remember good evening we'd like to call the meeting to order and welcome everyone this meeting is being held in accordance with the schedule of meetings adopted at the organizational meeting held on January 3rd 2024 adequate notice of this regular meeting of the kennworth board of education has been provided to the home News Tribune The Star Ledger the local Source on January 11 2024 a copy has been filed with kenor B clerk posted in the board office canorth B Hall Burly and Harding schools as is provided by the open public meeting s thank you Mr Canal can everyone please rise and join us in the salute to the flag IED Ali to the flag of the United States of America to the Republic for it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and Justice Mr Galo can we please have roll call yes berer here David here Drogan here Ferrara hather here L here kichi here tear here Zimmerman here we have Quorum okay thank you at this time we will have the a receiving of the minutes from February 12 2024 may I please have a motion to accept the receiving of the minutes move second okay motion made by Mr hather seconded by Mr biner all those in favor of accept in the minutes from February 12 2024 please say I I opposed eyes have it motion carries Mr ganella do we have any public correspondence yes we have a letter dated uh uh 214 from Cornell marino marino Osborne attorneys uh regarding uh Dennis mckever no longer being a member of the firm effect of February 15 2024 okay anything else no just that one okay just that one can I please have a motion to accept the monthly correspondence move second second okay motion made by Mr hather seconded by Mrs te all those in favor of accepting the monthly correspondence please say I I opposed okay eyes have it motions carries thank you at this point we will now move on to the superintendent's report and presentations Mr arson I'm thinking about the minutes and the committee notes okay do you want to do oh yeah looking at the order of the agenda ADT those yeah we passed over that I was going to say that Madam president that under number two there was also you want to go through receiving of the committee okay it would be simply um similar to the way you do the minutes it's receiving make a motion to receive receive the yes we want to go through each one or no no okay okay I'm just checking okay at this point can we please have a motion to on accept do you want me to how do you want me just all the Committees right yeah okay at this point can we please have a motion to receive the minutes from the notes of the secretary move second second okay motion made by Mr hather seconded by Mr David all those in favor please say I I I opposed eyes have it motions carried thank you very much good good evening everybody um I'd like to start with a few informational items as Mr ganel will discuss more fully in a few minutes our school district was only one of two Union County districts to receive a reduction in state aid funding despite Governor Murphy's increase of $98 million to New Jersey public schools for next school year more specifically our Equalization Aid reflects a loss of $1.6 million for next year Mr ganella will share more information about how funding is determined in his upcoming presentation I'd like to go on record and share that I am deeply disappointed by this news uh which will create tough decisions for our district currently administrators are thoroughly reviewing the budget which we'll learn more about in a few minutes as we determine how to make up for this seismic deficit as always we will prioritize students needs and do our best to preserve opportunities for them however the funding formula will likely impact several areas of District operation we will need to look at Personnel across categories resources and materials adding to this unfortunate situation is the short turnaround time we must adhere to to make up for this deficit the finance and Facilities committee members will be an integral will be integral partti participants in these conversations we'll work through options and possibilities for filling the deficit when we meet this Wednesday night in the meantime I understand that this sense of uncertainty is upsetting and can be distracting my leadership team I will share updates as they're available to ensure everyone has accurate information we hope that clear transparent communication reduces the temptation to speculate which only fuels worry and can impact teaching and learning I encourage any member of the public who has questions or concerns to reach out to me directly as we navigate this situation I hope we can all stay focused on our shared goal of supporting students education and well-being our job as Educators and as a board is to ensure a highquality education that foregrounds students academic social and emotional needs in the face of this reduction in state aid we'll continue prioritizing those aims please stay tuned for further updates amidst this uncertainty I'd like to thank the teachers coaches and administrators who engaged in or LED last Friday's professional development day learning topics included a variety of areas including a focus on new student learning standards and artificial intelligence among several other areas if you'd like to learn more about what teachers are learning or if there's another topic you wish to discuss I hope you join me for coffee and conversation at Harding school on Wednesday March 20th at 6 p.m. few members of my leadership team and I will be there and we look forward to the dialogue ahead and are excited to engage with you during this time finally the spring we'll engage in strategic planning to set goals and priorities for Kenn Worth's future we recently set correspondents out about that however due to scheduling conflicts uh we pushed back from March to April the first of the three dates when the community is encouraged to give feedback and participate in the process those new dates will be posted on our website and in the Friday folder shortly however for planning purposes the new launch date for public participation uh the first of three sessions is Monday April 15th more details to follow at this time I'm happy to turn the M mic over to Nan Shaw the Boe student representative hi Nan good evening everyone I'd like to begin with a few school events the celebration of Black Culture was a great success and it was hosted on February 28th it leads into this month's celebration women's History Month this is an event celebrating women that Inspire motivate embody uplift and embrace their Community students will get an opportunity to write short Reflections about a woman that has influenced them and these same women will get the opportunity to attend the event held on March 26th from 12:45 to 2:15 the prom committee is being formed to begin the planning process of PR prom and the senior superlatives were recently announced and the winners have had their pictures added to the yearbook seniors have handed in their money for the senior dinner and Project Graduation and for the final bit of academic news today was the first of four days of PSAT testing for juniors and it was a wonderful delayed opening by the way thank you for that uh transitioning to sports the spring season of track begins this week and many many other sports are also transitioning to their spring season as for the robotics team we finished our season ranked ninth in the league and scored a combined 500 plus points in our final competition and we walked away once again with the motivate award this time we came in a cool Trophy and Esports is also beginning their spring season as for college admissions a few seniors have already decided on the University they plan to attend in the fall but most are still deciding and eagerly waiting their incoming decisions between the month of March and April thank you I have one question spring uh track where is that placed talk to that yeah I think most of the practices are going to be at Rosell Park okay yeah so they've agreed to uh facilitate our needs there do we have any home or everything's go away this year they'll be tripping a lot on on our home track so yeah everything will be away okay thank you I'm going to keep going y great over the last few months we've been studying how to address a shortage of substitute teachers in our district uh the need reflects uh need most new districts most districts in New Jersey face which is compounded by a shortage of certified teachers as well our colleague director jablonsky led a a study of this situation in his presentation tonight I'll share more about the methods of the investigation findings born out of this study and potential steps to determine where we go from here uh thanks Greg for leading this work in a thoughtful and caring way we look forward to your presentation right good evening uh Happy daylight savings Monday and also a happy International women's day which was last Friday uh thank you to all our female leaders here we appreciate all your work uh this evening I'll be going into our substitute teacher study [Music] and I'll be going over our goals and objectives and some of the methods we took to learn more about the problem trying to admire the problem as best we could because it's it's a complex problem um so our goals and objectives uh we sought to discuss current reality of our absenteeism within our schools with an array of stakeholders uh we review data from multiple perspectives surrounding the substitute shortage concerns uh we reviewed steps taken to alleviate the impact which I'll go over since September and we'll discuss the actionable strategies to reduce impacts and enhance outcomes for our students uh I like to think that we admired the problem from multiple angles uh taking the deepest look to find what the true truth of the matter was or is for our substitute teacher shortage some of the methods um we used for our inquiry were to review data um from the region and the county uh we interviewed three third-party products or Solutions uh that claim to have solutions for this problem uh we were surveyed substitute teacher uh that we have in our district um reviewed or interviewed the Kaa leadership uh met with principles and other leaders from the leadership team and we spoke face to face with our substitutes uh but some of the actions that we've taken since September 23rd as you may know uh we raised the rate for our short-term and long-term Subs our new daily sub rate is now $125 uh we implemented a substitute teacher orientation and training process we're attending job fairs ongoing to find permanent talent but also Subs to teacher talent um and we've established employee attendance protocols which I'll go into a little more later and we reviewed uh sub rates from our surrounding districts uh you'll be happy to know that we're squarely in the middle of our peers throughout the county with $125 daily rate um regarding our attendance protocols our school leaders met with our attendance outliers to inquire about their absenteeism and they came from a place place of support uh and trying to understand why they're an outlier uh and also as you may know our our long-term sub rate raised to $350 and those are people who are in the classrooms for um weeks and months at a time uh like I said earlier we met with some substitute Services uh we met with three different companies uh we don't believe their services match our needs um we also streamlined our application process to make it easier for possible substitute teacher candidates to join our ranks um and we're trying to support them throughout the uh certification process and we met our special education leaders to study uh substitute teacher shortages impact on IEPs um those thirdparty services that I've mentioned couldn't guarantee fill rates and the ones they were quoting match the ones we currently have uh so it didn't seem like it would enhance our fill rates um and they're seemingly providing an HR solution for larger districts um where they might have dozens and dozens and dozens of substitute teachers um we don't have that as a smaller District I'd also like to uh reach out a bit of thanks to uh Maria Montoya assistant to the business administrator uh she's been instrumental in supporting our candidates as they navigate the application and certification process uh the process has been streamlined however it is still a bit bantine because of the state requirements I'm grateful for uh m Toya for her good work that she's done and she continues to do so thank you to uh Maria there I'd mentioned earlier we uh created a survey that we shared with our substitute teacher pool uh in that survey we gained some general feedback uh got some insights into their daytoday and we also went through a period of a introspection for our practices and uh kenward Public Schools uh about 50 uh people received the survey via email on our Frontline PL form 24 responded uh and uh out of that 24 about eight are our regular uh substitute teachers we also incentivized the the survey by offering to raffle off two GI gift cards which we will do next week uh we gained insight into our substitute pool demographics so about 46% of the respondents live in kennworth uh 4% are are in Westfield and the other 50% are in our surrounding towns and neighborhoods other respondents said that they come into one to three times a week on average um and 64% of those pulled find their overall experience in kind of with a four out a five or higher so encouraging news there um we're hoping that the efforts of uh Maria uh will continue to help um these numbers and help alleviate some of our shortfalls as we move forward some general anecdotes that we received our substitute teachers are looking for support uh with technology um more specifically Google Classroom so as we've U moved to the digital platform uh Google Classroom was a great tool for teachers uh our substitute teachers may not have the familiarity with that product um to execute lesson plans as hope as much as they would hope um and we also heard concerns regarding the needs of all Learners and also the support uh for management and discipline in uh the classroom uh We've offered a summer trading which is well attended um over in August however many of those who attended are not showing up throughout the school year so now we're considering changing the model for training throughout the school year um as we're hiring there'll be additional training and other trainings for folks who um want that support uh and to their credit our substitutes Express a desire to deliver uh effective instruction uh and doing what's best for our students so we couldn't really ask for more from our folks who are helping out in this important role diving into some of the actual data uh I'll read the question for those who can't see it uh if a significant bonus were offered to you after 10 full days uh 30 days and 50 days uh would that increase your interest and frequency in working in kennworth schools and you can see in this P chart here uh 73% said yes um 23% said maybe perhaps they just want a little bit more information and we did have a few that said no in regards to a bonus for rewarding their frequency another question uh if the rate of for a half day increased would you prefer to work in the AM or PM uh here we see a a pretty even divide among AM and PM um but on reflection of this question I was thinking of who might be our subs and if there were a parent who uh wanted to be a substitute perhaps the am opening uh would U suit their needs better as a a sub who is a parent may also be able to work in the morning uh take care of family needs in the afternoon and still be home by dismissal so a bit of a creativity there and our next question uh would you be interested in being a regular floater working Mondays and Fridays or just the mornings what have you um as you can see here 70% said yes I guess a more consistent schedule would lead to more consistent job acceptances and maybe would help with our our substitute fill rates so our possible recommendations from our study uh is to consider a plan to broaden our Outreach um to find out more people in the community who be able to support us uh consider a sub calling stien this came through and a lot of our conversations with the Kaa with individual subs and some of our leadership team members um to make more of a human connection between the Frontline platform and creating a point of contact UM in our brick-and motor instances and our digital uh landscape uh considering incentivizing uh subw work through bonuses after a certain number of days are achieved um those tiered bonuses would be dependent on the days that they work rewarding their frequency uh consider a floater as I mentioned in the slide before that would be a part-time position and consider opportunities for ongoing training for our substitutes to support their needs uh we are in the business of teaching and learning and we should also be helping those who seek to learn um and our substitute teacher ranks our next steps uh begin vetting out the feasibility of our recommendations work through these possibilities with our administrative team and Personnel committee consider recommendations within the new budgetary constraints as our superintendent mentioned just a moment ago and Implement those strategies and of course reflect um when admiring complex problems which I believe this is uh we are always reflecting on our practices uh we assume that the iterative process will ultimately support our students best uh thank you so much for the opportunity share those findings with you tonight and I'm here to uh take any questions if you have them the board have any questions for Mr I'd have to dig into that further to get a a true accurate answer but I believe they begin streamlining the process to make it a little easier because we're not the only District that has this this issue this is a nationwide didn't reduce qualifications they did reduce a qualification so now you need fewer college credits and we're putting that out there for Subs that here's you know here's the you know minimum requirement for in our outreach program yeah that'll be a part of that for sure yeah they still have to have a ba correct or no no sub that was Associates it used to be 60 credit it's in the 30s I think to 30 credits now affordances and limitations of that are that we get a lot of college students now who want to sub because now you only need 30 credits instead of 60 but they also have College schedules so they don't always take the jobs because they're at school themselves so that lowering of criteria that the state did hasn't really positively affected us much I don't think yeah so I have a few questions um it's funny because in all the decades I see that um managing discipline for substitutes still problem I hope think that'll go away um do you expect this to be temporary or is this going to be Longo many years or you don't know well I think it's reflective sorry go ahead no of course um I'll share my anecdote from Monclair University that's what I was thinking to I was speaking with an administrator from Monclair State University um looking into preparation programs and I had asked the question how many graduates um do you have now how many did you have like eight n years ago and they said 8 n years ago they had around a thousand from Monclair State um this year they're hoping for 300 so the pipeline has narrowed significantly um so just finding the talent um to enter our ranks uh is growing smaller which is of course affecting The Substitute Teacher uh pipeline as well and I was wondering about the cost versus if you have are regular teachers and Subs would it be more costly to have the teachers fill in or yes costing about this yeah you can you explain the question more I think she means like coverages if you're using teachers I said there was a amount like $10,000 or something budgeted per teacher or something so that's for a six period class but if a teacher covers daily one period because and then therefore loses a prep I think they're entitled to $ 443 that happened 43 41 or three so that's $200 a day right versus 125 so it is more costly it's costly okay um and I guess if you get I'm thinking when you get a substitute teacher they're there for the day but I guess not because you're saying morning afternoon so I'm wondering the teachers are here teaching well how are they going to be able to sub is that because of scheduling uh just to be more clear with what I presented the AM PM Paradigm perhaps that would uh incentivize someone who can't do a full day so if we made a half day more rewarding work with their schedules maybe we would get more people to show up for those half day sessions but my my question is about the teachers you're using teachers from here know and so they have half days or I thought it was a full day how are they going to cover so they substitu they either volunteer or are told they need to cover during their prep period okay so if you're the teacher if is the social studies teacher not one teacher would cover him it would be five teachers based on the five preps expens it okay yeah so F I thought when you were talking about the half of days I thought you sub will come in in the morning and then another sub will come in the afternoon right is that what you're saying and that would be split the day if available right that's what you're getting at so my second question is I know there's variables involved but the root cause seems to be absenteeism of the staff right is that the major issue why we need substitutes in are we on par with or the percentage that we have absentee every day versus the other Union County schools are we equal do you know that or are we higher than them or lower than them okay yeah we we haven't done any cross type of analysis with other districts I'm not sure attendance is more or less of a problem than it's been in the past I think it's an issue of Subs I think it's an issue of sub availability I know but if we're running at I'm just say 25% absentee I'm just throwing I have no idea what the numbers are 25% absentees of a day in our staff versus another school that's running at 10% I mean you know what I'm saying we need more subs than that other school can I make it my point like you know if our absentee is way way out of whack compared to other school districts we would have to investigate that I I can't thr can't answer that okay making a note now okay anyone else questions thank you you thank you Mr thanks thank you everyone for your questions uh Mr ganella is up next thanks thank you this yeah good even evening everyone um i' like to um start uh by going over a little bit of the history of funding uh and the School Reform Act of 2007 because it gives us a little background of why we have seen uh some significant fluctuations in our state aid U uh more recently over the past couple of years uh our current school funding system uh was established um um under the School Reform funding Reform Act or or Esra um 15 years ago uh it created it was created to uh address in in inequality in spending between the wealthier Suburban and the poorer Urban school districts asra is um set a fixed amount per student regarding regardless of location uh aiming to ensure a fair level spending for everyone uh District budgets were created by figuring out how much it costs to educate uh each student based on certain factors then they calculated the total amount needed to give all students in the district an adequate education or the development of the adequacy budget originally the plan was for the state and local districts to fund this adequacy budget based on their property and income wealth with wealthier districts contributing more the largest Aid category Equalization Aid was meant to equalize funding in a fair way other aid for specific programs such as transportation and special needs was also provided without considering wealth of the district however Esra was never fully implemented as intended typical New Jersey fashion a hold harmless Clause was added to ensure no District lost funding from the previous year regardless of changes in enrollment or wealth uh this led to the introduction of adjustment Aid to guarantee continued funding to all districts although Esra was deemed constitutionally uh constitutionally by the New Jersey Supreme Court behold harmless provision redirected some funds from uh educational adequacy Aid to districts under this provision originally adjustment Aid was supposed to be phased out uh in three years an equalization Aid was to be fully funded unfortunately due to the financial crisis caused by the 2008 banking collapse this plan was derailed over time legislative actions such as the Le the levy cap uh law in 2010 further complicated the situation this law limited annual tax levy increases to 2% affecting districts below the Esra fair share requirement districts receiving adjustment Aid faced no pressure to raise their levies leading to a substantial cumulative effect in 2018 S2 legislation aimed to reallocate funds uh from underfunded districts to those that have never been fully funded according to asro this forc districts with prolonged adjustment Aid to increase their local spending causing financial crisis for many due to the 2% Levy cap a combination of not following the original Esra plan the prolonged adjustment Aid and the 2% Levy cap has created a challenging situation that now requires a thorough review of e estra definitions and formulas the individual action taken without considering asra's impact have brought us to a critical point in New Jersey school funding so I'd like to talk a little bit about Equalization Aid first as you can see here um uh um it's fluctuated so the first several years you could see what we just talked about uh those were the hold harmless years where our Aid was flat then in um 2018 you could see the impact of S2 where the funds were being reallocated from overfunded districts to underfunded districts such as ours uh then in 2024 you can see another shift um due to the changing demographic specifically in counter worth our equalized property values and our district income those shifts have have resulted in us losing Equalization Aid so what are the drivers of Equalization Aid the two major drivers of Equalization Aid uh in addition to student enrollment in our particular case student enrollment has has remained flat um um is the equalization equalized value or the property value and District income income you can see since 2020 it was relatively stable 2020 2021 2022 then 2023 it took a significant jump um and then again in 2024 it took another jump and in 2025 it took another jump and those those last two years are the years where we did lose Equalization Aid and you can see here just so you know I'm not making up these formulas this is the formula that's provided by the Department of Education uh that shows where our Equalization Aid and I've highlighted the the the uh equalized valuation um uh and the proper uh District income um uh levels there uh so overall um last year we were anticipating another increase remember we were we were got several um increases of state aid because of S2 and we are actually anticipating another adjustment uh this year and next um last year and this year we were expecting increases uh in our our our Equalization aid but little did we know that the uh equalized valuation and the personal income levels changed which then took that money away from us so last F school year we were anticipating increases but we saw a decrease in Equalization Aid um a uh a corresponding increase in our choice Aid um resulting in essentially Flat state aid in uh 2023 24 uh but this year you could see that there is an overwhelming uh significant decrease in um Equalization Aid uh and the increase in Choice Aid was not able to uh keep us in pace so the total loss of state aid was 1 uh $ 1,48 th000 just to explain that you know where to put us in perspective with uni County uh I think this is a good um chart there there are districts in Union County that have never received Equalization Aid uh so you can see those districts uh up at the top of the of the chart there Berkeley Heights Clark Mountainside New Province and so on a lot of our neighbors have never received Equalization Aid that's because their equalized value and their personal income was significant enough to drive their formula where they got zero equ Equalization a um so this is a new phenomenon for us but some districts districts have been dealing with this all along the nice thing about to be in their those districts position position though they're not getting the aid they're not dealing with the drastic changes in Aid that were required to deal with um I also included on here um the school levy um percentage uh so you could see where a district like ours is 50% of the uh total tax levy um total taxes in town goes towards the school but in a district like Elizabeth it's 20% um and a district like Westfield it's uh 60 and uh Scotch Plains it's 66% uh so there's different variations there as well another um disturbing fact is last year the district was $789,000 above adequacy um we're projecting this year um that we're going to going to be about $1.5 million below adequacy it's just the fact of doing those numbers you know um um U which is a shift of almost $2.3 million in one year um so um I do want to bring this up because this is something we going to be discussing next week as well uh when we finally adopt the budget um the current the current budget as Mr Arlington is still is in flux due to the loss of state aid we're meeting tomorrow uh to go over some things and ultimately the finance committee will discuss it on Wednesday and the full board next Tuesday and adopt it for submission to the county superintendent um what's not really in flux is the capital projects budget uh capital projects are funded from a completely different account uh and sources of revenue the board cannot commingle these funds and use them to offset the operating uh expenditures of the district uh the list of projects you can see here are projects that um are to be funded with the interest generated from the bond proceeds uh we've been investing those funds since December 2022 an account that is earning in excess of 5% and we've generated a significant amount of interest income uh these projects were uh removed uh from the original scope of work of the referendum in order to lessen the tax burden on the community um with anticipation that we would have to do these projects but we were going to to seek alternative methods of of doing them um because they are essential to the overall goals of the originally uh original proposed projects uh in addition uh we will be appropriation appropriating an additional $474,000 to reduce the debt uh service tax levy uh that that fulfills the board of edge uh commitment to use $2 million from capital reserve to reduce the tax levy for the referendum so um as I said where do we go from here um um Tuesday uh March 12th tomorrow uh the board will the leadership team will meet to review the the cuts prioritize them come up with the list at which on March 13th the finance Comm we will review those cuts um and um on Tuesday March 19th we will discuss those cuts with the full board and adopt the budget for submission to the executive County Superintendent by the statutory deadline of March 20th there any questions regarding State a before I continue with my next uh piece of my uh project just what you this whole thing you so bottom line is because people are moving in to Kenworth with more money and the houses are going up and their income's going up we're and you're saying that next year that'll happen again or could it could it could I don't know um um it could very well happen again you know we still do get Equalization a so I was not um not anticipating that large of a cut there's no way for us to know what what that number is going to be until it's certified by the uh Board of Taxation um I'm on that as some of you know I'm on the my state associations committee that was taking a look uh taking a look at that and one of the recommendations that we presented to the Department of Education was to use a five-year average for those those those figures the personal income and the equalized valuation to alleviate some of these large fluctuations that you have um you know they haven't responded to that um but as I said the whole state a formula needs to be overhauled um um completely overhauled yes do you know where the state is getting the household income I would suspect is from the TA the board of Taxation okay which probably comes from our local assessor they get household incomes oh no no not that I'm I would suspect that's a Department of Treasury yeah well my my question I guess was or I was thinking towards does it use this the latest census data or is the state actually collecting that information on an annual basis it is a delay it is delayed if you look at if you look at the figures um the equ valuation has a reporting delay FY FY 258 is based on the the the 10123 valuation and the district income has a delay it was based on 2021 income so where they're getting it I'm not sure I could find out I could try to find out I mean you could just see the houses just in my neighborhood houses are going for $800 million dollar now on yeah Equalization of of property values that makes sense to me but the income again I'm wondering how they collect that information to be able to adjust it on an annual basis brother is always watching it makes it makes sense but I think it's I still think it's a flawed flawed formula I don't disagree with that just because 10 houses you you know sell for a phenomenal price doesn't mean that everyone else in the community now could all of a sudden afford right you know that doesn't mean that you couldn't even you probably couldn't afford to buy those houses on you couldn't even afford to buy those houses you bought those houses 10 years ago 15 years ago 20 years ago so that that whole concept doesn't hold water as far as I'm concerned but you going back to the Capital Improvements where you're not going to be spending the money no well we're not we're going to be spending the money what do you mean not spending you're going to hold hold it for a while no no no no that's not what he was saying he saying this money comes from a different area so the these these projects would still go forward completely yeah CU there's a whole bunch of stuff there that I thought you were going to okay put it up no I don't want to what what the purpose of this is not to give anyone the impression well let's not do the lighting and sound system in the high the high school and fill that in and reduce the tax levy or something to that effect that's that's the I don't want to give that impression you can't you can't really use it you could you could not do the project and let the money sit in capital reserve that pry safe yeah we will get the different funds okay yeah thank you okay um like to give my monthly update on the the school referendum projects um hbac projects are going along uh quite well uh they've shifted now I think since last time they're start doing the work at Harding um and they're actually ahead of their their completion date um so they um expect to be done by the end of uh July there uh so that'll be a full month ahead of time uh and once again I'd like to thank all the teachers and the students and the administrators for making the accommodations to allow that work to happen in this in the uh uh two classrooms that parting and five classrooms uh at brle uh are being done a day so that or a week uh so that's great uh that enables us to get open to uh open our school on time uh in September and also allowed us to modify the the school calendar as you could see on one of your resolutions tonight that's the driving impact we did not anticipate this project to go so smoothly this uh this year and anticipated some problems over the summer but it's clearly not the problem so we're going to try to recapture that time to allow us to um um have some time in the summer of 2025 when the Middle School Edition comes uh online field upgrades um contractors are still going uh full full full Pace uh the track was is started being milled uh I think it's just about done um and we don't anticipate any delay um or you know we've had some some minor delays because of weather whether it be rain or snow but we don't anticipate that uh affecting our substantial completion time uh the additions going a little slower than we'd like um uh the uh excavation um um for the pad is ready for footings and the foundations and the permits were issued on March 1st um but the contractor still has to mobilize and get out here and do that um so here are some pictures of uh Harding school's univ ventil going on going in and Bry is up top and and Hardings on below here's some work uh progressing on the um field you can see that the uh track has been milled here and some of the curbing for the track has been installed um and this is some of the addition work you can see the pad uh being uh prepared for its the footings um there's a resolution on this evening's agenda to approve a contract with the Mars Union jointure uh at our last uh finance and facility committee meeting that we reviewed the inventory of trucks um and we noted that um two of the trucks uh one of them actually had to be taken off the road completely um and is not uh that was a um 199 uh 2000 I'm sorry 2001 Dodge um can no longer plow um so we have to um take that one offline um the 2008 Ford that you see here um we decided to tr try to repair um and that's the work that's being done here you can see how rusted it is on the top and how it looks on the bottom so the Martian jointure is currently doing that work at a substantial uh savings to the district so we don't have to buy two new trucks we would just probably buy the one um so um it's uh that one was getting very sketchy I showed a video to the bo the finance committee where the the bed basically was falling off the gas tank was exposed um uh a lot of issues with that one but they uh took it up there and took a look at it and they feel that they could once this work's done we'll get another 8 to 10 years years out of that truck for minimal cost uh and that's all I have do anyone have any questions okay thank you thank you Mr G that's where we were J okay uh to close out this portion of uh the presentation I'll Point your attention to the HIV report in February there was one reported case investigated at Harding which was unfounded aely there are five reported cases investigated four were founded one was unfounded later in the meeting you'll be voting to affirm deny or modify the cases I presented to you in January um but as you look at the chart um yeah I had the chart numbered I just want to point your attention to the cases on the chart labeled uh numbered three and four those cases are part and partial with the student discipline hearing the Personnel committee heard a couple weeks back so three and four are related to that discipline matter the others are unrelated happy to take any questions on those for anyone have any questions you need another minute or two to read through you know sure take your [Music] time everyone vter we need a little more time okay good okay thank you uh finally I'd like to congratulate Miss Griffin who's in the audience tonight shout out to miss Griffin uh later in the meeting you'll be voting to approve her retirement Miss Griffin has been with us since 2000 uh has been actively involved with curriculum writing after school programs Book Fairs PD and most recently with the elementary gifted and talented and steam classes at Harding congratulations on your time and gra that concludes my report anyone have any questions from Mr Arlington before we move on to so [Laughter] happy oh you know she gets a life now okay at this point we'll now move on to the report of committees review of resolutions and board discussion up first is financing facilities Mr Le okay well first of all thanks for doing the funding formulas and everything else V so it's quite interesting okay so first I'm going to go over uh my report which I'm just going to read over our finance and facility meeting notes um for the for February so on February 7th um the committee met we went over Harding's budget special education budget guidance and assessment on so if you have any questions on what exactly were covered in those sessions I could give you that um on February 15th we went over the athletic budget um br's budget curriculum and assessment um in you know all of course we were also doing these meetings we were going over the referendum project and what needs to be done there also on the 15th we went over um Windfield tuition um that contract expired actually in June of 20 we're trying to get back them back to the table um for a discussion um I not if that has happened yet over the last few weeks so that hasn't happened on February 26th we went over basically this is Mr gella's part of the um of the budget phase three which is everything else except the budgets for the schools so it's all the um labor charges is fuel economics Etc um we talked about phase two which is Staffing cap in the the capital projects that Vince just put up on the screen uh we talked about the opening exercises the salute to the flag and we talked about the Haymon scholarship which is res one of the resolutions on our um for tonight um so that's all I have do you have any questions on any of the budgets I mean I know we're going to go over it in detail in the next two weeks or so so um just what's the problem with Windfield that St well I I know they wanted to withdraw and they couldn't but is operating under an well sorry um I think best uh thing to do is talk about that in tonight's executive session when you make the motion I don't know if anything under the attorney CL privilege is covered there but so we'll we'll we'll discuss that in a second okay so let me move on to resolutions one one to three are the usually normal Fair of the month on the superintendent report which just presented um and also the financial reports and the bill list I reviewed the bill list in the financials I didn't see any outliers all appears to be in order resolution number four is line item transfer there was nothing over a $ 5,000 doll cap resolutions five and six are for workshops and field trips um seven and eight are referendum related cost and payments nine is the revised school calendar I think that's on my at least on my laptop is on page 19 resolution is resolution 10 is the maintenance agreement with the Union County joint venture commission um that's the work on the truck that you saw um 11 is the mo MOA education and law enforcement that's 60 pages long from 24 to 85 kind of covers a host of items but in general cover covers the interaction between the district local County and state law enforcement covers items such as drugs Firearms you know any kind of offes you could think of surveillance undercover officers in the school Etc so there was a lot there I hope you got a chance to read it all um 12 is um labor Council change our two current um labor attorneys um are moving from the current firm to Chas and lamparella malen and capio um there's no Cho no difference in the fees the fees will remain the same the hourly rate um our Law Firm veto reviewed uh the new firm and they're in good standing um 13 is the Horus Hyman Hyman uh Memorial Scholarship so I think it all started out as one scholarship years ago um last year we moved it to three this year we're moving it to four um one's for community service one's for trade and Technical School one's for business and one is for General academics so and they're all $1,500 each and we were able to increase the values on though because Mr ganella changed from where the money was sitting into a different type of account which is gaining more interest so we're able to give more out per year correct correct got on that okay 14 is the Harding school PTO donation of $30,000 the board generously accept that of course um let me move on um for the policy um there's two policies here um revisions adopt PR 17 I mean 7610 vandalism policy regulation guide 7610 have been updated to remove the list of protected categories and replaced with the expanded list as defined in njac 6A 7-1a regulation um so regulation guide 1610 removes the specific list of violations and includes notification to law enforcement in accordance with applicable laws um so policy um regulation guide 1610 also have adopted to address acts of graffiti um let's see and the court and also a part of that is the court to order students to pay restitution to the district and the signed community service requiring a student to remove to remove the graffiti um um P 8820 is opening exercises um we revise that so policy 8820 has been updated to include language that will have the Pledge of Allegiance broadcast each day over the Public Announcement system okay that's all I have except for negotiations which I also chair um we'll talk about all those in close session this evening so anything else question yes okay I just want to make a comment um resolution 66 um that one of the trp was to the senior center the band came I just want to say I happened to be there it was very very nice and we're thankful that they can come and do that thanks for sure uh hold on 23 I just wonder why the abandon is Sever why is that a SP which number you on haven't got sorry there's more here though do you want me to answer it though for you I I'm only kidding take you take it for me thank you um just on on number 11 it says it's the education and law enforcement which I know we've had for a long time it's wonderful but just says 2023 revisions is the revisions just increases in salary or something or because it's a new person on number 11 yeah no this this isn't the SRO this is this is the memorandum agreement between the County prosecutor and the county superintendent the super attendance and it just says revised is it it's revised every year it's revised every yeah like I said 60 pages long I Tred to go over you know as things as possible but um that's it we're good matk you anyone else any questions for Mr L at this time okay thank you Mr L next up Mr hather personnel management thank you uh the Personnel committee met on Wednesday the 21st uh the commit committee part participated in a discipline hearing for a student who was issued a long-term suspension uh Brian Gardina Esquire of couro Bromberg and Newman represented the board in addition to the Personnel committee members Mr Arlington Mr ganella and Mr ganel were present for the discipline hearing uh were also present for the hearing were P brly principal Mr Davies assistant principal Mrs Ms pavelek and SRO Pickton after deliberation the committee recommends to the full board upholding the suspension the Personnel committee then reviewed staffing needs and potential Personnel modifications for the 2425 school year as part of phase three of the budget this discussion focused on how the Personnel convers Personnel conversation informs the instructional program next the committee discussed instrument and timeline for the superintendent's annual evaluation the committee also discussed the worth and value of the full board completing the Board of Education self- evaluation and the Personnel committee recommends the completion of the self- evaluation to the full board following this discussion the committee reviewed a draft of the school business administrator annual contract for the 2425 school year and finally several confidential Personnel matters were discussed involving sensitive information that cannot be disclosed to the public Mr Arlington will make non-personnel committee members of the full board aware of information that requires their attention and we adjourned at 6:15 p.m. there are 12 resolutions tonight uh resolution 16 accept the uh of resignation resolution 17 is the forementioned uh acceptance of the retirement of Miss Griffin uh resolution 18 is the approval of am lunchroom AIDS and paraprofessional AIDS resolution 19 is a maternity leave of absence resolution 20 is a leave of absence resolution 21 is the approve uh absent request uh leave of absence request resolution 22 are the approval of athletic stipend positions resolution 23 is the co-curricular stip in positions for the 23 24 School Year resolution 24 is the uh approval of child study team Replacements resolution 25 as the approval appr of translation services resolution 26 is the approval of additional teaching sections for the 23 24 school year last but not least resolution 27 is the approval of substitute staff and before I open the floor to questions there is a policy uh up uh revisions and adopt for um I'm reading yours sorry about that get with it uh p3211 code of ethics revised uh it states that the only Revision in the policy guide 3211 removes a list of protected categories and replaces the list with the expanded list as defined in njac 67-1 d1a it is a Rec it is recommended uh a board adopt code of ethics policy for professional Educators the code of ethics and policy um 3211 is published by the National Education Association a board may consider and adopt a code of ethics policy from another source or a code of ethics policy it develops or revises locally that is all I have you had a question on resolution 23 yeah it was just a the ban labor the assemble director of band had it's split and I just wonder why that was split they just so it's either two yeah so it's either two stiens or the teachers are choosing to split it but it looks like it might be two two separate stiens that the contract allows so the musical has two assistant directors so there's two stiens of 6,252 no I think she's asking about the banding Ensemble director where we have three names and it says split are they doing different Le Bruno Miller it's resolution 23 the first that's not being approved that was appr it's one stien and these three I wonder why three people are doing so the time B sorry I misunderstood that's okay anyone else sorry okay at this time we'll move on to curriculum instruction Mrs te uh the curriculum committee met on Wednesday and uh Mr Arlington led the first part of the meeting uh we gave an input into a draft set of committee Norms we uh talked about class size and examined our class sizes compared to other school districts around our area as well um we suggested changes to our student attendance policy uh focusing on defining what is excused and unexcused absences and then um their director of curriculum instruction she talked about updates about recently performed PD and curriculum committee including goals and objectives of the group she also focused individually individual data meetings she had for facilitated at Harding School which she put together these fantastic PowerPoints for all the teachers individually talking about the students academic performance their data in English language arts and math and then she gave an overview of collaboration work that BR ELA teachers and social studies are involved in we talked about AP seminar courses science curriculum and uh the the uh double block of English language arts instruction in Middle School and the recent reveal training for math curriculum instruction assessment professional development updates were then shared for Harding these included the benefits of conquer Math training and a focus on process-based teaching in English language arts we discussed the strong evaluation system which is the new evaluation system for the teachers and the parts that make it up including the documentation logs as part of the system then we discussed um the health curriculum standards all parent can access the curriculum guides including our health Guides Online you can also find a process for opting students out of specific Health lessons online the committee looked at several tools we put together particularly with providing parents Guardians with more streamlined ways to see the standards related to sexual and social health we talked about the importance of teaching Health topics in value neutral ways the full board has some of these tools in your folder as well and then uh we shared uh progress on pre-work that is happening in preparation for piloting two new math programs the two programs will be piloted piloted in 2024 25 school year and uh the selected program will be implemented across grades K through 8 in September of 2025 good questions and then we just have uh one resolution tonight resolution 28 which is the acceptance of the Hib report from January 2024 and then I have it and two yep I got it two Pol uh more than two policies we have uh the revision of R 5440 honoring student achievement this removes the list of protected categories and replaces the list with the EXP expanded list as defined in njac 6A 7-1 1A a policy and regulation guide honoring student achievement is recommended if a district wants to memorialize its practices in a board approved policy and regulation the board May revise regulation guide 5440 to meet local needs and then we have P 5750 Equitable educational opportunities this is referenced to the Amistad commission curriculum and the commission on Holocaust educ ation curriculum has been removed from policy guide 5750 as this curricula are referenced in policy guide 2260 the other revisions in policy guide 5750 remove the list of protected categories and replace the list with the expanded list as defined in njac 67-1 1A n jaac 6A 7-14 a and the c section 3 a a require a board policy to substate compliance making policy guide 5750 mandated then we have policy 5841 which is secret societies it's revised the only Revision in policy guide 50 of 41 removes the list of protected categories and replaces the list with the expanded list as def finded in njac 6A 7-1 secret societies student organ gations now open to all students are prohibited as per njsa 18a 42-5 and a board policy is recommended then we have uh revised for p 5842 equal access of student organizations it has been revised to remove number three in the list and to address staff involvement in student organizations in light of recent United States Supreme Court decisions Strauss Esme re recommends a district discuss the situation with their board attorney to determine how best to address this issue other revisions and policy guide 5842 remove the list of protected categories and replace the list with the expanded list as defined in njac 6A 7-1 point1 a a mouthful and then we have an abolish P 5755 which is uh abolishing the equity and educational programs and services is it has been uh abolished as all of the information within policy guide 5755 is addressed somewhere elsewhere in Str smme policies and regulations policy guides 1523 and 2260 address all of the requirements outlined in policy guide 5755 and address the district as a whole which includes students eliminating the need for policy guide 5755 Strauss smme recommends abolishing policy guide 5755 because the information within policy guide 5755 is redundant that is all anyone have questions you want to explain all that I'll all anyone of questions at this time about curriculum instruction for Mrs te no okay steering committee sure yes okay so we have two policy revisions that are up for approval this evening that fall under steering committee the first is p1523 the comprehensive Equity plan this is mandated um this one the revisions to policy guide 1523 add requirements to the C njac 6A col 7-14 C requires a district to develop a c the c section 1-d requires a board policy to substantiate compliance making policy guide 1523 mandated um the next one is p 9323 which is notification of juvenile offender case disposition this one is policy guide 9323 has been updated to align with njsa 2A colon 4 a-60 njsa 53 col 1-15 and njsa 53 col 1-20 do6 one of the revisions to policy guide 9023 involves a list of protected category categories that is enumerated in njsa 2A colon 4 a-60 and although this list does not include all of these categories listed in njac 6A 71.1 a Strauss Esme believes the list full still addresses equity in the schools a confidentiality statement has been added to policy guide 9323 that's it thank you before we move on to Old business mren do we have any residency notes we don't have any resolutions we have any notes from The Residency committee residency yes thank you um we met Friday the 28th at 6 o'clock and present were Mr Arlington gella uh I was there Mr biner Mrs Zimmerman and Mr L was not with us we began to discuss our current residency procedures including our registration process and the way initial checks for residency are conducted upon entrance to the district we also discussed vital role that return that the vital roles that return mail anonymous tips and teacher principal reporting play in ensuring only students um who who are permitted to attend our kenor schools to do so residency issues also brought to light in our regular review and expired leases leases we also discussed the process we would follow once we are informed that there is a potential residency case that needs investigating we discussed the different layers of the investigation um papercheck level uh renewed definition of domicile homelessness and the board policy and regulation um you want me to read this whole thing or well there's one thing that I believe the committee wanted the full board to discuss right and that was the pros and cons of a bigger re-registration right in odd let's say odd grade levels versus a random check every certain number of months so I think that's important to have that conversation because that's what the committee uh I think that's what the committee agreed to so yeah what they brought up that was that um they're going to send out um just a pick a number of students and send it to the family and then they'll have to report back and bring the proof that's one way we could do it um Mr ganella had said we'll send out a letter to every household at one point and then a lot of the mail will be returned if not forwarded so we there's a lot of things that we're discussing like how do we um check that the people that are coming here and we're paying for are eligible any questions anyone of questions for anyone before we move on thank you thank you so much okay soton was saying was during the course of the committee meeting of the propositions of some different ways of moving forward with doing the checks were brought up one suggestion um was that uh there would be these random checks of of a x number of students every few month cycle and um that would be a constant rollout thing the other one was to revert back to what we had done a number of years ago with the say odd number grade year check-ins every every odd number grade year you had to come in and reprove your residency so it was debated back and forth in the committee which form would be the better thing to do to go back to the odd years or to go ahead with the idea of just a random everybody in the district would be notified that this random check would be something that would happen but then you might get a letter in the mail next month Miss tier saying okay you're in this next selection group uh please provide the proper uh identification authenticating documents that you are a resident of the burrow of kenor and we would go forward like that that pretty much what you're looking for yeah that was my next question are we going to meet again we is there going to be another me should be discussed with the whole board he also said maybe sending out a periodic report quarterly of what residency look like so can can The Residency committee make recommendations whether it be in close session or we figure out what the next steps are because there has to be right next steps so what we could what we could do as a committee is put together a a tool or sort of like pros and cons of each of the different methods maybe that takes this conversation from the conceptual level to something more logistical so to a proposition yeah and maybe the residency committee can recommend their top two suggestions with the rationale to why they're recommending it and then the board can talk you know next time and then we can go from there we talked about the successes and the challenges the districts had in the past with a massive re-registration with every other grade level and the cost tied to that efficiency and whether it was effective or not so let's put something together in writing and we'll share it with the full board we also talked about maybe letting some of the some of the some of the newer processes that we have and checking it let that play out for a couple months and then you reassess it U for example something that Maria is doing now is when a student registers because be centralized registration she checks the register to see if there's any other student that's currently in that house or that apartment um believe it or not we found two this week so two kindergarten students um registered where there's already people living there so letters went out to those parents saying do you really live here you know um so there's going to be a process where in a couple of those things that we talked about we're doing now and maybe we take a look at that report that we're putting together on a you know over a couple of months and see you know if that full fullblown registration is really necessary we might actually catch some people this way uh without having to do that and inconveniencing the entire student population or population and with the influx of people coming going we need to really check this understood so next we are going to move forward with next steps residency committee will meet again give two recommendations with some information and then we can hopefully talk CL we just thought that maybe the whole board might have a suggestion what you might like also before we actually put it into well I think we got to do something with like informing the public right almost like you know you see something say something and I know it's not a one to one cost if one kid here illegal it's not the 10,000 or whatever it is per student but when we're deciding on cutting programs or you know one year I think n years ago we didn't have a middle school soccer program because we needed we 12 you know we needed $20,000 you know that's maybe you know if we find out there's four or five kids illegal in the school I mean I know it's not a onetoone cost but it does save us maybe we could get some of those programs back so think about that too like a program like like that would be great people just let us know if they know something this be because it is hurting the kids yeah and this came up to me because someone told me they were observing more than once a situation so because they said something I kind of thought we should look into this thank you we'll follow up for our next meeting got it anyone else questions concerns okay um we're now going to move on to Old business like to remind everyone to please review your Friday folders for opportunities and supports available there's information on the district website and school social media that has Anum of information for um parents stakeholders family students Etc anyone for new business I just have to go back to something that I miss there so much going on here with the curriculum and resolutions is such um the opening exercise so that was operations 8820 Board of Education um the salute of the flag it reads uh the Board of Education requires a student in each School each school so is that going to be Middle School and High School each school so each canorth public school which is I'm really thrilled to hear that um and also I'm not quite sure Commodore John Barry day I maybe should know that but I don't know what that is he is the father of the American Navy see well my son was a marine so or I would have known that very interesting well thank you very much for doing this this meant a lot to me as you know thank you just want to mention one more thing on state a that last week I did send a message to our three TR Representatives on their website during the we're in the 20th District uh Senator cryan some him in Atkins some in keano just letting him know and I'm sure they know that we would cut state aid by $1.4 million and hopefully they can do whatever they can in the next couple months I think the state budget has to be passed by July one and hopefully they can come up with some extra dollars for us I think Vince didn't that last year didn't when a lot of districts complain last year that Trent did come up with extra money and we got yeah so hopefully if enough representatives of representing districts that were cut I think there's 140 districts that cut so maybe they can come up in some extra there has been some Rumblings about that yeah I mean I've seen a couple senators and assembl so you're pretty upset about this you know uh school districts are cut so hopefully we might get some more money down the road y so see what happens there thank you thanks anyone else new business no okay at this point we will now open up the meeting to the public for comment is there um to move second open the meeting to the public motion made by Mr David seconded by Mrs Drogan all those those in favor of opening the meeting to the public CCI I oppose I have a motion to carry Mr Canal public comment will now be accepted the Board of Education sets a limit for the public to speak at the Board of Education meeting to five minutes per person less prior permission has been granted by the board of education for extended uh time pursuant to Board of Education bylaw 0167 when you approach the podium please include your name and address prior to making your public comments is there any public at this time that would like to speak please approach to move up with the microphone uh Steven Dunn 32 of Court uh just before I read my what I prepared here I wrote this before we found out about the $1.5 million deficit uh so two parts to that one It's upsetting two I think we need to find uh more value in the way we spend our and that's what I'm here to ask about today I had a correspond with Mr Arlington and Mr Miller and I first want to say thank you to both of them and to extension uh by extension the board for your support of Kenworth travel basketball a brief backstory on kenor travel basketball Samantha and I started the team for our son when he was in third grade uh we had just a few practices at that time and played only a handful of games last year we filled a fourth grade boys team and joined a league playing 18 total games all those games were played in other towns separately a fourth grade girls team had also started up and played all games away we had almost no gym time paid over $100 per practice to rent a rundown Little Gym in the back of a dentist office in Rosel Park um this year recognizing the want and need for more basketball in town we decided to expand the program and get as many Kenworth kids involved as possible Kenworth Tri basketball fielded five teams this season all Harding students 54 student athletes grades 4 through six and played a total of 90 games including over 35 home games at Harding for the first time ever every Saturday we were filled up there at Harding it was fun with the help of Mr Miller we were able to have many more hours of practice using the auxiliary gym up rarely three of our teams made the playoffs for the league and won fifth grade girls advanced in both the lead playoffs and the Clark travel basketball tournament which they unfortunately lost in the championship game it was a close one we should have had it uh more importantly our students have spent hours engaging in physical activity and play increasing their social emotional learning skills and improving their overall wellbeing I can assure you that there is a real struggle for parents in regulating screen time at this age we are still dealing with the effects of remote learning during covid and combined with the addictive nature of today's games and Technologies uh children need options for healthy outlets now more than ever especially in the cold dark winter months all these hours of basketball could easily have been spent playing fortnite watching YouTube or scrolling social media also I had two requests Mr rington pretty much covered one of them as far of um use of facilities but the request I wanted to bring to the board is to please wave the remaining fees for our use of Harding gymnasium for January and February we have already paid $750 for December and have $2,000 due in speaking with other teams throughout the region we have found that paying for the use of Argin is unique to kenart taxpayers while I understand the school incurs a cost to staff of custodian at Harding we urge you to consider the financial burden placed on Harding families to foot the B this bill and consider the value our program provides to students the Board of Ed financially supports brle student athletes why not Hardings waving the $2,000 will help to reduce program fees and purchase much needed equipment it represents an investment in our students that will pay compounding dividends that you can't really get anywhere else on behalf of all the students and families I thank you for your time in this matter and your support for our program over the past year I'm happy to discuss further and answer any questions um and just one more thing I wanted to add Mr Arington did reply and I appreciate it so just this is a request for this year and looking forward to next year we'll be submitting a request again for Saturdays next year asking for six hours instead of the four we had this year every Saturday uh for basically every Saturday from December through February uh if the cost Remains the Same which was $50 per hour for the custodian that will come out to $4,200 for the next fiscal year um I think this is a tiny amount when you compare it to the cost of Athletics for students at barely um as far as I know um I don't think there are any school sponsored sports activities for Harding students um so I again must raise the point that uh custodian um being budgeted is budgeted for brely why not Harding students and I think it really is um a great value to the Harding students that we uh give so much our time to thank you Mr and that's all I got thank you thank you so Vince is the reason for being charged because it's not being run through the recreation program correct correct it's a Mr D have you looked to link up with the recreation department yeah so the recre has the Harding gym from 6:00 to 9: every weekday and that is mostly filled by the recreation program um so we use the gym we get maybe an hour or two a week there when they're not used for practice we use practice over in the auo region we run games on Saturday mornings and that's what we're paying for because a custodian is not staffed a custodians Min are saying is their staff here until maybe 3 on the weekends but there's no custodian over at harden um so the school and the board has to pay for a custodian to come in and that cost is being passed on to us no I understand all that what I'm saying is that private organizations are charged to use the school facilities but when things are run through the recreation department so there might be another program that's being run through the recreation department but is there any reason why your program can't connect with them no there's no reason even so even even even the rec even the rec programs even our programs are wrestling the direct wrestling pays for custodial fees if it's on the weekends our cheerleaders pay for reimburses for custodial fees if it's on the weekends so it's not just wreck so that's that's basically we're if we incur a cost they um and we don't if we have codan we're not charging but if we do and they can't adjust their schedule they reimburse us for that yeah but does the town pay for it though I guess is my point here well if it's kind of worth wreck yes yes well that's what I'm saying so right so if it's run through the recreation department then the town will reimburse the school for whatever cost there is for the program right so we have the summer you know the youth program right that's dat four by Samantha done 32 of court I wanted to say I I did try to reach out to um see if we could go under the wreck umbrella but I think insurance purposes and it just it was I wasn't met with open arms so to say because it is a it's a different I can't Des I don't know what the word is but it's not wreck it's travel well we we have a councilwoman in the in the audience this evening so maybe she can help yeah um anyway I guess another question is if the rec has the gym 6 to9 at night like who's using the the gym every night at harden from 6:00 to 9: are they kids I think it would depend on the schedule I see like adults going in there or like volleyball and stuff going on there I think the kids it's pretty the kids kids and then there's I mean kindergarten first grade second grade been problem in this town basket um Court space right I mean I did the same thing I had a travel girls team and I paid everything at gym time and everything out of my own pocket um I it's just was under that was under wreck right no no my travel team I paid the refs and everybody out of my own pocket so um just not enough gyms so yeah so I mean we we did we I think told you that we do plan on talking about this at the financial facility committee meeting next week um but we're going to need some more background information so I'll be sending you some questions uh and we can't just do it blindly so I'll be sending you some more questions okay thank you anyone else a comment you said you there's a staff at Burly but not Harding is there a reason is there no need CU nothing goes on on Saturday so I mean we have our our sporting events not every Saturday but the way we've structured our our agreement with our company that does our cleaning is we require someone to be at rely every Saturday okay thank I would just say the I guess I guess the core of the argument here is I think it was even mentioned all Middle School sports have been cut on the budget um so this is a way to support middle school sports for or grand year so you know I'm asking we're asking for money but also it's we have no middle school we have no school support middle school sports here we still have Middle School basketball yeah finally yeah yeah that's so okay thank you um anyone else comment at this time good evening uh my name is Alex Ferrera 380 Cool's Drive uh so first I want to just um you know piggy back off of uh What uh Mr M has done said with reference to the kennworth uh travel basketball program I do want to kind of reinforce the importance as in talking to coaches and coaching both a travel team and Rec team this year uh the importance of players playing together as much as possible all the way through wreck program travel and these kinds of uh organizations as well as ultimately High School sports within the last 15 years of us being here in in the community uh we have seen a lot of these organizations kind of die out soccer is a pretty common one that pops up and then disappears uh so if we can kind of facilitate that coordination and articulation amongst the the different organizations I think that would be uh beneficial to to kids um and this doesn't necessarily have to be just Financial Resources it could be coordination of expertise coaching uh VAR State players going down into acting as Role Models those are all opportunities that have minimal cost to the district uh but provide um opportunities for kids um on a different note um the the other thing that I wanted to kind of touch on is I definitely wish uh Mr ganell and Mr Arlington uh you know uh well as they work through this uh you know state aid cut um you know this is a big um impact for a $33 million budget um so you know wishing well as as you guys can make some very difficult decisions and then finally with reference to the discussion before about the residency check um I wasn't planning on talking about this but um you know the it's important for us to kind of obviously protect the the the the interest of the taxpayer I think that's that's an obvious one uh but I I I can almost guarantee that Mr Arling and Miss canel have ideas as to how to do that efficiently um and um and obviously I just hope the board considers that thank you sir anyone else any comments at this time okay Step Up Laura Tuli 206 manry Avenue Cranford I have three grandchildren here at bril um last time I was here I was talking about all the half days um it it's hard for some of the parents to get children back and forth with all these irregular days it it just seems like there's never a full month of school um school was closed again Friday all day for for the kids does this count as a full day for the teachers but not for the children why don't you make all of your statements and questions and I'll address them all so you don't run out of the five minutes all right um was Friday's Workshop all day to do with the testing and 2hour delay opening four days of this week except for the 11th grade is this state a Statewide testing and will this be done for for the other grades at Bry I'd like to see a workshop for our children on alcohol marijuana drugs vaping and what it's doing to their bodies and their families cutting down on their cell phone time Tick Tock last time I was here the very next day I heard on the radio that schools need to hear from more grandparents and and families about what's going on with their children and what's going on at home uh due to the backlash of covid and the neg negative impulse on the schools St Teresa's and St Michael's never closed I think I think really did pretty good compared to some of the other towns in Harding I I never remember all these days off for my for my kids all these half days um and now we have spring break coming up so those are my comments sure thank you um after your last visit to the podium you and I met in person I think we had a nice conversation happy to meet again and So based on that conversation I did do some background work about how our half days compareed to some of our um neighboring districts so each kid in New Jersey is getting 100 0 days of instruction as required by law teachers in their contracts may have more days for professional development than others so our teachers work 183 days so I'm not going to say these other districts names but I'll just say their neighbors to us we have three full PD days across the year and four half PD days for the purpose of professional development uh one of our neighbors has three full PD days like we do and five half PD days another district has no half PD days but five full PD days there's one District that has six half PD days and three three full days so it's really um an issue of the board's oversight over the district calendar the teachers contract and also you know you spoke about covid learning loss I think you were alluding to there right as a teaching and learning institution teachers are practitioners they're constantly practicing in their craft that means they need professional learning just like I need professional learning to do my job in enhanced and new ways so those PD days are really important actually for students so I understand what you're saying about students not being in a seat that day being home but the work that we do on those days eventually transfers to the work of teachers in the classroom and does have an impact on classroom instruction so a couple points there I just want to to to talk through one of which was I did take our conversation serious the other day seriously looked at that data and see we're pretty much aligned to at least the five districts most locally around us some of the reason why we have delayed openings on State Testing in Brewer is because we share staff between the Middle School and the high school so when the a more separate middle schools opened in September of 2025 that may change uh because we need the shared staff have to both supervise the students and Proctor the students taking the assessments and and therefore that pulls them from their regular teaching period so I think you asked a question there about Harding and and delayed openings did I hear that Harding and delayed openings did I hear that question yeah so there's no plan to do that um we don't take calling a half day or a delayed opening lightly but sometimes that's the cost of doing business in a school district yeah thank start it yeah at this point does anyone else have a comment please they consider the podium no sure a comment Romo Hernandez uh 135 B Lor Avenue um well after after after examining what's going on with the budget for for the school here um I was surprised about the issue with the trucks that um that the way he was rusted and the and the way how the condition was that caught my attention because anything that can happen to like a snowstorm they have to plow and anything anything can go wrong it I would suggest it had to be it had to be examined in case any any problems going on um but they have the union the union moris join King maybe a good idea to help out sure um I might I might have to agree I might have to agree age with the with the basketball because um if kids become more po if kids become more popular with basketball it could become it also become a great idea that that can help help more in the academic field because if they can put they can put that passion in sports the academic skill it could actually help in acade academic skills in the classrooms that anything that is miss anything that is missing that to help a learn development it be able to fill that Gap um even uh even even fundraisers can to help out with the help out with the school budget if needed um from the public um but I like to say that um anything that any anything any type of sport that have kids have passion with this can be able to become a creative idea that can help out with with the academics and also become a practice for the state for the Statewide test if any kids cannot be able to suceed that that can help um I would suggest to help out with a remedial reading in case anything is missing that could help get back on that test and be able to achieve more scores that can help our state thank you thank you thank you any other public for comment at this time hi Tony jir I have to lower it now uh 241 f 2 Avenue I'm just here to ask if there's any way uh the contractors that are working on both projects could maybe prepare a flyer that could go to all the houses on 14th and the few on Monroe that are affected because they're calling and sending emails to the counil and the mayor I think they're doing a fabulous job the street is clean the fence is up everything is in order but people that don't understand construction and are feeling um overwhelmed let's say and especially where the field is going you have more of the heavy roller equipment um they're calling about their house shaking or whatever so I know in because I'm in the construction field sometimes we will prepare like a onepage flyer of somebody's name and phone number as a point of contact and maybe just a blurb that by such and such date the field should be somewh completed for that major work so they have an idea of when they'll be at that completed stage um because they don't know who to call so uh you know maybe the two contractors can do that and just drop it off in those mailboxes but I I think they're doing a great job the grounds look great even all the surrounding streets the way they're leaving the property and and the machinery and all um it's really nice job coming along nicely and the last thing was um I come from a long line of Educators I grew up in nework and that's where my mom my sisters um my nieces and nephews still there how they do residency check is every year the start of school it's standard procedure every student every year so thank you thank you anyone any comments this time okay this time I'll make request close the public portion okay motion made by Mr David seconded by Mrs te all those in favor of closing the meeting to the public please say I I oppose I could comment on uh councilwoman's uh comments regarding that what we do plan on doing for the students uh not the students the residents along 14th Street is to uh provide them a a flyer tell to provide them the information on our website site which we are going to update weekly um um with what the status is because of the timing of this you know we're delayed by snow and weather and things like that it could change from week to week so we want to provide them that information that they could check the website to see this week we are going to be working on the Milling this week we're working on drainage or whatever it is the contractor has agreed to provide us that information on a weekly basis that we will get up on there and we will make sure that that's done we've also taken some steps to reduce the vibrations that are going on um the contractors put some wood down so the trucks don't bounce off the curb um there's also apparently some different settings on the um the the equipment he's going to put it to the lowest setting uh to prevent that uh he's agreed to do that as well so uh we're addressing some of those issues and and the council did mention at last week's council meeting that anybody has any want to get update on the referendum projects go on the website so she did mention that last week great thank you thank you Mr Gilla okay so um we were in the midst of the motion yeah no no no it's okay no it's okay um so no one was opposed so now we are going to move on to the roll call of resolutions Mr Gano whenever you're ready yes there are 30 resolutions on this evening's agenda do any need of those need to be voted on separately no okay this is for Resolutions 1 through 30 on the agenda biner yes David yes Drogan yes hather yes M yes tear yes Zimmerman yes panichi yes motions carry unanimously okay um Mr ganel is there a need to go into close executive yes there is motion to go into close exe executive session okay motion made by Mr David seconded by Mrs tiers all those in favor of going to going into close executive session please say I I opposed uh be it resolved the Board of Education the Board of Education me private session which the public shall be excluded to discuss the topics of uh student uh discipline uh negotiations specifically PSA negotiations and Kaa negotiations as well as attorney client uh privilege regarding the uh Winfield send receive relationship um private discussion is being held pursuing to section 7B and a of the public meanings act matters under discussion will be disclosed to the public as soon as final decisions are made and voted upon uh uh the Board of Education uh will be considering two motions this evening in a closed session and we'll return to the public to take those votes however this will conclude the live uh uh live feed on um our channel so okay that's it okay Bruno are we off