemics that that uh necessitate us to pivot and and do other things but for by and large we do try to to stick with the strategic plan at all times and it's a commitment that the board the administration and the staff have all made which is great enrollment is obviously a a major factor how many students we have in the building and in terms of resources we have our tax levy which you will see is most of our revenue we have a smaller amount of state aid about two million dollars in a about a 50 million dollar budget
008and we have a tuition send receive with our um our partners greenbrook board of education uh and that makes up about seven million dollars in the revenue side in terms of expenses we always look at salary and benefits first that's our largest item obviously we're a service industry technology always is a big factor uh and certainly that was uh at the forefront this past year capital maintenance needs always very important got to maintain the building properly and make sure you don't leave issues for years to come so if whatever you take care of now you will not have to take care of years later and as i mentioned before um this particular year and even into next year we do have to plan and be ready for any issues with the cobot 19 pandemic and
009as i mentioned the enrollment is always a big factor and as you can see our enrollment is dropping it's been steadily dropping by small amounts each year for the past uh actually i only have four years on this but the past five years it's been dropping uh we we projecting at 1879 for next school year in terms of salary and benefits uh it accounts for about 65 percent of the the total operating budget we and it's something just uh it's hard to see because it's over a five-year period but we did reduce net positions by 12 over the past five years mostly through attrition we did i believe we did have uh one that we rift a couple years back um we are also in the final year of the three-year contract with our largest
010union the w-h-r-e-a and that amount was three percent a three percent increase and in terms of health insurance we've been very successful with the school health insurance fund which we we joined uh i believe it was three years ago um and our our projection or our increases have been below three percent and this year it's actually at one um and the one thing we do have to pointed out the chapter 78 contributions that's contributions from staff to help fund the um health benefits that's at 1.3 million um ehp that that's um employees health plan that's something that the legislature enacted and it did actually drop our contributions um we lost about twenty thousand dollars um okay so in terms of academic co-curricular editions some of the things we're adding and you can see the pictures
011on the right this was phase one of furniture that we put into five classrooms and we're going to be adding similar furniture in five different classrooms that furniture has gone over well in terms of feedback from the students and the staff we have a new textbook series for math and social studies some are textbooks but most are online books we have a skill deficiency assessment software obviously that's something that could be covered by uh the coronavirus funds which are the acronym is esser sr3 which we haven't received yet um so just to keep keep aware that we do have that in the budget but it's possible we may have funds to cover that at some point in time um but right as of right now we do not have that information um in terms of
012co-curricular we have our new uniforms for next year and slightly up about half of that is to replace uniforms that have the um the warrior head symbol and as the board knows we have the board move to change that so um so that was necessary but again not all of that just about 52 000 of that 109. on the new athletic scheduling software it's a very minor item and we're adding a position a competition share position but we're also eliminating or not eliminating we're not funding uh a jv position uh for um cheer i think it's in the winter so the net is an addition of twelve hundred dollars which is uh minuscule uh in terms of technology that we're in year five of the chromebooks the initiative the one-to-ones um that and we did
013enhance those we're trying to get better chromebooks to assist with better connectivity we have wireless access points 10 new smart boards 105 and it'll be great knowing that the students will actually be all in the classrooms we hope uh and we believe it will be and then we have 105 laptops for the staff that's about half of what we actually need we're doing half next year and half the following year and four virtual desktop servers for our it folks in terms of capital needs we are we are doing a major renovation to a very large room in our north building it's a major mechanical and plumbing changes new casework new furniture new lighting a major layout revisions and upgraded technology for that program our ceramics room is a picture of the ceramics room on the
014right or my right it's a complete replacement of the furniture the cabinets that you see along the side wall there will patch and repair the walls in the ceiling and some minor lighting and plumbing upgrades to make that a more uh efficient uh learning environment for our kids and in the old gym gym 3 4 we're replacing the floor we've been putting this one off for quite some time but you can see by that picture we've been patching patching patching there's lots of band-aids no longer okay to have the band-aids it's gotten to the point where we need to replace it so we're going to use a synthetic floor we did some research this is something we don't this is a gym we don't use for competitions mainly for health and pe uh and we
015also use it we rent it out we have intermedia we're not in murals but i know the kids play there afterwards after school um so that being the can we also use it for lunch so that being the case the synthetic floor was the best floor uh in this particular it's a multi-purpose floor so it makes sense for this particular area and in our north building courtyard we're doing some lighting upgrades we're actually going to put lighting on the exterior walls there there's three walls we'll put them on this will allow some of the students to do things at night ms schneiderman mentioned it actually has nothing to do with the play but it is pretty neat i hope folks do get out to see that the actual stage is very cool uh and it
016has like a this roof that's really neat but anyway there's other things in the future we would love to do with the lighting it will certainly assist our band and scheduling practices and things it'll add some flexibility to the evening events as well terms of covid19 just a rehash of what we did this year we spent over hundred thousand dollars in covert related expenses cleaning sanitation facilities improvements technology a lot of hvac obviously the ppe those sorts of things there were countless hours spent by our staff moving best making sure we can have the students in safely on that hybrid approach and we did receive about three hundred thousand dollars there is still some fema money out there we did meet with them but that hasn't been finalized yet um but anyway so there are
017additional funds that we may get at some point in time and obviously like i said before the coronavirus phase three funding um we do anticipate at some point um we uh there's also reserve funds that we have in place and people asked me last year and they asked me this year going into next year's budget well what if this happens or what if that happens and that's what the reserve funds are really for the board plans wisely we put away funds in reserves and the funds are there for issues rainy days you know and we would never anticipate it would be a pandemic but thankfully we had that that amount of funds to move into the budget to take care of some of these projects so again you know the board is is ready for
018uh things that have that come up and i hope that next year nothing comes up and we're back to a normal schedule but just in case we we can't we will be prepared just looking at some of the numbers in terms of last year's budget the year we're in right now 2021 i'd say last year and we're in it but last year or this year's budget that we're in we did have one entry in there that kind of skewed the numbers a bit what we did was we passed through the budget the referendum project so we used our reserve funds and state funding from debt service aid uh but you had to put it through the budget and it kind of artificial artificially inflates the budget so i put an asterisk near the surplus number
019on the top and you can see where i deducted it on the bottom i called it a tax neutral referendum entry so the actual budget from 2021 is 43 849 186 and 2122's operating budget this is the revenues 44 318 875. i mentioned it before the tax levy you can see takes is most of our revenue that's the property taxes we do get a small amount of state aid two million dollars and 8.5 million dollars in tuition revenue most of that is from our partner green book bring green brook i'm sorry so overall the operating budget on the revenue side is up 1.1 and then on the expenditure side um as i said the the largest item is salary and benefits obviously that's where we look first the one thing i pointed out to the
020board when we discussed this budget back in march the special ed tuition is up and we anticipate that may be a little bit of a trend going forward i think the pandemic year certainly is going to have an impact on special education and again we are prepared to take care of that overall the spending plan is up 1.1 this is the operating budget only uh just for some comparison purposes these are schools like us their regional high schools they are in communities similar to ours you could see our cost per pupil 19 0417 compares favorably to some of the other other schools on the list other ones um admittedly there are some that are north jersey so you tend to see higher costs up there but we do have some mars county schools which are
021very close to us morris hills sales westmores so we obviously compare very well there in terms of our instructional expenses we're actually low i would like to see that a little higher in comparison but i'm still it kind of falls in with the overall theme or lower than the others uh in terms of our administrative costs we've actually decreased we actually were further to the left but now we're kind of moving our way back down which is i'm happy to see and for curricular costs we're actually on the low end of that 100 essentials actually a little bit lower but still we're not too far off most of the schools in terms of the tax levy the thing that always kind of perplexes folks is the um the fact that our tax levy changes the
022the allocation changes each year between the three constituent districts warren wachong and longhill and it changes based on two factors factor number one is the amount of elementary students compared to the high school students in comparison to the other two schools and then the change in valuation if you if that column on the left there is um if that is negative and the other and the the column in the middle is um positive then that's when you tend to see a little you'll get a little bit more of the budget so what that means is your valuation is going up the house valuations in the town and you have but you have less elementary students um so that that will cause our and more high school students that that would cause our tax levy to
023be apportioned a little higher to those towns but the results of of those changes um in for next year are a slight increase to warren point one four nine uh a decrease in watch young 0.56 and then a increase in long hill 0.41 and just keep in mind how the taxes work this is for half of a year so we're still working on because we work on a fiscal year that the townships work on a calendar year so it gets a little tricky i know but with that um the tax impact of all three towns so so for warren township average home of 748 thousand uh dollar increase on an average home compared to last year's average is eighty dollars dollar increase per one hundred thousand of home value is eight dollars and twenty cents
024watch young boro average home value of 730 000. uh it's actually um a decrease which is uh strange for the um 100 000 home value of 3.93 and below that it says a dollar increase for the average home because the average home in wachong actually increased the value increased so if you compare average last year to average this year i think last year's was about 7 10 7 15. so that average home goes up 18 um in long hill township the average value home value 506 or 507 uh dollar increase per hundred thousand dollars it's a decrease of 6.36 and for the average home a decrease in of 29 and 68 cents per home so that's why i see that you can see the different um numbers per town that's based on that that formula
025you saw on the previous slide and that is that is it so if there are questions uh thank you ms uh scheidermann and mr stize uh this is the opportunity for board to ask any questions of either ms scheiderman or mr sties about the budget presentation dr chabelski yes please uh so mr size first of all thank you um both to ms schneiderman yourself and the administration for uh pulling this together and providing such a comprehensive overview um just for clarity purposes um is it accurate to say that the sr1 and sr2 funds have been utilized as part of the current year budget to offset costs related to covet 19 and the sr-3 funds which have yet to be allocated from the state you know are not present in anything that we're looking at currently
026yeah so the the sr1 funds were yes the yesterday funds most there's two components in the yes or two which we're still working on that is the um the mental health piece and then the learning acceleration piece those two that's about seventy thousand dollars we have not used those yet but the other funds which was about uh close to two hundred thousand dollars we did use uh actually mostly for hvac work great thank you mr fallon yeah i just want to thank uh mr stize and and uh beth scheidermann our acting superintendent for once again bringing us another budget that that really embodies the principles of our strategic plan and is is guided by uh our strategic plan uh you know they're they're i think promise to be good improvements for for what we can
027provide for the students next year and i think it's another fiscally responsible budget so not not just youtube but the whole administration that you put together thank you i think you've done a very good job with this budget thank you does everyone anyone else have a uh question or comment i'm doing my best to scan uh everyone to make sure hearing and seeing none this will be the opportunity for public to comment this is specifically only uh to the budget we will still have two more comment periods uh during uh the rest of the standard board meeting so if miss schneiderman you can open up the queue and see if anybody in the public has any comments yes there's people in the waiting room i believe i just admitted miss shanahan as you make a
028public comment if you would please state your name and uh location for the record please ms shanahan did you have a comment regarding the budget no i'm sorry i thought um i thought just we were supposed to log in in case we had a question i didn't have a specific question yet okay thank you sorry okay good evening donna schmitz did you have a comment for the public regarding the budget ms schmitz did you have a comment for the public regarding the budget this evening it looks like she's still connecting to audio okay let me try somebody else good evening april um please state your name and your town and if you had a comment regarding the budget presentation april larson at 10 pine street and i have a public comment not related to budget
029okay i will bring you back when we are at that portion thank you good evening jill welcome to the board of education meeting please state your name and the town where you reside and if you have a comment related to the budget presentation and hi jill conway from greenbrook and no i i have a comment for later thank you thank you and that is everyone in the waiting room at this point uh thank you ms uh scheidermann that brings us to the action item for uh adoption of the 2021-2022 budget i would entertain a motion for approval mr president i'd like to move approval of resolution d1 the adoption of the budget for next school year thank you may i have a second second thank you uh would anybody like to further discuss this uh
030seeing non-roll call vote please mrs maron yes mr burnberg yes dr chand you're in second yes yes yes mr palin yes mr hunzinger yes mr morrison silver yes espresso yes and dr schubelski yes who cares thank you uh this brings us to the public hearing on uh the superintendent dr jewitt's contract uh the board uh has uh recommended uh renewal of her contract uh and this is the uh opportunity for uh public comments specifically to the superintendent's contract while we're waiting i i will make a comment that under uh board correspondence we did receive a very uh nice letter in support of dr jewitt's renewal for which we are grateful for evening gina strong welcome to the board of education meeting do you have a comment regarding the superintendent's contract miss strong did you have
031a comment regarding the contract okay we can try again later welcome back mrs larson did you have a comment regarding the superintendent's contract no i don't have a comment on the superintendent's contract thank you okay and that is everyone in the waiting room at this point uh thank you uh and that brings us to uh board correspondents uh outside of the letter that i mentioned i think we've received a few other letters on a different topic ms scheidermann i don't know if you want to comment on that if uh if not i will yes we received several letters regarding the diversity equity and inclusion webinar that has been rescheduled to june and the education committee is meeting on thursday and is going to be reviewing the comments as well as our program and having a
032thorough discussion on that topic we also received correspondence regarding the removal of absent but virtual as an option since we've returned to five day a week instruction thank you miss schneiderman and for those who sent in correspondence regarding the diversity equity and inclusion webinar uh we appreciate the comments that you uh uh sent in uh we did uh delay the webinar uh for the reason of uh uh too few folks compared to uh prior uh webinar last year had plans to attend and we wanted to give a little bit more opportunity but this also gives us as a board an opportunity to review that uh for those of you who are not aware uh as has already been stated in this meeting that this is part of our strategic plan goal four uh and uh
033this has been going on since fall of 2019 uh nonetheless our education committee will uh review the letters uh regarding this uh and we'll bring uh a summary of those uh back to the board after their meeting and with that we'll move on to superintendent's comments thank you dr schabelski tonight is my last evening my last board of education meeting as the acting superintendent and i want to thank dr jewett for the opportunity and i want to thank the board of education for your steady support and your encouragement these past few months similarly i want to thank my watchung hills colleagues for their support i am grateful to all of you watching hills is truly a wonderful place to work and a wonderful place to learn so from the bottom of my heart i don't
034think i can ever tell you how much i appreciate all of your support um this has been a great experience for me because of all of you um and again uh to mr sties for his uh knowledge and his good advice these past few months too thank you thank you very much uh ms schneiderman and uh on behalf of the board i would like to thank you for your outstanding leadership during the last several months of dr jewett's leave this would be a challenging endeavor under any sort of circumstance uh but given the pandemic we're especially grateful for your success and keeping our schools open keeping our schools safe uh and expanding in our uh last uh term uh to five day a week instruction for those who are uh desirous of that uh and
035uh although not not typical for this portion of the meeting if any of the board members would like to make their own comments uh to uh ms schneiderman i think this would be a great opportunity to do so and since i can't see all of you feel free to speak out so uh uh first of all i want to congratulate uh ms schneiderman for just an outstanding job uh again it's it's a difficult thing to do under normal circumstances and you've handled uh this role and uh provided leadership with um just deft handling and a level of grace and empathy uh that i think met the moment and so i just i can't i can't speak highly enough of the job that you've done and you've certainly proved your medal of being able to handle
036uh running a district um i'm i'm not wishing that you run off somewhere to do that uh but certainly uh you've you've shown that you are more than capable uh to be a successful superintendent in the state so congratulations and thank you uh for all the work that you've done under these most trying circumstances thank you i would like to also congratulate beth you stepped in and it was as smooth as could be you just you just handled it as a professional i mean there's just no other way to say it you were perfect thank you so much barry thank you [Applause] uh and uh to to continue my comments one uh i wanted to also personally thank ms shutterman and mr sties for all of their hard work along with the administrators uh in
037developing our budget and once again uh providing us with uh a manageable budget that achieves the goals that we've set out for the district we know it's a long process and it takes a lot of effort at work with some items being more controversial than others but once again stellar marks to all of you for doing that and then finally one of our agenda items uh towards the end i wanted to thank on behalf of the board the ernst wessel foundation for their generous grant for uh uh two student scholarships uh and with that i'll uh turn it over he has peter has his handwriting sorry peter that's so that's okay uh beth you know when i got to the school i i first met you when you were advisor to the color guard you
038come a long long way from from there and and i have to echo the comments of greg and bob and barry you know you you did an outstanding job you know we we threw you into this and and as barry said you never missed a beat you just kept us going and and as bob said you've you've shown your medal and your your competence we don't want to lose you but but you certainly could be a superintendent anywhere in in this state and i'm i'm proud of the job you've done thank you so much thank you just in case i missed anyone else anyone else uh have a comment i think we would all probably say the same thing thank you again thank you thank you susan yeah i will share the same view with
039everybody what has said i didn't feel any change you know what it was indeed seamless and we're very grateful for that absolutely we didn't feel anything it was so seamless transition thank you so mr size the ball gets tossed to you for your comments thank you yeah i'll say the same thing with that you know honestly like in the best of times it's always disruptive to have an acting superintendent uh or interim or whatever you you know whatever that may be um this was not normal times uh i've seen more in the last three or four months like strange things happening and this and that losing a things that you we forget about but losing a transfer switch uh for our generator you know calling beth in the middle of the night a foot and
040a half snow storm you know so this was like a brutal stretch of time and i think you guys echoed it perfectly there was no disruption and you saw it but the day-to-day staff and the the day-to-day administration they all saw that and they were all incredibly uh appreciative of what what uh you did so thank you thank you thank you um so one other thing i do want to we have a i have a meeting tomorrow morning with the operations committee and uh actually susan's going to sit in for rita we're going to be talking about food service for our next school year um one of the topics it has to do with the national school lunch program um so there's a lot of things that we want to talk about so just kind
041of prizing the board that that's going to be a discussion item uh going forward also we are moving forward with the ecip program as as you all know we approved the solar vendor so they're getting involved in doing the paperwork and the honeywell our ecip partner is almost ready to speak with the committee first and if the board so chooses the full board uh just going through their plan it's a significant plan the numbers you're talking about total project is six six million to seven million dollars so just to give you an idea of where we're going with this thing but it's a substantial improvement to our energy uh to our certainly our green energy but to our energy it's going to save the taxpayers in the long run a lot of money down the
042road so when the once we have that information together we'll get it together with an operations committee but i believe it's going to be within it's it's in the month of may we'll be having that committee meeting with the operations group and then maybe the full board in june so anyway that that's my comments thank you very much mr sties uh we'll move on to uh student representative comments i didn't see ms al gore here i do see mr ober so i don't know if you're taking uh both roles today but please all right uh go ahead thank you i uh there's a lot so it it'll be exciting um for the student achievements we are proud to announce that the following students qualified to compete in the national cyber scholarship competition which took place
043from april 5th to 7th to qualify students had to complete a set a set of computer security puzzles and challenges that's their skills in areas such as password cracking reverse engineering memory corruption and cryptography prizes in the national cyber scholarship competition included 2 500 in college scholarships access to professional cyber security training and more from grades 12 shane connors and lizzie wang one from grades 11 uh nicole brunskill ricky dass and parita panalu and from grades nine alexa christu owen glass and brandon smilsky congratulations to sophomore isabella rites who won first place in the 25th annual high school essay contest celebrating women's history month sponsored by the elizabeth ann seton center for women's studies at seton hall university she will receive an award certificate and a monetary prize of 100 isabella's essay was selected from
044several hundred entries received from all over the state the essays were evaluated by several professors in the women and gender studies program who were all impressed by the thoughtfulness of isabella's essay as well as the quality of writing congratulations to junior anika kathstein who is the national winner of the 2021 national society of the colonial danes of america congressional seminar essay contest iniko will receive a full scholarship to the washington workshop congressional seminar which takes place this summer in washington d.c she will receive a week of citizenship education the chance to meet u.s senators and congressmen and visit memorials and monuments throughout the city additionally innoco will be able to explore the inner workings of government and hear from speakers from the legislative and federal branches 27 fbla students competed in the future business leaders
045of america state competition 14 students placed in the top five with several students taking home taking first place in the state students who will be placed in the top four will move to the next we'll move on to the national competition in total 13 students will be moving on to nationals uh first place anmol bhatia andrew kwanzo adveda patel ian youngelson stephen chang and moha trevetti second place megan mcgee third place jordan jungleson nicholas yang emma liang ronald leong and wesley liu fourth place stanley lou fifth place sabine sabrina hugh um junior daniel z j zhang won a gold key and two silver key awards for poetry in the scholastic art and writing uh awards northeast region congratulations to mr lynch and the entire cast of of clue for receiving the following five nominations for
046the montclair theory awards outstanding achievement in contemporary costume design outstanding achievement in lighting design outstanding performance by a actor in a mass play ben coop at cupid outstanding performance by an actress in a mass play jordan pincus an outstanding production of a mass play the virtual awards ceremony will take place on may 20. a team of eight students in the math league participated in the princeton university mathematics competition in which they came out victorious the team was sixth in division this is the first time the watching hills math team is placed in the top ten three of our students were awarded individually for their performance daniel zang uh 10th place algebra ben liu seventh place number theory and anton livonian 8th place geometry the team also placed third in the state in that in the
047new jersey math contest congratulations to anmol batya who was admitted to the pioneers research program spring summer term on mold's research area is biology neuroscience psychology with the concentration in genes environment and the brain pioneer is the only is the world's only online research uh program with u.s college credit for high school students it is global highly selective and his rigorous academic oversight and collaboration with oberlin college as well as an intensive support and research mythology methodology training for the sports update we rounded up the late winter lx season with these results gymnastics boo brady represented watching hills at the annual senior showcase in volleyball the girls ended their season going as far as the state semifinals tournament in wrestling the wrestling warriors had a successful season and spent and sent two wrestlers to the
048state tournament hunter soybert qualified as a top 285 pound wrestler and blake bona qualified as well as taking fifth place overall in the 160 pound weight class after a one year hiatus of spring sports these sports are back in action baseball softball boys lacrosse girls lacrosse boys volleyball tennis boys tennis boys golf and girls golf track and field also had a very successful weekend the boys placing third overall in the meet at ridge the boys javelin team finished first and vincent rizzi had the highest jump mark of six feet the girls placed fifth overall with gretel gelmer and claudia gelmert placing first in their respective cobalt relays thank you great right you're on muted greg thanks uh thank you mr ober does anyone have any uh comments or uh questions for mr ober yeah i
049greg i would just like to remind our fellow board members who aren't from long hill that isabella writes who won that essay contest is the daughter of our former board colleague lisa demizio yes john you mentioned memory corruption uh that the computer guys were working on when when i had memory corruption it was after i was cramming for a test that's funny thanks any anyone else with any comments i guess i would like to close this by uh wishing luck to all of our seniors may 1st decision day is coming up this saturday and hopefully you've heard from most of the schools and if you're on a wait list that you'll soon be hearing and uh we wish you the best of luck in uh achieving your dream college to attend uh in the coming
050year that will move us to our first opportunity for public comment this public comment period is reserved to agenda items specifically for this meeting we will have a second public comment period at the end of the meeting uh open to any comments uh the comment uh is typically limited to five minutes and we'll open up the queue uh for comments about uh the agenda items for this meeting and again a reminder please provide your name and town before you comment miss strong did you have any comments regarding an agenda item i actually had comments about something i thought would be on the agenda today which it was about project graduation um so i guess i have nothing to say at this moment okay thank you wait that should be on there there there is a
051section where we're approving uh the the budget uh uh transfer uh from the board for project graduation so uh it may be pertinent if you would like to share your comments yeah it actually is on there it's perfect though it's uh i i think it's a donation d8 correct yeah so d so gina it is on the d8 is the item on the uh on the agenda okay and it's what we spoke of mr stein so i don't speak out of turn thank you it's uh for sixteen thousand dollars thank you i just wanted to say i i thought it would come up for to be voted on before i spoke but i just want to say as the project graduation um chairperson and on behalf of our committee i appreciate you going back over
052this multiple times because i know we met um at the end of february and i wanted to thank the board thank you for bringing it to the board and the board for voting on it because it really as i said in my letter it you the money the board of ed gives has been instrumental in the previous years but it was critical to us moving forward uh we'll have decisions made this week and i can send a letter to the parents that's not so vague thanking you know asking telling them to jump on board because we've got plans we had plan a plan b and plan c and this actually helps us move forward this week um and for a class that's had nothing no senior experience if you'll allow me to say that um
053this whole year bringing them the t-shirts the spirit days and giving them one final celebration together is really important to us as a committee and i know to the parents too so i want to thank you for revisiting that like two and three times i know you we went back and forth with discussions and i appreciate everything you've done thank you thank you good evening mrs larson did you have a comment regarding any agenda item no i don't thank you okay and that is the entire waiting room at this point uh thank you ms schneiderman and and again for the public who is listening there will be a second opportunity for public comment uh after the agenda items are voted on and that will be open to uh any topic uh that moves us on
054to uh board discussion uh just a reminder that uh we've got uh uh assessments for dr jewett that uh we've committed to have done by the end of this month so this is just a friendly reminder that you've got the rest of this week uh to get that completed if you have any difficulties uh with accessing it there should have been uh an email sent uh from new jersey school boards uh if you have any questions uh give one of us a holler and we'll uh try to help out uh with that uh excuse me i was just gonna say greg that um if you do a search by gwen uh gwen thornton then you'll find the email and find the link easiest way to find it thank you susie uh do we have any
055other specific board discussion items i i know mr morrison may have some update for us about the regionalization presentation that might be pertinent at this section sure the the regionalization ad hoc committee will be meeting on monday at seven o'clock uh with representatives business administrators and superintendents from the sending districts to have a presentation uh from mark magyar with the new jersey senate regarding the potential for a regionalization feasibility study uh we following that meeting we will probably have some action items for this board to take up but this is the first opportunity for all the boards to hear the same information that our ad hoc committee has heard um so they can make uh their own judgments and informed decisions about uh participation together in this feasibility study thanks mr morrison for your leadership
056in this and uh continuing to move that forward uh peter did i hear you yep yeah uh we the new jersey school board's delegate assembly is scheduled for approximately may 15th i will try and uh have uh a little discussion of of what what is going to be up for a vote at our next meeting so if there's any input on that and if i can get it around to people before then i i will as well uh but we want to discuss that briefly at the next meeting and greg i don't know whether or not you want to now discuss whether our next meeting ought to be in person or you you you read my mind uh so uh uh as you're all aware uh this this was going to be our last virtual
057meeting that is scheduled uh our our plan was to go in person uh starting in may uh if uh anybody has accommodations that they require and uh or uh desire and would like to remain virtual that option exists but this would be a good forum to discuss the plan to go forward to in-person meetings beginning in may what is the plan exactly in terms of how public would participate so that i don't know if we have that plan developed yet or so uh if if somebody knows better correct me if i'm wrong i think the governor just sent out very recently updates in both outdoor and indoor meeting capacity and i believe indoor meeting capacity increased if i'm not mistaken to 200 but i'm not positive of that so if somebody knows better correct me
058but i do think that there's opportunity for in person for public and obviously we would want to offer a virtual option as well so dr jabelski based on based on actually the the executive orders um i think it was executive order 234 exempts boards of education from indoor limitations so we can meet without an indoor limitation as it relates to our conducting a legislative function thanks and i figured the the overall larger number was never met anyway by the previous meeting so i think we qualify under both circumstances and the idea is to meet in the media center and we would still be doing all the visitor uh like taking temperature like i'm just trying to understand people come in get the temperature taken have to fill out that form we would still be doing
059all that uh i i would assume so um the charger men can comment but i think we would handle it no differently than a regular school day with people entering the building we are still we have the kiosks for the temperature scanning and we have paper questionnaires for visitors to the school we are still doing those procedures and then within the media center we would be three to six feet apart with masks not just us but even the public right yeah we um are currently still using six feet apart that's advanced yeah so i guess my issue is is that if we have no limiting capacity that's where it gets a little confusing to me and i just wanna not that i think we're ever gonna get there but i just don't want there to
060be any misunderstandings so let's assume a hundred people show up to one of our meetings um are we trying to space them or will we be turning people away because we can't space them i just want the public to be aware exactly what our um conditions are so that nobody gets upset if for some reason we're turning somebody away because of space considerations or that kind of thing i can talk to buildings and grounds to get the exact numbers wouldn't it be easier to space everybody out in the south auditorium and that's why so we're using the media center yeah you guys you got three you got three venues you got the south auditorium which is smaller but it you could probably still get 250 in that room maybe it might be tight but i
061i think that obviously the performing arts center you can that's 250. um and then the learning commons i don't know what the capacity is but it's with the three i don't know if it's three feet or six feet i i get confused with all these numbers yeah i'm thinking three but the mask yeah so i think i i think that's going to be probably less than the 250. um that's not so it depends on if if we know how many people are coming usually we do if there's going to be a larger crowd we kind of have a sense of it so we can kind of play it by ear i mean i would think on the may third meeting unless we do something crazy between now and then which we'll try not to be
062we'll try to behave ourselves but between now and then i would think that would be learning comments would probably be um the easiest and certainly the best technologically so like these things about you know if people don't want to come and they want to meet um technologically that would be the easiest space to do it in the other ones we can but it's just a it's an uphill climb that's all and then the second question is where would be where so we have a separate room for that in the learning commons as well actually in the same room where we were and that probably should be okay to accommodate all of us and and perhaps a contingency plan might be uh in in that setting of a substantial interest in attending a public meeting that
063we would have an overflow room uh uh with video should that occur might be an option to consider right that's something we've done in the past we've done it for graduations where we had people on an overflow in the uh the south auditorium and that worked pretty well oh do we lose our board president oh no zoom can't end fast enough all right you're up susan i realize that i don't know what to do where are we i'm watching the waiting room um we are now at uh discussion of addendum items uh i'm sorry just i i had my hand up which greg might uh i i just want to say that i'm i'm ready in general to move back to uh to meeting in public although the the meeting next week because of a
064couple reasons i may have to attend that virtually yeah what would he suggest is if you can let us know just email me or email uh dina if you would prefer to do the virtual thing and then we'll make the accommodations and set you up that way thank you yes because we have there's a lot of technology that would make it a little easier i think could i make a comment yeah see yesterday my younger brother died because of kobe 19 in delhi i'm so sorry though he had oxygen and everything so i'm little uncomfortable to attend the you know in-person meeting at least next next one you know because in india india declared they thought that they they won the war and everybody became you know free to move around and they did not
065take precautions and large gathering and all of a sudden now it's out of control you know the big line of the dead bodies you know they can't find the place to cremate them you know no bad in the hospitals so something is my head so i'm just wondering that i do not want to be that fearless so i would prefer that if i have an option i attend the virtual meeting you know at least you know one or two meetings so that i gain some confidence very sorry for your loss direction yes we did our best you know i mean but what can you do you know people are dying there every day and system is totally out of control yeah sorry about that had to switch to a different device greg what you missed
066was that a few of us said that there may be reasons for for the next meeting and and maybe some meetings after that we may want to have the option to attend virtually and tim asked us just to let him know so that he could bring the technology to bear yeah we can have a hybrid setup next week and next meeting at least can you hear greg i can hear now sorry about that internet difficulties on my end i apologize uh any other comments or questions about uh the coming month and going in person and is everyone okay with that what you missed greg was was a couple of us indicated that for the at least me for the next meeting and dr chan for the next couple meetings uh there may be reasons we
067need to to do it virtually rather than in person and tim asked us to let him know so he could bring the technology to bear and that that's what we're going to do i believe perfect thank you uh and hybrid a hybrid board meeting hybrid board meeting right perfect uh any other board discussion items that anyone has yeah i do have about the agenda items right go ahead this is item number d10 so the item number d10 is about choice of the the supplier of the electricity now tim my understanding is that that we are going to have a solar system and this is going to be connected to the grid so we should be buying the electricity from the company which owns a grid because solar company would be talking to them and that
068company would be giving them permission that you can install only this biggest system based on our actual consumption so if you go to a third party which does not own the grid it could create some complications i do not know whether you have looked into that yeah that that's a really good question i mean we have um so it's very possible that we won't see solar for another year um they're doing all the paperwork now the rest and there's a lot of approvals and things and then there's the construction so that that is a factor and i'm going to bring that up with the energy auctioners tomorrow they they auction either 12 months 18 months or 24 months so with what you said uh what you just explained it's uh that's probably where we're going
069to go is the 12 months but i do need the electric for another year yeah but when when when the sub this electric the solar company when do their paperwork get the approval from the town they have to get the approval from the um the electric supplier also you know they have to get the approval how much capacity so though we may not have the solar power for one year but to begin with they need to work with them they would give them permission otherwise they will not get they won't be able to sell their certificates you know i mean there are some issues there you may like to talk to them but uh yeah no thanks for bringing that up i'm that honestly this is this is new for me so i will be
070asking them uh the solar company but actually our uh architects and uh uh honey honeywell uh that our easter partner um what i need to do with that that's that's a good point thank you so i've preferred that we don't vote for item d10 today you know i mean if possible well we already have the auction set up and you do we do need an electric rate for next year that regardless we have to have that otherwise i'm stuck with uh jcp l's rate and i'm at the mercy of what it could be this is at least i think this is a supply that's at least going to be competitively bid if i don't competitively bid it we're going to get we're going to get beat up for a year i don't want to but
071but jcpl could match their price no i mean because you are a lot normal if jcp if you jcp l is this is for supply now and jcp l will just it'll just be according to what their rates are so it can go up as higher than what we have on on this resolution i don't want that i want to lock it in for at least a year if i can okay yeah otherwise you're out there mercy that's bad yeah but they may but but our solar company has to work with them correct correct yeah no correct you're right so it should not create any complications so you may have to discuss this with architect and with the solar company yeah well i'll just make sure that the commitment time i have to talk to
072them about that yes okay uh mr fallon and just a reminder we i just wanted to close out the board discussion uh not related to agenda items uh go ahead mr fallon um no i that was raised from before i'm sorry okay sorry about that are we done well with uh board discussion issues unrelated to the agenda i see nodding of heads uh so that'll take us to just discussion of addendum items i think that is solely in the a9 to a16 range uh the others were previewed at the last meeting does anyone want to discuss any of the addendum items i see none that moves us to action items and uh mr fallon's q yes mr president i'd like to move resolutions a1 through a7 and a14 through a16 second would anybody like to
073uh discuss any of those or pull for a separate vote um actually yeah actually i can move you can move on is not here to vote i'd like to amend that to move a1 through a 16. second thank you same same question uh seeing none uh roll call vote please miss perron yes mr burnberg yes dr chand yes mr fallon yes mr hunsinger abstain on a1 and 82 and yes on arrest mr morrison yes mrs ober staying on a1 and a2 and yes on the rest mrs prasa yes dr schubelski yeah motion's carry thank you we have no b items mr president i'd first like to move to the table resolution c8 until at least the next meeting so a determination can be made as to whether it needs to be brought back on you
074have a second second uh we can just do a hand vote uh for this uh anyone uh opposed everyone in favor so uh c8 is uh tabled until the next meeting assuming that it needs to be back on and mr president i would like to move then resolutions c1 through c7 and c9 would second like to discuss any of these individually or uh pull one for a separate vote seeing none roll call vote please mrs barone yes mr burnberg yes dr chand yes mr fallon yes mr hunsinger yes mr morrison yes sober yes sir yes and dr schabelski yeah motion carry uh thank you uh we've already voted on d1 which was the budget that leaves us with the rest of the d items mr president i'd like to move resolutions d2 through d12 i
075may have a second second would anybody like to uh discuss any of these or pull for a separate vote seeing none roll call though please miss brown yes mr burnberg yes dr chand yes mr fallon yes mr hunsinger yes mr morrison yes silver yes espresso yes and dr schabelski yes merchants carrie thank you very much uh this brings us to our second opportunity for public comment uh this is for uh any uh item regardless of whether it was on the agenda or not and miss schneiderman if you'd open up the queue and uh let anyone who would like to make a comment good evening mrs larson this is the opportunity for public comment on any topic just state your name in the town where you reside and your comment thank you april larson in greenbrook
076um good evening i'm addressing the board tonight to share my opposition to a change that was recently made regarding the absent but virtual attendance as communicated to the wachong hills community in a letter sent by the principal uh recently we were informed that as of the 12th of april the option to assess access education if you were not attending physically but expected to be physically at the school would result in an absence if you join virtually i felt this procedure was not well thought out and for those students that would be affected a case-by-case option should be available i wrote the principle and subsequently the board to ask that they consider having exemptions for those with acute medical need i use the example of seasonal allergies as that affects my family but if a student
077checked off co the covet 19 daily form correctly they would be omitted from attending uh due to nasal congestion or coughing or what have you and um they could access their education virtually but would be marked as absent and possibly excused this would prompt students i feel pressured to head into school and not correctly respond to the form i feel that's inaccurate and it's discriminatory for any students with pre-existing medical conditions under the care of a physician the procedure is not a boarded yet approved part of the attendance policy this procedure does not work for everyone and is not inclusive in nature to the point of what is accurate we have students in overflow rooms which are marked present as they are physically in the building but they are virtually accessing education the same as
078one of my uh children did when injured during a sports practice after providing the school nurse the coach and the principal the student was incorrectly marked as absent but excused even though they logged into classes as they do on their hybrid home days the student was not absent and i feel should be marked appropriately as present we need to make room for a case by case basis for the remainder of the school year many children have just returned to school in a hybrid format and i want to encourage them and others to access their education when possible several times a year the school hosts or the pto host seminars on stress and anxiety and procedures such as this add to that pressure that our students face i'm asking the board tonight to discuss alternatives to
079my formal um to my formal letter into you prior to my formal complaint into the state on inaccurate documentation of attendance thank you thank you [Music] welcome to the board of education uh meeting mrs bergner's please state the town where you reside and your public comment thank you uh hello oh thank you so much for letting me in uh so my name is elena bergners i live in warren and i have two children in high school currently and one in middle school uh first of all i want to say thank you so much i'm so grateful to our school administration for keeping our school uh open and sports programs sorry well welcome to the board of education uh meeting mrs bergner's please state the town where you reside and your public comment thank you uh
080can you guys hear me yeah i think you i think you are still on thanks for letting me in uh so my name is alina berners i live in warren and i have two children in high school currently and one in middle school i think you just need to close your youtube right our school administration for keeping our school uh open and sports program so sorry about this okay can i i'm just gonna go back to grateful i'm so grateful for school being open for all the sports programs they definitely need um you know my kids at least feel um you know brought some sense of normalcy to them but however i'm very very interested and uh what are our plans for opening our school full time uh which means with lunch and going back
081to a full day uh do we expect to be open uh in september um yes so what are our plans and uh what can we uh right what can we expect thank you so much thank you i i i think that uh our our plan is to open full-time in in in the fall obviously things can change substantially before now and then just like we've had to be uh prepared to respond to changes in the pandemic but i think our overall mission as a board and as a school community is to be open uh full-time five days a week uh come to fall based on uh current declining uh numbers of transmission in the state uh and uh increasing vaccination uh with uh vaccinations open to everybody from 16 and older uh i think that
082there is every reason to remain hopeful that we'll be able to achieve that in the fall good evening jill c please state your full name and the town where you reside and your public comment hi my name is jill conway i'm from greenbrook there there's some feedback from something else should i exit out of the youtube yes out of the youtube out of the youtube art hold on okay sorry um my name is jill conway from greenville i'm just calling with regard to project graduation i'm a senior and um there hasn't been a lot of information i understand they're talking about different options and um one of them perhaps being on a day after graduation and i just wanted to voice my concern with that as a parent i i would be my hope that
083project graduation would occur as it always has right after graduation so that they're all together um i've paid for it and it's you know a decent amount of money but my daughter would not be able to attend at another date so i just would like to um say that it is my hope that um project graduation occurs on the day of graduation you know after graduation and i understand from previous comment that you know they're going to be discussing it this week but that was really my comment thank you thank you thanks and in case uh uh they're not on we'll pass that message on to the committee thank you very much thank you good evening mrs schmitz uh please stay the town where you reside and your public comment and it looks like you
084may be on mute hi i i missed part of that did you call for donna schmitz i did i welcome your horse education meeting no i was canceling my youtube while you were announcing my name so i didn't i didn't catch it my name is donna schmitz and i reside in greenbrook i actually have two comments for the board the first comment pertains to the regionalization meeting if someone could just elaborate on exactly what that is and what it pertains to and then my second comment is regarding project graduation if possible i feel the committee should follow um the venue that offers the most normalcy as project graduation is usually done in terms of on graduation night so i feel that would be the most beneficial for our seniors because my daughter can also not
085attend something at a later date thank you very much thank you and while we don't usually uh do a response to all comments if uh mr morrison wouldn't mind just giving a brief summary of uh the regionalization as it's uh one of our board goals and certainly something that we've been working very hard over the past year to achieve sure the uh the board of education is one of our board goals has been exploring uh ways to you know have shared services create more efficiencies up to and including potential for regionalization the state of new jersey and the state legislature has been passing legislation that is incentivizing districts to conduct feasibility studies to determine what if any benefits may uh occur as a result of you know potentially developing shared services again up to and
086including regionalization so these are conversations that we're having between the individual districts to gain a consensus of if the other districts will coordinate with us on a regionalization feasibility study this is only a feasibility study to determine uh what if any benefits may uh occur for the community both as it relates to improvements in education and protect potential benefits to the taxpayer but again it's just a feasibility study to be conducted to determine what the benefits may be and there's no obligation to do regionalization our only obligation if we do a study would be to return the study to the state for their research and investigation as well so that's the uh that's the the the short strokes of the regionalization meeting um that we're holding on monday evening with representatives of the sending districts
087uh thanks mr morrison thank you and one uh one more person uh welcome back miss strong this is the public comment period on any topic and you're currently on mute on youtube i'm good now um thank you gina strong greenbrook um again just answering letting you know i am still on the meeting and there mrs conway and mrs smith's comments and anyone else's will be taken into consideration at the meeting thank you thank you thank you for all you're doing as well i'm a parent of a senior and i really really appreciate the hard work you've put into this thank you there's we we've been tireless it's been daunting i will say that and we're kind of always in limbo because we don't know what's going to come next as you probably all are in
088the same boat but we're trying our best and i hope that shows through thank you very much thank you and that is everyone in the waiting room uh thank you ms uh schneiderman uh that moves us on to uh other business if anybody would like to bring up uh something that we haven't discussed yet i think it's been pretty thorough uh it sounds like it's time for uh motion motion to adjourn and a second second thank you all for your attention and perseverance tonight thanks again to uh miss scheiderman uh for her uh excellent navigation through stormy weathers and uh for ms scheidermann and mr sty's preparation of the board presentation today wishing all of our students best of luck on may 1st and have a great rest of the week thank you thank you
089thank you again beth thank you very thank you great job beth thank you thank you good night good night