I would like to start tonight's Bo ofed meeting um we're doing things a little different because Mr Lorenson is not here so I'm going to be doing the roll call and then Mrs wiler is taking notes on them so if you're wondering why we're doing things that's okay Mr sha here miss wingler here miss georgiano here miss Weinstein here Mr PA here miss pece Mr ker here I'm here adequate notice was published on Tuesday January 10th 2023 in the Asbury Park Press the Manchester times was advised to specify the time and place of the meeting and a statement to this effect shall be entered into the minutes of this meeting whereas Section 8 of the open public meetings act njsa 1042 permits the exclusion of public from a meeting in certain circumstances and whereas this public body is of the opinion that such circumstances presently exist now therefore be it resolved by the Manchester Township Board of Education as follows the public shall be excluded from discussion of here and after specified subject matters the general nature of the subject matters to be discussed is legal personnel and negotiations it is anticipated that the matters will be made public within 60 days it is anticipated that the matter will be or it will be made for At Any foreseeable time in the future this resolution shall become effective immediately uh we will go into close session can I get a motion motion second roll call Mr Sanic M wingler yes M geano yes M wiste yes Mr PA yes Mr ker yes Mrs M okay we should be back in about half an hour I'd like to reconvene tonight of Ed meeting um going we're going to do a roll call Mr Sanic here miss wingler here miss georgo here miss Weinstein here Mr PA here Mr kellerer here and our Gail Mountain here please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for all thank you for coming out tonight um for those of you who have just joined us Mr Lorenson is not here so we're running things a little differently Miss wingler is taking notes and I am going to be doing the roll calls um it's nice to see so many updates and holiday fund going on throughout the district like to thank you Miss Pedroza for linking up to our calendars it definitely makes things easier for us I would i' would like to thank the PTA for creating magical moments for the students with their holiday shops I got to help the little one shop at mte their excitement and energy was very contagious if you're not part of the PTA please consider joining as they do do a lot for our children in Manchester School District the generosity of this town and district is amazing I got to be part of the Kevin kids Kevin's kids rapping event and the amount of gifts is astounding the amount of involvement in this is also very refreshing I'd like to thank Mr George um I know you're a big part of that so thank you for all you do for Kevin's kids congratulations to all of the teachers of the years and the esps we can't wait to recognize you at our May meeting I'm so glad that your fellow peers are recognizing you all for your hard work and your dedication to our district and our students Laura and I attended a hybrid Ocean County Schools board meeting it focused on budgeting and financing Ing and we both want to take this opportunity to thank Craig for all that he does for our budgeting needs and um doing an outstanding job um our next board meeting will be on January 4th it's our reorganization meeting it is a Thursday night at 6: pm here at Manchester Township Middle School our policy committee met on 11:30 to review revise and in one case omit a policy it was a policy that's no longer um necessary we follow the guidance of Strauss Esme we will be meeting again in January the team consists of board members superintendent uh Mr George and Miss th I got to attend the first Manchester Township Middle School home game it was nice seeing the kids play basketball and the cheerleaders do their thing in support um I would like to thank Tim PA for suggesting a board of ed liaison for the Town Council Tim will be for sorry can't talk will be reporting monthly on those happenings in the past I was the liaison for the CPAC there was some miscommunications about whether or not we could have the aons and Miss Pedroza looked into it with our lawyer so we are excited that Laura wingler will now be our board um Board of Ed liaison with the CPAC and will be reporting I'd also like to thank Debbie who's not here tonight and Gina for their service to the Manchester Board of Education and we wish you the best as you continue and I hope everybody has an amazing holiday season Mrs Pedroza do you have a report I do so good evening everyone and welcome the holiday season is certainly upon us and we have had many festive events along with some great news that I'd like to share with you so on December 1st our town was considered a town of Excellence we were recognized by the dark Coalition and was presented with a beautiful plaque that will be hung in our mayor's office it was given to the high school along with Sarah TFA myself and Jen eard the reason for this is because we have been Pioneers in safety in terms of what we've done in our high school and throughout our district you've probably heard of some of the programs such as responsive classroom restorative practices and challenge day so that is quite an honor for for our town and I just would like to commend all of you for your diligence and certainly the focus on making sure that we're keeping safety Paramount within our schools um on Saturday December 2nd at the high school at mths we had our NJ Roc who hosted its annual Pearl Harbor Memorial Day drill so we earned third place in ns1 for the color guard fourth place in Varsity Color Guard but what I found to be most exciting about this event is that it was hosted with 14 Schools and over 600 cadetes so congratulations to the high school and Hawk Pride definitely there at the Hawks Nest next I'd like to talk about our family stem night um Mrs simister works so closely to make sure that there is grant funding for this on Thursday December 7th there was a host of a stem family night at the middle school it was very much a ended the focus was clean renewable energy education with a Hands-On demonstration of solar and wind Technologies so thank you to you for your efforts and thank you to the middle school for supporting this there has been a lot going on in terms of holidays Regional day hosted their Holiday Express if you've never been to that I certainly recommend it it was on December 5th we also had a lot of winter concerts I believe we have the elementary band concert still coming before us um is that on Tuesday night Tuesday Tuesday evening so you're welcome to join um I would like to thank the entire Community once again Kevin's kids everyone came out lots of volunteers um we had purchasing of gifts on Saturday and then of course wrapping here um uh at the Ridgeway school on Sunday Mr George I know that you are a very humble person but you do so much to make sure that that comes together and so thank you to you thank you to Mrs Moore thank you to Mrs BRZ thank you to the community but also I'd just like to give a shout out to Mr burer um he is definitely behind the scenes doing a lot and him and his wife Peggy are just instrumental in making sure that there's magical Christmas for our children here in Manchester um as if the weekend wasn't exciting and jam-packed enough we also had a vendor fair that was hosted at our high school if you went to it it was amazing there were lots of vendors um thank you to S thank you to Heather Staples and and um the sgaa and National Honor Society it was um definitely a little tricky with the weather but we had lots of vendors and a lot of great festivities there um I'd also like to ask you to please mark your calendar we're going to have the Gospel Choir this will be the 55th Annual Gospel Choir tribute to Dr Martin Luther King Jr it will be Friday January 12th and it will be at 6:30 at the high school if you've never been to it they are remarkable it's amazing their voices were actually a part of the Christmas In the Pines this past weekend also so um please mark that on your calendars and also as um Mrs Mount said our reorganization meeting will be on January 4th it will be here at the middle school and it will be at six o'clock I also would just like to say on behalf of the board and the central office staff I'd like to take this opportunity to wish you all a wonderful holiday it's my privilege to express how grateful we are um your unwavering dedication here I'm looking forward to working to with all of you into the New Year and I wish you all a very happy break and a wonderful holiday and the best in the new year um also what I would like to say is we also have two items on our agenda uh Paula nowakowski is our regional day our teacher she has 28 years of service we'd like to thank her for all years and recognize her so um if you know Paula she's truly talented she's a remarkable lady her child went to our schools Mr George and I actually taught her so we wish her the best in her retirement and then also we'd like to thank Mrs Gina georgano this is her last board meeting with us so we thank you Gina for your service we appreciate you and we wish you all the [Applause] best we're going to start with our Board of Ed uh presentations uh first we'd like to invite Mr Robert provos from pfk o Conor Davies to the microphone to go over our audit thank you and thank you for having me tonight superintendent board members just a couple quick remarks on the deadline you know I think over the past 5 years 5 years plus even the sen Jersey had some delays and in a way to keep waiting on information waiting on information I think last year we were here in March April this year we got the information a little bit earlier and they quickly diverted back to the statutory deadline which is December 5th that just made it very very hard uh not just on the accounting firms but school districts as a whole we to quickly just you know scramble resources Etc really to get this done timely excuse me as a matter of fact as of December 5th only 187 out of I think 690 school districts actually file timely so I'm happy to report that Manchester did V Ely and I bringed it up for a reason there's no way that would to happen without Craig lenson and his and his financial team uh just quickly getting us everything we needed you know the audit is generally a good two-month process in general put report together so you know we're very happy that we actually got together and and filed by the deadline and there's still you know some um legislation going around that next year they actually may make it February 5th like permanently and I think they're going to decide that on January 16th of 24 right now that's in uh on the governor's desk and legislation so I guess uh we'll see what happens next year and I'm happy to report too that the Manchester School District once again got the certificate of excellence and financial reporting I want to say that's the the 28 consecutive year which is really really impressive and you don't get that award without you know really putting to work and effort in and you also don't get that without getting you know the best opinion which I'm happy to report once again Manchester got an unmodified opinion both on the financial statements and on single loed and now too with all the the co grants all these different grants are coming out you know we really do a really deep dive on on the grant process so I mean I think that's really really a good Testament to Craig again and his team that we filed with not only un modified opinions but we once again have no reportable findings so I think that's uh you guys really really do a nice job over there um just quickly on some of the financial statements just brief because I certainly know you have a more exciting topic behind me people want to get back to Auto process Page by Page certainly uh but just quickly quickly I'm just going to highlight some numbers uh you know your general fund fund balance uh remarkably I think you know was was almost the same as last year and I mean you had Rising health benefit costs I think increased another 10.5% um transportation costs are up approximately 11% so your front balance last year was 6 milon 806 881 and you remained at a steady 6,741 251 so I me no only declining 65,000 from prior year I think that that's a pretty healthy number this year so again that's you know it's good control over cost and over a couple years too you guys had uh not not just Manchester but school districts as a whole you know a lot of Co grants the FEMA grants coming in so this year I think was the first year you know that those grants are starting to kind of DnD down a little bit and uh you know so have some cost saving measures in place which you guys obviously do again you guys really really do a nice job with that the Enterprise funds you know we're doing pretty well Food Service increased 277,000 and again I think that's the last year you guys are going to get some of the co grants in that you got about $250,000 in Co grants and that pretty much made up you know the the increase in the Food Service fund and the RDS program I mean really really doing well I want to say back five six years ago something like that uh you know there's a little bit of struggle with enrollment Etc but I mean now that the program increased $1.2 million so you know I think the RDS program is is is really really really doing well um that's basically I really had I just wanted to kind of leave it to you guys for questions remarks or anything else want me to go over there any questions no I I I would just like to say on behalf of Craig your team is seamless we love working with you you're very efficient um you let us know ahead of time what documents and items are needed um really very very smooth uh I cannot speak highly enough about what you guys are doing but I also am very grateful to Mr Lorenson he um is very clear with us what our expectations are and he has done despite some very challenging times been able to really keep us in a very good place in Manchester so I'd like to thank him and I'd also like to thank thank you very much it was very kind start here Craig's under the weather today you couldn't be here but I can tell you this too you know I I have carel from my AIT team she's a Lead Supervisor on engagement this year every single team that comes out to Manchester they just love being on the audit some audits are a little difficult but Manchester just it's like family oriented over there in the have an office and uh it's just a nice feeling so well we appreciate that and we're glad to hear that um I know Carmel very well she's very easy to work with and um we appreciate Carmel the way you work with our team but you are right in Manchester here we're a family so thank you very much thank you [Applause] thank at this time we're going to begin recognizing some of our student achievements like to begin with recognizing for a silver award from the Girl Scouts if I could please have Josie O'Brien and baile O'Brien please come [Applause] up these students both volunteered at Harbor House they worked in the backyard cleaning it painting benches and planting a rock garden they also created a research book am I correct in saying that has a lot of various resources and things to help people in that area they are um obviously not satisfied with just the silver award because now they're moving on and they're working towards their Gold Award girls thank you so much we're so proud of you do you have any idea what you're going to do for your Gold Award no not yet okay well I'm sure it's going to be something very very remarkable so thank you for Community efforts and thank you for what you're doing here in Manchester but also for representing the Girl Scouts it's wonderful congratul we'll continue with our student recognitions from our schools I'd like to bring up mtes recognizing the fourth graders Amelia sorno Leela Lyla Nelson Zach Mark Ben Karina Papa and Kyla Jenkins so when I read this this just really made my heart feel so good these young ladies and um is he not here tonight Marco Okay so this young man and along with these young ladies they are the founding members of Operation Kindness Operation Kindness is a student Run Initiative dedicated to spreading kindness throughout the mtes community during our December 16 days of smile students are delivering kindness grams hosting door de contest and planning spirit days these young dragons are helping not only their classmates but they're also spreading kindness throughout the entire MCS community and don't they just make you want to smile look at them we'll continue with lighting Elementary School is James Cherry here I think I saw him come on [Applause] James is a third grade student being recognized for being a friend and mentored a student in our autism program James has invited the students to sit at his lunch table and uses his time to communicate with them through English is not the student's first language so we appreciate that James he goes the extra mile to include him in resex activities and helps him during special area classes he is a role mod for kindness and acceptance so congratulations and thank you our next student I just wanted to make sure Mrs is she here Bella okay Bella come on up so on Thanksgiving Day when most people were home their turkey dinners Bella volunteered at the annual Thanksgiving dinner held at St Stevens's Episcopal Church in whing she worked with her mother and the Boy Scout Troops in preparing meals for the attendees Bella worked very hard and helped out wherever she was needed her positivity and her upbeat personality was very much appreciated by everyone thank you so [Applause] much is our friend from Regional day here Ben let's give a nice round of applause to so Ben has made drives in class at the beginning of this year he comes right into each class with a smile on his face and ready to work he follows rules and procedes he's a positive role model to others he's extremely respectful kind and helpful to all we are so incredibly proud of you Ben and the improvements that you've made he's deserving of this award and he is the regional day student of the [Applause] month we'll continue with our middle school students I think we see I think I saw out there Kennedy ser and Kier Valera is there here why don't they come up I'm going to bring up their teacher as well Mrs simister these girls are role models and stem they can continually help other students with project stem program the program allows students to challenge themselves and achieve their goals with computer programming both girls continue to thrive in the program thank you ladies for being [Applause] part our middle school athletes of the month Ezekiel Carrera and Savannah Jackson please come on [Applause] up we're extremely proud to have eel and Savannah represent mtms as our student athletes for the month of December Ezekiel and Savannah are both great representations of what it means to be a student athlete they're both eighth grade leaders of our basketball team they work just as hard in the classroom as they do in the athletic Arena and they serve as an exam an excellent example to our younger students and our athletes thank you so much for living [Applause] excellent in our high school we have several young men and women that are being recomended and recognized Michael mango David Estrada Emily emit Stephanie earheart and Todd POC [Applause] okay congratulations to these to under the direction of Mrs White and Mrs Mala Branch students participated in the Ocean County College robotics competition on December 1st the group of students won first place for the overall category for presentation and received tuition scholarships at OCC to pursue College work at their college [Applause] congratulations and next we'd like to bring up our mths student athletes will Ashton and Abigail [Music] [Applause] Montgomery these two are extremely impressive Abigail Montgomery has been a big part of the of the girls bowling team and has had to start their start this year with a 40 record for over the first two weeks Abby has had the team High game in series for two of four matches five of her 12 games have been over 200 on her way to an average of 195 good for second highest average in the division her season Highs are 235 game and wait for it 636 series congratulations and Will was a driving force for cross country team success after losing four of our top seven Runners to graduation the team finished six in one Division and second place in sou Jersey group two will finished individually in the fifth in the fifth place in South Jersey group two and narly missed qualifying for the me of Champions that is impressive [Applause] both accomplish congratulations to both of you so if you listen tonight most of it was about kindness smiling being and excellent and so the quote for this evening is we what we can do to make the world a better place it is in our hands to make it difference so thank you to all those students and thank you to everybody in the community and their families who are supporting them [Applause] at this time I'm going to ask Mrs Swift to come up she's going to do a presentation about her one school one book which is very very um impressive and was definitely a community effort good evening everyone and thank you so much for this opportunity to share what wh Elementry did this year for one school one book commission it was held in October and November and we were very excited about what we were able to do this year so first so for those of you who probably have heard about the book and the movie Wonder it's about a fictional character and Auggie who has what's called Treacher Colin syndrome which is a fa deity and this book explores the journey that he has in school and how he relates to his peers the companion book that most people don't know about um is a book for primary age students and it's called we're all wonders and it focuses on individuality and how children can me and special so over the summer I was talking to uh one of our parents about how we could make sure that our students felt great about themselves how to encourage kindness in all of our students and we came up with what I thought was a spectacular idea so I spoke with Mrs IO about this and she told me about the organization that she is a part of and it's called Philly faces and what it is it's a volunteer nonprofit organization for children with congenital facial abnormality so they are committed to empowering the children adults families of those who have this and they are Rel they're relating all that they do to the idea of giving back to those families um and they do all this through the division of plastic and reconstructive surgery at the Children's Hospital in Philadelphia so how did we start this initiative we started on October 7th with each of the families receiving a book a reading schedule and they received all the activities that they could to align with the reading that they would do as a family also some of our teachers were able to infuse this into their instruction and read allows we had schoolwide trivia contests and the students won things like pizza parties and ice cream sunday Pary and then we culminated the first culmination of this activity was by inviting a special guest and the special guest came to our school and saw all of our students preschoolers on up to grade five and this was actually held on world kindness Day November 13th so the organization children's Pio facial uh Association was able to get us a speaker for the speaker Bureau that they have and to come out and talk about their personal experiences related to cranial facial abnormalities and this is the young lady and she was absolutely outstanding her name is Aaliyah Bucker and she's a senior at St Peters University and she was a dynamic speaker she talked to all of our students even little ones three and four year olds about being special being unique being kind and her theme was different is beautiful and the students were very receptive and they really enjoyed her presentation we didn't stop there we actually decided to take it one step further and despite some tricky things with regard to weather we were happy to report that we were able to have a schoolwide family event thank you to Manchester Township High School um to Mr listi and of course Mr Adams for helping facilitate this for us and we actually were able to do a drivein at our high school and it was super exciting we had treat trades for all of our families we had concessions and we were able to fund this completely with all of the organizations that you see there and thank you to Mrs Sonia pinho who was able to help us with the fundraising efforts for that and this is what it look like it was absolutely amazing and you could hear a pen drop when that movie came on so the students came they were with their families they were in their car and uh depending on where you are in life you may or may not remember drivings um but the students loved the drive-in that they had this experience was really wonderful for them and we of course had a tremendous number of Staff you can see one of the photos there our staff came out they volunteered their time and they came to be with our students and to assist us with helping make this program a success and so tonight we would like to acknowledge and thank uh two people who were very instrumental in seeing this happen uh the books that were purchased were over $3,000 and these books were purchased by Philly faces the organization uh that Mrs IAC is a part of and the president of Philly faces is here tonight to be acknowledged along with Mrs Lindsay IPO one of our great parents of uh Dan Dylan they're there right now there's one there a Christmas Princess um and we are acknowledging them and thanking them for the tremendous tremendous gift that you've given us of reading with our children Mr Steven ly president of Philly faces and Miss Lindsay iot thank you so [Applause] much Stephen would you like to come up and speak at [Music] [Applause] all I'm gonna try so hard not to cry um I'm part of Philly faces because my son Dylan was born with a CLE lip and a CLE palette I found out 20 I was pregnant with my twins so everything that I wanted to do was for this school to show caress kindness anything that has to do being fair to one another my little here um I actually met with Stephen from Philly faces while I was pregnant and um he introduced me to a bunch of people that help me with Dylan's procedures and everything so Billy faces is to help is to thank for all this um so I'm glad that we were able to donate all the books to this school well I just want to say thank you and we're going to continue to do kindness [Music] [Applause] things you thank you for um volunteering those books and for all that you've done with your philly faces and educating our schools it was a great idea so thank you our military Ambassador is not here so we are going to move on to miss popek the U student government representative from the high school good evening everyone my name is Jamie POA and I am the junior class president at Manchester Township High School the reason that I'm speaking here tonight is to provide the board with some important information about the activities and events that have occurred or being planned at the high school since the last meeting as of right now it's be so on Monday we had holiday movie Monday on Tuesday yesterday we had red screen and today we have dress as your grade Thursday tomorrow we have FL for sweater day and Friday is our peerally and we have to wear a class colors so as of right now with fundraisers the junior class is currently working on a blanket fundraiser and a possible Bubba food fundraiser um over the weekend the holiday craft fair was recently this past Saturday where vendors came to the school and sold their items which was a Hu huge success to both National Honor Society and student government uh freshman class is currently working on multiple fundraisers and the students will attend the New Jersey Association of student C winter conference in January thank you for allowing me to represent the Manchester Township High School government at the board meeting this evening I am honored to stay before you all and share this past and future ongoings involving the sgaa at the high school thank you again and have a great night at this time we would like to invite anybody from the public to come up and have a conversation or ask questions on agenda items only are there any other board member reports i i attended the vendor fair on on Sunday and having participated in putting together craft fair in our village I was incredibly impressed with the amount of vendors but also all the students that had participated and were face painting and picture taking and all kinds of activities it really made it a great afternoon and we enjoyed it thank [Applause] you okay um Mr Lorenson is obviously not here of course the night that the one night that is you know he's getting all these accolades for his great work um we're gonna have Mr Lorenson report on Old business and any correspondence next month so G to move on to the agenda section one a new business numbers one to three can I get a motion okay any discussion Mr cvan yes Miss wingler yes all same Miss georgiano yes Miss Weinstein yes Mr Foss yes Mr K her yes and I out say yes as well B and C annual comprehensive financial report and C is transportation can I get a motion motion second discussion Mr cvan yes Miss wingler yes M Georg yes Miss Weinstein yes Mr PA yes Mr kellerer yes and I miss scale Mount say yes as well section two administ numbers 1 to three can I get a motion motion discussion Mr cvan yes Miss wingler yes Miss georgiano yes Miss Weinstein yes Mr PA yes Mr kaher yes and I M also say yes Personnel listed on the agenda you have numbers 1 to 25 we are writing in um a number 26 and that's for a letter to be sent from our board attorney Mr Monahan to Mr suby can I get a motion motion discussion Mr Sanic yes Miss wingler yes Miss georgiano yes Miss Weinstein yes Mr Mr PA yes Mr ker yes and I Gail Mount say yes student personel numbers one to three can I get a motion discussion Mr sanah yes Miss wingler yes Miss georgiano yes Miss Weinstein yes Mr FL yes Mr kellerer yes and iail mount say yes good aot pressure special services number one can I get a motion second discussion Mr Sanic yes Miss wingler yes Miss georgiano yes Miss Weinstein yes Mr PA yes Mr K yes I out say yes section three letter A numbers one through five can I get a motion discussion Mr cvan yes Miss wingler yes Miss georgiano yes Miss Weinstein yes Mr Boss yes Mr kellerer yes and I Gil Mount say yes at this time we would inl like to invite anyone from the public for a comment at this point I'd like to make a motion to adjourn our meeting all in favor have a merry Christmas happy healthy safe New Year everybody see you