appr minut call Mr Mr Mr Mr Mr ponia four Dr scardina four M Stella for carries representa report good evening everyone and welcome to the February Board of Education meeting my name is ncol on tanesco and I am the student representative for the board without wasting any more time here is my report so I think many items could be improved on in the building the most urgent ones I believe are the bathrooms and the locker rooms I've mentioned both of these rooms previously in my reports many students actively try avoiding the bathrooms because of how rundown they are from the last time I Liv in there they have been writing on the walls which is not the school's fault however the sinks are still the same the sinks barely produce any water which is not useful to the students if they are trying to wash their hands in order the in order the bathrooms most most important to fix are the main ones downstairs right by the student entrance then moving on to the upstairs one and any other small bathroom scattered around the building for the Maring of the building moving on to the locker rooms they are not any better I have heard some students and they have recorded there seems to be a hole somewhere in the athletic training room granted I have heard of conversations regarding fixing it immediately in my next report I will provide an update on whether it has been repaired or not the locker rooms themselves are just extremely outdated our athletes and students should be comfortable and have a clean space to prepare themselves for sports games or regular Gym classes I I have also been told that the rooms have not been updated for a significant am amount of time lastly to highlight and end on a good note our student government ran a canned soup drive for all students to participate in in a play on words it was called the Super Bowl where students were told to wear ju jerseys and donate Soup cans to earn class points this was an overall successful event and the student government Association is figuring out and planning out events to get not only the students involved but the community as well thank you for listening to my report and have a good night pres this is the second time that she's mentioned the bathrooms and locker rooms and I think we said last time that we were going to do something about look like nothing what is the process so so we we've gone out um we've got estimates to repair the lock rooms or really fix the lock rooms um it's about $250,000 um to completely gut and the L bathrooms um bathrooms typically we redo we do ear Mark bathrooms each summer to to to redo right a bathroom is not something typically you can really do during a school year you have to cut the bathroom um plumbing and it it's difficult during the school year so um each summer we year mark is set number of projects last year in the high school um over the summer we redid the whole first floor we did all new flooring um at the high school we painted the whole first floor so um you know as we look into the summer months we have the ear Mark in as what projects we're doing um around this time um at the next board meeting we're going to be passing our budget so you know now is when we're having the conversations and we're figuring out what projects we're going to do for the summer so um so that's the process that's where we are we have gotten Essence to um really you can't there's really no repair you can do for a locker room at this point um like niceta mentioned they they haven't been you know redone in a long time um but there are priorities in the district necessarily you know and we have to look at those and see um you know what needs to be done first um last summer we did boilers um so there's a lot of that go for that so I mean we're aware we got the estimate um we have to balance that with our budget with our capital reserve um right now we have $475,000 in our capital reserve if we ree Mark um $250,000 um for locker rooms at the high school should we have an emergency should we need an emergency repair we might have the money for that so it's not like we don't want to do the project just a matter of fitting into our budget nich are you saying the bathrooms are unusable um so they're not unusable but I think an update is much needed because like I said the sinks they kind of don't have any water in them I mean they do but not a good amount if that makes sense certainly we could look into it I can get an estimate to just do the things okay thank you just so you know those badrooms have been like that since my son played basketball and he's 40 years old so they definitely need an upgrade no about yeah I mean you know there's no question the high school I think when we look at our facility needs upgrade that's why you know we've taken you know the steps to put in projects we did we did the high school gym uh two years ago did the high school gym two years ago knowing that that wing of the building needed repair before we did the high school gym we did the high school roof on top of the gym right so $250 $60,000 for the for the gym roof $600,000 for the gym then we did the high school field that was needed repair at 1.2 million so you know we definitely recognize that High School needs rep and updating um again that's why last summer we did the first floor in the paint so um you know we are trying to put resources towards the high school as much as we can with obviously trying to repair other things throughout the district so um it it sort of a given a take last year unfortunately um like Mr kasano said you know there's been things that haven't been touch in the district in a while the boilers we had to do boilers into the buildings those were roughly $200,000 each so um sometimes some um there's some big ticket items that you don't see daily like Brews and boilers but when we look at what has to get done first um we need to look at those areas first so we're always looking to make improvements we're always looking to obviously make the fields the facilities the best we can for our students and just managing all all of them can I make a suggestion for the next Bo meeting we have some type of proposal to just fix the six like you said would help 100% so hopefully by next board meeting we'll have an answer or proposal of how much it's going to cost us and it's feasable I I think we should follow on the and um I'm aware that these changes won't happen overnight it takes a lot of work but I think these issues should be acknowledged and brought up thank you all right the state monitor's report please be advised that our state monitor Mr Wayne demov is observing tonight's meeting via live stream he ask me to read the following statement into record on his behalf State monitor report I reviewed the financial reports for the months ending December 2023 and January 2024 and support tonight's resolutions that certify that there were sufficient funds available based on the December and January financials to meet the district's Financial Obligations for the remainder of the 2220 uh I'm sorry 2023 and 2024 school year as we reviewed the January 24 uh financials all indications are that the district's financial position should remain positive for the remainder of this school year we are awaiting a draft report of the June 30th 2024 Financial projection from our Auditors which will verify our current position I've also reviewed and discussed the other resolutions on tonight's agenda with Mr torso and support his recommendations to the board that they approve the resolutions on tonight's agenda that concludes my report for this evening presid I just want to say that some of you may not know but our girls basketball team and our boys basketball team made it to the states in semi-finals I think they did an outstanding job hasn't been accomplished in a long time and I look forward for them for the future will have a State title High School bask football moving forward I'm involved with all it and I think we're going to make it happen by next year not Year all right superintendent thank you Mr pass welcome everyone um I know we have students here um to be recognized tonight but before we do I just have a couple of brief announcements I promise I won't be too long so you were talking about our facilities um I think many of you were aware we had a fire in the basement of Washington school earlier on in the beginning of the school year and so we are getting to the point now where I can confid L say we're going to start to bring back students um I had a meeting there yesterday morning and the construction really is moving along um So the plan tentatively right now is to um hopefully have an open house next week I'm waiting to see how the work continued through the end of this week into the weekend if all looks well I'm going to be sending out an email on Monday um inviting just the kindergarten and one of the prek classes to an open house on Thursday night the 7th um and ultimately return those grades only on Monday the 11th and the reason for that is because Washington School unfortunately only has two bathrooms in the whole building and they happen to be in the basement and so um if I bring back the entire building the basement level is not done yet and so it would not make sense to do that but I do want to return students as quickly as possible um the students that are at Mount Carmel Church um are the only students that are not in one of our current facilities and those classrooms are a little bit smaller um so we want to return students back into our facilities as quickly as possible and so um it just makes sense to bring back the kindergarten on that first level because the kindergarten and that one prek room they all have bathrooms in their classrooms and so um those students can come back on the first floor while the few little odds and ends are tided up in the basement so that ultimately then we can bring back the rest of the building so it is my I hope that if we bring back the kindergarten and the prek on the 11th that either the following Monday um I think it's the 18th or the 25th we could bring back the rest of the building worst case scenario the rest of the building will return after the um April break so um I know it's been a long haul um and I apologize for that I've been pushing the contractors really um as much as I can but um if anyone's ever done work in their house and you know a contractor says they're going to be there on a Monday and then you know it's Wednesday there so our contractor has been very good but it's really managing the subs we've had uh new ceilings put in we had to have the boiler repaired all new electric the entire building um it was unfortunate that we had a fire in that building um but I think on the tail end of it um we ended up getting um literally new electric in that entire building that building will now be the only building in our district that's entirely LED um lighting um which we're going to have a 10 year warrant guantee on the lighting in that building uh the entire boiler was updated and repaired um new flooring throughout many areas of the building and the entire building was painted as well um so again I was there yesterday and I'm happy with the progress and I'm I'm hopeful that everything goes according to plan we'll have that first floor back um on the 11th so um thank you for your patience um secondly I'd like to highlight um something that's getting appr tonight um Miss vuno is here tonight our high school principal to um honor some students but um her and I have been working on a project to partner with uh Felicia University but I'm really excited um to say that the board has agreed to pass that resolution tonight we've been talking um to Ed curriculum and we talk tonight as a full board and I think this partnership with Felician is really going to put our district on a progressive move forward and it's going to expand our programing at the high school um that we could never do without such a partnership um right now we have um high school students that take du enrollment courses um at colleges and we're going to be shifting that to Felicia University so we currently have teachers at the high school who teach courses that have been approved by a college so we can have um one of our high school teachers teach a course but they can get college credit for that course so that's one of the things that we're shifting over to Felicia University um but that's something that that we currently do already um the next phase is what I'm really excited about what this Mo I really been working on and so um the next phas of the project with Felician is to allow our high school seniors to take elective courses on the campus at Felician University so next year for the first time we're going to have high school seniors that going have an opportunity to take college courses at Felicia University during our school day um that will come at no cost to them and so um we're going to start slow with with three electives for the fall and we're building out what courses we're going to be taking in the spring um but I know for the fall we have a criminal Jus of elective a psychology elective and a business elective um which is marketing and so um it's really an exciting opportunity um it's it's it's really a beautiful campus that is so close to Winter's High School um it really be crazy not to utilize and partner with them um I know when I I've been meeting with Felician routinely over the last couple of weeks when I leave my office at 420 Fern to get to pH University there was one time where it literally took me 6 minutes to leave the board office and get the ficia and get into one of their buildings so it is really so close to L Hurst um and the campus is gorgeous and so um Felician has also offered um even though it's High School seniors and some of them do have vehicles um we understand that Transportation can be an issue for for some and so Felician has also offered to um pick our students up in their shuttle rotation since we're so close to that and so um again initially we're going to be offering three electives in the fall we're going to be offering more electives in the spring but aside from that we're looking to expand our program even more with Felician um I understand um you know that the high school um you know does have some limited resources and we haven't had the ability to build um some stem labs and and Robotics labs and I know the Health Sciences has been a big field um that our district has wanted to to to move toward and so I think and I were just brainstorming and looking ahead um not having millions of dollars to add on all these different um programs to our high school why not partner with a local College where he has these programs and so we're what we're going to be looking to do is create path for students so um you know should you want to go down a business path through Felician we're going to have students taking business electives should we have students interested in um Robotics and stem there's going to be stem courses that we be partner with Felicia whether our students take classes on the fici campus or whether their professors come here to teach our students um Health Sciences I think um one of the biggest programs I think that Felicia Prides himself on is their nursing program so over the next year we're going to be working with them to also develop a p pathway for nursing the students interested in in a Nursing degree we're going to have them taking courses as early as junior year um on the same track that a college freshman would take they could start as early as a junior in high school so what that would that would mean is a five or sixe nursing program that you would have to start as a freshman in college you could start as a junior in high school and then enter College there and maybe only have two years left to finish your degree two years paid for by us in the district and maybe only two or three remaining for you at the University so not only is it going to FasTrack students it's also going to be un less of a financial burden for families um we also recognize that um students may not necessarily be College Bound but they would want real world life experience or certification so another program that Felician offers is an X-ray tech program which is an 18-month program so if you're not necessarily College Bound but you want to find yourself getting into the workforce as soon as possible you can take and start your 18mon X-ray tech certification here at the high school maybe get a your whole entire first year done as a senior only have a few months to then take at Fan so there's a lot of different opportunities that we're exploring was here tonight I want to thank her for our partnership and I want to thank fich University for their willingness to partner with us because I really think it's going to move our district in an extremely positive direction and give our students more opportunities at our high school so um thank you to felici and thank you for the board for supporting it um I think it's going to be a tremendous um experience for our students so thank you um that concludes my report um at this time i' would like to call Miss woa to um introduce U Miss Pastor who is our late house advisor so thank you thank you Mr Juro um for having us here tonight um I just do want to mention um if we do have any Juniors here tonight um you are all going to hear about the program in your uh scheduling assemblies tomorrow um so it really is like the um potion program really is exciting and we are calling it l lcab which is Linhurst College acceleration program um so if you have any questions and counselors we'll be addressing it tomorrow um but without further Ado I am very happy to uh be here thank you for and to introduce Miss Tanya Pastor who is our lighthous advisor um she has a wonderful staff who most of them are here and she's here to uh share some of the wonderful accolades and some of the awards that the lighthouse staff has won last school year cor um hi my name is Tanya Pastor I advise three sections of the journalism elective at LS high school it's my 16th year advising the program and I'm really excited to announce that for a seventh consecutive year um the joural ISM program the lighthouse newspaper has won the distinguished journalism award for New Jersey from the Garden State Scholastic press Association the students earned this award for work done in the monthly student newspaper that's printed as well as the work that is put online almost every single day um 28 students were recognized for their specific contributions uh last year we had about 55 students on staff as I said 28 of them won awards so it's really an incredible number so the awards that I'm going to hand out today actually represent work done by the staff last year so we actually even have some LHS graduates who have returned to accept their certificates tonight we also have some parents who are here on behalf of their children accepting the awards since I know a lot of the students are now freshmen in college um in places as distant as Pennsylvania um and even further than that so without further do I'm going to be sharing uh the certificates I'm going to invite our current editor and chief Camille Eckles up to help me [Applause] out all right and when you receive your certificate if you can just stay up here so we'll get a group shot at the end um you know journalists always want to take photographs all right so our first award goes to Nikki and Tesco the next award goes to Emma [Applause] Bannon the next award goes to Shirley bero Elise Cardona one of our [Applause] graduates Vela Castillo John saidas Brook [Applause] Dandrea tala [Applause] D am Mar Diaz Sophia Duran Angela Ellis another graduate Natalia [Applause] Hernandez Michelle go and nicolina aono Franchesco [Applause] inferna Alexandro Loreno Kyla Marina Jude melur yir Pera eston Ramirez Adriana Rodriguez a former editor and chief an LHS graduate Tara tiu and Dana Trier and we have a very special award as well um every October the lighthouse staff attends a conference at Ruckers University and that conference sponsors a write off contest every year they call it an on thepot writing contest um I selected one student from LHS to participate and that was editor and chief Camille and Camille placed first in the entire state for a timed writing competition she had an hour to compose an article after seeing a 1-hour uh discussion um so she received actually both a plaque as well as a $100 check uh from the Record newspaper for her wonderful work all right we're ready for the photo out St e [Applause] congratulations to our students um and and our families and thank you to um Miss Pastor she puts a great deal of time and effort um into being the lighthouse mendance paper that does come out each month and um it's been consistently winning Awards so congratulations to our students and their families thank you so much for coming um at this time we're going to continue on with the meeting our families are certainly welcome to continue and stay for the meeting um but if you didn't want to exit now would be the time to do so hello hello you two take care how are have a good night heard on agenda items Chris I think you might put the right want agenda or not agenda agenda or not agenda so um what what you're not agenda okay so so you're still we're just going to move you to non agenda because the first part to speak is if it's on physically on the agenda if not it'll want or not agenda so we'll just sh to not agend okay any discussion on any of the board agenda [Music] items [Music] sure what we'll do is when we do the parent agreement we'll explain how the credits could potentially work or not work right we'll put a statement something like um We Believe or you know it is hoped that we'll be submitting students TR grips to colleges um and it'll be up to the college discretion see how many of those credits will transfer resolution 10 is just to approve clean as a vendor we're not approving the amount de because there there is a portion of the bill that is being discussed with insurance [Music] that's yeah so this is this is just to approve vendor to finance report pursuing to the recommendation of the superintendent of schools the committee on finance recommend the following resolutions be moved forward for roll call vote I make a motion to move forward Finance resolutions 1 through 19 to be adoped call Mr V Mr androp for Miss pasamano Mr pasamano Mr P I'm going to abstain on this Mr petronio for Dr scardina for Miss Stella for Mr valano for motion carries I I have an curriculum but I'd like to dos and I also have a finance one of the superintendent of schools the committee on education and curriculum recommends the following resolutions be move forward roll call vote I make a motion to move forward education and curriculum resolutions 1 through6 to aded Mr V Mr angop for M Pas for Mr P Mr far I'm going tostain Mr Pia four Dr scardina four M four and Mr Al four motion Car policies rules and regulations pursuant to the recommendation of the superintendent of schools the committee of policies and rules and regulation recommends the following resolutions be moved forward for a roll call vote I make a motion to move forward policy rules and regulations resolutions 1 through three to be adopted I have a second roll call Mr V Mr andropoulos four miss pasam Mr pan Mr pained Mr patr Dr scardina saf security okay okay pursuant to the recommendation of the superintendent of schools the committee on safety security and health recommends the following resolutions be moved forward for a roll call vote be it resolved that the lonard Board of Education conducted the following live bus school bus plus emergency evacuation drills according to njac 6A col 27112 make a motion to move forward this resolution Mr M Pas Mr P Mr abtained Mr P Dr Scardino Miss and Mr Val motion Carri atics and Student Activities to theend of super school ofs students activities roll call Mr for Mr and for Miss four Mr P Mr pain Mr petronia Dr Scardino Miss Stella and Mr valo Carri pursuant to the recommendation of the superintendent of schools the committee on Personnel recommends the following resolution to meet forward for a roll call vote I motion uh to move forward personel resolutions a through M to be adopted roll call Mr vat for Mr andropoulos for Miss Paso for Mr Paso for Mr par I'm going to abstain on this one just like obained on the other ones before because I still feel I do didn't have enough time to review all this agendas over and over again less than 24 hours is not enough time to suffice for me I need more time to go over the agenda before I decide to vote on things Mr petronio Dr miss four for new business I have two resolutions that I like to put Bo the first one falls under education and curriculum be resolved upon the recommendation of the superintendent the Board of Education approves the final ineligibility designation for the students listed below who have been determined to not reside in Linhurst and are there therefore not eligible for a free education from The District student ID numbers 196 973 and 19749 I have ation motion motion was Stella and who is the second I'm sorry thank you call mrat for Mr androp for Miss pasamano for Mr pasano for Mr P four Mr patronia four Dr Scardino for Miss Stella for and Mr valan for motion carries and for the second resolution uh under the category of Finance be it resolved the lur Board of Education the board of points sorry j some lell and Milan and kuso PC as general counsel labor Council and construction Council affected February 15th through June 30th of 2024 get a motion second motion Mella second R call Mr vat Mr andropoulos four Miss Pano four Mr pasamano Mr pained Mr petronio Dr Scardino for Miss Stella and Mr Val motion carries there is any to do business the board may discuss now immediately prior to the meeting I spoke with Mr Heyman about getting a more uh accurate working agenda um I think that would help uh tremendously would you care to speak on that a little bit we discussed earlier sure we made the agenda available via uh Google Docs uh ining uh which we then proceeded throughout the week uh one week prior to the uh the meeting which we then proceeded to um finalize throughout the week uh unfortunately as business is conducted we have to update the agenda as we go along we there's certain items on the agenda that we cannot provide within uh a week ahead of the board of the board meeting so we have to provide as we move forward uh some of those items uh similar to like the bills list for instance U cannot be finalized one week otherwise we would have to shut down the business activities uh so that the board would be uh able to approve that so uh we felt that that would be sufficient um and that's how we proceeded with the agenda the Google isn't that 80 85 9% of the agenda one week prior yes it's about 80 to 85% of the agenda of the final item yeah I mean I can share the Google Docs early it's just throughout the month obviously we're updating it if you wanted two weeks before I could do that but two weeks before it's going to be 60% you know then a week before going to be 80 a week a week is good there's any major changes um if we not receive them 24 hours good just a I just suggest that don't look at it on your phone I good want a computer to perfectly WR so a week before would be and then and then like what I always do is a work session like tonight if something comes up I never want something to appear on agenda that the board member is not aware of so um if there's a last minute change the last day or so I keep a list of that and then during work session that's something that we agreed that then I would just review during work session so there was one or two items that then appeared on L and so then we're in work session I just point those Point those out the agenda officially because as a agend come to these Mee frequently having hours to go through it or less because that agenda again until after [Music] iodent I mean I can't even imagine on the board but even as so I mean this this is part of a bigger conversation that I had with the board which is why we wanted to shift the meeting to Thursday is because with working days that would allow us to get the agendo out that was there was a back and forth about that and ultimately we shipped it back to a Tuesday which is problematic with the work week so we we we're going to do our best to to get the agenda out as quickly as I can but that's why initially we had recommended that we have board meetings on Thursday nights which is what we started to do um but you know so yeah you know we definitely try to get that agenda posted sooner um so that you have an opportunity to read any other new business agenda items Chris I think for this week just to clarify too we were closed last week so I think um you know that added to it where I recognize this is a Thursday night but moving forward we just asked for that little extra time last week being closed not having staff in I think added this month to it being a little bit delayed good evening um we spoke we spoke last month about policy 57 56 I think were you um did you guys like sit down and talk about what it's about St being the policy chairperson I've been watching and waiting and watching the court cases that are going through and until those are done we will see then what we will do with that because I'm not spending legal fees when they're doing where the three people were uh CU they changed the policy right where they had a problem with right our policy is intact the way it is from Strauss and Essay because we're not going to touch it I've discussed this with the board and we're not going to do anything until we see how those cases turn out okay um okay but I mean right now so as of right now you're saying that um you know the locker rooms are AV they're they're all it's all spelled out in the policy that's what they will the school district is following and so they're following okay now but there are plenty of cities that have done it and haven't faced liation no but we're not going to touch the wording in the policy till we see how those court cases turn out with the attorney general and the districts I'm not wasting taxpayers dollars to see what's going to happen when there's already cases on the books we just have to wait and see right no I'm not asking for an amendment I'm asking for just de which is what the other cities are doing I understand it I'm not touching it because this is what protects everybody the board and the students I'm waiting for the court because they touch policies you don't know if all these districts that are repealing it are going against the laws that were put in place so there's there's like a lot of different legalities here I understand other cities I from from what at least from what I understand the cities that were Su were the ones that tried to make amendments or changes correct which they didn't have policy why what do you feel that you would want to do with this policy to repeal it so that way as far as you know bathrooms girls are protected in their in their spaces where because under but if you look at the policy you see there's separate bathrooms for those CH those children and everything else can made right sometimes well we haven't had any kind of problems come up and if a problem comes up then we'll address it I mean that's what that's what I'm here for all right so then so what you're saying is as soon as some mve to see where is a movement right then then I can come back and say all right this is where this is where it's landed but it's kind of ambiguous because you know what I mean like if they just change it back to you know full 576 there could never be any resolution on this it could just be like policies change all the time no it's not going to change at least correct you should bring it to the governor of New Jersey right but I don't in Tren live I I'm only coming like I'm not going to all these other places just don't feel like it's a to do that but I live here you know and then it happens know we have to see how it plays out CL spe