I was so low what I was so low very very chilly it's cold in here it's it's cold in here yeah hello everyone good evening everyone the public has been duly informed that this meeting in accordance with chapter 231 of the public laws of 1975 by posting at least 48 hours in advance a notice on the bulleon boards in Stevenson and Church Hill School a notice to the Township Clerk and a notice to The Herald news and the progress please join us for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all at this time public comments on agenda items only does anybody have anything okay okay so under Personnel I'd like to approve the three listed tenure track teachers uh for two we're going to uh approve the resending employment as listed uh she was board approved back in January so we need to resend it uh for number three we have movement on the guide to approve uh Giana as listed we also have a retirement for June 30th of Angela Brittain and we would like to wish her the best and thank her for all of her uh years here 24 years of service here in Fairfield we wish her the best and we will miss her uh for number five to approve the mentor teacher has listed number six we have a maternity leave I would like to approve that number seven to approve the change of assignment for the remainder of the school year number eight to approve the job description uh we have a club advisor that I'd like to approve for number nine and then under non-certificated staff to approve the change of assignment um as listed for William Harvey and then for number two we have two custodians that we'd like to approve as well as a cafeteria playground office Aid and the technology Network admin assistant for number three to approve the revised job description and for C to approve the substitute for the uh 23 24 school year motion motion second any discussion Mr feedi yes Miss Street yes Miss alai yes Mr D Pasqual yes okay under curriculum program to approve the uniform memorandum of agreement um also we have the field trip approval as well as fore to wave the um special education Medicaid initiative and for D to approve the Workshops the attendance reimbursement for registration and mileage and I'd like to just point out that we do have um one that is coming out of title two funds motion motion second any discussion P the RO Mr feti yes Miss Street yes Miss salai yes Mr D Pasqual yes uh under policy to approve the first reading of the two policies listed that's it resolution approval introduced motion motion second no discussion Mr FEI yes Miss Street yes Miss alai yes Mr D Pasqual yes okay um under Finance page seven of the agenda um approval of the minutes as for the attachment um Part B bills and claims as listed on page seven payroll um for January 30th as well as well as faal for February 15th C is to transfer funds for January of 2024 as well as the secretary's report and treasury's report for the same month uh National lunch program is item a we still don't fall under the qualifications to enroll in the lunch program but it needs a separate board resolution for the state to know that that we will continue it f is a with notification of withdrawal for the request for public assistance This was um FEMA contacted me and at one point I guess prior VA put in an application but there was no covid related expense so they asked us to withdraw it under G uh New Jersey learning Grant um Mr Santana wrote the Grant and it's going to be submitted to the state and after this meeting we'll we'll be able to get the resolution to him um for contracts the roof replacement at W uh Winston Churchill school so I know every month it almost appears as if it's the same resolution but this is the execution agreement section 15 which means that now we're allowed to bid it the total project cost for one section of the roof is 130,000 and the state share that they're giving us back is 52 so that's why it has to be resolution form so that after it begins we could submit for the reimbursement um for the bottom of page nine which is building use application as listed on page 10 everyone knows that we approve the uh facility request forms so can I have a motion for all those items from page what is it 10 on I'm sorry from page seven forward all of them M MO motion second any discussion uh Kathleen on G can you just uh tell the members of the audience briefly on the New Jersey learning acceleration Grant just a little bit of what it entails and what the money will be used for so they okay so this is a state grant that came out probably um around November and you had to apply for it but at the time we didn't know know how much money we would receive and it's specifically geared towards um train uh tutors tutors whether before the bell in the morning after school um and Summers so right now there's some Rubik if we were going to go out for a specific company to come in but we're going to utilize our teaching staff to teach our children and that's what that's about is that right that's right okay thank you very much Kathleen R okay okay Mr feedi yes Miss Street yes Miss alai yes Mr de squirrel yes under their old business I would like to take a moment and just congratulate the fairfiled Education Foundation for having their first successful fundraiser um as you all know they raised uh $35,000 and we're looking forward to them working with the district and you know filling some shortcomings that the that we have financi event so we're very excited thank you very much for all that you've done and we look forward to working with you in the future I just have one item under old business as a result of the questions passing in November one of the many things that we were able to restore was the chicks program in kindergarten the eggs were delivered they were hatched successfully and the farmer has come back to pick up the chicks so thank you to the staff at Stevenson for making that happen and of course to the community for bringing back that program okay and under their old business Angela is going to address the community outreach program and the results of the survey that was sent out the shareholder take survey okay so as you may remember we spoke about uh forming a superintendent search committee at the last few board meetings and over the course of the last I would say probably two months we were able to go through those applications and actually form a committee and a survey went out so this is to share the survey results and just give you a little bit of background on what we were able to accomplish as a committee so we had 10 people selected for this committee were selected from a pool of Churchill parents Stevenson parents and community members who no longer have children in the district um we felt as a board that it was important to include different types of professional backgrounds so we had both educational and non-educational backgrounds um it did include four School administrators and two teachers from West essic we felt that it was important to have two people on the committee from the school that we're ultimately going to be sending these kids to who can give us some feedack back as to what they're seeing from fairfields we met three times um some of the things that we focused on were that we analyzed and discussed the job description and looked at some updates that we'd like to add to that we discussed the interview format what the different rounds of interviews would look like and compiled interview questions and we also developed the stakeholder survey um the committee felt that it would be important to allow for anonymous responses we thought that it would encourage people to be more forthcoming in any ideas or concerns that they wanted to share and it was blasted to all of the district parents faculty and staff as well as all members of the community and again we also allowed for open-ended feedback so that the board could take that into consideration during the interview process so these are just some of the results as you can see it's broken down just in simple pie charts um blue is faculty administrator staff members the red are current parents and the yellow or orange are residents without children in the district so we received 165 responses mostly from parents of of current students the top three issues that we saw throughout the comments and the survey that they felt the districts was facing was you know of course budget space and Staffing the most important changes they would like to see the common theme was budget curriculum and again Staffing uh the three most important leadership qualities just professionalism someone proactive open minded honest and ethical resourceful someone with people skills and some of the hard skills that the stakeholders share that they would like to see is of course financial management and budget development curriculum development and alignment and public relations so when considering the candidate profile it was broken down into several different components um this again is just a pie chart you can just see the breakdown has school district superintendent Andor central office experience which was sort of an even split between important critically important and important so critically important being blue important being red has classroom experience it was largely felt that it was critically important has experienced managing a school district with specialized programs including gifted and talented and special ed again about equal uh one of the big ones was someone with expertise and knowledge of curriculum instruction and supervision practices and Trends uh demonstr Ates experience and measurable results in providing exemplary education for all students including how to close opportunity and achievement gaps in subgroups that was a long one and again about 57% felt it was critically important um looking for someone with experience recruiting hiring and retaining effective District Personnel 70% of course felt that was critically important and is visible at school and community events it's about half and half so the next steps will be that we will utilize this input as a board in order to screen and narrow down the candidate pool and the board members will be conducting interviews utilizing rubrics to make sure that each candidate has a fair shot and we maintain consistency throughout the interview process and the interviews will begin on February 25th and we look forward to sharing updates as we go along thank you you're welcome so I'd like to take a second and thank the committee members uh for their several nights and the input and I'd like to thank Angela for not only presenting but preparing that information and presenting it to all of us tonight so so thank you to the committee members and thank you to Angela as well anyone else on their old business all right on to new business anyone have new business committees I'll bring Tracy up dur committees yes absolutely so nothing on their new business all right committee reports we'll start with building and grounds sure uh as we just spoke about earlier we have officially gone out to bid for the partial roof replacement in Churchill uh we expect to have all the applicants in by the end of March and then make a quick decision as that'll all start in July to replace that section of the roof Joe while we have you anything on finance great to thought I shut it off on purpose uh no no major update to finance obviously we're in the preliminary budget process we find out our our state funding next week so then we could have real conversations about where we are currently and what we're looking to do to have a balanced and I guess logical budget where we are thank you very much um HSA Melinda sure um I just for those of you that don't know the HSA is made up of a group of Volunteers in the schools and they donate back to the schools about 75 to ,000 100 th 75 75,000 to $100,000 per year to our school in different different forms um they have two events coming up one is the Color Run which is a community event which will be on March 23rd at 9:00 a.m. um it's $35 to sign up and if you'd like to sign up and you know participate please go to their website Fairfield hsa.com there and their next meeting will be held on February 28th at 7 p.m. in Churchill thank you Melinda welcome uh for special education we actually have one of our executive members here Tracy who will talk about our upcoming CPAC meeting thanks Anthony um so we have um developed the special educ parent group for special education which is a requirement of the the state um we have a Facebook page so anybody who wants to join the CPAC Facebook page you can go on to it's uh Fairfield CPAC um you can you find that on Facebook next Tuesday this coming Tuesday we will have our first parent well that's actually our second meeting but um for for official second uh first meeting uh will be on Tuesday and it will uh the content will be around the difference between IEPs and 504s and we'll start by um introducing the executive committee and letting everybody know what uh CPAC is going to be doing for the next several months but you can expect that you will see us um post hosting uh meetings they'll be either um as we bring new content in we'll either have them monthly or quarterly um right now we are working to get a uh an attorney to come in and talk about parents rights as the next uh speaker so we will uh publicize those dates as they come available to us um but it's really important to um the CPAC group is is not there as a fundraiser or things like that that group this group is here to be uh support for parents and for the special education students so um it's really um an interesting uh group of of of parents that have come together that really are just there to bring concerns back to the district so we'll be meeting with the Board of Education all of you on a quarterly basis to bring our concerns from the parents and the students um and then working on um solutions to those concerns and Tracy just uh for those that don't know can you just elaborate on how this is an education group that's there to educate the parents that are not aware of the difference between a 504 and an and to kind of let you know if you are your child is having a problem or struggling the resources that are out there and where we can go and and you know how it kind of all coincides with you know being an educational group as well as a group that has the best interest of special education in mind sure so it's it's super important to know that you know it's it's hard right parents it's hard to know where to start and this group is brought together because either they've been through it before or we've done our research um the state provides a lot of training and education uh for uh CPAC group leaders to understand how to run the CPAC group um but what really it is is best practices and ways that parents can help deal with certain situations that their children are going through um and how to identify those um and so we'll talk a lot about um best practices and where to start and then how do you get the school involved how do you become um collaborative with the school not not so com like not back and forth on it's it's our responsibility as parents it's the school's responsibility who's doing what so it's really about educating um all parties on how to um kind of navigate the system um but it's not meant for just parents that have children with IPS or 504s it's meant for all parents or anybody that's interested or has a concern that wants to come and be a part of making our district better and making more available to our special education students thank you very much Tracy and Miss Kone just a question for you um is there a link on the website for that for our yeah youal Services page the iters up there and then all wonderful and any meeting dates will be wonderful thank you very much anyone have anything else on their committee reports yes we had a technology as well as a curriculum and instruction committee it's sort of it was one meeting but two parts and in attendance were myself and president D Pascal Mike lewig William Harvey Miss Morano Dr selli and then Dr trabo joined us for the curriculum portion on the technology end we had 130 Chromebooks arrive and that was purchased with the funds that we received from the questions passing on the ballot and they also include the three-year accidental damage warranty which we've heard you get a lot of use out of at Churchill School um last year we received 71 Chromebooks from a grant so Churchill is in good shape um we're trying to keep the newer machines in the Upper Grade so that they're covered under the warranty and then move the older machines down to Stevenson because they remain in the buildings uh software programs like genesis are remaining the same we're waiting on a quote for alarms on the doors and Churchill is being rewired and the server is going to be relocated for proper temperature and ventilation on the curriculum and instruction end we are budgeting for textbooks there's going to be a change in the sixth grade math to align with West essics and the other sending districts uh social study standards have changed so they're looking ahead to budget to update those materials for next year and then science would be the 26 27 school year the math curriculum committee had to speed up their revision for math uh the plan was worked out to update it for K2 before Mrs Valente leaves and the district updates for ELA and math need to be in place for September and that's it on curriculum thank you very much Miss Al Tai so if there's nothing uh else under committee reports we'd like to open up the floor to public comments on non-agenda items only just a quick Chang on our meeting on Tuesday it was going to be at the rec center it's now moved to the Stevenson School uh cafeteria yes so just to touch on that so everyone is aware of why why we're having the change is because the meeting room that we uh reserved can accommodate anywhere between 35 to 40 comfortably and we're hoping for a bigger turnout so we're hoping that everyone gets out and you know takes part in this and you know educates themselves on on the uh the CPAC and and comes out and and you know really gets a grasp on what this group is trying to do now that we're in full swing so thank you very much okay with that being said next meeting be it resolved that the next meeting will be held in person on March 14th 2024 Public Work session beginning at 6 PM followed by executive session with public session resuming approximately 7:30 p.m. at the Fairfield Municipal building can I have a motion for adjournment motion roll call yes yes yes yes thank you all very very much