please out out of sequence it's out of sequence needs to be read first meeting statement needs to be read first thank you adequate notice of this oh I need a microphone are we running good adequate notice of this meeting of the Berkeley Heights Board of Education was given as required by the open public meetings act as follows on January 4th 2020 2 4 notice of the Board of Education meeting schedule was sent to the Star Ledger and The Courier News and was also provided to all schools PTO presidents the bhea president and posted in the administration building a copy was also provided to the public library and filed with the municipal clerk please rise for the flag salute I pled to the flag of the United States of America to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for Alli Radford here Dr porer hman here miss Jolly here miss Conor here Stanley here adjourn to Executive session number one whereas the Berkeley Heights Board of Education seeks to adjourn to Executive session in full compliance with the open public meetings Act njsa 10 col 4-6 and whereas the open public meetings act provides that a public body May exclude the public from that portion of the meeting at which it discusses matters related to the those identified below matters rendered confidential by federal law state law or Court rule individual privacy collective bargaining agreements purchase or lease of real property if public interest could be adversely affected investment of public funds if public in interest could be adversely affected tactics or techniques utilized in protecting Public Safety and property pending or anticipated litigation attorney client privilege Personnel employment matters affecting specific perspective or current employees be it resolved that the Berkeley Heights Board of Education adjourns to Executive session to discuss matters related to Personnel students and legal matters and be it further resolved that the minutes of the discussion of any of these items will be disclosed to the public when the matters have been determined and confidentiality is no longer applicable may I have a motion to enter into executive session second second Voice vote any Nays time is 605 I believe okay let's move over all in favor I opposed thank you we are going to move on to the report of our student Representatives Jak and Olivia hello everyone most of the spring sports teams at Governor livson have concluded but some are still on the road to a State title the baseball team is 24 and 5 and are in the midst of their State title Championship run the team plays in the state sectional semi-final tomorrow May 31st home at 2 pm the baseball athlete of the month is sophomore catcher Michael basil coach rof said Michael has been one of the best catchers in all of New Jersey he has also raised his average close to the 400 Mark this season the softball team is 20 and seven and are also on their State title run as they faced Westfield today the girls softball athletes of the month are senior captains Emma McElroy and Gianna basil coach Lanigan said this entire season they have both been leading by example and setting the tone prior to games after getting knocked out of the county tournament earlier than expected Emma and Gianna really locked in and made their primary focus to play as many more games as they could and keep advancing in the state tournament their leadership and wanting to keep playing is what is driving our team right now the boys lacrosse team finished the season with a 5 and4 record the boys lacrosse athlete of the season is senior Brett Pierre who led the team in goals assists and points the season the girls lacrosse team finished their season with a 10-8 record the girls lacrosse athlete of the season is Junior Hayden Pano who led the team in goals and points this season the boys and girls track and field teams are both getting ready for their state sectional championships this weekend the boys track and field athlete of the Season his senior Jack wowski coach cogin said Jack hardly missed any practices and attended every meet his attitude and positive influence on the team not only improved team performance but spe as well the girls track and field athlete of the season is sophomore rileigh Conover coach cogin said rileigh also demonstrated her commitment by having a stellar attendance record which is why she improved so much Riley always stayed until the end of each meet so she could cheer on every last Highlander that was competing the golf team finished their season with a S and 10 record the golf athlete of the season is senior Brady silver coach Ley said new to the team this year Brady won the division tournament and contributed to the overall success of the team throughout our season thank you good evening May has been a very busy and exciting month for GL students AP exams officially ended on Friday May 17th and freshmen and juniors finished their NJ SLA State Testing on Thursday May 23rd students have finished most of their testing for the year with the exception of finals in the beginning of jun June GL students have excelled in the Arts and Music with some of their last exhibitions and concerts for the year many Governor Livingston artists and musicians were selected to travel to the annual Union County teen Arts event on Friday May 17th a few days later on Tuesday May 21st GL students performed at the music honor society's Cabaret night additionally on Wednesday May 22nd G students who are part of the deaf and heart of hearing program performed in a great in school percussion concert with each student getting highlighted for a solo many clubs have also initiated end of school year activities yesterday the women in stem Club of Governor Livingston held its second annual stem Outreach day at Columbia Middle School featuring experiment stations special guests and an engineering challenge to show the importance of Environmental Protection AP students at GL have also been participating in the climate games over the past two days this Symposium is designed to simulate the process of cre creating environmental legislation that all parties can agree upon including climate activists the fossil fuel industry proponents of clean technology and more today GL held a field day in honor of Mental Health Awareness Month students participated in traditional Field Day activities like games and races but there was also a dunk tank for teachers looking ahead there are many more exciting activities in store for G students tomorrow May 31st is senior prom which is a highlight for many students awaiting graduation on on Wednesday June 5th many GL seniors will be celebrated for their accomplishments at an awards ceremony in the High School auditorium thank you very much any questions for our student Representatives Miss Stanley so I just wanted to ask how are you both doing with getting ready for graduation is it Bittersweet are you excited yeah I'm definitely excited uh for years is definitely enough um you know uh but I've made a lot of memories and I'm truly grateful for what go has given me over the past four years okay thanks guys for your report I always enjoy hearing about what's going on at G okay thank you Jake and Olivia you can leave at any time now um we're going to move on to our superintendent report at this time with a update on our district goals Mr Nixon e okay good evening everybody uh at this time I would like to invite the members of our administrative team to come up and join me for our presentation with me this evening uh is Dr Christine seminario Mr Dennis dunis Mrs Brenda Marley possibly uh Mrs Jessica nardy uh Mr John Moro Mrs Jackie Bartlett Mr James Finley Dr Kelly Curtis Mr Steven Hopkins and Mr Paul Kisa uh tonight we will be presenting uh an update on the district goals uh that was originally uh presented to the board earlier this school year in October so what we'll do as we go through we uh we'll go over what the each of the five goals were and and what some of the action items were for those five goals and provide an update uh with where we stand on those current goals uh each of the individuals that I've asked to join me here tonight have had a part in in helping these goals move forward over the course of the Year while some of these goals have are goals that have been accomplished some of these goals are goals that are ongoing and will continue to be ongoing as we move through the future and uh each of the individuals will share some of that information as we move through um I'll be sharing information regarding to uh regarding our first goal communication uh and the First Communication goal was to engage the community and more robust forms of communication inclusive of website enhancements social media platforms and district and school-based Communications focused on transparency and relationship building some of the specific action items related to this goal we're going to be to enhance and update the website to be more user friendly to highlight Friday folders or Friday blasts as we call it the high school on the school-based websites uh to create more committees for Parental involvement and also to work with PTO and bhef to focus on Parental engagement so uh as a progress update for goal number one uh first as most people have seen we've transitioned to to a new website platform um platform is thrillshare uh so ongoing work is happening at each of the buildings uh to make the site more user friendly essentially we took a step back and and and viewed the websites and said you know as as somebody from the community or or a parent of a student in the school who wants to find important information spell schedules um announcements different things like that how can this website be set up to be more user friendly to make it as a a go-to place where people can find information and I think the current state of our websites demonstrate that great work is being done in that areas in that area obviously we're still continuing to work on trying to collect more feedback and try and find more ways that we can make those websites a better resource for our school Community um within each of those websites we can find the Friday folders and the Friday blasts uh I know those are sent home uh regularly by the principles on a weekly basis as well um and then moving forward to September uh as we start to realize more of the um capabilities of what thrill share can do with us we'll be transitioning to the thrillshare plat platform uh replacing School messenger for us as a means of mass communication and and one of the way one of the some of the things that will be are an example of what that will be able to help us do um through the uh School District app um we'll be able to push out notifications like you might get an app notification on your smartphone as well so just trying to find more ways to communicate effectively with families um while not losing any of the functionality that we've currently had in terms of some examples of of family engagement that have been shared um there was a uh CMS transition night um that occurred earlier this school year a family presentation which happened this past spring uh Mr Kisco hosted a coffee with the CMS principal in the fall and also had parents involved in in working to develop the vision and mission statements for Columbia Middle School we put a couple pictures here to kind of a picture of you know what our website currently looks like on the bottom right as compared to uh you know what we had typically been used to and here's an example of when you when you click on the menu uh option on the high school website you'll see how it's broken down some specific things just general information about the high school you'll see on the left um important information for students can occur in the middle and information for parents and guardian Guardians are broken down on the right and across the top you can see information related to staff school events academics Athletics clubs and honor societies as well as our school counseling program with that in mind I'd like to invite up uh Mr Dennis Dunes to go over our green initiative good evening um as it means the meeting the Boe sustainability policy the district will work on establishing a districtwide school-based green teams consisting of Schools staff students Boe members um faculty maintenance Representatives community members and other critical stakeholders um will develop this goal center around 5-year plan so the things in this goal in our green initiative goal was to incorporate sustainability in K12 education by ensuring the climate change standards that were um implemented last year reducing energy usage by auditing and improving infrastructure and modifying processes and behaviors exploring and increasing solar capacity at in the district implementing additional sustainability policy procedures anti-idling policy for example uh developing a tree planting replacement plan and exploring the installation of possibly charging stations in the future so the action items for this goal was to establish our Green Team consisent of teachers administrators stakeholders parents and students students and staff will engage and participate in districtwide or school-based initiatives to make the district more eco-friendly staff members will engage in meaningful activities related to the Next Generation excuse me New Jersey climate change standards teachers and administrators collaborate with stakeholders to focus on promoting those Boe sustainable goals so some of the things that we like I never used a computer before there we go no there we go ah here we go so some of the things we use to some of the things we did to kind of breach and meet these goals were one incorporating climate change standards in K to2 curriculum so in the beginning of the year before the teachers had come back over the summer we had a professional development day so I gave professional development to all second year teachers in the district on how to incorporate new standards into uh incorporate the new climate standards into various disciplines so all the new second-year teachers came and they were all throughout the district they had different disciplines and we talked about how could we promote climate change standards and how could we um promote them in the classroom across disciplines uh today and yesterday we held our second annual climate Symposium this year we had 11 AP horses um participate nearly 200 students participate in that the this year I saw Miss Bradford and a couple other people there it was a great event um one of the things I thought was really impressive was I talked to student last year who was involved in the climate Symposium and he said after he did the climate Symposium he actually changed his major moving forward into college so he's going to continue to do Finance but he's looking to have a spin on green initiatives and work with green companies in the future so I thought that was pretty cool to think we did something here and somebody saw the change that could be made in himself uh K5 steam pro program is incorporated last year we got wind turbines and solar panels and renewable energy projects that we can do K through five um our steam teacher through the elementary school has been utilizing all of those um things that we we brought in last year incorporating the climate change standards into the curriculum uh um high school students help to promote climate change standards K through five we actually had high school students go down to the elementary schools in the beginning of May and they talked about stem projects and climate change goals while they were there talking to the students um we had the steam day yesterday and that was a great success from what I hear we had it last year as well and during those events last year I know we used the model solar cars did we use them this year no okay sorry but we used them last year um during that event uh we have a we're called a climate action school we have a partnership with tag which is uh taking action globally this particular group um works with high schools elementary schools all throughout the entire Globe so our students were able to participate in um participate in U talks with school districts all throughout the globe um we had a presenter come in during our Earth week from tag and he talked about all the things that they're doing to promote climate change initiatives throughout the entire world uh we had people talk to our students from um national parks conservator conservatories so this was a great program and we were actually allowed to participate in it this year because they had heard of all the good things that we do here they actually asked us to be part of it and they didn't charge us so I'm hoping next year we can continue that relationship with tag uh we organized Earth week we have our recycled art here on display so I suggest everybody go up and take a look at it we had a bunch of students working on that and if you look at it it's a a labor of love they put a lot of work and effort into that um piece of art there so that was one of the things we had on display in the IMC we had all the art displayed that the kids were working on um we had guest speakers tree planting out front we had a a tree planting we reworked the rain Gardens so that was a fun week um some of the other things other parts of that goal is reducing energy use by auditing improving infrastructure our high school students during Earth week were passing around a petition that they had signed and they want to present that information their findings to the board so hopefully they'll be reaching out to you soon they'd like to come and speak to you about their petition and all the benefit of expanding our solar panels and Energy Efficiency um we are part of the Arbor Day Foundation we're looking to continue that work with the Arbor Day Foundation that's a initiative we've been part of for the last three years so we put in for an application again for next year and it's just another goal of promoting and tree planting and there you have it thank you what I wanted to try and sneak into the presentation that I didn't get a chance to was a great picture of Mr dunas sitting in the dunk tank today at uh did you guys get a chance to throw and get Mr dunas in the dunk tank all right more to follow on that maybe next something on te's look forward to the next superintendent report will be that picture all right I'd like to invite up Mr Stephen Hopkins to uh talk about goal number three our Dei metrics good evening we're at different perspective this year it's interesting we're usually against the wall uh before we do a brief overview of the building level metrics for the Dei goal I think that given the turnover on the board of education uh it would be appropriate to contextualize our Dei Journey um it actually began 20 years ago in 2003 2004 where as part of our middle State process called a accreditation for growth or afg a group of stakeholders led by gl's new very handsome assistant principal um I uh did a comprehensive self-evaluation and determined that gl's scores and academic performance were outstanding but that we had some serious systemic cultural issues that needed to be addressed the next year in 2004 and 2005 an article appeared in the Highlander back when it was on paper and served as the voice of the students the article was written by Steph tutor is and is titled educated to be ignorant one students look at gl's problem with race um it's a copy of it uh the next year oh sorry uh it's an Illuminating article I will quote selectively from it along the way uh they stink they're lazy they're uneducated they should get a job they should stop complaining they all around Governor Livingston you can hear this word referring to African-Americans it can be heard with various insults attached to it students apply they to any race different from their own whether it is Asian Indian Hispanic no matter how you look at it there's a problem with racism at our high school step continues what is truly astounding is that students continue to believe there's no problem with racism at goo honestly Steph she says I've heard say that there is no problem with racism in GL we were joking as history would show Steph did a spot-on job in capturing the SC culture of the school for a variety of reasons the decision was made not to pursue the recommendations of the stakeholders involved in the afg process fast forward to the 2019 school year that fall there were a few incidents surrounding race at the high school and Dr vley asked me to sit in with her during a parent meeting we quickly quickly determined that there Merit to the parents concerns and upon talking to our students and families sadly we learned that there've been no significant changes to the culture in the building since Steph tutor's article as we were moving to address those concerns covid-19 happened and as we were reacting and adjusting to that the nation and our students took to the streets in reaction to the murder of George Floyd through that summer and through that spring and summer Dr vley rebranded the district to emphasize inclusion and and we put together a plan to address the lack of inclusion in our schools this was done with the formation of diversity committees at the building level and the purpose of those committees was to celebrate and educate in December of 2020 at the zoom board meeting several hundred GL students and graduates came out to protest and share their experiences at glhs while the majority of these students and graduates from our lgbtq community there was no there were also a signif significant number of other minority students who Shar shared their experiences at GL in short the experiences that they shared were very similar to those voiced by Steph in our article from 2004 2005 reinforcing that the culture had not changed in any significant way at this point the board of education at the time asked a group of stakeholders to be formed to create a de leg to the Strategic plan this was done and the plan that emerged was remarkably similar to that which had been created in ' 034 for afg as we emerged from Co we real realized that one of the most serious issues that we faced was the resocialization of our students in short inclusion had become an even more critical issue principles were CL tasked with creating 20 or so focused small group activities and two large scale ones well this might seem a lot by comparison in the last three months I was acting principal at Columbia that year there were 20 SMI 26 small group inclusion activities and four large scale ones and this year alone this year here at ghs my departments are responsible for some 12 to 13 small group inclusive activities we want to focus on small group activities because it's the small groups that move the needle and yes many times we are preaching to the choir but choirs sing if we are going to change the culture of the building and the district moving forward it'll be by empowering the students in that choir before moving on to the metrics it is important to understand that the principles are the drivers of the Dei initiative in their buildings and to clarify my role principles do not report to me my role falls into five areas one I'm a resource to the superintendent and the principles two I establish best practices for the teaching of sensitive materials three crisis management four my own independent program speakers lit lunches conferences for students and teachers Etc and five to be a lightning rod for public attacks of the five I think it's safe to say that the fifth one has the one I've been most successful last year principles were T were asked to analyze all of their data using a Dei lens and asked questions of our data in a way that we had never asked the questions before and from that this year principles were tasked by identifying an area or areas from that data analysis and building an action plan to address that issue at William Woodruff and Mary K McMillan principles identified a gender Trend in students in tier three and tier 4 interventions and they have developed an action plan I won't read it um but it's in the uh on the slideshow at Thomas P Hughes and Mountain Park principles identified an inclusion goal based on race and ethnicity at CMS the principal identified an inclusion goal using both gender and race ethnicity a quick word about inclusion uh it is well well established in the research that students who feel included and con connected to the school will do better academically and have better self-esteem and socialization also is extremely important to note that this is not a zero sum gain providing opportunities to students including at the honors and AP level is not to exclude anybody we are about opportunities building ladders and opening doors at Governor Livingston the principal Mr Nixon identified two goals there is a gender disparity in Humanities classes I'm sorry I'm behind here we go there's a gender disparity in Humanities classes at the AP and the honors level and there is a race ethnicity disparity in honors and AP classes these things are important particularly at the high school level to give you an idea um how we are ranked and scored by the state of New Jersey something I know we're all very concerned about um is based on the old Humanity 's model of an education the more honors and particularly the more AP classes that a student takes the higher the ranking of the school so when we find a disparity in access to AP scores and if we can can get more students of the different identified groups to accelerate into those classes will improve our rankings now moving forward it is my hope that the principles will continue to examine their data through the Dei lens so as to identify other groups of students who we can work with to include and who we are able to help best become the best versions of themselves how successful this will be is up to you the Board of Education whoever the next superintendent will be and the building principles ultimately I'll return to Steph tutor's article where she says if even one student feels hated because of their race and I'll update her words to at gender or sexuality then that's one student too many so I urge you to continue to support the goal and I will hand it over to goal number four everyone uh I'm Jackie Bartlett I'm one of two of our school safety specialists in the district and I worked with Brenda Marley our other school safety Specialists on goal number four about our behavioral threat assessment teams so this goal was developed in resp response to the new state law excuse me uh signed in August of 2022 stating that schools this year must develop behavioral threat assessment teams the purpose of these teams is to identify evaluate and address any potential threats of violence the law specific specified who should be included on these teams they listed school counselors teaching staff member principal our SRO or school resource officer and the school safety special IST to be included so the action items uh listed on the screen were considered for this goal so identifying and training the staff members uh of each school's team then creating the board policy on the behavioral threat assessment teams uh training the full staff uh on what the purpose of threat assessment and the threat assessment teams are uh and Reporting any potential threats uh and then fin implementing a recordkeeping system uh for the behavioral threat assessment teams to use so I'm happy to report that all of the action items were addressed and completed during this school year uh so the identified team members did attend the virtual training offered by the state called the school behavioral threat assessment and management training um all identified team members attended this virtual training either at the end of last school year or at the begin beginning of this school year uh board policy 2419 school threat assessment teams was up uh created and approved um all the staff members at every school at the beginning of the school year using Vector Solutions were trained on threat assessments uh and how to report any instances of potential threats and then the leaders of each of the teams uh were trained to use ASAP which because comes to us through the same company as hipster that we use for reporting hivs um for recordkeeping at each meeting and then each of the teams met as needed throughout the entire school year and are still meeting as needed thank you okay so goal number five is our final goal it has four parts to it to kind of Encompass each of the levels The Early Childhood Center uh early early childhood Level Elementary level Middle School level and high school level um so for each of these parts we'll have multiple people um come up not all people may be part of the presentation but we wanted everybody here to be available to ask questions and speak to any uh any of the items that anybody may want to know more about uh so first I would like to sorry that first I'd like to introduce Dr Christine seminario to come up and begin talking to our elementary and Early Childhood Center levels good evening I'm joined by Mrs nardy and Mr morso um we'll speak to our first student achievement goal which focused on math for our students at the K to 5 level so the goal was set that at least 80% of all students would be at or above grade level um which is meeting or exceeding grade level standards by June of 2024 and we base this on our our I ready math benchmark data that was collected three times during the year so we are currently still in the um final collection window our assessment window ends next week so we're able to report a progress update on both the action action items and how our students um have progressed during the year so we again are happy to report that we were able to attain all of our action items earlier in the year we were able to provide small group targeted professional development to our teachers in grade level bands at all of the elementary schools so we had a staff developer from IR come in we had wonderful feedback from the teachers on this training they really were able to dive into how to look at the assessment data to drive differentiation for our students so I ready has a combination of an individualized learning pathway that's very adaptive for our students but our teachers were able to be um trained on how to use some more of the teacher toolbox or the lessons that they then are able to deliver to students in small groups so they were able to dive into student data how are we grouping our students based on their performance and then where can we find appropriate resources for supporting them both for intervention and enrichment so that was a great way to kick off the year throughout the year teachers and administrators have engaged in ongoing data review looking at our students I ready assessments and determining where specific areas of need are and how we can group those students so that we can really Target their needs during our wi Cycles there is an amazing intervention framework in place at all of the elementary and early childhood centers I can't take credit for this this was already in place but can tell you that there are amazing things happening under the leadership of these people um so that was amazing to learn about and see this year um and then really the teachers using that training and then in collaboration with their administrators and our interventionists we have math specialists at each of the levels and then interventionists were able to differentiate instruction both in the classroom and out of the classroom so with all of that we were able to see some significant growth for our students between the fall and the winter I ready diagnostic so you can see all of our grade levels in kindergarten we do not administer a fall assessment because we do not feel it is developmentally appropriate for our students at that point of the year but you can see from the fall to the winter every grade increased um by a significant percentage of our students so at this point we are still in our final assessment window but we are hopeful that we will um come close to or exceed the goal in all of those levels good evening so the second tier of the of the goal is related to K2 uh Ela specifically focused on phic awareness uh and phonic skills uh we um with the uh support of Christine seminario we brought in the hegerty uh Assessment program and toolbox that provides lessons to teachers as well as a diagnostic tool um it should be noted that there is an uh an existing iic program at these levels uh but this allowed us to have a consistency across schools and ACR and and vertically across grade levels and to have a a consistent measurement um as we look at the Student Success uh our action items are listed as above we we were able to complete all but one because the last one we are currently in our final assessment window um so students were T have taken um form a in the fall as our as our uh Baseline Target and then they will finish up in the coming weeks form C uh which will have the end of year assessment it should be noted that we were able to project on the next slide um where the students are as we have approximately 90% of the results already come in hi everybody so I just want to apologize for just walking in I did not forget that I was supposed to be here I was at my son's band concert and un fortunately his group was the very last one to perform so I managed to get up here without getting pulled over but I'm sorry that I was late um so as you can see here from the results as Mr Finley said we are in the process of still assessing students but for our second grade we are at 97.6% we were looking for 80% and we do have everybody assessed per second grade except for about 1% of the population first grade is very similar we have about 1% left and we are at 97 .1% you will notice with both of them too for the blue which was at the beginning of the year those scores were also high and that's because with the Continuum per phonemic awareness we expect students by the middle to end of first grade to have mastered most of the skills so that's why there is such a difference between kindergarten and first and second grade kindergarten is ongoing we still have about 9% of the students that we have to assess but we have also already reached the goal of 81% with um the form SE for kindergarten too thank you I'm going to jump back in because I did want to add in terms of the math goal that we also were able to purchase about $330,000 worth of math intervention materials through the New Jersey high impact tutoring grant that we received so those are currently in both of the 35 buildings and Mr reel and our interventionists are so excited to have them and be using them so I just wanted to add that now for the uh Middle School related go call Mr Kisa and Miss Scott so our goals are all based off of the njsla testing since we don't have those scores yet or won't have them till the fall we'll report back on whether we met those goals at that time but we are excited to tell you about the great steps we took this year to improve instruction to try and meet these goals so the first thing that I'd like to call your attention to on this slide is that we met as a middle school Ela team with Miss Scott and the teachers and we ensured that all of our writing and reading rubrics are aligned to one another that the language is the same that there's more or there's a more cohesive progression um and to ensure that there is consistency from sixth to seventh to eth grade another thing that we focused on this year was questioning techniques um it shows on the slide that two of the Middle School teachers came with me but there were also two high school English teachers as well as a music teacher and we went to TCNJ and had a really good workshop on questioning techniques and by this I mean we're trying to take our questioning to another level the kids really enjoy a lot of those like Jeopardy type review games but there's not a whole lot of depth to that so we were working a lot on asking questions that really forced the students to demonstrate more knowledge of what they were doing to go higher on the taxonomy um and we've done a lot this year with that not only did we go we TurnKey it with um all of our teachers in the department and then during observations this year that became the focus of a lot of what we were looking for And discussing afterward so we did make I believe a lot of progress in that area and on our next slide I'd like to highlight the fact that we use two of our ELA teachers this year to support students uh as interventionists um and provide additional targeted support in small Windows of time to boost students up and get them uh to where they need to be and we are thankful and excited that with the budget passing that we are in the process of interviewing for a reading specialist for CMS for next year so thank you very much okay and Dr Curtis is going to join me for our uh our high school goal um so at the high school level we we targeted the class of 2025 our current junior class and in specific we wanted to see demonstrated growth in both English English English language arts and math uh when comparing how that group performed uh as ninth graders on the njsls in terms of proficiency verse how they performed as Juniors on the NJ GPA assessment which they took this year um in order to try and support not only those students but to find better avenues for supporting all students at the high school um we really dove in and triangulated different data to try and identify or better identify uh students that could really need some benefit from additional support not only to help them uh with particular standardized tests but to help them with their language arts and math um you know academic courses as well um and in doing so we developed a new program called our msta program the English and math strategies application uh program um where what we did was rather than having a course be within a student's schedule um we identified a a half of lunch during once during a rotation very similar to how science lab meets at the high school um to try and have students meet in smaller groups um for targeted support particularly part of that motivation came from uh our previous math and English strategies courses we found a lot of students who were recommended for those courses families were opting out of taking that course possibly because they didn't want it to be on their transcript or perhaps they felt um meeting three times a rotation like a regular class was perhaps excessive for some of those Support classes as a result we were getting extra support to very few of our students we needed to find a new strategy um I'm happy to share that over over the course of this school year um we saw a lot of students benefit from taking part in the msta program and in particular uh during the fall when uh 11th and 12th grade students so we targeted 11th and 12th grade students in the fall because the NJ GPA test happens in March earlier in semester 2 and then we targeted uh nth and 10th grade students in the second semester because the njsla test you know just occurred last week so um later on in the school year allows us to spend more time with those students over all 99 students in 11th and 12th grade took part in this small group instruction um during the first semester and 60 students in n9th and 10th grade took part in this instruction so overall 159 students received additional instruction which is a significant increase as to what we um were able to provide students in previous years and and while scores aren't officially released yet the preliminary um some preliminary data was released on the building level for for initial analysis and you know it was you know initially right out of the gate it's easy to see that more students demonstrated proficiency because the initial cut score on the NJ SLA assessment when they were freshman when they took it was 750 cut score on the NJ GPA their junior year was 725 part of the analysis that I did was I took that score from their freshman year and you know tried to calculate how many students demonstrated proficiency above 725 so we were comparing like results and I'm happy to report that um you know the initial um analysis without anything being officially released shows us that we met this goal um in both language arts and math um by decent margins so um happy to see that this was a a successful approach to how we um uh supported students um in language arts and math at the high school so with that in mind uh we wanted to open up to any of our um presenters this evening if you have any questions related to um any of the programs or goals that we presented on tonight Mr Heyman thanks Mr Nixon and to all presenters hugely informative I just had two quick questions um it's okay if we don't know this yet on the I guess one on the um on the green initiative uh do we have any Mr du I guess do we have any data points yet is that is that all coming in terms of the suggestions from students uh the difference that can be made with LED and all that fun stuff or is that do we have it we're just waiting for them to present that was my one question um data points as in um I guess you had mentioned that there there'd be some cost-saving benefits uh coming with their suggestions I I know we had there was a presentation last year which was interesting and informative don't know if any of that actually was implemented but as it relates to solar and led Etc yeah so the the students have all that information that's what they want to present to you guys okay so nothing in hand yet for us nothing in hand yet but they have all that they're they're ready to go they're eager they want to come today okay all right I told them I'll take care of as much as I can all right appreciate it um curious to see it and the other question I asked was for Mr Hopkins um I just curious if there's any data behind some of the the disparity um enrollment maybe not or if that's if that's to come but what are there any data points behind what we've Unearthed in terms of some of enrollment at at Ela or social studies or or the a class the shorter answer short answer is yes so just to to concentrate on the high school one but every principal has lots of data that they've gone through it it would be its own meeting if we were to present everything that we we we've gone through um but for example uh at the high school um the gender disparity um is we have a significant uh significantly fewer number of boys in the honors and AP level for the Humanities particularly Ela and history um and uh what experience will tell us is that if a student has the capability of working at a high level in the maths and Sciences there's no intellectual reason why they shouldn't be able to cross over and go into the humanities and take high level Humanities courses it doesn't always translate the other way like kids who are not good at math can still be good at the humanities but generally speaking students who are strong academic students there's no reason why they shouldn't be in honors at least honors in certainly AP classes on the humanity side and as a a philosophical approach um students are are best served by taking the highest level number highest number of courses that they can take at the hardest level they can do and still remain uh getting a good grade which ballpark you know rule of thumb is a b or better so you're better off getting a b or a B+ in an AP English class then you are getting an A in an honors English class um and you know if those students are certainly capable uh it's in their best interest and our best interests to round their experiences with engag in the humanities courses and you know the Advent of things like chat gbt um actually reinforced that where communication and analytical thinking and arguing uh are going to be more important moving forward is I was going to ask is there is there a why is is there is it just is it an awareness issue hey did you know that we have course ABC is it a lack of Interest or and and how do you combin certainly certainly for the last I don't know seven eight nine years with the emphasis on you know you'll make your money in stem um is is I think a big piece of it like the preoccupation of society that this is how you earn money um which might be true unless you're not good at stem in which case and then even most of the people I know who who worked in engineering a good number of them within five years of graduating from college are in management positions and then need the ability to think and argue and and write and all of those soft skills that we happen to teach in the important classes like history and English um little Prejudice there uh the other one was uh the other high school one which is a very interesting one is Mr Nixon discovered a disparity between the number of our Hispanic and black students who are enrolled in honors and AP classes uh is about half of what the enrollment is for the school um which would indicate an issue but then when we dug in further that my understanding is that uh as we dug into that further a significant number of those students arrived in our District in high school so we're having a population that's coming into the district in high school who might have the intellectual ability to perform at a higher level course but don't necessarily have the academic Foundation or the excellent academic Foundation that we provide or deerfi provides and so they start behind the ball uh and that would indicate that we have a uh an obligation to find these students and look at their programming and see if we can ramp up their experiences like it's obviously not something that we're going to correct in a year or a semester but to get those students in a situation where by into their Junior and senior years that they're able to to elevate into higher level courses and and prepare themselves so you know we have we have identified something at both ends of the spectrum um for our student population I think those are that's an indication of the power of using inclusive lenses and and analyzing our data in a way that we've never done it before thank you can I just piggy back off of that Mrs Stanley question so the right so what I'm hearing is that some of this right is maybe partly in um guidance right helping students pick the right courses but then some of it is also social right that they don't think that the AP course maybe in ela is as important is that what I'm hearing um I don't know if I think I think it's unfair to say it's a counseling issue um I think it is a cultural issue obviously I think it's obviously a larger C cultural issue than just here at Governor Livingston um you know there are there's a significant amount of literature and research done on the problems of boys uh and having boys tie in academically and the performance of girls academically Vis of boys and the traditional boys are better at math doesn't necessarily hold true as much as it used to um but Boys Still plump that way um I think it's it's a communication about both what's important to them what will be important for them longer term in the face of um what are a lot of societal pressures telling them a message that isn't that pushes them another way so part of it is building a culture within the building about why these things are important and having those Communications frequently and you know keep emphasizing again this is probably archaic of me I I believe in the high school that um a broad-based Humanities education in high school will prepare you for for whatever it is you're going to choose in college most kids who go to college will change majors of concentrations five times um and we need to prepare them for that and expose them to things and a lot of high school really is figuring out what you don't want to do um and so some of it is counseling but I think a bigger piece of it is the message that we send to the kids about what success looks like um we have a very transactional group of students and they will take the courses that they take to get them to the college that they want to get to uh and that's also something we need to to attack and break and you know like actually learning things is good for you and experience things and taking a broad variety of classes I know you and I have had some good conversations about even Middle School uh boys and sometimes um uh just their way that they behave is very different from the girls in CMS a little bit yeah um and that sometimes that is biased into how they they do in the classes so I I saw I think that we are looking at how we go from middle school into High School AP and honors yeah yeah yeah it it's the earlier track the more you lose the middle and and you know we're slower boys are slower we just take longer and that's not just me all the research again proves that boys develop much slower than girls they get there um but we have to try to keep them in the game long enough until development they're ready to take off um and usually that's Junior year-ish when they really like it clicks um and we have to try to keep them in the game until they're educationally and intellectually and emotionally ready to handle those things so G gender is a real concern um you know speaking very broadly I think told you this before you know in in Middle School generally if it's neat and clean and on time that's an honors kid and in middle school that's a girl um that's not necessarily a boy very few boys are that way many times in Middle School we're happy they shower you know different different bars yes my My Girl Scout Troop we're working on hygiene mrsi did you have a question I think it was for Miss seminario or it's I think it's mostly on Ela like have we signed up for spelling seminario just an update I think last year we we asked her if there was any possibility of our district signing up for the spelling be yeah I know that in speaking with Mrs nardy and Mr marso it was something that they would consider at that level for next year so given that I will not be here um that would be a conversation that I will I will leave in a determination that I will leave to them to make okay I thought we were going to evaluate last year like when this school year started 2023 2024 so no update we had talked about potentially implement M menting it for next year but no that is not a conversation that we had thank you any other questions from board members Mrs Conor I think this is a question for Mr Nixon the msta program that's been initiated it sounds like it's it's driving some value in terms of English and math is there any thought any interest in extending it to other subjects to apply it to physics chemistry even the humanities we haven't gotten to that point with that conversation yet it's it's certainly a conversation we can have um this was initially brought forward as an attempt to try and remedy uh a math and English strategies program that wasn't functioning successfully for us um initially this msta program helps us with a lot of different components um particularly with seniors if a senior hasn't met a graduation pathway yet we immediately enroll them in that program and and the program targets supporting them through um you know that process whether it's preparing them for one of the pathway assessments or helping them prepare their uh their portfolio um for presentation um and ultimately approval which is the third pathway uh that they have the option to um I think right now what we want to focus on is is making this program even better for next year and and taking a look at the results seeing you know so regular growth that we see from some of our students who are identified from this program did we see better growth in their performance this year as a result of it so I think before I think initially in terms of participation and what we're hearing as feedback seems like the program has been successful but I really want to see what the data tells us a little bit first and once once we realize what the data tells us then we can start talking about what are some of the other uh you know areas you know that that could benefit if if we want any of those other areas to benefit thank you Dr forer okay so when I was in college they had an option you could take a course past fail and that was to encourage you to try things that you may not otherwise were willing to try you were worried about grade point um is is past fail an option here for some of these courses and yeah P fail is an option that we have as as part of our stent can a student take a course in high school pass fail yes there's there's specific criteria um and if I try and name the specific criteria I may not get it exactly 100% perfect right now um but ultimately it it the language of our past fail policy is in place in order to try and encourage students to you know push themselves you know with with with an additional course that they you know may not otherwise take uh if they're concerned about grade point average and so they could that does that mean they you didn't go into the details but does that mean they could take an AP History course p faes come to the yeah so I paused because yeah depending on whether it's one of the courses used for one of the identified State graduation requirements or not impacts what it is if if you're taking something Beyond what's required uh by the state that's that's something that's considered um considered separately in terms of That So within our student handbook there is a there's a section that that clearly lays out what the you know requirements for taking a past fail course are Mrs Ziri another question yeah um I know we spoke about the rotate and drop schedule at middle school and um The Learning loss after the pandemic especially from a special ed student perspective dropping a core subject and maybe including modifying a rotated drop schedule I know you said you are working on it is there any timeline on when we can hear more about this like maybe next this Falls CMS day or like you know an Outreach we have I would say there's a point that we can definitely talk more about some of the other initiatives that we're working on um obviously we we present about five goals tonight but there's plenty of other initiatives that we're working on as an administrative Team all throughout um you know most recently Dr Curtis myself and Mr Kisa met to discuss you know let's let's take a look at at you know how we're currently you know conducting our math program um you know you know the middle school but also as it transitions to the high school and just overall what are what are some of the things that we may need to do and we kind of broadly discussed a lot of different ideas um so I would say we're at initial phases of some of those things and initial phases at some of that but those are definitely things that we're talking about thank you no other questions Mr Nixon thank you very much the administrative team thank you very much for a very thorough present this evening thanks [Music] everybody at this point we are going to move on to the interview of our board candidates uh to fill a vacancy left by Mrs Angela Penna excuse me I apologize Mr Nixon has a busing update for us also besides his district goals thank you Mr Nixon so we've been uh obviously discussing busing and transportation quite a bit and I know there's there's been some questions some questions from the board some questions from the community uh regarding any updates with what some of the numbers um we're receiving back from uh the information that Mr Sheen sent out so just to kind of share with everybody and give an update as to where we sit right now you can take a look and and and see the numbers it's broken down by school you'll see at the top section you see uh qualified busing that is every person that qualifies um for mandated busing as per mileage so if you're over the two and a half mile Mark at the high school level if you're over the two mile Mark at any of the other levels so you can see of the um students that qualified uh for busing mandated busing 542 have signed up and you can see as you go across the breakdown of what those numbers are per level um and then a certain amount per level too can also wave busing we ask for that information because that helps Mrs Sheen better identify you know what which routes have open seats so we can try and accommodate as many students as possible um then the numbers on subscription busing of the students that signed up for subscription busing you can see below there overall 239 um students have applied for subscription busing um and then you can kind of see what the breakdown of that is by as well um so over the course of the next month I know Mrs Sheen had mentioned that she is committed to sharing what um you know communicating with families by the end of June um you know what the you know if they have a seat on any of these buses we we spoke about a certain amount of seats being available uh possibly depending on the number of students that signed up possibly up to 350 seats total being available for uh subscription busing so certainly that 239 number is below that which is which is good news the one thing I might want people uh to just be cognizant of you know those seats are also route dependent so uh at at specific levels at specific schools based upon the number of students um that have you know signed up for qualified or man mandated busing but also um subscription busing you know it doesn't necessarily mean that there um would 100% be a seat but in speaking with Mrs Sheen you know we need to look at some more things but we are cautiously optimistic that um these numbers provide um good reason to think that most students should be able um who signed up for subscription busing should have busing available a busing option available for them um one one of the things I I did want to point out and me and Mr Marks were working on this uh for a stretch of time today is you know I don't want to call it user error but just by user action maybe misunderstanding of the form and things like that there were some uh multiple submissions there were some other um you know people that signed up for a wrong category by accident and things like that so we are still in the cleaning up the data stage but what we we did think it was going to be important tonight to share an update to give a general sense of what sort of feedback we received now that the uh registration window for uh busing has closed so I don't know if the board has any any questions on that but um I wanted to make sure that we communicated out this update Mrs Stanley so um I I know that we're we're in the beginning stages of this but I know two of our schools have really low um percentages right like 10 12 kids on a 54 passenger bus did Kelly have any advice on what she was thinking in that particular instance and she has she has a couple different thoughts and and certainly has has a plan I don't want to speak for her her plan yet at this time but I think she has a plan to try and make that work out yeah more cost-effective for everyone involved okay thank you Mr Nixon does this conclude your superintendent report yeah I'm done now thank you okay thank you we are going to be moving on to the interview for board candidates to fill the vacancy left by Mrs Angela Penna um I'd like to say good evening to the public and good evening to Mr bang Miss G Mr guski Miss huffnagle and Mr Tero the Board of Education and the school district are grateful for your commitment to step forward and volun for this vacancy position on the board as community members you have taken the extraordinary measure to serve the staff and students of our schools we are in a time of rebuilding and look to our community to guide the board and hire a superintendent as the superintendent is the only employee of the Board of Ed this process this evening is designed to protect and to honor your standing in our community and there'll be no public discussion of character questions were solicited from participating board members the questions selected considered the role of the board member reasons to serve participation of vol or volunteerism in our school district strengths and the time commitments and hiring a superintendent priorities for the board to consider and support for inclusivity in our district this interview process is taking place in public board members have received your cover letters and resumés each candidate will have up to three minutes at the podium to speak as an introduction the board president will ask the the four candidates the same three questions immediately following their presentation at the podium an additional 3 minutes will be allotted to answer the question following the four presentations and the three questions the board will adjourn to a second executive session to discuss candidates and return to public session to make a motion to appoint the new board member we're going to go in alphabetical order Mr bang we're going to invite you to come to the podium first thank you thank you and thank you for giving me the opportunity to introduce myself this evening um my family and I moved to Berkeley Heights in 2016 when we bought and renovated my husband's family home prior to that we lived in North clean field which is where I grew up so we like to put down our roots and kind of stay in one place so um a lot of my activities and volunteerism happened back in my old Hometown so in North planfield I served on the municipal Alliance and you Services Commissions for about about 10 years uh we coordinated with Somerset County agencies to bring programs and services into our school district and into our town to support the youth um I also served on the library Advisory Board again working with the Summerset County Library to improve our library and the services offered there um now with my daughter she's graduating from GL this year she's off to Ithaca and I'm looking for an opportunity to contribute more to this Community I think that the Board of Ed is a place where I can really have a great deal of impact based on my background um as you can see from my resume I've spent my career dedicated to education I have been on the child study team both in Rosel and now in Bridgewater for over two decades prior to that I also taught I was preschool teacher for about nine years as a child study team member I think I have a unique perspective because I get to see programs across our district and sometimes even travel to other districts or private schools to see what kind of programs are offered there so I have a sort of a a wider lens um and in addition to my masters in educational psychology I also pursued classes in educational leadership so I have an idea of how school systems function as a whole um my job gives me kind of also um unique perspective on that it's multifaceted and I have to always balance the needs of my students the needs of our families concerns of the parents the teachers all while keeping in mind that we do have a budget so you know there are things that the kids need and we have to figure out a way to get them for them um and is you know so I work across the school Community to do that um also as part of my building I've served on the school climate committee so we have done um some of the some of the work looking at how our kids feel in terms of diversity issues and things like that inclusion um I've I'm on the school safety team I did that school threat assessment training this summer um I serve on the attendance committee looking at some attendance issues in our building um and I recently most recently participated in a districtwide five-part professional development on inclusive education done by the state so my own personal uh qualities I feel like I pride myself on being a strong listener and a communicator I try to keep an open mind to other people's opinions and viewpoints and I feel like respect and honesty are the keys to a stronger working relationship um those are things that have made me successful on a child study team and I think would make me a strong boette member thank you Mr bang I'm gonna ask you some other questions at this point um the first question is would you like the one at a time or all three at once I'll I'll say time okay please describe describe your role and your desire to serve on the board of education and the opportunities that you have personally participated in or volunteered for within our school district okay so since moving here um within the school district I mean I've attended PTO events um my daughter's involved she doesn't do Sports so we don't go to all the sporting events but she's been very involved in theater so we go to a lot of the place I try to pitch in wherever I can being a working parent I'm not always available to come to the school things and those kind of functions but I try to be there when I can pay attention to what's going on in the Board of Ed so you know we keep up with what's going on in town um otherwise I'm active in the community I am on the H Board of the pool Club down the street from our house that was kind of the first thing I got into um and doing a lot of community service things so cleanups in town um going to the you know working booths at the street fair wherever I can to pitch in but I've been very busy with family and things like that so now that she's off to college I think I have a lot more time on my plate and I would like to uh get more involved second question describe the strengths and time commitments that you would be bringing to the Board of Education as we look to hire the new superintendent of schools and your top two priorities for the board okay so I think the strengths that I bring are just that having that overview of how the school system kind of works and having that over you know just kind of seeing the way different school systems work um in ter of time constraints I'm off for the summer so I have a lot of flexibility this summer um we don't have a vacation planned and I'm really excited actually to be able to be part of looking for a new superintendent I think that that's going to be a great kind of new start and give us the ability to kind of start fresh with new ideas and hopefully everybody can get behind that person and really you know move things along um priorities for the board I think collaboration is a big priority because as a board we're really supposed to be working together to bring ideas to the community or to bring ideas from the district you know out to the community so I think that it would be helpful to be able to work together um in maybe a more efficient way get decisions made quickly and and move things along um because our top priority really is the well-being of our kids and our staff and that doesn't happen if we're taking a long time to get to the next item so I think that would be sorry third question explain how you would support and advocate for the importance of inclusivity with the district's goal of diversity equity and inclusion in our schools and in our community okay yeah that was a really interesting presentation kind of looking at it from a historic P perspective because I was not here back in 2003 um I worked on a diversity Committee in Bridgewater for a little bit um and we looked at things like providing materials to teachers um making their classrooms more inclusive so that there would be books for the kids to get to that you know have characters that look like themselves or their families um we worked on kind of acknowledging holidays um and more than just like had having off for a certain holiday but also like before maybe Ramadan for example there'll be an email that goes out to the entire District that reminds all the teachers that this is an important time for that community and you know kids maybe haven't eaten and they're tired so it just kind of brings a level of awareness to all the staff that maybe didn't have that awareness before um also I think that we might want to look at some representation issues to make sure that kids see themselves in the school community in the people that are teaching them and the people that are in charge of the people that are teaching them because that helps them know that they can they can achieve that too so um I think there are ways to get that information I know that you know data and we want to collect data you can look at the climate surveys you can look at the Hib reports to see how how kids are getting along with each other to see if kids feel like they're included in their in their school Community thank you very much appreciate you coming forward Mr ruski welcome thank you for your volunteering I'm a little I'm a little slower here because I had a knee replacement in March so I when I sit for a while I have to let it settle out a bit um my name is Steve gusy you don't know me it's three syllables Greg Gus and ski just run them together but it's spelled SK at the end not an I don't make me polish okay I'm actually Slavic um I live in Len pain I moved here in 2011 and uh in 2015 my family and I we all went off to Ireland for three years came back in 2018 we've been here ever since I have five children three of them are already gone through the public school system and are successful and I have two daughters oh I'm sorry is that better does that work it's fine I'll go like this okay thank you um so I have two daughters at in um sixth and seventh grade and I'd have to say I'm very pleased with their progress and the things that they've learned here in the school uh I started out life as an electrical engineer graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1970 I retired in 2018 after 48 years of being in the workforce um is this like stereo uh is that better okay no worries so after 48 years in the workforce I worked my way up from engineer to being a um president of my own company and I also along the way was a project manager um I've hired many people um in the course of my career and that's really the reason why I'm interviewing here tonight is um I sat in on a meeting where people were talking about what to do for the interview and I was like you know I've done so many of these I think I could be a help I view this as a seven-month assignment um and so I think during that time period maybe the best thing I could can do for the board is to help out with that um and I would be eager to do that because I think getting the right person for the position is such an important thing this is one thing that as a board we wouldn't want to really mess that one up we want to get that perfect we want somebody with lots of energy who want somebody with a lot of compassion we want somebody who loves their job loves to be around kids loves to have teamwork loves to develop teams get teachers to together uh what we really want is we want somebody who's going to make this place fun enjoyable and when our students look back on life 20 years after they graduate they say you know that education I got in Berkeley Heights really helped me be successful and it's the chief School administrator who sets the tone for all that so I think I can help a lot with that um I'm very comfortable with as I said with during the interview process oh sorry okay are you ready for our questions I'm all set all set please describe your role and your desire to serve on the board of education and the opportunities that you have personally participated in or volunteered for within our school district so um I've already talked about the interviewing angle okay um I have been on PTO for Mountain Park and for for um Columbia um and I've also been the curriculum liaison for both schools and that's been a lot of fun curriculum is extremely important uh it's the basis for what gets done and it was very helpful and I learned a lot from that I'm ready for question too describe the strengths and the time commitment that you would be bringing to the Board of Education as we look to hire the new super intendent of schools and your top two priorities for the board so have I mentioned I'm retired okay I do have quite a bit of time available to me that I am willing to dedicate to help out this board um because it helps me as a parent I think it helps out the community in general and I would love to think that it helps out a lot of kids as they move forward in life um have two priorities first one is to get the chief School administrator on board and the second one uh be because I you know see this as a seven-month assignment I'm not looking to do a ton of stuff to shake the board up or anything like that I would rather the priority is more related to me I would rather my priority is to be helpful I want to be helpful to the board in ways if you need research done if you need something um searched for some reason whatever I have the time to help out and get kind of that stuff together for you and I would love to be able to do that sort of thing so that's really you know my second priority third question please explain how you would support and advocate for the importance of inclusivity with the district's goal of diversity equity and inclusion in our schools and in our community uh this this one is um one that's easy for me to answer it gets me going because I really think um a school should be a place where every child feels completely safe feels completely at ease is focused on learning doesn't have distractions from all sorts of other things going on we need to watch the culture very carefully I I know that's a difficult thing for the administration to do I think they're really working hard control all that kids our kids you know they bring with them a lot of baggage from home and you know we rely on the parents to be able to help us in in getting right culture going so that all the kids feel like they can just come here every day learn a lot and go home feeling satisfied thank you very much thank you I appreciate the opportunity missel welcome I know is that the one that works we have some help do you need any do you need any more assistance no I'm good thank you thank you you ready for my statement please great thank you so thank you for inviting me here this evening thank you for the community for listening uh let me kind of introduce myself to you my husband and I moved to Berkeley Heights just after we got married in 2001 um so we didn't have children yet but part of why we moved to this town was because we heard it was a good town with a good school district and it didn't hurt that I worked across the street from Bel labs and I had a mile and a half commute um so in the 20 some years that we've lived here a lot has changed most notably my mile and a half commute is now about 15 feet because I work from home full-time which is great we also have had a child who is now a junior at GL and part-time at the vocational school for welding so I get to see a little bit of how things are done there versus here um I do have a full-time job as I said I a chemical engineer by degree I still consider myself engineer but I guess I moved into management and that I'm a project manager I managed Capital Equipment projects that are roughly between 20 and $50 million I have about three or four of them going on at any given point in time as I said I do that from home my team is remote as well um so I do have a bit of flexibility with my time so in my spare time right now not doing Boe stuff I do like to Garden I like to crochet you usually see me here with my crochet I'm working on a blanket this evening um and I do like to bike with my family uh if you've been around town you'll sometimes see us in matching biking outfits yes that includes a 16-year-old teenage son who will go around in shirts with Tacos on them or M&M's or or flags with his parents um we try not to embarrass them too much so that's a little bit about me thank you we have three questions sure please describe your role and your desire to serve on the board of education and the opportunities that you have personally participated in or volunteered for within our school district so my participation in our school district has kind of waxed and waned over over the years I was an eager beaver in elementary school did class parent a few times and was on the PTO and did some things and then we hit Middle School we rights Collective my son hit middle school and it was like Mom it's not cool that you're helping out and so my my participation uh kind of dragged a little bit and those were also the pandemic years so then it really kind of dragged a little bit more but I still tried to participate and support the school when I could volunteering time or money as needed um and high school is sort of the same thing it's even less cool in high school um although last year I did do Project Graduation chaperoning it's like really late I can't I'm like too old for that um but it was but good fun to see like how the kids interact and what it was like so I have been in active um in terms of what's going on in the school before the pandemic I I never came to a meeting I never watched a meeting but I did actually read the meeting minutes and I thought I was fully informed and then that first Zoom meeting when we were trying to figure out like we could ever go to school again I you know watched on zoom and I was like wow I missed a whole lot of what was going on by just reading minutes and so I from then on I started uh either coming here or watching them online and and I've really been trying to keep a breast of what's going on in our district so why do I want to run for the board I actually said to my son tonight he's like why why are you running I was like I don't even really want to be on the board and he's like but why are you running then and and he and he said something I thought was really striking out of the mouths of babes or teenagers he said you know the people people that should be running for president or Congress are the people that don't want to do it and I think that was a really good point the people I I don't really want to get political I don't really want to be un necessarily on a board but I really do want to support and I think that's why I want to be here I've seen our district kind of get a little bit polarized I've seen our country get polarized and and I'd really like to try to bring that together within the group thank you please describe the strengths and time commitments that you would be bringing to the Board of Education as we look to hire the new superintendent of schools and your top two priorities for the board so I'm not retired yet but I do as I said work from home I have a lot of flexibility in my job um and our summer vacation this year is uh doing some Home Remodeling mostly done by my son and my husband so I will be around for the next six months um the biggest strength that I think I bring to this role is collaboration and ability to see multiple viewpoints um and this happens a lot in my job as project manager we have you know Engineers who have very opinionated ways of doing things and I'm always the one sitting in the room going oh I see his point of view I see her point of view I see his point of view let's figure out how we can get the team to come to a consensus on this how we can how we can collaborate and come to some middle ground and I'd really like to bring that strength to the board instead of having oppos opposing side let's try to collaborate and bring something to the middle uh the two biggest things that I think I would like to get done over the next uh six seven months on this role would be that collaboration and to that end bringing in a new superintendent um we have you know that's a big thing in this coming year and I think we have an opportunity here to to Really you know take a new turn with the district thank you would you please explain how you would support and advocate for the importance of inclusivity with the district's goal of diversity equity and inclusion in our schools and in our community I'm G to take a completely different approach to this question than probably everybody else um and I do think in diversity inclusion the way it was described tonight the way we often hear about is important but I want to take a different step and talk about diversity of strengths and needs amongst our students not just whether they have a a difference in race or religion or or gender but just where they are I think we spend a lot of time helping the special needs students and we should do that and they need that we should continue to do that and do it more and we also spend a lot of time recognizing and supporting what I call the superachievers the high and AP kids on a lot of activities Sports and whatever and again we should we should do that too they're great students they need recognition they deserve it but there's a I don't know 80% in the middle that I feel like gets a little bit lost and maybe doesn't get recognition for hey they've improved their grades they're not the top kid in this school but they've gone from being a c student to maybe getting a B+ this time and figure out a way to meet students where they are what their what their strengths are and where they need different support so I would like to try to figure out how to do that as well as um you know give them the support they need but also find where their strengths are as well so my kid strength somehow seems to be really into the the vote the welding thing and he's managed to find that Avenue to do that but not all kids necessarily you know have that have found what they want to do and I think we want to help them find what their strength is and where they can move forward with it how I feel like I can support that I think it goes back to finding a superintendent who can V focus on meeting the children where they are and bringing them up and giving them the best support they need and supporting their strengths thank you Miss H our final candidate Miss Terio we welcome you to the podium and I'm gonna back up hi everyone good evening um for my intro I wanted to start by telling you a little bit about myself and and my upbringing um I was raised in Short Hills New Jersey as a public school student when I was in fourth grade at Melbourne Township decided to actually close down my elementary school um it was actually called Ultra Hill School um I still remember how I felt when my school was closed um and we were redistricted and I watched houses actually being built where my old school was um it wasn't fun and and the families were quite angry about it um my parents decided to actually not keep me in the school district they transferred me to a private Catholic School in Summit complete disaster um and you know my mom to this day actually admits that finally she made a mistake um but I was in seventh grade I was enrolled to a school called mortown bar in moristown New Jersey um it was an amazing experience um I went on to graduate from seen hle University um with a degree in Psychology and Communications um this is actually where I met my husband so I've been with him for almost 30 years believe it or not um and um I've continued my career in um computer programming I managed a staff of over 40 people remotely actually in India that was quite a challenge because of our hours um and um I learned a lot about the culture over there and um I learned how to manage um over P2 billion doll projects um with doing that because I worked for AT&T at the time and and so they had a lot of Legacy systems in place um in 2003 my husband and I decided to move to Barkley Heights and wow what an amazing town we all live in and um we had our daughter in 2017 um and I can't believe that she she's actually going to be in high school next year I don't know about you but wow time flies and um about a year after I had my daughter um this is actually personal to me I actually lost a child at Birth um and that made me decide that I no longer actually wanted to have any more kids so if you ever wonder why I have one child that's why um it was a dark moment for me as I um as it and I decided that I was going to put my time and energy into her her upraising and into this community and so by doing that um when she became a first grader over at Mary Kay I decided to get involved in the PTO and so I didn't actually run anything at Mary Kay I was a little nervous because I didn't know really what I was doing um but I got involved in um a lot of different things I was told you know I was a worker Bas I was told you you go do this you go do this and um I went on to um having my daughter over at Woodruff I was the co-president over there when the redistricting happened it brought a lot of memories back to me about what happened and so I'm looking to try to help heal this community is really what I'm looking to do because I think there's a lot of old feelings that have been going on that that need to be you know healed and we can try to move this community forward um would you describe your role and your desire to serve on the board of education and the opportunities that you have personally participated in or volunteered for within our school district so Berkeley Heights right now now is currently um dealing with small fractures within this community um and they just kind of continue to grow and expand and when it comes down to it I think that um if we don't actually focus on those fractures it's gonna get to a point where the damage is done and it's going to be Beyond repair and so at that point when that happens everyone loses nobody wins in that so we need to think about how our behaviors and how we're moving forward as a district how we affect our kids how we affect our Educators how we affect our staff how we affect our community I mean we we have to look at it um the good news is the fractures are not Beyond repair and um that's where I'm hoping that I can step in and get involved to help with that I think we need to really move towards thinking positively and stop some of the Discord that's going on here um you know we need to also think about attracting the best candidates possible we have a lot of administration and a lot of staff that need to be hired this summer and so we really need to think about that so I really want to join because I'm open-minded um I'm well organized I'm detail oriented and I'm willing to compromise and I think that's really important it's a lot of give and take when you're involved in running a school district not everybody's is going to degrade agree or disagree but we need to kind of come to some kind of common ground to help move the district forward so um you know that's really kind of where I stand with this please describe the strengths and the time commitments that you would be bringing to the Board of Education as we look to hire the new superintendent of schools and your top two priorities for the board so my leadership and EXP sense of volunteerism with the PTO and right now I think most of you know I'm the current bpto president um my current involvement and and in within the school system is that I hear a lot of different things from different perspectives of people and and the truth is by hearing different perspectives on the various issues it allows me to have a unique perspective on The Learning Experience for all the kids within our district um my active involvement will help me help you um bridge that gap between the board members and your stakeholders um I regularly communicate with parents I don't pass judgment on people um and in my opinion no perspective is actually wrong um so I think the key thing is to to work together um I'm willing to compromise I don't always need to win an argument um and feel like I still have to come on top um as far as the I'm also just to let you guys know I'm self-employed so I work as a realtor now and so I have all the flexibility in the world and I'm around so you got me um the two priorities for the Board of Education are simple one is hiring the right superintendent not only for the district making sure that that person is well equipped to have success in this district and um we want to have a superintendent that's here for a long term we don't need to constantly have turnover the second thing is I hear a common theme over and over again from people and it's lack of trust that's what it really comes down to and I think the big key thing is deep rooted inide in in terms of and I heard this in part of your goals here is communication and so by communicating with each other and with your stakeholders you start to rebuild that trust again and um so it's not going to happen overnight but I think that through um working hard at it I think we can persevere as a community please explain how you would support and advocate for the importance of inclusivity with the district's goal of diversity equity and inclusion in our schools and in our community so de and is actually a very very sensitive topic for me I actually have a multi-racial child and so it's it's important to me and the purpose really of De and is to help students and Educators thrive in our schools and um for our Educators and and staff in their work in their workplace so one thing I want to touch on regarding de Andi as it comes to this community and where I see a major lack is our staff and our educators are not reflective of what the Berkeley Heights Community looks like today and so the question that I kind of have continued to ask myself are things like and and I understand this is difficult but you know generally speaking most kids won't see their first male educator until they're in like fifth grade so you know maybe we can start trying to actually um recruit male teachers as younger and I know it's difficult with the pool um I also think about things like how many Asian-American Educators do we have in the district how many African-American Educators do we have in the district what about indian-americans um you know it it truly in and in my opinion I don't think we have that many maybe I'm wrong cuz I haven't gone through um all the schools and I haven't gone through the high schools so I'm not quite sure but I think to my understanding the key thing is making sure that we're looking in places to try to recruit talent and and not at the level where you're sacrificing quality because I'm not saying that but what I am saying is we live live near several fantastic universities you know Sean Hall Ruckers Kean University that's a teaching college are we reaching out to those schools are we reaching out and networking with cultural groups are we posting things on LinkedIn where are we looking to try to recruit Educators to expand our staff and be more reflective of what this community is all about now thank you thank you very much I want to thank our four candidates uh the Board of Education and the school district are grateful for your commitment to step forward and volunteer for this vacancy position on our board at this time we're going to adjourn to Executive session with a motion to discuss our candidates do I have a motion to go to Executive session number two second second okay uh Voice vote please I I thank you okay it is now s sorry 9:35 we will return as soon as we can thank you session and I have a motion please seconded Voice vote I I any Nays time is 101 okay may have a motion to appoint a new board member at this time Mrs Stanley I would like to make a motion for Debbie Terrero do we have a second I'll second it okay roll call are we doing more nominations yeah we have to Nom yes it I believe it's one at a time either I've seen it done both ways how the board have done in the past in 2015 there were the all nominations were received and then the vote happened it's done differently it's being done differently since the last time last time there was only one nomination so I think we should take all nominations to be fair to all the candidates and then vote I will back I've seen it done both ways your policy is Big to kind of this meeting along president probably has that disc out so turn it back so if it's permissible then I would like to nominate Steve gregowski okay excuse me the determination is that we'll make all the nominations first and then we'll vote Mrs Ziri do you have a nomination I just did this is Bradford do we have a second I'll second it are there other nominations yes I have one I'd like to nominate Miss um Kelly HF Nagel for the position of the um board member and I'll second that do we have any other nominations okay all right our first vote would be for Miss uh Miss deio roll call please Mr Stanley yes Mr Heyman yes Mr Kiri no Dr forer No Miss Jolly no Miss Connor no Miss Bradford yes motion fails maybe we have a roll call vote for um Mr gusi that was nominated by Mrs Ziri Miss Airi yes Dr forer yes Mr Heyman no Miss Charlie no Miss Mrs Connor no Mrs Stanley no Mrs Bradford no motion fails may we have a roll call vote on Miss huffnagle Mrs Connor yes Mrs Jolly yes Mr Kiri yes Dr forer yes Mr Heyman yes Miss Stanley yes Miss Bradford yes motion passes okay Miss huffnagel uh we will help you get on board uh with the process and I want to thank all our candidates we are grateful to you and our district is grateful to you for your participation in this process or would you like to have her seated at the day I don't think she can until she has onboarded and been sworn in okay right we will help you with that process thank you um we are going to move on to committee and liaison reports at this time I will give a report on the board goals the Board of Education will improve planning and the committee structure the board continues to refine and to standardize committee minutes the board ucation will Board of Education will work to improve communication both internally and externally the board is piloting a remote participation at tonight's Boe meeting the Board of Education will evaluate the CSA in a timely manner the board is beginning the processes for both Dr vley and Mr ni deadline is July 1st the Board of Education will promote all district goals by providing the support and resources necessary to achieve the goals the board of education has had input in the budget process to support the district goals the Board of Education will develop and Implement a plan for continuous board professional development with ongoing board training board members receive frequent invitations for ongoing training in person and online training attendance is tracked online with njsba many of our board members are planning to attend attend the Statewide Boards of Education conference in the late fall to attain to obtain or enhance their board member certification in terms of the Veterans Affair committee which I am a leahan for the week of May 20th local military veterans police officers the town mayor and the Boe president read age appropriate books to Berkley Heights Elementary students the students made Memorial Day cards for the veterans the collaboration was facilitated by Mrs Andrea masery fourth grade co-teacher at Mountain Park School the Veterans Affair committee and the schools plan to continue the partnership on Veterans Day the town's Memorial Day Parade was a huge success with many students marching the Gil band and bagpipes marched and performed under the direction of Mr niiko Sullivan and two GL students Garett o Conor and Kell excuse me Emily kubic were the Parade announcers Town Council liaison the Berkeley Heights Town Council made on May 7th and May 21st an update was provided on the town's affordable housing requirements the film photographic Justice the Corky Lee Story was shown at Town Hall last evening with a good attendance as a part of the Asian-American native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage mon month the PTO Council uh the administration shared and discussed the curriculum agenda with the p PTO liaison from each of the schools Mrs jolly and I attended the celebration and final project presentations for Berkeley Heights fifth through eth graders who were invited to participate in the fiser fin future techies this program is a collaboration between our school district and the financial institution at conell Center the students projects were Innovative and creative we are very proud of our students who attended this community collaboration and look forward to next year's partnership our district educators of the year were honored this past week at the Union County level with certificates and a breakfast at Liberty Hall on Kane University we look forward to further honoring these amazing Educators on June 10th with the reception in in the IMC and the ceremony in the GL Auditorium other other committee and liaison reports at this time Mrs Stanley so I have Personnel um Personnel was on May 23rd um we had an update on our listing for a interm assistant superintendent and the director of Elementary Ed and intervention uh we also discussed the summer curriculum writing it is on hold at the moment it for tonight's meeting um but there is still hopes that we will have a sidebar very very soon we're getting close um and also we talked about a staff replacement um there is an employment add up for that position next is policy we had a meeting on uh May 16th so first we have policy 2411 that was guidance counseling the change was to our protected categories group this change however would to replace it with the state statute NJ a and then it's 6 a 7- 1.1a this is a much more comprehensive and has changed many times over the years um this is a way to keep the policy up to date with the state law I just want to read what it actually says so we know what the protected categories are because multiple of our policies tonight did have this change so the purpose of this chapter so this is again 6A 7- 1.1a the purpose of this chapter is to ensure all students regardless of housing status social economic status immigration status or any protected category as stated at njsa 10 5-1 such as race Creed color national origin interest and anry age marital status civil union status domestic partnership status affectional or sexual orientation genetic information pregnancy or breastfeeding sex gender identity or expression religion disability atypical hereditary cellular or blood trait service in the armed forces of the United States or nationality are provided equal access to educational activities and programs by District Boards of Education the educational activities and programs include the teaching of challenging curriculum based on the New Jersey student learning standards differentiated instruction formative assessments aligned to the njsls and qualified teachers and Professional Standards for teachers and school leaders so again right we removed our phrase that talks about race Creed and religion and replac it with this more comprehensive state law that as you can see has changed over the years um so in the first draft that was released to the public though the option number four was not chosen um so we did change that for tonight the number four says involve the coordin um coordinated efforts of all teaching staff members under the leadership of certified guidance and counseling Personnel so again this is what our current practice is and what our current policy language has um it just was not checked off in the original um draft policies but we did fix it for tonight then we have policy 3211 code of ethics um this current this policy was currently last updated in 2001 um again one of the big changes was our protected categories the statute was added instead also added was a paragraph describing the Nea remedies for um a displ actions then we had the policy 5570 sportsmanship we had a good discussion on this one but we did send it to the athletic director for any input and there was some feedback so we are going to hold off on that one and have the committee look at it further then we have policy 5750 Equitable education opportunity again it was added that the statute there were small language changes a lot of it is pupil to student uh St SMA over the years does not like the word pupil and they need to change them all to students so there's a lot lot of those cross outs again we had policy 5842 equal access of student organizations again this was added we added the protected category the state statute and then again pupil to student and the last one is p 9323 notification of juvenile offender case disposition the last one is our bylaw 167 the reason why we discussed this one is in order to add remote par anticipation I know that is something that we have discussed in the past the technology committee decided they are going to Pilot that um and we were asked to look at the policy so again what was revised was the language around remote only um adding that in um and just changing how we are going to use that in public participation in board meetings um recently a board member brought up um a judge ruling in Pennsylvania about free speech I do think that is something that the board can look at but again I think that the the Board needs to um address this with struss Esme um I have um the staff trying to get us some feedback from St smme first and then we obviously will go to the attorneys because we cannot discuss something as important as free speech in 48 hours um so I do want us to look at this further but for right now I do want everyone to focus on the part that is about remote participation because that is what the policy committee is asking us to look at today and what was changed um and the last thing is that we discussed our policy 169.254 Transportation um we discussed the need to move forward with these I've sent an email out to get um feedback so I'd appreciate if you can give us feedback on these so that the policy committee can have a very uh good discussion on these policies so we can try to move them forward again that is my Lon report also in the parade I don't know if everybody saw but there was the Arts and woodworking um vehicle being pulled through uh the Memorial Day parade and I was really impressed with all the work hard work that had gone into that so look for that in peppertown park any other committee reports uh Mrs Ziri yeah from a technology aren't we piloting the zoom remote participation from today as we speak okay so anybody on Zoom if you want to raise a hand after but you get your chance after everybody in this room gets to speak so officially I think it's open thank you Jordan I see no other committee oh I'm sorry Mrs Conor I'll be quick um this is the finance committee meeting from yesterday a number of items are actually on the agenda for today um the first one was the um cafeteria renewal uh with with the vendor uh I think the key point that came out of the discussion yesterday was there's probably um a good idea to go survey our parents on what change or Improvement might they want to see in the options that students have in the cafeteria I think our high school cafeteria has has um a variety of options but it's probably more the middle and the elementary schools that um that could use a refresh perhaps uh there is the other part on the cafeteria is uh AJ's working to look at the analysis of the findings that came out of the audit as it relates to our um uh cafeteria pricing or there was a finding that that we need to go analyze so he's working on that the other item that was discussed was the student participation fees again we have that on the agenda for today uh the discussion was to keep them flat they had not increased for a long period of time they went through an increase yes uh last year uh at this point in time we don't think it warrants another increase uh at the same time there was discussion to make sure that our on one hand the fees that that we have for the participation and the requirements to run our Athletics programs or the clubs that um that are offered in the schools to make sure that we provide them with what they need uh in terms of equipment or in terms of opportunity so perhaps more conversation in the next finance committee meeting uh there are a few Co-op agreements on the agenda for today um standard renewals uh the way we understand it uh two items that are basically getting corrected uh there is an eate award um number that's being corrected from what it was in the last I think in the last uh meeting or the one before that we had the one before that we had a approved it came back to find out that the the amount on that was incorrect so that is on the agenda for us today to look at uh the other piece is the software support contract uh there is an additional I think about 3,000 odd um in terms of support fees that was not included the last time we looked at it so that's on the agenda for today uh there is a renewal of the physician contract on the agenda for today one item that we Ted talked about but it's not on the agenda is the use um the facility usage fees and um the committee couldn't come to a conclusion quite yet yesterday so we will put that perhaps on the next maybe the June 10th meeting it is it is it's on there and okay discussion we had yeah the fees we'll have on there and the discussion that we had with the pal we had it with them and they agree with it completely okay so they like they like they like it they like the proposal yes excellent um so that that's quick uh one last thing we talked about the um architect um RFP that we had I believe we have uh the documentation sitting in the office we we need to come together and agree on the the path forward for how we are going to go about choosing the architect firm for the next school year starting July um 2024 um on the activity fees um I know we have a policy and our our fees have pretty much stayed FL flat so if a my basic question is if a student enrolls for multiple activities is it per activity or is it one fee so however many sports the or activities so if a if a student joins the jazz club and volleyball and also wants to do soccer it's $7500 I 200 it's a it's a different number for G number for C you only charge one fee per student irrespective of okay that thanks for the clarification um the other question I had was um and this what we are approving today for the activity fees is for this upcoming school year not for um the current one okay and can um maybe this is an administrative question or a finance committee question um there needs to be some sort of I know we have a policy but some sort of clarity on when these activity fees have to be collected by what is the process are they collected before the school year starts do these letters go out you know between September and do they have to be paid by October or are the letters going to go out in the third like right before the school year ends maybe some sort of communication on that would be great Mr Nixon thank you that concludes my report any other committee or liaison reports we'll move on now to board Communications we just have one we have uh Dave Ryan uh District bus driver he's retiring U he's been a bus driver past 14 years he's retiring at year end and uh he also is making a recommendation for uh uh Mr Nixon to be the uh uh full-time superintendent that's my only correspondence thank you we're going to move on to comments from the public on agenda items only um we will then do our piloting for our Zoom with the same um reminders during this portion of the meeting District residents and staff are invited to address the board of education on agenda items only the board requests that individuals State their name town of residents or school of attendance for our record all comments shall be directed to the board president and depending upon the nature and complexity of the question it may or may not be answered during the meeting by the administration if so the response would occur after this public portion of the meeting has concluded although the board may not respond to all items raised during the public forum all public comments will be considered the board asks that the members of the public be courteous and mindful of the rights of other individuals when speaking specifically comments regarding personel maners are discouraged and cannot be responded to by the board students and employees have specific legal rights afforded by the laws of New Jersey the board has Bears no responsibility nor will it be liable for any comments made by members of the public please note that if any member of the public or on Zoom becomes disruptive during the meeting the board president May terminate the participant statement continue disruptions may result in removal from or adjournment of the meeting each speaker's statement will be limited to three minutes in duration public comments in person on agenda items only hey Mr Marks we are going to move now to our piloting our program for uh Zoom participation our first uh participant is John McGee Mr McGee can you hear me yes oh it's working um because you guys don't hear enough from me uh John mcz uh 56 C Avenue Berkeley Heights New Jersey uh first I want to really well done in terms of uh you know the vote and the discussion around the candidates I thought everybody did a really good job it was nice to see things just go smoothly for the first part of the meeting um so Kudos on that um so I have concerns on the agenda the first I think it's the athletic trainer is that the right term for that okay well it's the athletic uh we're spending I think a hundred over $100,000 on this new position and when we compare ourselves to other districts we have probably one of the highest per people costs when it comes to Athletics I'm fully supportive of of Athletics I'm concerned though that we're kind of making a lot of things really robust and I'm not seeing that same kind of investment in co-curriculars or academics or the Arts um and I and I feel like if you know I I feel like you know that's something that the board may want to consider or think about I'm not sure what the purpose of this position is and how necessary it is I was a little disappointed that there wasn't much of a discussion point at the budget meeting uh going on to be the behavioral health program I think you know that's something I don't know what I I'm familiar with the agency um I feel like that's something that sh you know the district should have a presentation on if they're going to I mean it's a lot of money I don't know if it's a current service we're using or not but I think that that's sort of worthy of um having a presentation to the public to to determine or to to hear what it is that they're going to be doing versus it just kind of going through a vote you know without without their you know I don't know if you guys can do it as much justice as maybe somebody from that facility and there being a sort of a back and forth discussion um on guidance um I'm glad uh Miss Stanley cleared that up uh that there is one option there I don't really have an issue with the prot but I think with policies like guidance it might be a good opportunity for the Department to come in and do a presentation just for the community if you're going to work on a policy that involves a department sometimes it might be a good thing to have them come in and talk a little bit about what they do and how it works uh ethics concerns about the Nea language um I I don't know if that's a Union contract thing but I'm you know they're a labor organization and I'm not sure how they can define a remedy for an Ethics violation I feel like that's something the superintendent or an administrator should do but I might be ignorant about that uh public participation ask that you bring allow people to come up more than once and then last thing is goals I'd like to see I I think it would be helpful it's very your time is up we'll just allow you to finish your last Point yeah thanks scale just give me one minute if that's okay all right um a lot of tasks you know and and not a lot of measurable outcomes in some areas and I feel like tasks are great they they're a pathway to the goal um but you know I think it would help uh to add some measurable criteria to some of those things uh so that we could see if what we're doing actually works thank you very much thank you I see no other hands raised okay there are no other hands raised for um inperson public uh for agenda items only has closed too late okay our Zoom portion comes next okay we're going to move on now to Gil there is hardly anybody can we continue can we let this parent speak there'll be another time for public comments we're moving on to Administration address any those questions oh I I apologize yes the questions the athletic trainer Mr Nixon the costs involved yeah I mean I I I don't know where the cost of 100K came from there's a general amount budgeted because candidates haven't even been interviewed yet um but similar to teachers athletic trainers are paid on the same pay scale so it's similar to the hiring of teacher so I don't know necessarily where 100K price tag is is discovered from I would assume that that probably will not be the price tag I said this at the last meeting I think or maybe two meetings ago but for what it's worth um this to me is not a net incremental whatever it's going to be 60k 80 whatever it winds up being because again we had a lot of cost for training services but year this school year and in the past so this there may be some additional cost I would imagine it's not that much when we consider what we've paid out for Jag and other services so just just pointing that out and I think we did discuss at one other meeting that there like the budget for athletics did go up right because not because of this position but because we had cut it the previous year right so they're just trying to catch up so they can give uniforms to students this year right so it's it's not it's not a flat thing for the athletic trainer Dr por yeah actually I think John is substantially right I I've been asking some questions about how much this would cost and uh when I took the two if you take the salary number I guess like you said for the um step one teacher guide uh and then uh you had benefits it it comes up close to 100,000 Mr Nixon would you like like to comment on the behavioral health program request for Public Presentation um I mean not much other than that's something we could certainly look into I don't know if that was so much of a question as much as it was a you know suggestion or request for more information for the public we had another suggestion on the guidance policy with the guidance counselors coming in same okay same answer uh public participation I think it was just a comment on that did anybody have any other yes Miss Stanley so just for Effective School Solutions this was brought um the beginning of last year right 20 2 23 school year um and this was brought in um due to the fact that we had students going out of district and this was a way to bring the students back into district is to have this um um effective School Solutions support our behavioral um and mental health of our students that we didn't have enough support for um so the we were hoping right for the cost to be um equated right by bringing people back um and we always want our students back in our buildings and part of the community here um so this was brought to the curriculum committee I guess a year and a half ago um and that was where the decision came from the reason why the budget now is um seeing a a big difference this year is because we are not using some of the funds that we were using previously right we I think we were using Esser funds yeah we were using Esser funds so this year we're seeing a bigger price tag but it's the same program that we are already using and is being offset by bringing students back into the community these these questions were addressed on the 24th and also on uh May 7th yeah we've discussed this before definitely thank you all moving on to minutes is that correct resolution a all board members approval of meeting minutes resolved that the Board of Education approves the following meeting minutes regular session minutes from January 18th 2024 executive session minutes from February 26 2024 special session minutes from April 15 2024 executive session minutes from April 15 2024 regular session minutes from April 18th 2024 executive session minutes from April 18th 2024 special session minutes from April 24 2024 executive session minutes from April 24 2024 regular session minutes from May 7th 2024 executive session minutes from May 7th 2024 any discussion I have two well we first have to move the motion so so moved second thank you discussion Mrs Conor yes I I so I look through the January 18th minutes and I think that is um I would like to propose an amendment to fix something uh at the end of the this was the vote for the board president um where we had rounds of voting and at the end of it the minutes right now State the board fails to appoint or you know elect a a a vice president should be president you have a motion to what is a motion to amend amend and and say the board fails to okay so it's for January January 18th yes January 18th okay so your motion is to amend the minutes for January 18th I'll give you a second on that could you restate that again Mrs Conor sure let me open up the minutes real quick the minutes uh State actually hold let me open up the minutes I think you might be confusing this because I pulled it up so it it has the fourth roll call and then it says motion fails and then there was a table right the vice president nomination and what you're describing is under the board vice president that's right right so that's correct so there is no need for a change so if we table the motion we wouldn't have voted on it so the motion fails doesn't apply to the vice president is that the one that I sent at it says the board so three o' yes this the one we've been talking about for months this this is the one that's revised correct correct so it's clear right that vote for the president roll call roll call roll call and every time it says motion fails motion fails then there was a motion to table vice president nomination the motion passes the board fails to elect a board vice president I don't I don't think that that is a a miscommunication because we're under board we're under vice president nomination is that the way to read those minutes is is the the board fails to elect is that for um if he tabled a motion I'll be honest with you I'd have to go back and look because from what I'm understanding I've I've probably went back with this several times from Mr jolly and I thought we had this pretty much down pad and made the last change with it today and I thought they were pretty good with this because I I I was reading through that today and I wanted to make sure that it applied to the right roll call I I think if a motion is staed it should just say the motion was tabled for vice president not motion fails yeah that that's why we never voted on it um it it doesn't say motion fails it just says um so as long as this applies to the motion that was tabled I'm fine I just didn't know if it applied to all the ru calls up above Mrs kanana are you resending your Amendment um motion to amend I will resend it under that assumption that it applies to the motion that was tabled yeah once once the motion has been seconded it belongs to the assembly doesn't belong to the members so it's it's not an option for the member to withdraw the motion okay what are we doing next like we're getting caught up in the weeds again we'll go for a vote vote to amend so what are we amending nothing am of minutes accting to amend the minutes so here's my question we're we're doing an amend of the 118 meeting minutes and what are we amending you're you're just saying that there's nothing to amend so we I'm saying is this I'm confused when it says that if we table a motion and I really can't answer that at the moment because I don't say it and it's right now it is I'm gonna say 10 to 11 and I really don't remember because I went through all these meeting minutes today and I really I'm honestly I can't answer that I believe uh the person who uh put a motion forward can resend it at the meeting also the no the rule is that once the motion has been seconded the motion belongs to the assembly and it's up to the assembly to decide whether to allow ited yeah let's move okay let's take a a voice roll vote to amend uh this to move on from this eyes eyes to resend the motion I I I okay so all right so we have to finish by midnight resolution a all born members Madame President if we are going to if we are bound by Robert's Rules the vote was to amend the how about we make this nice and simple M Mr Mr dler has said that if we need to call him I can call him right now because he said he'll be on call he needed to go home we can make this nice and simple if we're GNA fight this all night long because I I'm not I don't think we need to do this we just have to do a roll call that's all we have to do a okay the simplest thing actually if you don't want to consider it is just to move to table it okay roll call vote please we move I move to table table the motion please table okay so you're going to move to table the motion that we don't know what was amended the motion table table motion table motion and who made that Mrs Stanley yes who's the second second Miss Stanley yes Miss Jolie yes Mr Kiri yes Dr forer yes Mr Heyman yes Miss Connor yes Miss Bradford yes motion passes resolution a all board members approval of the minutes we need a um I think we've already had yes we had Mrs Stanley and we had Mrs Khana as the second correct correct yes that's right I I do have the question on the minute for 7th of May and the conversation that we just had um okay what was the question I don't know if they accurately reflect one of the resolution um yeah one of the resolutions it basically said that that everything except C passes so it seemed like everything under C has failed I I'm going to I'm I'm going to defer to Mrs Jolly if you don't mind so this was the uh vote um with the hip reports um I think you had documented it as the entire um resolution I guess failing but um based on the counts there were uh at that time I think there's actually three that passed um including the one discussed earlier okay so what we need to do is motion except for resolution C and I need to document the hold on one second for that one the three that passed uh which were the three that passed would it be simpler to maybe pull the minutes and not go through that sure okay why don't we do that and then sure so are you're making a motion to table um well you could just not pass them right that particular one so we're all gonna vote no to it that's the one from May 7th regular minutes regular minutes this is letter I miss Stanley yes to all no to I miss Conor yes to all no to I Mr Kiri it's a yes to a to c and then and then no to D J and F and I D J F and I yes okay so you have n g so then what about e that's a yes okay hold on one second you just gave me that you said you had a to c was a yes and you had D J F and I were Nays D now what about the rest djf and I were no yeah the rest are yes so the rest now e d e f hold on one second it's a yes to ABC there's F there there's so we got g h there's I and J is a yes no no that's a no okay a c e g and H are yeses okay Dr forer U abstained on the whole thing Mr Heyman uh abstain on G and H I wasn't present for April 24th and no on I yes to the others so yes on AB bcde e f and J Miss charie um yes to all except e and I miss Bradford yes to all except noo I okay I everything passes except for I moving on to Administration resolutions a through G all board members District uh bylaw policies regulations first reading approve professional development days approve report of Acting Superintendent approve employment contracts of business administrator and board secretary amend Acting Superintendent employment dates amend acting principal position at Governor Livingston amend Lead Teacher position at Governor Livingston High School may I have a motion to for Resolutions a through G all board members so moved second discussion so um if I may um I just wanted to um speak to um the policies so um I think everything Pam said was um correct um the only thing so just for policy 2411 which was the guidance C cing policy in the um when we had the meeting I think the one because of you know some of the issues that we had the one change that we didn't see versus our existing policy was that the new policy removes um legal guardians from like in the section where it said parents and legal Guardians and that one is a little not sure why right because situations may be where there's legal guardian so I didn't not to ask the question at the time because it wasn't transparent um but in you know so that's one issue that I have there so I did look there is um some of the other policies to remove legal um legal guardian as well so I think it must be a stress smme policy that they feel that that that no longer is needed but otherwise I don't know why that would be necessary but other than it's it's seen in other policies that they are removing legal guardian so if this policy passes um first reading and we get so because I mean Mr jion here so I thought maybe I'd ask him but if um if we want to bring that back into the policy right because I I think that's just more inclusive right of what it might look like in a family situation right um I think again we'd have to look to Legal because I don't think right like we have plenty of people here in Berkeley Heights who are legal Guardians and not necessarily the biological parents so I don't think that we run into issues like that um again I think we would have to as legal on that right because I think stme is moving away from that language right so I guess so my only concern is that if we go with this but we are um but we do want to bring it back does it have to come back for first reading or if we want to add that language back in or can we do it as part of a second reading so yes in I just pres president for Berkeley Heights is that we go back to First reading if we make any changes between first and second reading but there are plenty of boards that don't do that they they the first reading is the first reading for everyone and then everyone gives their feedback and then you go to a second reading with the new changes so we do need to maybe have a deeper discussion on what we want to do as a board um because I don't think that that is like legally we have to go back to First reading but we that's what we have been doing okay but again if it's approved today and afterwards the policy committee wants to look at it again there's nothing stopping us from doing that so we can reintroduce it with the language for first yes if we find out from legal that they do that legal guardian should be in there that's absolutely something we can add and then it would either go back to First reading or if we decide we can keep it for a second reading okay Dr forger you had a question you you can on a policy you can you can do a first reading and then you can even make a slight change on the second reading you don't have to go back to first uh I don't I don't actually see what we're talking about legal guardian what what is this right so Tom this is um this is the issue that if you look at the the most current SME version versus what we actually have on the books um in our policy guide it references parents um and legal Guardians um so it's it's there it's but in in the one that we're considering for tonight I printed it out from yeah and the one that's for tonight does not have legal Guardians oh oh and where was that in the it's on the website it's on the website no I mean where in the text I mean is it just struck out or it said parents and Guardians stress has removed that previous so okay so this time we haven't got a strike down version like the standard operating procedure is if we amending a policy we get a track change version with our current policy that hasn't been shared this time so I think that's why you're not seeing it any other discussion yes yes okay I'm sorry M Tom oh Mr Dr forer yeah I just have a minor uh thing here I noticed in uh section seven uh there's two parts it A and B and the each which policy please Dr forer thank you uh 2411 uh has Parts A and B section seven Parts A and B each of those has an njac uh Administrative Code reference but now when we come down to eight which says establishes a referral system that utilizes all the aid to schools and Community off all the aid the commun all the aid the schools and Community offer guards the privacy of the student and monitors the efficacy of such referrals there's no Administrative Code reference I think whatever it is that should be added we maybe we could it at the second reading I don't know but I think I think to be parallel to the rest of the policy it should be in there thank you we can check with legal uh Mrs kaana thank you um I have some of the same concerns that Natasha brought up um and I think maybe as a district we need to have a conversation even if Strauss Esme is taking legal guardian out of their policy if we want to be as a district more inclusive and you know more reflective of what our popul ation needs what I don't see why we should take it out just because sh Esme feels like we need to take out all references to Legal Guardians so that that's my you know feedback on that but all I'm saying is we can keep it in but I want to make sure we check with legal because stress saay might have a reason why they took it out right should get yeah maybe another thing to do is ask them why are you taking all of these so the problem is is that this policy I said for is from 200 W so we have missed many of the of the updates that would have said why they removed this because this was not removed in the latest right this had already been removed in one of their previous alerts okay right so we don't know currently why they are doing it because this was done a few years ago it wasn't something that's current okay so I would say we should get the reason uh and be more like have a broader uh point of reference here my feedback here is policy 3211 code of ethics it seems to give the power of any kind of remedial actions or pretty much everything to the Nea and not to the board and that is a cause of concern to me the next policy well the next policy I had on my list was one policy okay let's go ahead so are we done with so I just want to remind everybody that it's 11:05 we have to finish the entire agenda before midnight and that includes public participation thank you for the reminder um okay so are are we done with a discussion of 2411 if if we're done with 2411 we should just vote on it and then move on to the next one we're going to we're going to vote on all the uh resolutions a through je that was the the motion yeah yeah I want to mention 3211 uh we're giving it looks like we're giving the Nea uh exclusive ability to enforce the policy I'm not sure we want to do that but I don't I don't understand why we would do that uh and then I was wondering if they have the exclusive Authority would that be at the national level or would that be at the local level and uh that would be one question so we could check with legal on that um yeah so I think that's the only uh question I had about 3211 who and actually why would we want to give up our authority over them there also seem to be some uh overlaps between this kind of Ethics policy and maybe uh licensing requirements uh for teachers um Mrs cona oh sorry Mrs Ziri sorry so on 3211 um I think we can go back to Strauss May and ask them instead of asking the legal I think that we already pay them a fee so what one of the clarification that we need to ask instead of asking our attorneys is it's the policy says Nea or its Affiliates so are the Affiliates National Affiliates it's an ambiguous term so only Nea and its affiliates can take remedial action so who are they I don't I would like to list them instead of being ambiguous also I believe as a school district and as a board we are responsible for our District staff and supporting them and if at all there was a code of ethics you know improper act then if we are indemnifying them and if we are supporting them we should also be able to have some sort of a medial action on that so maybe we should get some clarification on this and I did ask this from the administration what is the urgency to vote on these policies I am aware of the time so and given that we had a little bit of a snafu that we didn't get the strike through version with early our district policies is it fair to ask can we table these policies until we get these questions answered to June 10th we just have the two questions to ask on policy 2411 and 3211 and we will get those no there are so all the policies that are on the agenda right now Mrs Bradford have we did not receive a track change version which we which is our standard operating procedure in the district so the attachment package we got did not yeah so all I'm saying is I I believe the response we got from the policy committee chair was they were track changes done done with the Strauss Esme version of the policies so because we haven't received it can we just table them go back well we have a motion on the table for Resolutions a through G all board members if there's no other discussion we can go for a vote Dr porer yeah uh there's a lot to go here uh can we go on to 5750 uh there's a interesting parag this Equitable Educational Opportunity uh there's a paragraph in there I'll just read it to you a teaching staff members Act of derision or enmity in any form against any against a person or person's on the basis of the protected categories list uh njac we've had this before shall be considered to be conduct un becoming to a professional staff member of this district and shall be subject to appropriate discipline well that's that's good I I think we all agree agree with that but why would you not uh have discipline for anybody outside that category so you're basically saying derision and enmity is not allowed against these protected categories that's fine good but you're then you're imp implicitly allowing it against all other people that are not in those categories there's no no profession there's no discipline Associated by this policy anyway against somebody that's not in the protected categories so I think what we should do is just take out on the basis of the protected categories list and that covers everything well let's refer this back then to our policy committee for that Dr I mean Mrs Stanley the name of the policy is Equitable education opportunity so it's it's directly addressing the protected categories section right that's that's what the point of the policy is so again though um board members did have this um a week ago um I know that in the last 48 hours um we've had a lot of questions and concerns and I have um I spent all day yesterday and this morning answering those questions and concerns um but again I think I've made it clear that the board has more policies that we need to work on um I am willing to hear all of your advice but not at this hour since we need to make a vote on on them if there are no other discussions on policy we'll take it to the vote are we going to vote on 167 we're going to vote on all of the policies as a group okay all right so I have a lot of concern about that uh and I've notified the board there's a uh memorandum from a judge in Pennsylvania uh where there's a case that uh four parents sued the district over a policy that had some problems with it and how they were conducting their meetings and the judge granted a preliminary injunction and he has a 23-page memorandum explaining uh why he did this and with citations to Supreme Court precedence and District or circuit uh uh Circuit Court District three which is us and uh he says you know you can't use vague terms in the policy uh you cannot um you cannot require an address for for a speaker they don't have to give their address uh and you cannot use terms like irrelevant disruptive abusive none of those have any definitions in our policy so this is would be uh basically against the First Amendment and I'll tell you what happened in that District uh the district settled with the finish up with your comments I I will I just a a little bit more here uh the parents settled with the district and the district wound up paying $300,000 because they this a policy that was very similar to what you're proposing here with these vague words uh I really don't think that we should go forward with this this kind of policy that has these vague terms and I did circulate to the board um the policy that they finally came up with which I assume passed legal muster in that District so I did give you an example of a good policy thank you we're going to move ahead with the vote for Resolutions a through G all board members roll call vote Mr secretary Mr Heyman uh I a yes to all except uh abstaining on the uh the first two hibs the ones that uh 2646 28 uh and uh and uh 263 175 so yes to everything else Mrs Conor yes to everything except a except for a a and that's abstain or no that's a no sorry Mr Kiri it's a yes to everything except A and D Dr forer I'll say yes to everything except a and um yeah that's okay every everything's yes everything's upd Miss Jolly I'm going to say yes to um everything I do want to qualify that um this is first reading of these policies and that we said 2411 3211 0167 are the problematic ones that need further uh clarification from stra asme I think we had 5760 also 5842 we could we could refer all of them back with the specific questions okay so yes to everything thank you Miss Stanley yes M Bradford yes to all okay motion passes education resolutions a through e all board members approve student educational field trips approve Contract Services approve Learning Management platform approve effective School Solutions uh amend out of District places may I have a motion to move resolution a through e under education all board members so moved second discussion so I did have a question about um the I think this is UN under the E rate um oh we're in Personnel right uh we're in education now effective Solutions okay so um yes so for Effective Solutions uh effective School solutions that was um a line item from the previous um time I did um I I guess I had the question around um that how it was budgeted because I know last time it was budgeted based on out of District placement budget and then some Esser funds and I guess for the budget going forward we just articulated a separate line item for it right that's how okay so it's fine okay roll call vote Miss Connor yes Miss Jolly yes Mr Kiri yes Dr forger yes Mr Heyman yes Miss Stanley yes Miss Bradford yes motion passes moving on to person L resolutions a through AA all board members resolutions ab and AF were Berkeley Heights only may I have a motion to move this resolution forward so moved second any discussion Mrs Airi yes I did um I see that on the agenda are some re-employment of uh staff and tenured staff and certific central office Personnel I did send an email asking for the contracts for the for agenda item F I did not receive them and I do believe that our board attorney said all public um School District contracts are public documents and they can be uploaded to the district website so can I ask Mr Nixon if they can be shared and uploaded on the district website y as I will consult with legal and provided we can do some of these things if that's the wishes of the board it's not my wish to do that to our central office I think perhaps the Board needs to have a discussion regarding this item so but these are public um documents but can we at least if we are voting on them could we at least see them could we get a copy of we're not we're not voting on their contracts we are we're not how are we not working on Reemployment and salaries that's it we're not looking at their contracts so if Mr Nixon if you can clarify when you say Reemployment and salaries salaries are defined by a contract or is it different well partially yes but there's a lot of other information in contracts as well so we are so when we are reapproved all these terms are in the contract so can the board at least receive a copy I did send a request yesterday before we made this as a supporting documentation I did not hear yes you will get it or no I'm willing to I would want to support and I would want to vote Yes but I would at least like to receive a copy and these are public documents according to the board attorney so we will get them sure thank you may we have a roll call vote Mr secretary Miss Stanley yes Mr Hyman uh yes on a through daa Mr Kiri just hold on one second it's say yes to everything thank you Dr forer uh yes to all Miss Charlie yes to all Miss Conor yes to all Miss Bradford yes to all motion passes moving on to business resolutions a through K all board members may have a motion to move this forward so moved second second any discussion sorry so this is um Miss bradfor I had the question around the eray item I know that um it came back because there was an error but when I compared the um to the minutes from April 18th and so the agenda from the April 18th the numbers are exactly the same so I don't know the number if you go to page 17 um if you look at the last line where it's 162 okay off to the left of 162 you have the number of 12602 2411 it's in parenthesis okay is that the number that's the number that changed prior to that it was 97 and changed that's the number that changed okay I was looking at the bottom I was looking at the bottom line which was exactly the same that was a number that was changed and that was what was gone over I believe in the technology committee as well so they can verify that okay thank you I just want to thank um the fireworks donation is the last one K from um Garden State fireworks I want to thank them for doing this every year and supporting our students and um it's just I don't know if you've ever been to Governor Livingston high school graduation but it's it's a lot of fun and it's it's um it's made even better by this donation and I really really appreciate it thank you roll call vote Miss stany yes Miss Jolly yes Mr Kiri should I give you the nose first or uh yes please I think it's a no for J and everything else is a yes thank you Dr forer yes to all Mr Hyman yes to all Miss Conor yes to all Miss Bradford yes motion passes moving on to finance resolutions a through C all board members may have a motion to move those forward so moved second second who did the Bills there were no bills oh because of the all right okay roll call vote Miss charie yes Miss Khana yes Mr Kiri uh it's a no to B and C yes to rest Dr forer yes to Mr Heyman yes uh Miss Stanley Miss Bradford yes motion passes at this time we will take comments from the public in person on any topic I'm not going to reread we have there is there any public comments in person thank you for your patience hi my name is Gina deloro I am a counselor and anti-bullying specialist at CMS since 2013 oh should I go all right so so at the May 7th board meeting either five or six depending on the vote earlier harassment intimidation and bullying cases were overturned by the Board of Education each case was thoroughly investigated and confirmed by an anti-bullying specialist we are all experts with Advanced degrees in counseling social work or psychology after an ABS makes a determination it pass passes through the principal and superintendent and only moves on to the board once all three parties agree I am bewildered that a decision that has made it through three rounds of approvals was overturned by the board who has no real experience or familiarity with the cases and is basing their decision on a one paragraph summary to be honest it is baffling that you would even feel comfortable weighing in on such a thing there were no clarifying questions asked of the Specialists who did the investigations there were no explanations given about why the board overturned the decisions the care consideration knowledge of the anti-bullying Bill of Rights and Decades of experience that went into these decisions were all cast aside as a counselor and anti-bullying specialist I look kids in the eye every day and promise that I will do whatever I can to help them I agonize over the HIV decisions I make wanting to be sure I always remain fair and objective and understanding the impact that these decisions have on both the victims the offenders and their families My Career Centers around helping children I have had extensive training on the hiaw and I investigate countless cases per year do you believe that you know more about the anti-bullying Bill of Rights than I do it feels like an egregious abuse of power if I were to share some of the words that were used in these six cases words that have been said in our hallways and on our kids phones I believe we would hear an audible gasp in this room words that insult a child's race religion sexual orientation and were confirmed to have had a substantial impact on the victims do you want to send the message that this Behavior will be tolerated in Berkeley Heights Public Schools I care entirely too much about the well-being of our students and I try entirely too hard to get these investigations right to sit quietly while three board members make uninformed decisions about the important work that I do please finish up okay I'll finish by saying that if we end up in the newspaper because the school didn't do anything I sure hope that the victims and Community think of your faces instead of mine hello um Ramia curri 86 Cromwell Court I am so happy that we finally have teachers and staff that are speaking up both here in person and on tap into uh we should support our teachers and our administrators and our staff some of the Boe members sitting up here claim that they support teachers and staff but then they do things like minimize the degrees of teachers overturn the findings of Hib counselors and vote no to pay School psychologists who cover periods for others we should be listening to and supporting our teachers and staff and admin I just want to put something else on public record we already have four members sitting up here who are closely aligned with a special interest group in town the Berkeley Heights Community Watch I hope that everyone in the community is paying attention to what's happening here on the board and I'll just reiterate that all board members should show independent judgment as to what is best for our students teachers staff and community and shouldn't be beholden to a small special interest group that does not represent the entire Community thank you thank you Adam harwitz a 79 promo Court I have a lot to say so please excuse me if I talk a bit fast first I just wanted to make an observation that it appears that uh some board members are not necessarily reviewing the agenda and documents ahead of time there seem to be a lot of questions today about technical issues that could have been resolved prior to this meeting so as not to waste everybody's time um I'll also note that we heard a lot of legal arguments today regarding terminology requirements or policies and interpretation of case law um I would like to know if anyone on the board of education has legal training or as a licensed lawyer because I know the Board of Ed has an attorney and these questions could have been directed to them prior to this meeting um or we could have set the meeting up so we could actually you know not waste two hours beforehand so he was still here so we get lawyer input also as an actual attorney I can tell you now I can find a trial court judge who would say anything I want somewhere in this country there's a reason trial Court decisions are not finding precedent on other jurisdictions and Pennsylvania trial courts are not precedential in New Jersey finally I want to say how disappointed I am that tonight this board appointed the only candidate who avoided answering the simple Dei question that was presented to the four candidates um instead of addressing the question they discussed an issue that was actually I thought handled quite well by the Educators in their presentation before the candidate interviews um I also want to bring attention to the public that on the Berkeley Heights Community Watch Discussion Group page which I know many of the Board of Education members are active participants on um this new candidate um commented on a post on May 18th 2023 regarding the uh District's Dei survey um and please excuse my language this is from the post I seriously want to blast with lots of false SL crappy answers to J F asterisk asterisk asterisk with them Mr Gold I'm gonna ask you not to comment on now we have a board member okay well my name is harwitz not Goldstein I'm sorry I'm sorry but I say I don't feel like that's the attitude the board should be taking towards Dei initiatives and I hope the board will do better going forward thank you I see no other public comments we'll move to our online Mr McGee hi John mcz uh so Berkeley Heights Community Watch is a website and we get about anywhere between three to 5,000 views a month and anybody and everybody is welcome to post there we have a social media page just like Berkeley Heights Community Forum just like Berkeley Heights Community um if the two speakers wanted to have their positions reflected they could certainly use our platforms to do so they are welcome um and of course we're going to support candidates or the the the the group is generally prot transparency and so it makes perfect sense that people are going to be aligned with candidates that support that uh um so I'm not going to go around criticizing other community forums and I'm not going to go into poking into other board members social media history today um the second point that I want to make is um you know I'm a licensed clinical social worker as well and I certainly empathize with the point on hip cases but there's a reason why we have people elected by the community to review these cases and I'm not I don't know anything or any details of the cases but we don't have prosecutors or defense attorneys on juries for a reason um what we what we want are sort of impassioned objective viewpoints looking at the Hard Evidence to make sort of a determination will mistakes be made uh yes I wouldn't want an I wouldn't want the elected body removed from the process um I do have concerns about safety I think we're spending a lot of money on security over close to a quarter of of a million dollars we can invest a good bit of that money for Dei initiatives for mental health services and enhance those so safety doesn't have to mean Hib punishment and police safety can mean um you know services that support kids activities um ways to sort of inform culture that uh work with collaboration restorative justice uh which is something I kind of talked about last year um but I am concerned with what I feel is sort of like I don't know what schools are turning into we're talking about threat assessments police hardening schools you know um hibs please finish up yep uh which which there are a lot of opposing viewpoints on so I think uh I think it's a good call to maybe kind of step back and look at how we our overall approach to this so that it could be effective for all students thank you okay there are no other uh comments so at this time we have no new business uh we're going to motion for adjournment May I have a motion to adjourn so moved second all in favor I I a motion ended at 11:34