aliance flag theice welcome to the March 5th meeting of the Branchburg Board of Education please be advised that this and all meetings of the board are open to the public in media consistent with the open public meetings act and that advanced notice required therein has been provided this is a meeting of the Board of Education of Branchburg at which formal action may be taken the public will have an opportunity to be heard as shown on the agenda okay so the purpose of this meeting is to interview folks for the um open board seat so I'm just going to give you kind of a rundown on how that process is going to work um we're going to kind of cycle through each of you we just going to pick a number out of this little box um we're going to give you an opportunity to make a statement addressing the following questions what experiences have you had with the Branchburg Township uh School District why are you seeking the open seat on the board and what qualities or qualifications do you have that you will that think that you think will be an asset to the board um this is kind of stuff that you already answered in your statements that you provided us earlier but we just want to hear it from you in person um there's a possibility that as a candidate um provides their statement that you received questions from the board after the interviews are included we will go into the small conference room and deliberate an executive session if we're able to make a decision tonight on a candidate we'll vote publicly and select you if we're unable to come to a consensus the board will conduct um additional interviews at a later date if we do select a candidate that candidate must go through a criminal background check which is a requirement by the state of New Jersey for all board members and upon clearance of the background check will be sworn in and take your seat on the board of education any questions about that good so out the numbers anybody have the unfortunate lock of drawing number one yeah okay yeah there is now testing testing all right is this okay all right great um so I'll just dive in that so uh my name is uh Jeffrey celebr um I a little bit of my my background I know the the three questions I'll address your your your questions uh start a little bit of my background my undergrads from University of Maryland with a communications degree from there I went on to uh Montclair State University for master's degree in uh education um and then from there I worked as a uh public school teacher in the bis cataway Township School District for eight years while doing that I then attended uh seaten Hall University where I earned um a Doctorate in Education um and I currently for the past six years uh have been the department supervisor of Science and Engineering uh for grades K to8 in the Piscataway Township Schools um my experience with Branchburg uh School District um my wife and I uh moved to Branchburg with our son about uh three years ago he's a first grader at Whit and Elementary we've had nothing but positive experiences with the school district in terms of his teachers the principal the administration and you know he's having a blast in first grade um you know just Leaps and Bounds growing uh you know every day so uh he he's having a blast so so seeing this opportunity to be part of the Board of Education um you know it it it really was appealing to be part of of this group to help you know uh steer and uh you know be part of that decision-making group and and and advocate for the teachers as well um when I think about like my My Philosophy for Education that I bring in my professional career um you know it's all about of course centered in in science you know uh but it's all about student students um discovering knowledge students being able to ask questions and learning to ask questions and to be curious um and I approach that position as a supervisor of the department as primarily as an advocate I'm an advocate for students I'm an advocate for my teachers uh I work side by side with Administration uh to do such that to do that uh I believe in transparency um I believe obviously in Integrity um and and and advocacy and I see a board of education position very much in the same way uh where you know I look at it as a service position um where you are an advocate for students teachers Administration the community uh stakeholders um and and to approach it with with with just those same values of Integrity transparency and advocacy um you know for for the betterment and the uh the growth of students and a school district cool have any questions I think that covered all of my questions yeah all right fantastic yeah you covered them right in order beautiful I'm an educator all right well thank you very much thank you for this opportunity thank you J number two number two so I'm Ken Hollenbeck I moved to Branchburg in 2018 when I had one child we now have three kids that one child's now at White and Elementary as a kindergartener as you said loving it no complaints whatsoever white has been a fantastic experience um one thing that Drew me to this role has to be the fact that I struggle to volunteer and commit unless there's a schedule and organized factors to it so like I started with a Branchburg wreck doing in soccer this year it was easy it it was great I was there every single time it was fantastic I really enjoyed working with all the different kids not only my own kid who was on the team um so I saw this as an opportunity of something that's structured scheduled and where I can add value to the to uh Board of Education as far as my value I would say looking over what a board of education does because I was newbie to this whole idea um overlooking the budgets of the township and the and the educational system I manage large budgets in my work um construction project manager I work uh for an account on National Grid I oversee the infrastructure build outs of all the National Grid sites in the state of New York for their EV Fleet conversion uh so we're looking at about $100 million over the next five six years that I personally manage um and team underneath me I manage as well so there's a lot of overseeing budgets figuring out where it's best spent getting them squeezing the most juice out of you know the lemons sometimes unfortunately um so that's where I think I would add a lot of value as is overlooking the budgets of the township and the board uh the education part part of it as well um one other thing I want to bring up is the fact that when I moved to Branchburg I really didn't know Branchburg all that well we we were new to New Jersey my wife is from Long Island I'm from Philadelphia area and we worked our way west until we landed in Branchburg and it was the perfect mix of value education system everything about it property size home size it just it's literally The Sweet Spot um so we immediately fell in love with it it was something that you know we didn't expect we weren't looking in Branchburg like I said but it's where we see ourselves forever um now like I said we have three kids that are all going to be going through the system so I've got 18 years I'm going to be committed to the Branchburg schools as a parent and I would love to be involved much more than just as a parent I'd like to be able to make sure that the educational system is going to benefit not only my own kids but every other one every other kid that's out there um my kids are significantly different personality learning experiences all that so I understand that every kid needs to be treated differently have the equal opportunity but in a different way sometimes and I want to take that and make sure every kid in bransburg feels the same way good there no way we got all of your questions two people in a row um so I think um I don't know I'm good with your statement I don't know if anybody has any other questions but I guess like after everybody gives everybody then we'll ask them more questions all right sounds good thank you thanks guess I'm the only one that needed [Laughter] notes hi everybody I'm Megan Smith and I'm um interested in being on the Branchburg Board of Education um my family and I we've uh lived here for 19 years and I've had three kids in the school district for the last 13 years um I actually have two in the district currently and I have one at the high school right now so that's part of the reason that I want am interested in being on the board um just to have that sense of community with all the children in the district um there's uh I noticed at the meeting that you held I guess it was last Thursday um that there was a report given from one of the members on the seat of the board at Somerville and how we only today I believe maintain one seat on that board and as as I know it I believe that we have more of the student population there than Somerville does but I don't know if that's changed over the years I know that there's been a lot of building um new houses and whatnot so the population may have shifted but I know that that's one thing that I have always been curious about is why we don't get proper representation over over there um just a little bit of my community background so because I've been at the schools for 13 years I've been a class parent many times um I've done lunch duty at whiten and I was also involved in the whiten family school council back when my daughter first started preschool um I've also done been a wreck girl soccer assistant coach and I actually also coach a women's adult W volleyball team in Branchburg so it's basically a group of moms that get together every week and if we don't win many games but we have a lot of fun doing it um I'm also involved in both of my daughters are still Girl Scouts um one of my daughters I her troop as they went into high school um pretty much was disbanding but there were three girls that were passionate about getting their silver award so I was able to Mentor them to get them through that a award they ended up building a trail kiosk after one of the storms in town actually they built two um to put on the local South Branch River and then my younger daughter I co-led with another mom their Girl Scout Bron's award and they built trash dispensers to hang at one of the local shop rights and I'm also currently a Boy Scout Wolf Den lead co-leader and I also do website development for a travel softball team um being that we've been here for so long I enjoy going to all the school activities and one of the whiten um Halloween parades that we went to one of the teachers stopped me Miss Rob who is now retired and she looked at me and she said are you still [Laughter] here um and then another um instance I had at whiten was actually Mrs Scher stopping me in the hallway at one of the events and she said you know we need to tune this event a little bit can you give me some of your feedback from over the years and because I've been there so long so that's just a few of the involvement I've had with the community um as far as my personal work experience I currently work for Signa Healthcare and I'm responsible for developing and running reports um based on the data and that's what the data analytics team um these reports deal with confidential data and on on occasion they have quick turnaround time which deal which shows my time management skills and I also have managed people over the years so I have to deal with adversity in that role as well as helping people through tough times um I also have um community board experience so in that position I read policies um responsible for the financial budget that sort of thing so um a lot of of that aligns with the board I believe um is there oh I just also wanted to mention I really believe that the it's important for the students of this community to see the board members interacting with the community and I really feel like that came out on the Friday night Wizards game and I just really it was a great event to watch um from Dr chasu representing the board as well as Mr Mater who had a great three-point shot and to miss cries and many of the teachers that were involved in the process um it just so happened that Dr Chas you ran into my daughter in the hallway at the end of the game and talked to her and it just really made an impression on her and it's these kind of interactions that really show me show the interest and that the board has in the community and that's really what I'm excited to possibly be a part of so thank you very much unless I missed something that was excellent than you very much thank you so hi good evening my name is Gom theb Gom is in French means William in English so I graduated in France did a business school over there uh four year business school one year was abroad so I spent a year in in the UK and in Spain uh after that I started working in the uh retail industry as an internal auditor in France I moved to the US for Monsanto in St Louis also in internal audit for about a year and then I moved to New Jersey uh in fact in branberg working for phaia upj I don't know if you remember they were around here and and I was put in a for about a month in a temporary housing in Branchburg that's how I discovered Branchburg in 20 in 2000 uh after that we got purchased by fisers I moved to New York City and I work for corporate finance uh working for the CFO group reporting to the CFO of fiser where we were rolling rolling up all the forecast the budget anal the actual analyzing the actuals and after um after that I moved to the manufacturing division of of fiser where for six years about six years I was in strategy working at domestic selling plant when we had too many plants because fer was always buying companies at some point over 100 plants so too many so we had to sell some so I worked on that uh as well as when there was an acquisition helping integrate the products and the manufacturing of these products into fer so it was for six years and then after I went to the operation side so I was responsible of Biotech plants and I got up to five plants I was responsible for the budget of these five BoTech plants making various products uh that was until 2019 and then I moved to Merc uh uh they are based in rway or Ken was before just moved to rway uh but me I moved to Branchburg about a year ago a year and a half ago so I commute from here to rway uh and in Merc I take care of Shar services so it's basically accounting groups so for Americas the Accounting Group for all the Americas is in Costa Rica for Europe is in Prague Czech Republic and for Asia Pacific it's in qualo so my my job with them is to look at all the cost the budget for uh all the shed Services of mer uh so I've been doing this for four four and a half years uh back to Branchburg so I I chose to uh come back to Branchburg because I had an apartment in forley and forly is very congested as you probably know the traffic got me completely crazy and I said okay enough of this let's go back to the countryside and and I knew BRB for 20 years before so I okay let's look in this area and we find a very nice house here um as for kids I have three kids two from a previous marriage they are in Rockland County 15 and 12 years old and then I remarried and my wife and I live here with a fouryear old who attends in fact he attends two things he attends the apples and books decare and because we threw at him three languages Spanish French and English he he was little delayed in English and they recommend that he should attend whipton Elementary School for Specialists so two months ago he started that so he goes to to school morning written afternoon um app and books um so why why do I want to be the board so I've never been on the board of education I've been on other boards in finance and other projects but never in education so be very honest um but I think I can bring a perspective of u i I've seen per first have three children uh and also I've seen education in France I've got uh my two older kids in New York state so I see what they do over there um what I've seen here with the whipton elementary program I was very impressed what they are doing for my my younger son um and also I have seen education in France and in Australia because my older brother lives over there and my niece is uh in she's 18 years right now and so she's finishing and I see what they do over there which is very amazing they they study how to launch rockets they do chess for example it's been four years that she's taking chess classes at school so I think it's it's interesting what they do in other countries and how to compare uh and last point I would say is yeah I believe in Integrity I believe in hard work and I believe in trying to push the kids up rather than down so any occasion I have I would like to do that any question all right so I would just like to ask all of you questions about like Ken you mentioned being part of a structured environment sometimes we all know that this is not so structured like they say oh we have to uh interview board members we only have 45 days to do it we try to schedule some time when everybody's available but can each of you talk to like your flexibility with your work schedule your availability to be here on a Thursday at 5 30 or like for this week for instance for me I'll be here today tomorrow and we have virtual meetings on Thursday so can you just speak to your flexibility start totally flexible I work from home all the time so as long as I have 48 hours or so which actually happened with this it changed it on me it's supposed 8:00 to find some Child Care hold it off of here um so as long as I have some lead time I can make anything happen uh there's not any sort of obligation I can think of besides my children's obligations you know fo lesses sport all that kind of stuff for all that okay sure I work in public education so I'm certainly available in the evenings uh I coach my son's baseball team little league baseball team uh but fortunately for me there's I I have a few uh great assisant coaches um so should there be a meeting on a game day I know that the kids would be in good hands I'm very organized with my lineups and stuff like that for my past few years as coaching the t-ball team now they're moving up to the next rank uh so I know if I just hand off my lineups it'll be they'll be in good hands okay what's while I work from home drive um but my husband is certainly there to help me as well and we actually have the car with people on team for me so I three days a to worry but typically I finish around five so it's I do travel a little during the year three times a year so if we can do Zoom or but to be honest I will be few times a year okay okay um I have some other questions if nobody else has some okay you get SED to the can I just can I just clarify though before you answer that um if if you are selected tonight this term runs through the end of the calendar year this year so in order to continue on you would have to um very soon decide that you wanted to run for actual the election in November so I just want to clarify thank you uh for me I would say there was nothing that that held me back from running during the election this more hey this opportunity came out there and I saw it I jumped on it um I've been talking about this with my wife for probably about a year about trying to get involved in some sort of way in the school district and she's want forward to me but I'm very happy she did like so that's why I didn't run it's just the opportunity came I jumped on as far as running again obviously if I'm here interviewing with you all I'm interested enough that I definely want to keep with it um it's a short term that this this portion of it is and it' be invest myself and then not want to run and keep going with it um so I have full intentions if I do get place that I can you guys do me a favor can you grab the mic and pass it around because yeah that's probably idea right Folks at home don't hear you unless you're on we hear you fine catch all that actually they can't see you because I don't think we have a camera that points that way not into the audience sorry I I feel like I agree with a lot of what what you had said you know I saw this as a great opportunity to be involved with the board is something that I had thought about since moving to Branchburg and my son entering kindergarten you know like I'd like to be part of the Board of Ed one day and just seeing that so you know say say like why haven't I run I just think it was you know at that point I hadn't um you know I keep up with the board minutes but I hadn't really attended board meetings or things like that so I don't didn't really feel like I had been part of the Board of Ed world so much to say like let me let me jump into a campaign and I saw this opportunity and thought this is a great way to get you know involved potentially um and then to stay on to you know to say okay and then I could get involved with like the next election cycle and knowing that it is a a short turnaround um yeah so it was really just the timing I think of it all yes so for me no problem at all as well like I'm okay to run again in a year in fact I wanted to volunteer and I had two options I was looking at the board when I saw this or maybe helping the fire department because I keep seeing on 202 the announcement but I'm a little out of shape but maybe if I fail here I might try to help them so I was actually looking to run already before this got announced um being on the community board that I'm on I have done that probably for about a year now so I kind of felt like that was my stepping stone to see if I liked board work to be begin with and now I wanted to take the opportunity for this interim position to see how this board ran to make sure that it would fit our family and things like that and with all the intentions of potentially running um in the next round just to get my feet wet and see how this board operates because not everybody operates the same probably but um just so yeah um I have yeah um thank you for for one interest um we were sitting in the same spot not that long ago um would love to know and and some of you did cover it a bit but what are some of the areas that when you look at the school system whether it's ours or others that from your your lens from your perspective you know I wish you know or would like to do more of X or maybe focus on this or you know just curious that think just curious to see from your lens what are the areas that you see um that you'd want to advocate for or just things that are it doesn't have to be personal to you but something that's relevant to just our kids it doesn't even have to be relevant to Branchburg but just would love to get a sense of where you see opportunities for for growth for our children um you know just some things that I think are really important within education certainly there's a lot of challenges that face public education today with sub shortages and teacher shortages and teacher retention and things like that so that would be certainly one thing to say like how can we focus on you know building a great and supportive Community for our Educators and our administrators so that we can retain and bring in you know great quality you know teachers for our students but from the student perspective um just continuing to you know develop that the social social emotional lens you know within the classroom um I think is really important obviously I have the the science background with you know that's my curricular focus in my day job um so I'm not going to say science is the most important but there's certainly a lot of opportunities to explore from a science and technology standpoint the integration of artificial intelligence and things like that are certainly you know topics that the board is going to have to if not already uh think about and discuss and and develop policy for and uh those are some of the things that you know in thinking about this position I've thought like okay these are the kind of topics that I'd want to uh you know bring to the table for me to my kids I'm trying to teach them one thing which is critical judgment I think in the coming years to have a critical judgment and to be able to make your own decision without either your friends telling you you should do this or the media telling you this but you have your own mind analyzing the facts and say I would like to do this or that um so I think it's super important to teach as young as possible to a child to analyze facts data and come up to his own or her own decision I would say extra curricular activities uh one thing I've noticed at ween was they had some programs I think it's Lego building and some puzzle building all that but didn't work with the schedule it wasn't the right time those are things that my kids would love to do so I'm sure all kids would like to do it and I found it a shame that we couldn't do it because of the timing and I feel like additionally there's so many things out there that kids don't get exposed to in general education like Lego building and puzzle that I would love to see more opportunities out there for for kids to get involved and find what they're passionate about I I just speaking from experience my kids are polar opposite human beings they're furthest things from each other one's an athlete one we we're still struggling six years later to find what he likes um so I definitely think extracurriculars that are out of the box just fun but do you know stem type of things would be great um so that would be what I would like to see more of so I can think of two different things the first one is curriculum based um being that we've been in the district so long the curriculum changes fairly often between my oldest and my youngest which is not a bad thing because you have to change with the times you have to change but I've also noticed having my three kids happen to all have dyslexia and I've noticed with the curriculum that especially my son the youngest this year in math they're giving him 20 different ways to do math and I'm like can you just learn how to ad so it's just things like that that I would like to have an impact in deciding and looking at that sort of thing the other thing I can think of is with all the building that's going around in the community um it's worries me that they're not thinking of the impact on the schools there's a lot of new kids coming into the district um both for um Branchburg and Somerville are they you know do we have the capacity in the classrooms to and teachers and everything that goes along with that to support all of those new people moving into town I would just like to thank you all for coming here um three of you might be disappointed but you're all excellent candidates and I thank you so much honestly from for coming out here and volunteering and stepping up to our call because we obviously need a new gun board member and I think we would all be grateful if you even if you do not get selected if you pursued this in the future got on the ballot and tried to run because we need all of you would be we'd be happy to have any of you so thank you very very much impress us stuff and um guess we'll just go deliberate and if you give us I don't know how much maybe 20 minutes hopefully 20 minutes uh we'll see how it goes but um if we take too long I'll have both come out and fill you in uh what's going on so thank you very much we ran too we did that motion hi hi no we supposed to do it on this thing you got to click the bus I'm sorry I shut it [Laughter] down one is it still honors this off thank you does