##VIDEO ID:6fnX54ZjX7U## welcome to the Board of Education meeting of the parcion Troy Hills Board of Education I'm going to call the meeting to order uh today uh August 22nd 2024 in compliance with chapter 231 Public Law 1975 entitled open public meetings act adequate notice of this meeting has been provided as specified in the act in the following manner a meeting notice was published in the newspaper and on the district website on January 17th 2024 in addition the notice of the meeting was posted at the municipal building in the schools and a copy of the notice was filed with the Township Clerk and transmitted to other newspapers on July 26 2024 those include the Daily Record The Star Ledger Pary Focus tap into parcion Pary patch in the district website this regular public board meeting is being video recorded as per bylaw 0168 and the recordings of these meetings will be available on our district website and our video on the Go YouTube channel we ask that you please refrain from using student or staff names in your statement professionalism is expected at all times may we have the roll call vote uh roll call pleas Mrs here Mr baros here Mrs kogan here Mrs mayor here Mr Rea here Mrs Chappelle here Dr Wright here Mrs Golder here Mr Chael here may we all please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance Al 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 okay we do not have any student reports today uh is there any correspondents to come before the board no there's not there's none thank you uh is there any unfinished business to come before the board all right then we are going to go into um committee reports and I'm uh actually going to uh start with a few notes that I've made and then we'll go into our uh regular standing committees uh as a board members know uh the board committee schedule uh for the second half of the year has been published uh it's on our calendars and Janie has sent out information regarding that um we've made some website changes um uh that came out the the communications committee meeting the uh FAQs on residential developments have been updated uh the superintendent regarding class size is published um in our business uh section of our website where we where we publish our annual budgets uh we now have the links to the um audit reports so uh residents can view our audit reports as a reminder the annual NJ SBA Workshop is October 21st to uh 24th I'd like to congratulate Alice and kogan for being voted in as the treasur of the Paran Education Foundation so congratulations for that um the board self- evaluation was completed we discussed um ways that we can improve board operations this evening in close session we have some um suggestions that we'll Implement over the next several months and I just uh want to talk a little bit about um a topic that's been out in the community which is the the mayor's audit of the school district um first let me let me say that this is unprecedented it's not authorized by any statute uh it's potentially illegal the mayor's actions led us to a very dark place where time and effort are unnecessarily expended on this audit instead of focusing on and talk about the excitement of the first day of school we are mired in the doldrums of this political malaise first I I have to apologize to the staff of the school district um these are hardworking people or Cent central office staff or Business Administration staff who are committed who are thorough and who really put their heart and soul into making this District run as well as it does so I and I know the board commends um their efforts and we want you to know that we don't share any of the same feelings uh that might be out there in the municipal government we think you do a fantastic job the audit reports uh confer that and um I just want to apologize you if you you or any of your staff are feeling you know poorly as a result of that our audit results as I mentioned are public um I just want to take a quick moment to take take a look at the last few years so this is from a truly independent auditor who works under the guidance of the state to uh compile the audit for the for the school district and they make comments on 10 different categories um administrative practices and procedures no findings financial planning accounting and Reporting no findings School purchasing programs no findings food Serv programs no findings student body activities no findings application for state school aid no findings Pupil Transportation no findings facilities and capital assets no findings miscellaneous no findings status of Prior year findings and recommendations there were no findings and that was from the auditor's report of 2023 I'm not going to read the same information for 2022 but it's the same and for 2021 and several years prior to this so you you don't have to believe me um we actually have a very short video clip of our auditor um from our January meeting reporting on the 2023 School audit that Mrs benos will play for us it's just a few minutes so I beg your Indulgence from the a results perspective results are good as they have been for for the last several years the opinion is unmodified which is opinion the most important part of a financial statement issue I also want to congratulate the district and the board for the certificate of excellence award it's the sixth consecutive year for this District receiving that again you're about one of 30 districts of the state that receives that on an annual basis AUD highlights very a very good on good financial position and you continue to keep reserves and put reserves aside through the budget or through a resolution to fund cap Reserve Bal Reserve Etc to allow you funds to utilize going forward I also as part of the audit we spend time looking at your internal controls and we also look at your federal state grants and I'm happy to report that we did not identify any material weaknesses significant deficiencies or any other items we identify that want be included in the orders match report so again overall very very good Financial results filed on time clean opinion and no finings okay thank you and the mayor has said numerous times that he is hiring an independent school auditor so let's talk about what an independ depent auditor is an independent auditor is a certified public accountant who examines the financial records and business transactions of an entity with which they are not affiliated an independent auditor typically is typically used to avoid conflicts of interest and to ensure Integrity in performing an audit in order to for an audit to comply with regulations it must be conducted by an auditor with an independent opinion and what is an independent opinion it's an Auditor's unbiased objective stance towards an organization which leads to an accurate credible report on an organization's security and compliance maintaining Independence allows the udit to gather necessary data without any outside influence on their opinion an audit firm hired by the township is by definition conflicted it is not Independent by the very nature of the township paying their fees uh and that was my report on this auditor um we can now go to some of our other committees Dr Wright Transportation if you would oh you have question you have questions mros well thank you Mr President uh just to follow up on that just real quick just in case anybody forgot this small book is the audit that every board member gets from the time I've been here nine plus years ago and this book here is what they call the management report Auditor's management report um our auditor is a independent school district auditor uh not somebody who is doing this as a hobby or um thought was a good idea um and the district and the taxpayers um and this is money well spent pay a lot of money to make sure that this is done correctly um so um and I want to also uh back Mr Mr President chafo is that um I've worked in Corporate Offices where I have been part of audits that never came out as good and clean as the school district's audits so our team um The District's team the hard work I mean I can I even describe the work that gets done to make sure that everything lines up and you know uh for what to be said that was said about these great people is a disgrace thank you uh thanks Ste any other comments on this topic no um Mr Ray just um one of the in the audit report there is a page indicating that our our staff has been has been awarded for a number of years I believe it's six years in a row with the financial Excellence award and also the the audit was completed on December 5th this this past year the last one and only 27% of the school districts in the state of New Jersey completed their audit by that by that date and we have a large school district so the fact that they did complete on time and an audit involves the Auditors went through probably hundreds of trans actions and and basically track them from beginning to end so there is a huge amount of work and it is an unqualified opinion there are four types of opinions there is unqualified qualified adverse and no opinion at all so we have the best kind always have had the best kind and I give a lot of credit to our St to Robin and to Dr Sutter and to our staff here at the board of education and they deserve all the praise in the world thank you Jack that that was a very important comment and you know for board members I don't want to call you out but we have a few CPAs on the board um would you mind just identifying yourself if you're a CPA okay so and you're both on the finance committee I am not you're not on the finance committee but you were the chair for a long time and Jack you're the chair currently right I'm not a CPA you're not a CPA right now but you're the chair no no no Jack's the chair so you know the the point is we have very qualified people um who have many years of Knowledge from a board of education member perspective who are in addition to our very qualified business uh office staff in addition to our certified public school auditor watching how the district is transaction trans transacting its um finances so um well I'm not going to make any more comments on that so we'll move on to Transportation so Wendy sure thank you um so we the transportation committee met on the 20th um uh president were myself uh Alison kogan Tim baros Robin Tesco and Tiffany piz hiltz uh and joury benos Reporting um this is a very busy time for transport it's probably one of the busiest times this week is the busiest time of the year um just for the public pipany uh has both its own bus fleet and we contract with an organization called sta to provide uh those Services we are unable to provide with our own Fleet um this year we are were're able to uh draw down the number of sta routes from 88 to 85 um inhouse there will be uh 44 a and p.m uh routes and 22 midday routes they will serve like pre and such um the Transportation Administration was able to arrange to uh provide transportation for the Orient patients themselves this year rather than Contracting out which is a cost saving measure um there is an updated guide parents guide to transportation that has been republished to the district website if any parents are interested in reviewing that um as well some specific issues that are emerged for uh they're kind of In Motion right now there's a great deal of construction over on in Lake hawaa North and South beverick um we were advised by uh Tiffany hilts that the north beverick construction should not be affecting our bus routs at all uh the are able to rout around any of the disruption um the south bwick is likely to present some delays however um uh Tiffany hiltz is working very closely with the town and with the construction leadership to ensure minimal disruption to the roots uh there's also uh the park paret par parue development will be sending students this year um thus far we know of uh eight Elementary and two secondary students um that will be uh transported and one stock location will service that development at this time and then the last issue uh is a change to transport policy typically when um a when field trips or special events are need transportation uh the transport Office charges what is largely a nominal fee to use those buses um the transport will be uh no longer offering that those trips for trips that are going to end after 6:00 p.m. um what they found there were a number of trips that were being taken with relatively small numbers of students um that were uh costing a great deal and were also being very very difficult to sta say like when um a club went to a Broadway show in the evening wasn't getting back until 10 11:00 at night and so the transport office will be covering and that continuing to offer that service for daytime trips and but not for evening trips Dr right that's for out of state trips out of state just for out of state out of state trips thank you Dr for out of state trips and that's all I I have a question do does this include any of our um our trips I guess for sports teams or is it no it's it's really it's focused on like these oneoff small um clubs club club type Club type trips not exclusively clubs but um where it was kind of a jaunt into the city for the evening is what they found like Dorney Park trip Broadway just a Broadway play kind of but the Dorney Park trip from middle school yeah that's a that's not included in this no okay no that's why no yeah those were um those those more consistent trips were not discussed I don't think they'll be they they'll be affected all right thank you any other questions for Dr R I was also in tenis on the on on the phone driving um and I will say uh I'm very confident that we're going to have a very good opening via the transport department they seem to be be well positioned for a successful you know opening few weeks which can sometimes be bumpy pardon the FED uh one bus schedules uh for high school will be out on Friday um Elementary may not be out until early next week uh thank you Michelle okay thank you uh so I have two committees to report on one is the uh human resource and Labor Relations uh so we met on August 20th uh president were myself Mrs golderer Mrs mayor and Mr Ricker um we spent a majority of the time talking about Staffing updates uh and U suffice it to say that uh Mr Ricker and his team has done an extraordinary job in making sure that we have adequate Staffing in place to make sure that we have a very strong start to the school year um I heard on the news last night I was watching a number of different districts around the state are suffering to find Stu teachers and other staff and Mr Ricker has been very proactive in his efforts to make sure we are identifying and hiring those staff um and he's very Adept at addressing any of the gaps that may be arising unexpectedly so uh kudos to Mr Ricker and his team um uh in addition to that uh we have uh he highlighted to us that we have filed the um the annual evaluation Information Systems report uh with the Department of Education in New Jersey uh we are on cycle this year for the quality single accountability Continuum or qac report um and just to be clear for everybody in the audience this is where we are required to submit information with regards to five different areas about our district and that includes instruction in progress fiscal governance operations and Personnel it's a very in-depth document I know it's very painful to go through some of us may have a little bit of Trauma from past experience with that um but uh it is definitely well wor worth it um we are well prepared to provide what's necessary to demonstrate what a strong District we are uh we did Cover waivers that we have in place to ensure that we again address any gaps that we may have um for just the sixth period classes uh substitute coverage is in place we're still using the services of ESS um but we have worked with them to make sure we have a better rate that's being applied um and the system that we're using has been very effective uh in the past couple years uh we spent time with our or we're going to be spending time uh with our new staff on August 26th and 27th uh to help make sure that they are informed as to what our district entails um that they are prepared to start the new year um the new school year on a strong foot and then finally uh we had the administrative Retreat uh held on the 20th and 21st this week where there was a lot of information covered I heard it was very well received um very collaborative um again we have a very strong administrat team um where we work together to make sure that we are um not only uh conveying information to them but Gathering their input and concerns so that we can make sure that they are addressed going forward that's my summary of the Personnel any questions for personnel okay my second one um so on Wednesday um August 14th uh the Educational Services Commission of Morris County met and I intended as a a board board member um it was a standard meeting there really wasn't too much um out of the norm covered uh they covered they talked about the transportation numbers for the year um pretty consistent with previous years so uh no concerns raised there um they talked about um the school changes that needed to be happening um uh because of the changing school size um with the lower enrollment obviously they need to uh move some Personnel around um the one thing that stood out was that they have they have introduced a new role assistant superintendent um and this is with the view that um uh doc Dr um valard you know needs to be PR prepared with you know somebody to take over for him so for continuity sake they're trying to look to bring somebody in uh this year so they can start to you know collaborate before he moves on question okay thank you any final questions no thank you sheo thank you uh I have two committee reports uh teaching and learning met on August 12 present were Dr morone Susie Golder Wendy Wright and Judy mayor and I want to take a moment to thank Dr Mor his administrative staff the teachers this and the auxiliary staff for working very hard this summer to look over and revise the curriculum and standards for this upcoming school year they took a tremendous amount of time uh during their summer to uh do this for us and just to go into the actual uh minutes the books for review that were checked out this uh this particular time was a document to see the summaries of new books for the mythology course and the fairy tales book clubs and copies of these will be coming for us to review uh we also discuss English 3 and English 3 enriched uh two of the books were secret life of Winnie Cox by Sharon moss and six of crows by Lee bardugo the textbooks that were discussed uh that are going to be added due to the contract for the previous text that were expiring which was a six-year contract for class sets with the digital copy and those textbooks will also be available here at the CEC for review biology for the AP course uh 2022 which is only in digital format and the physics for scientists and Engineers the 10th edition from 2019 that has class sets and digital format including a web assign uh in addition to that we discuss policy 2363 which is bring your own device policy and it's just the beginning of talking about about that and I'm sure the policy committee will also discuss this and they also talked about uh the parent student letter for potential change in the bring your own device policy and needing 100% buyin and how the TSS was bringing it up and um collaborating about it and that we need to expand uh conversations about this policy and future discussions and the curriculum revisions for review there were about 49 curriculum revisions that Dr morone and his staff were able to look through uh it is in this particular bulletin and the following curricula were either brand new courses or pre-existing courses that have been revised by teachers and reviewed by Administration and they were complete revisions where standards activities essential questions Etc have been reevaluated and updated I won't mention all 49 but there were a few that he did uh talk about aspects of Spanish culture was a special ed course English 3 enriched as a standard course English 3 stand uh just English 3 not enriched was a standard course that used to be called British lit uh he also o mentioned applied science in design thinking unified mid busting in science uh English 4 fantasy and fairy tale semester course English 4 mythology semester course a Lifetime Fitness 10 to 12 semester course intro to dig digital art and design 9 through 12 that was revamped with some overlap from previous years AP africanamerican studies which is a brand new course in just one day it's a one-day seminar with books and a field trip and French 2 or 2H which was two courses in one curriculum and 21st century skills which was offered in sixth grade for one semester we also discussed some authors like Fredrick Bachman and modern writers for the English 3 enriched and English 3 classes in addition to all those revisions they also look through the curriculum standard updates for review and these curricula were included because we have updated the state standards only they are not revisions rather the same curricular with the updated standards to keep us in compliance with qac and as a result there's no need to go through them with a the fine tooth comb those were about 86 standard updates that we had gone through so a tremendous amount of work and I just want to take the time to thank them again for doing all this thank you and after that we had the communications meeting Communications met on Monday August 19th present were Dr Suter Jack rehea Wendy Wright Andy Chao Miss benos and we were also able to have Brian satch join us so thank you Brian uh Brian gave us an update on podcast some thoughts on future podcasts scheduling Etc the podcasts are hosted on a free account such as iHeart Radio Apple Etc and it holds up to about 4 hours of audio which would need to be updated once that threshold is reached and eventually recycle them and refresh the RSS feed we did want to try again with the brookln podcast as well as 32nd episodes of Meet the staff the board meeting views are going up and Brian will be keeping us up to date on the number of views Dr morone and supervisors have been coming up um have upcoming podcast but the back to school content will be played first and we're hoping for a weekly or bi-weekly constant flow of updated podcasts to keep up with the algorithm and hoping to have about recording about three podcasts every two weeks and uh we're also keeping an updating a spreadsheet of topics and getting student involvement once school starts uh Brian also mentioned putting chapters into the video on the go with descriptions for our board meeting and podcast content to allow viewers to skip ahead if they would like uh most more positive things will also be mindful to post about ongoing issues like the ramifications of the class siiz policy waiver we're also using parpan patch and focus to share School news and happenings and Brian would also uh he also wanted to say that uh to be added as the admin for the Facebook page for the district so that podcast School news board meetings updates Etc can be updated in a timely manner and more people follow the V the video on the go page than the Facebook page and uh also requested to have permissions added so he could do simultaneous uploading hoping to use um Flyers ads animated uh features art programs to reach more audiences and we're also not using Instagram to the best of our ability so that needs to be utilized as well to capture the 25 to 40-year demographic uh there was some discussion about pilot Communications but not a whole lot because there were no particular updates except the press releases that have gone out in recent weeks uh we did review the district website and it was found that it was a little bit hard to find the video on the go on the district website you have to go to pthsd and then district and then video on go and only four items were displayed at a time on the district main page as District videos and if we embed the YouTube links there can be more videos displayed and we also need our our Web Master to be able to embed the YouTube videos and the media player and uh last but not least for earlier discussed podcast ideas suggestions and topics please refer to the May 13th 2024 communication minutes that were presented at the May 21st 2024 public board meeting thank you if you have any questions let me know any questions Oro Michelle is there a um a process to take suggested topics from the public for podcasts um I don't think we discussed that specifically but we could certainly um perhaps in the FAQ section or where do you think we could where do you think potentially um have have the public um give ideas for podcast topics we could do regular website on the regular website yeah I would be afraid that like I'm not an engineer I would want to do a podcast on engineering So within reason of course within reason put it out as a messenger we can s out one of the podcast and say you yeah I'm I'm sure students would have yeah I'm sure yep than thanks you uh Tim policy committee thank you Mr President policy met August 19th 2024 in attendance with myself Mr Rea Miss Chappelle uh Dr Sutter and Miss benos excuse me key discussion points are the uh we reviewed for first read policy 2363 puple use of privately owned uh technology it's a it was a revision and we also uh reviewed for first read policy 5410 promotions and retention and that is also a revision uh the policy committee reviewed uh policy 54-65 early graduation and policy 5337 service animals um and uh the committee had additional questions um and also I believe on the early graduation uh in general we were we were good with it but there was some confusing wording in it so I believe um Dr Mo was going to take it back and try to do some clarifications and on the service SLE policy um the committee had a few questions and I think it was going to insurance and our legal our Legal Group um any questions J hi uh thank you I don't have a question but I just had um a comment uh I just wanted to mention that on we get uh emails from njsba called daily clips and one of the ones that I noticed on the August 19th one they had mentioned um a couple of Articles uh about cell phone Banning articles and delays they mentioned um places like Montclair um they wanted to do a lockable pouch maybe uh that particular topic has been delayed about a few months now um there's also some articles on there to talk about how research shows that phones detract from academic performance and uh that there's data used to measure test scores learning challenges anxiety Etc that use uh that's caused by excessive phone usage and I think this is all brought about by the kids online safety and privacy act from the US Senate in July 2024 and there was also another article that I thought was interesting uh called seven things to know about sweeping social media and K through2 privacy regulations moving through Congress that was um published on August 15th I just want to bring that up thank you just as a a quick note um although the smartphone usage has been discussed and is currently there is a current um administrative process that takes place um this policy here was uh primarily directed at use of laptops um iPads or or or tablets um but I do believe that the further discussion be warranted uh coming up shortly on the the next phases of this yes Miss gold well one of the things that was discussed during teaching and learning was um the fact that a couple of teachers already you know they have a basket in the classroom and they ask the students to please put the um to put their cell phones there you know in the beginning of the class um but one of the things Dr said was that it I guess the staff wanted to get something more concrete more assistance as a a policy a districtwide policy so that they had you know because technically they have um they don't feel they have the authority to tell every student in their class well you have to put your phone here um because it's not a it's not a schoolwide policy so I know that they were looking for us to to do Implement something like that for that reason so that they that that so that the staff was covered um in if they decided to to continue to do that individually so without speaking for Dr Sutter uh I can tell you that in the in the committee that was a um that was a topic discussed and I believe it's fair to say that um it was decided that the best course of action was more of a walk before you run strategy um but I do believe that any organic policies or or processes that are happening currently within the schools um there is nothing that's stopping what's happening today currently but I don't believe we're at that policy Point yes I don't know if Dr Su you want to add into that this this policy was revised because we we cannot monitor home devices when they come to our schools we can monitor the devices that we distribute to students so this policy was amended for that reason so we can track and monitor what's coming on our websites on our on our internet so therefore the policy was revised we did not do anything with the cell phone policy Mrs mayor yeah um I was uh speaking to a number of High School teachers and that's that's a real problem with the cell phones I think there needs to be a policy across the board for the whole District because it it needs teeth because like you said A A teacher told me that she said to the kids put it in the basket and they're like yeah okay and they walked away there needs to be a very Stern strict policy and it needs to be all over and the kids need to be aware of it that they're not going to sit there with their phones in their hands I think teachers would appreciate that it it's not a problem so much at the middle school it is really a high school problem more than anything else yeah thank you for that I think as Tim alluded to um you know we want to take a walk before we run uh approach I think for devices like iPads and and um notebooks to say we're not allowing those because we can't monitor the the the content that's being um viewed on on them if it's appropriate or not I think to to go to cell phones is is is is a much more difficult thing um you know I often joke that all of our hands are like claws now because we're always clutching our phones so before we start running in that direction I think we have to get some Community input Community involvement really do a deep dive with our teachers and how this would work uh is it a basket that they're collected in is it a pouch that doesn't allow them to work like how would we um do that so I don't I don't see that happening uh right at the moment no Dr muray and I agreed before we do anything like that we'd have Community input we'd have teacher input we'd have U parent input we'd have administrative input um that's not something that we're going to make a decision on right now at this point yeah I agree that it has to be brought in I think the thing that is important for parents to understand when that conversation Begins for teachers to come and say this is how it impacts work in the classroom because I think when you let them know what's going on and how they're abusing that privilege of the phone teacher the parents might be more aware of how it really needs to be monitored a little bit better and I think teachers need to come forward and say this is how it's disturbing the learning going on in the class yeah thank you for that uh Jack we're also starting to see some evidence in other school districts and other states that uh you know that have implemented where basically they allowed cell phones in school or keep them in the lockers and they've had much better results you know the students are more they're they're they're just better emotionally they're just better off and the learning is better and and there's there wasn't really any downside to in in the results that we've seen in some of the other Tech other school districts Nationwide yeah so more more to comment that I know Dr Sutter and his uh staff will look into that I I know from a professional business perspective when we have meetings at work it's very frustrating to see people on their cell phones when there's a discussion ensuing because they're distracted you can't help but be distracted you cannot do those two things at once read something on your cell phone and be present at a meeting so more to come on that and um you know we we'll see where that goes uh Mrs kogan yes I have buildings and grounds the committee met tonight in attendance was myself Mr baros Mrs mayor president Choo Mrs Tesco Dr Suter and Joanie benos uh Mrs Tesco told us all about the summer projects and there were many the paving the district has completed all the pavement all the pavment all the paving with just a little to do with brookln and Central there was mulch going down at all schools that hadn't got mulch during the same year Lake parcion School was the painting is in progress and the new sign is almost complete the gym floors at the hills and Central are complete the replace the replacement District floors are almost finished at the high brookln Central Intervale and mount Taber the jrw air conditioning installation is ongoing brookln is getting a new serving line for lunchtime the equipment is on its way and the project should start Monday or Tuesday we also discussed the Littleton construction project the delay change order is on tonight's um meeting bulletin for approval the rooms at the school for the construction have all been painted the Cabinetry has been installed the bathrooms are complete the whiteboards are being mounted and the finishing work is ongoing and the floors won't be done until after all those other things are done so it is still ongoing but making progress thank you any questions for Alison on that no I really want to thank um Robin for overseeing that construction project um you know again we're we're adding additional classroom space without going to the taxpayer for additional funding or referendum for that space and it's um going to be very helpful as we see enrollment increases due to the residential construction that's that's happening in town um of course you're welcome let's see Jack okay all I have is um the pal board meeting on August 1st um uh so I'm the lia on for that uh just some of the bullet points from the meeting um there have been some structural challenges at the palal building including a burst pipe in the need to replace a structural beam Tom Bush nascus who was hired just a few months ago is uh kind of has been thrown into the deep end and but he's dealing with those challenges a draft of the shared services agreement is a is with parcion awaiting Town approval and there are still three open board positions if anyone knows someone that may be a suitable fit um they might want to contact the P about that uh there is also interest in a cricket league however the Pal doesn't have an available field that is suitable at present as looking for Alternatives and and that's about it thank you Jack I appreciate that questions for Jack on PL no Judy you were so prepared to jump in with that committee report I just wanted to skip over just throw you a curve ball I'm good here okay I um asked Mrs BOS to send out this report early because when you come to the table and see this length of a report you don't have time to read it so I hope that you all took advantage of that um I'm not uh there was a quite a bit big attendance to that meeting it was surprising that it was a summer meeting and it was very well attended um Mr deinard gave the sport spring sports update um at the H at the high and Miss Herman gave the ones at the hills and I'm not going to go over all the different you know scores and whatever um the boosters um the the high school needs booster precedence for the boys basketball and wrestling um coaches girls lacrosse head and assistant coach head track coach for the boys and assistant wrestling to assistant football um Hills needs a booster president for baseball and girls lacrosse coaches for baseball girls lacrosse and boys lacrosse so if anybody's interested in being a booster president it's available um the idea for Co-Op for the girls LaCross teams because we don't have enough for each um each team so the coaches asked if we would support making a co-op and we did and that's what they're going to be working on um one of the point points brought up by the boosters is that if we have to go to a co-op and have a big team the athlete athletes don't get as much playing time that's something that the coaches will definitely keep in mind and adjust accordingly um they wanted the ask the question was asked why do they think the team sports numbers are down and they think that in part it's due to club sports and the time that they entail which very well could be um the let's see the notes from the boosters were kind of you know when will the record banners be updated they will be they're working on that Mrs Herman said they're in the work in progress um the ones in the auxiliary gym they are going to be with booster donation and they're going to be having them repurposed um the rest of it is just one of the new uniforms are you considering Co-op and that was the field hockey next year so the rest is just kind of you know procedural questions um I hope that if you had any questions you know you could have gotten back to me ahead of time I forgot to say who is there it was myself Mrs kogan Dr Wright Mr Ricker Mrs BOS Miss Herman and Mr dard and a lot of parents very good questions and very good concerns thank you any questions for Judy on that Michelle so I don't have a question but just to clarify the reason for the decrease in participation um so in addition to what you're saying about um the club sports you also when students reach high school they also have the opportunity to participate in many different clubs and other sports so you take a small population and you divide it right so that's also part of it and in addition work there's a lot of students out there who actually seize the opportunity to either work because they want to make make money for themselves or take opportunities as internships you know to progress towards a professional career so um there's a a number of factors that could impact that they also said that a lot of Club don't want you to play yeah on team on school sports so you know you got to make a choice that's right so and it also wasn't just parcion it's everywhere so it is this is not just solely in PIP and when Mrs kogan says everywhere it is Statewide this is something that we're hearing from schools all over the state yeah yeah U Judy the uh communic Communications committee meeting was the same day as the Sports Committee um and the communications committee was running long so IID popped out to say please start the your committee and this room was completely filled when I when I pecked in so thank you for uh for overseeing that I appreciate it well the coaches really took care over the meeting and they were really after you know how you say do you have any questions you have any questions and nobody said a word the meeting ended and they all came running up with questions to the coaches I'm like okay I guess you had questions but they were very patient they talked to everybody and I think parents went away comfortable and happy with the start of a new year and some of the clubs some of the sports have already started so we're we're in gear y thank you um I do have a question with respect to the boosters the the ptas have a a more organized you know they on the national level they they have a council and and um you know every PTA for every school elementary or middle school high school has a Treasurer and you know um all the paperwork has to you know they they have um their taxes are filed every year Etc um do we have any way I I saw the question question are all boosters getting their ta tax ID numbers and doing their annual compliance um is there any way to give the booster clubs any guidance on on this is there any are you aware if there's any national booster club Association or no I'm not okay I do not know that all right because the guidance I mean they could always if anyone has questions they could always reach out to the treasurer at the at the PT you know at their PTA level right that could help them uh with their tax ID information and such but um in making sure that they do you know that that they are not only in compliance but also follow you know we try as a district we um we were trying to make sure that all the ptas were in compliance um to make sure that uh um monies are are are spent properly or or um I hear you okay and and in booster clubs if if you know it's like it can't be the same the president can't be the treasurer and stuff like that you know it's important to to make sure that um you know at least within our school district maybe you could mention something like that during your meeting well maybe we can ask um Dr Suter maybe you can take that back to your staff and see if there's any National Organization like like the National Organization for the ptas that sets um booster club booster compliance such as you know so the ptas have a National Organization that kind of sets the the guidelines of how ptas run I don't know if booster organizations have such a National Organization that so perhaps you meet again check probably we just we just happen to have a expert witness here we do don't we Mr Ricker Mr Ricker you want to chime in so I I don't know of a national booster organization there is um an organization called booster USA I think it's called they may have changed names recently um they provide a lot of guidance there's nothing official um they also provide an opportunity for insurance um for booster CL through their organization um and they help with tax ID numbers there are a handful of booster clubs that just aren't big enough and they don't really have the need to go through a tax ID number the expense the time the effort to get it just isn't worth it for what they do um some of them just want to have a pizza party at the end of the year to celebrate a season um there are the marching band football booster clubs that have all of those things in order they have President they have a treasure they have their tax ID number because they do so events and fundraisers and things like that but it's kind of dependent on the group um I don't know if that answer yeah I think it does um and like ptt's boosters aren't part of the school district right they're they're correlated to us they we work very closely with those the ptas um so thank you for that appreciate that that's a good question Su thank you uh did you have a critical issues report excuse me you have a critical issues report sorry yes okay um sorry I didn't know you were coming to me so you you were the second to the last one I know I know you want me to do ad hoc while you get ready I can do ad hoc real quick sure yeah um so the ad hoc committee met on August 13th President were president at the meeting were Vice President Golder Mr Chapelle Mr beros Dr Suter uh Robin tadesco and of course myself uh just to refresh every's memory the ad hoc committee was um constituted to uh look at how the district handles um additional enrollment due to residential development both pilot driven or not pilot driven we um had met with the township uh on two occasions earlier this year uh however those meetings seemed to come to a stop we could not um get a a third meeting date with the township scheduled unfortunately so there's been no additional conversations between the Boe and the township um we did put out a statement responding to the mayor's comments about um the adhoc process and the pilot programs in general that was posted on our website and sent out as a press release um we've also review reviewed uh our updated FAQs they're posted on the website and you can see this large chart to my right and your left which has some key funding um information on there just a couple of points that weren't discussed at the um ad hoc committee but are related to it um I want to thank Handover Township who for the last uh two years or three years I believe um has had a pilot sharing agreement with their school district where the town is providing 56% of the pilot Revenue to the um local and Regional School District uh last week the burough of chadam announced the pilot sharing Revenue with its Board of Education to provide for school security out officers and just today I saw that the city of Hoboken um has entered into agreement with its Board of Education to provide the board with $500,000 per year from two pilot programs and I'll read a quote from one of the councilmen um he says this is definitely Landmark new territory so maybe future city councils down the road can try to include more pilot money for schools and I I definitely agree with him uh and this agreement between the the uh city of Hoboken and the Board of Education of Hoboken has an automatic increase of 2% per year for every year that the pilot is in place so I want to commend those districts for for doing that um I've also heard on from a very reliable source that the old cineopolis movie theater on 46 uh which is adjacent to a strip mall that is quickly becoming vacant is slated for high density housing I'm not sure if it'll be a pilot um tax abated high density project housing project or if it'll just be regular high density housing but it's a big piece of property um as as is the strip mall where the marshals uh and some of the other stores that are no longer there are so there's I I suspect more coming our way that we'll have to deal with in terms of uh new housing and uh new students so wish I had better news to report yes Mr M I heard that that was going to be um ma uh you know low income housing it wasn't going to be a pilot but then again rumors go back and forth but I did hear that it was not going to be a pilot yeah I don't know if it's low income or or Pilot but I'm fairly confident based on the source that it's going to be residential housing of of high density residential housing of some sort income housing I I don't know that I well that's questions on that Mr R thank thank you Mr President um so at the August 6 Town council meeting as the administration was announcing its um audit on the uh School District um it was disclosed publicly that um there was not going to be any further discussions with the Board of Education until after our finances have been um vetted like yes is the term I'm using I'm not sure the exact terminology that was used by the administration but that's as of August 6th okay thank you for that and I'll I'll I'll have a closing statement you before we adjourn the board meeting sort of along those lines any other questions on the ad hoc committee Mrs Golder critical issues thank you okay I apologize for the delay um M um the critical issues uh committee met and pres were Mr toffo Mr varios Mr rehea and myself and what we did were we discussed um issues that were raised by the majority of board members dur um in our board self- evaluation and we decided as a committee to uh address the following which was the community outreach portion of it and what we decided to do as a committee and approve by the the board was um that we will be doing a committee of the whole once a month showcasing one of our committees um so we will invite the public um via messenger via announcements on the um you know in in the newspaper we will be inviting the um where the public will be given um I will we will send out an invite to the Community via messenger and a suppress release in the various Publications and state board of Ved invites you to be present at the next Board of Ed meeting where the transportation committee for example will meet as they do on a monthly basis and the public can see how the meetings are handled and type of information that is acted upon at the meetings the public will be given time to ask questions after the committee meeting but before the general hearing of the public portion we will also make make sure the recordings have a more prominent place in our district website um and we we will um send it out a schedule and what we decided was that in September the second um meeting in September we would be having um the transportation committee meet as a whole in October it would be the finance committee in November it would be teaching and learning Committee in March it would be policy April would be buildings and grounds and may would be Communications and the public would get an opportunity to see um exactly how our committee meetings work are yes are handled work okay and we will be hoping to make sure to give the public plenty of notice so that they make plans to attend we decided to do that instead of having a different um night um during the week where we all usually meet we decided to do it during a board meeting so that we're not asking the public to come out you know during two separate meetings and such so um and then we also discussed um maybe um you know possibly having um a survey go out but that would be given to the communications committee to handle and um the logistics of that and we and I believe that that is um that is that was the whole point of the two and a half hour meeting any questions I believe there was a financial education Financial literac for board yes um the there would also be a financial literacy um for the district finances and where we would be where we would be inviting the public to also attend and it would be our business administrator basically uh conducting a a SE a seminar to the board of education but the public would be welcome to to listen in on that as to how um how each how the budget is is arrived at how to for us to be able to uh decipher our you know the reports that we get the secretary's report where we get all of the uh billing for the you know all the uh State bills that are paid monthly and um and how you know um any questions and how a board member should handle any questions that we have for the business office at the time that was the third piece thank you Mrs K Judy I don't have a question I just want to comment that the board has set up goals for the board having this kind of activity I guess we can call it um it IT addresses being having public participation getting the public more involved with the board and also full full disclosure you see everything there's nothing that's hidden away you know exactly what we're doing and why we're doing it and I think the public has been looking for that and I think it's a really healthy way for the board to communicate with the public so I applaud the critical issues committee for coming up with that idea any other questions any okay thank you so we will move on with our oh yes she I just um realized that I did not say that I was present at the communications and TLC meetings when I mentioned everybody else's teams soid want make sure that I mentioned that yes I was there too the chairperson was present um approval of the minut executive and regular minutes of July 25th 2024 may I have a motion please Timothy Judy roll call Mrs Abraham yes sorry Mr baros yes Mrs kogan yes Mrs mayor yes Mr yes Mrs Chapelle abstain Dr Wright uh abstain on Executive session uh yes on regular session Mrs Golder yes Mr chaa I yes so now uh it's time to turn the meeting over to Dr Sutter for superintendent's bulletin number two thank you president chafo good evening everyone during our July meeting a question was asked concerning how many students are involved in our summer programs as such Boe members were provided with a handout in their Boe packet which includes that data I want to congratulate the mount Taber school for participating in the promising practices project and being recognized by the New Jersey Department of Education as background the promising practices project is a partnership with the New Jersey state policy lab and the Joseph C Cornwell Center for Metropolitan studies which are both at Ruckers University this initiative explores the best practices that dozens of successful school districts have used to improve learning in response to the covid-19 pandemic the Rucker's researchers have identified um a diverse array of 52 schools from 47 local educational agencies school districts and charter schools that have demonstrated exceptional growth in student performance when comparing pre and post pandemic data for English and language arts and math I want to once again thank our maintenance and custodial employees for the hard work and effort they put forth during the past three extremely hot summer months their hard work and effort has made our schools look great for opening day tonight for your approval we have superintendent bulletin items 1 through 52 with addendum and readin items 53 through 77 thank you Dr s any questions for Dr shter on the superintendent's bulletin seeing none we'll oh I'm I have to look further to my right I'm loaded tonight uh thank you Mr President uh Dr Sutter just a quick uh for reference only um this uh I'm assuming it's an email there a summary of comments on 2030 ladex Plaza is this just an email we received yeah I think it was in our board pocket oh okay then we can okay y Tim maybe you can bring that at our next meeting absolutely because I I I don't recall the address list it was sent to I do recall receiving a copy of it but um I believe it was from a resident who spoke at a previous board meeting with some very good points about the 20 20 it alludes to that but just wasn't sure I wanted to make sure that I was aw the there was an engineer that that spoke correct okay so uh perhaps we can review that document for next meeting and just sure comment on it absolutely thank you um secretary's report Mrs Tesa hi everyone on tonight's secretary's report we have our regular business motions including the award of a school Physicians R RFP for the 2425 school year does anybody have any questions oh Tim thank you Mrs tadesco um as we reported out in uh buildings and grounds and it's now on the addendum um is the uh item number 74 Littleton school project completion day extension um obviously going down here there's a uh the board is being asked to approve 13900 000 um uh to the build to the uh Builder I'm assuming this is the Builder um and obviously it's talking about the delays and uh since a topic of taxpayer dollars and um how things are spent in our in our beautiful District I was hoping maybe you can just talk about that a little bit like why are we here um and then I have a follow-up question okay so why are we approving approving the the change order please okay so um we started off last summer um with the project at Littleton and we hit some snafus getting our permits so we were delayed by I can't remember exactly how many days and then after that um we started our project I think in the beginning of September and during the course of that um starting the project we hit Bedrock on the far side of the Littleton project property and that caused us more delays so we had to get Engineers architects involved to figure out how to go around that Bedrock so that's where this came from there was two different um change orders one for the delays and the permits and then one for the actual bed rocks thank you that that that was helpful so I guess part two of the convers part two of my question is the 139,000 as as uh board Mr chafo me mentioned uh I believe in one of his early reports um Littleton phase one is being currently worked on um without one additional dollar of taxpayer funds so we did not go out to the taxpayer and say we need more money that cor we're doing it right so this $139,000 that we are approving here um are we impacting the taxpayers at all with this we had money budgeted in the 23 24 school year to make sure that we did not impact the the taxpayers so no we're it's just part of it was part of our regular budget right yeah right so therefore but what the business team was able to do is not only um get phase one started without asking for any additional money but this cost overrun a lot of which are out of our control well most of it is um we're not asking for additional money I mean we have to prove it to pay the bill but we're not going back and saying taxpayer you need to give us another 2% right correct we're not asking the tax not nothing right okay just want to thank you and your again you and the um business team and the district and Dr Sutter for bringing this all together how many classrooms is this going to bring us phase one again roughly six six additional classrooms and one small group instruction and one small group instruction and then phase two assuming that comes to be because I know there's money involved there too phase two hopefully brings in what another seven classrooms yeah so uh 13 additional classrooms so I want to thank you for that that's uh great job and you deserve uh you guys deserve credit for that thank you thank you Judy yeah um having the overtime spent because of the Bedrock and because of the permits the Bedrock you know that that's nature we can't really do anything about it but as far as the permits um since we were held up for it and it cost us some money I believe that that should be an expense given to the town and say next time move a little quicker for permits because you cost us a ton of money I think that should be something brought up to the town that they should pay for that portion not the Rock but the portion that we got stuck with because of the delay of permits I think that's a reasonable suggestion and let's maybe ask Mrs Tesco if she can work up an amount that we can quantify um with our data on on how much that those delays cost us you know these kinds of projects are are complicated right as as Robin alluded to you have Architects engineers and construction Crews involved and in each each phase of a project like that up to beginning construction has to go in order because construction companies hire people and pay people to Begin work on a certain date and if that date comes and there's delays that don't allow them to work well the construction company can't say sorry they've contracted with these workers to do this work uh so they're they're incurring costs for idle workers um which they're going to as we see Bill a district for those uh those costs so I think that's a very reasonable ask uh Judy thank you any other questions for uh Robin no all right we um have some new business on our agenda so what let let's see I'm going to go out of order here so um we have two Board of members that attended webinars uh called mastering School finance and best practices for policy development so may maybe we can split them up and have one board member take one and one take the other do I have another one too you have three I have two you have two in addition to these no I have another she's the two mastering School Finance yeah I did say that one and best practices for policy yeah I can do either one okay uh do policies you want to do policy and you do Finance sure okay who goes first oh god um yeah I did attend virtually best practices for policy and maintaining the manual and I have to say that everything that was discussed we do you know we we go governance is through policy we rev viw our policies are they necessary are they are they really realistic to what we want um the wording should be Clarity versus confusion it should be out for the public that they understand what exactly the policy is addressing um the the the thing that I thought was interesting and again it was basically what we do there's nothing new that came out of that I was really pleased to know that we are pretty much on target the only thing that I thought was interesting is they well they did say you should have a committee to do it when we do that they also suggested that the committee review the the manual starting with a 100 and going forward to see if the policy need to be revised at all or if maybe we don't need them or if there's any change um they suggested doing it every year I think that would be a Monumental task i i i in my own opinion I think if you do that maybe once every two years just to make sure our policies are relevant to the district um sometimes the wording as we've done in the past needs to be tweaked a little bit so I think that was a really good presentation that was the only new thing that I took away from that I don't know what Mrs Abraham maybe she took something else away but I felt that it really mirrored exactly what we do um should comply with the law this it should uh working it should meet the district needs and it should reflect Community preferences so they like I said they said to do it every year I think that would be just like whoa so maybe every two years that committee starts with 100 goes right through any questions for Judy on that just just want to add something can I just add yeah sure um I know part of the they mentioned the policy process and um to add to what Miss mayor said they did talk about the language the clarity confusion um the tone you know describing how word choice can really change the meaning and impact of a policy um they also talked about you know the kind of discussions that you should have with your committee uh the adopt the adoption of it the diss dissemination and implementation and then also maintaining your policy manual such as policy you know not just having a policy committee but best practices and then reviewing and tracking periodically to make sure that um you're in line with your uh manual so I think it was wonderful uh in the board packet there are the video and the presentation materials and slides for anybody to to uh view so I wanted to I'm very happy that was able to uh participate in this thank you so just a question um that review to me implies that there's not a third party that's assisting the board with policy development updates did did the did that seminar speak to um speak to having a third party like stra talk about you know like we have our people that send us policy and they said you can rely on that or you can conduct your own internal review of policies because let's face it when a policy is made it might be great for 90% of the districts but maybe for our district it's not appropriate or we don't need it or we need it worded differently so I think you really have to take it to your own district and have your own people look at it and make sure that it's per pertinent to what's going on and I I do believe that when we get the policies from stra ese they do go to our district subject matter experts for review to to make them germine for parpy right because I I agree they're very generic when they come out lots of times the language has choices you can do this or that so you've got to decide what you want to do to have a policy that's clear I know often times we will send questions to Madame attorney for review and clarification so um yeah I always I I think we could do better I think we have 700 pages of policy it's something like that if you look at all of the policy so it is an arduous task to keep it up to date and you know we do have a third party that helps us with that but thank you uh so she do you want to take the second Point yes thank you uh so I was able to also sit in on the mastering School Finance essential conversations for board members um webinar it was presented by Charles meller who is the business administration in Residence at the njsba and uh he hosted the seminar to assist school board members understand the various areas of school Finance uh because as board members it is vital for us to communicate with District administration to gain a deeper understanding of their individual District circumstances and it kind of uh went into uh the conversations you should be having at this time of year uh including but not limited to the end of the year budget like the board secretary report revenues Appropriations fund balance outstanding purchase orders special revenue or federal grants the 2425 budget uh covering enrollment Staffing tuitions Transportation revenues special Reven VES such as facilities and a comprehensive review uh to give you a good idea of what the next budget cycle is going to look like so it's really just preparing you um so that you don't have a difficult time in the coming year um they also talked about the statement of priorities which is maintaining our school systems and raising the standards and expanding opportunities uh building professionalism protecting our investment planning for the future they spoke about New Jersey learning standards um how to analyze the original budget approved in the last um the last year and making the necessary changes how to kind of read the board secretary report um how they show revenues and Appropriations and the annual comprehensive financial report and it shows what the actual versus budgeted revenue and expenses letter is from the administra administration documents so I thought it was um you know just just a really wonderful way to dive deeper into a very complex issue and um I think we probably have to read these presentations and slides and go back into the video often just to remind ourselves um you know not just about policy but also about finance and I think it will be very helpful when we're having these monthly meetings um maybe something that we can touch upon and go back to so thank you thank you Judy you want to add anything to that yeah again um a lot of what was covered basically is what we do I mean you know first read you know drafting it making sure your priorities are met it's pretty much what we do I mean that was like affirming to me that we are on track what what we do so um I don't know that there's anything else I would add to that you know I I saw the statement of priorities you know we can't forget building professional mentoring first year first year teachers um a teacher evalu educator evaluation those are all things that F into it so again it's what we do Allison please yeah I also attended the class and the presentation that is in our board packet has quite a few links in it so it really is a useful presentation it's not just the slides with like three bullet points it's actually a very useful presentation with a lot of links in it that should be like Mrs Abram said referred to more than this just time of year there is a I'm I'm sorry no please goad there is information and I think I even sent it to you that New Jersey school board has um a video I believe or training video that talks about finance and how to read the budget or how to read the secretary's report and I know we're going to be doing that but it was very informative I mean I I watched it and it broke it down you know the secretary's report into each each column and it gave you you know an example of how that be you know like teachers are assigned to a building and then if they get moved you know it was very interesting so I think you know we could always reach out to New Jersey school boards and if we want to have them present also that it was very interesting I thought you and Shea would do that presentation no no I really want to thank board members um I think sometimes the public loses sight that it's not just uh two meetings a month that we are here for an hour and a half or two hours uh the folks here volunteer a lot of their time outside of these meetings um going to community events and I've often said that school board members are the best trained public officials in the state of New Jersey because we are um we attend many many trainings um some because we want to be better educated uh some because they're mandated U for uh compliance reasons but I want to thank you for the time you all spent doing these things appreciate it uh two other topics uh again Mrs mayor and I if I I apologize the list I'm reading just has you and Mrs Abraham attending some additional events Judy you attended the Raul wenberg remembrance as well as the Indian independence day and flag raising and sheo you attended the Indian Indian independence day so perhaps you can split those up with sheel taking the Indian independence day and you taking the r wenberg ceremony we'll start with sheel first uh I think mine's going to be a little longer so oh go that's okay yeah go Ahad okay all right um so this past uh Saturday I was able to attend the 78th Indian Independence Day celebration and flag raising uh that was held at our precipi town hall at 9:00 a.m. on August 17th it was organized by the indian-american senior Association of Morris County uh coordinators were thushar Amin and S SEL Maha and they also arranged cultural programs and refreshments to follow the speakers after the flag hoisting uh the ceremonies began with the Pledge of Allegiance led by former council president Michael diero welcoming remarks were made by mayor Barbaro Mikey Cheryl sha and keynote speaker Raj Patel who was the president of the indian-american cultural committee both the American national anthem and the Indian national anthem called Jenna ganam were sung uh that particular song was written by a noble laurate tagor who translated it roughly translate to Thou Art the ruler of the minds of all people dispenser of India's Destiny let the victory be with you and it was originally written in Bengali meant to awaken patriotism Unity sacrifice and emotion from August 15 1947 independence of India from British rule to the present day and it was first sung in 1911 at the annual conference of the Indian National Congress the flag hoisting was accompanied by many elected officials and dignitaries from parney and Morris County but not all there were quite a few people missing that could not attend some hoping that in the future events that we'll be able to see a lot more um at the time of the flag hoisting the song uh s Jan SE AA was played for all it is a Udu language patriotic song written for children meaning anthem of the people of Hindustan it was written by Poet Alama Muhammad ibal in the gazal style of Udu poetry and Hindustan is another name for India as is Barat and an a bridge version of of it was sung frequently at as a patriotic song and as a marching song of the Indian armed forces and many attendees were seen to be saluting the flag as it was raised shortly after after Mr sanjie pandia the MC introduced the cultural programs and the entertainment began with an absolutely captivating and meaningful but the naum performance it reminded me of the days that I used to learn B the naum dance in my childhood and teen days the song chosen for this dance was ja barata Jenia which means Victory to you mother kadaga the daughter of Mother India and uh that poem was officially declared the state song of the Indian state of karda in 2004 along um a few more dance performances followed which altogether were wonderful to watch even within India itself there are so many states languages dance styles religions music and song uh and food but the pride shines through all the diversity and it was always wonderful to see India being celebrated by residents of all ages elected officials children and families in our wonderful town and the cultural identity contributions and engagement of our Indian citizens and residents is kept alive with ceremonies like this and I look forward to many more celebrations in the coming years thank you thank you for attending that any questions Ral or you want to add anything I don't have a question oh you want to talk about R wenberg yeah okay please all I wanted to say was that I was honored to be invited to the Indian flag raising it was very poignant um it was exciting to be a part of that and to celebrate with everybody that was there okay uh Switching gears um actually um Mrs Golder and Mr Ray were also at the Raul Wallenberg um presentation it was August 11th it was at Smithfield it was just you know a wonderful celebration and the thing that was really interesting to me was the man who um came up with the sculpture his name is Edward Adams and he was there and he was talking about the inspiration why he Des if you ever drive by Smithfield it's right on the corner like almost where the bus stops and I can't tell you how many times I have driven by there and never really stopped to look at it but he was saying that um he didn't want to make it just to the person he wanted to make it to the ideals of um what was it Courage and compassion this was a man who led out who saved thousands of Hungarian Jews from extermination um there was also someone there from the Swedish government um he was the deputy counsel from the general Swedish Consulate of New York and he spoke and it was it was just a very moving um ceremony we had a rabbi there we had um some lots of different Faith people there that would we had a representative from Mikey Cheryl um mayor barbaros spoke uh we had Pastor from the Lutheran Church it was just a wonderful way for everybody to come together and appreciate someone's courage because really I mean this man gave up his life for it so I mean I was proud to be there and then what they did was they handed out yellow roses and if you wanted to remember somebody in a generation past that was affected by the Holocaust um and I was one of the people who went and placed the Yellow Rose and it was just it was really meaningful and I was glad that I had attended there was a great there was a good amount of people there so it was a good it was a good Community Activity thank you and to sheo and to Jack and to suie for attending that any questions okay any other new business to comeing for the board you have new business part of part of the um presentation was one of the rabbi and I don't recall I do have the the handout but I don't recall his name uh did um say to me that wanted to we in the past when Dr sites was superintendent here have held um the award Night Celebration which is throughout all of New Jersey and it's about um anti-bullying if you will or the courage to stand up to um to people like that in the name of R Wallenberg and um and we used to host that evening um here in in parcion and he had wanted to find out if we would we be willing to continue to host that he um you know and I I said I would bring it up and that um I think it's definitely very it's worthwhile and it I have attended in the past and it is very emotional and uh the presentations and and just the life of R Wallenberg is extremely um I mean the courage and and everything that he you know he put his own money and and for you know for strangers and it was just it's it's so inspiring and I and I believe that with the way you know we give a lot of we give a lot of Celebration and a lot of Credence to things that aren't as important and I believe that this would be something that I that I would be very you know proud of our district to continue hosting and um and and and I remember I believe the one time Nicholas um not Li lion um Li leonov okay was one of the recipient of the awards because they you know it it was like I said it's definitely worthwhile and for us to consider continuing to do that thank bring that would you mind speaking to Dr Su perhaps Mrs benos after the meeting you know today tomorrow whenever and just maybe speak about that see what it might be entail to um to revitalize that just one last comment Andy way I think if you think about it one weekend we were celebrating India and another weekend we were celebrating R Wallenberg what does that tell you about our district we are so diverse we have so many different people living here it's just amazing you know it was just great I can't say enough what and peaceful and peaceful it was it was lovely really lovely thank you for that um just spurred something that I didn't I didn't mention during my ad hoc committee report that the district did um commission a new Dem demographic report that uh really focuses on the development and what we can expect in terms of um additional student students but part of that does speak to the diversity of the district there's a lot of data on that uh that report will be on our district website shortly so I encourag people to to read through it it's it's it's thick but it's generally an easy read um if if you if you're reading the text and not diving into the um the uh the calculations it's it's it's very informative so part of that is there so i' definitely encourage people to take a look at that any other new business no okay we are going to um move on to the hearing of the public EXC before we do that I'm sorry I do have to take back my uh no I have to take back my um uh I did say I have to abstain from the minutes from um an attendance of the July 25th meeting okay thanks Robie correct that thank you okay going once no just Cas go quick hearing hearing of the public I to my glasses on because there's a lot to read and also I'm now I'm interrupting myself um it's been the the um what the word I'm looking for it's been the um past practice of the Board of Education to acknowledge elected officials who in attendance so I like to acknowledge councilman Justin Mella who is here with us tonight so thank you for for ATT for attending our meeting Mr Mel I appreciate it okay at this time if there is anyone who would like to address the board please come up sign your name and address in the book at the lecturn and state your name for the record and please address the chair each person will have three minutes to speak to the board it would be helpful if you would like to address the board to please uh come up now and sign the books so that you're ready when the first speaker is finished as a reminder we are video recording the meeting if you are a student who wishes to speak we ask that you not provide your home address but rather uh give only the name of the municipality in which you live if you are a parent wishing to discuss a specific matter pertaining to your child during this portion of the meeting you may request that the board temporarily suspend the video recording alternatively please consider speaking privately about the matter to the superintendent after the meeting speakers should refrain from using specific student or staff names in their comments and are referred to by law 0168 for further information regarding the videotaping of meetings M attorney would you mind be the timekeeper happy thank you very much yes ma'am you're good oh I'm sorry I we also have uh in attendance and I'm sorry I didn't see you back there Mrs Calabria um um the wife of the wife of the uh longest serving poran board member correct yeah years um someone who I considered a very a close friend and um in my first several years on the board was just a resource that I couldn't live without to become you know a better board member so welcome also thank you call you yeah please hello my name is Marie I'll preface this by saying that I grew up in pipany I went to the same school my kids are attending right now and their principal was my music teacher so I am familiar with the pipan school district um this part of my message is addressed to Dr Suter as the superintendent of our school district it is your job and your responsibility to find solutions for our kids to be educated in the best way possible by removing the 25 student per classroom cap it's clear you've chosen the easiest solution there is moreover the influx of student into our school system should not be a surprise the 250 apartments and town homes that are now finished at I guess we call it par Q I don't know have been in the works for a long time so this influx can't be be a surprise in addition to that the semantics between waving a policy and abolishing the policy is disrespectful to us as parents like treating us as if we don't understand what we're doing advertising the average of 21 students per classroom is also disrespectful we know what average means okay we know that average means that my child had 25 kids in her classroom last year but some special ed classrooms may have only had four or five your job is to come up with a viable solution and not just one that benefits the Littleton Elementary School or preschoolers I mean you guys congratulated yourself on that a lot today and we appreciate it but you know there are other schools out there besides Littleton and not everyone's kids are preschoolers so it's time time to set your copy and pasted emails aside and get to work to the mayor and council members I know they like to keep track of what goes on over here and vice versa so I'll have a little message for them um our children are not political pawns all right they're not here to serve your career I could care less and I'm sure this goes for a lot of people here I don't care whether you're a Democrat or Republican this is a bipartisan issue and referring to children's education as a burden as the mayor did I'm sure you guys all saw the mayor's latest post um that's downright shameful we all know that Boe already gets audited every single year so spend our tax money on a mobile classroom or additional pair of professionals basically anything besides another audit if you're going to authorize developments you know I guess the movie theater is now going to be a departments I guess I don't know but if the town is going to authorize developments that encourage growth and pony like we appreciate the growth but you are part of the problem and need to be a part of the solution in terms of kids in classrooms ma'am could you finish up please sure to all of you stop playing the political games the blame game it get jacked together okay this is for the kids and if I could have one question does anybody know apartment buildings like new construction that's going to be happening in the next 5 years if I if I could suggest you after everyone is speaking you can have another minute to come back up if you want to complete your thoughts or ask a question having to rush through it okay I mean I just one question okay like the you know park it didn't happen overnight so I'm asking as of right now what else is being built in pany okay thank you very much but are youall going to answer it uh are you the superintendent will answer at the end of all the questions good evening everyone my name is Nicole I have a I'm a parent of a rising second grader I have two nephews in the district I went to school in this District my brother went through this District as did my cousins and I have friends and family who teach here and many friends whose kids go to school here first I want to say before I get into the details that I'm absolutely appalled at the effort and consistency of the ping pong blame game going on between the town and the Board of Ed on social media in Publications and at meetings I'm also disappointed that it seems that all have lost focus on the education of our children because honestly as a parent I feel at this time that we have no support from either the town or the Boe and improving outcomes in students at this time the political rantings from some members of this board is deeply concerning to me and I have heard no mention of the education of our children during comments like that as I said I grew up here I chose to raise my child here this is a good town and a good school district and the absolute circus that's going on is attracting from the real needs of our students however we got here we are where we are so I understand that class caps have to be waved that's a reaction to the realities of this town but what about the solution what I want to know as a parent and as a taxpayer is how you all plan to support our children to make a classroom of 25 plus run efficiently and successfully and to support our teachers in this endeavor I understand this affects grades 3 to five and I'd like to also note that there is seat testing starting in grade three I won't spend time on the negative effects of large classroom sizes as I'm sure you're all aware for the past two years at Troy Hills my son has been one of 25 with 24 and 25 students in the other class as well and keep in mind this was before the pilots it may already be that the district average is 21 but the reality is that many of our kids are already in large classes and we will have even more in the future have you given any thought as to how this will actually play out in the classrooms how will teachers address small groups how will that many children fit in the classroom because I was there for the Halloween party and there was nowhere to move around the desks waving the classroom cap was a reaction but you can't stop there without making it work it's your job to come up with the solutions not to place blame on anyone or any entity or to elevate your personal political Ambitions in such a short time I personally have researched while I also have a full-time job and spoke to many people in an attempt to come up with some solution other districts have partnered with schools to get student teachers in the classrooms others have added mobile classrooms some have used bonds for building additions while I understand the board was able to add on at Littleton without requesting additional taxpayer funds which is a great accomplishment thank you all it won't help the majority of our elementary schools with additional space and needs all the more reason we should have a referendum to attempt to improve Endor added on to our existing buildings we need to do something to have more space more teachers and smaller classes to meet the needs of all all of our students and to keep high quality teachers from going out of District because the classes are just too difficult to manage without support of resources at the elementary age I'm pleading with all of you to place the focus on the kids and figure out solutions to a situation that will only get worse in the coming years as more and more housing is being added and our school involvement increases I hope we can get to a point where we vote on a referendum for a bond parents are looking for answers and I hope in the coming months you can provide them thanks for your time thank you [Applause] I'm just going to pick it up because I'm Too Tall uh Matt DeVito resident of Paran um a former board member from uh 2018 till 2023 um so I wanted to talk a little bit about this supposed audit by by Mr Mayor um the the I'm glad you shared some of the video from this uh from the January 4th meeting because besides uh well I was in attendance of that meeting I seem to recall there was actually two councilmen in attendance of that meeting Mr Mel was here tonight and Mr mcgraph who Mr Mayor mentioned on Tuesday about saying he took all this good data from Mr mcgraph and and and is coming to this conclusion of doing an audit and I seem to think that Mr graph maybe might have gotten that actual data from our district audit so thought that was kind of interesting um to I just had a couple of questions um regarding uh it was park or Park you whatever you want to call it um the you mentioned in transportation about uh uh eight elementary students are going to be bused from Park I assume to East Lake that's the closest school that is less than two miles and recently they actually put a sidewalk from Park all the way around to get you to there so I'm curious why a bus is actually needed in this point um that one um one last point I was just curious also to know we mentioned something about first year teachers this year what the number of First Year teachers we're going to have this year uh in the district we remember seeing the uh new teacher orientation happens around this time and one I'm curious how many more new teachers we had to add to the district thank you very much thank you hi my name is Lacy I wanted to come to this meeting tonight to express concerns regarding the decision to wave the classroom cap of 25 students in grades k25 I'm wondering if there's a new class size that will now be considered too big and warrant the creation of another class is it 28 students in a class 30 40 what is now considered too large I have two children that will be entering first grade at Littleton this year last year their kindergarten classes contained 24 and 25 students at the start of the year I believe that was too large for a kindergarten class had any students moved into town during the year the classes would have swelled to numbers over 25 in kindergarten the teachers had the assistance of a pair of professional in each class but in first grade it is my understanding that that will no longer be the case I'm extremely concerned about the class sizes this year and in future years with already such a large number of students in classes like my children's the district 1515 complex on Route 10 is set to open in December of this year which would likely add to class sizes that are already bursting at the seams how will the schools handle a potential midor influx of students when this complex opens in December these Elementary years are so crucial to students learning they are the formative years where they are learning the skills that will lay the foundation for their future academic successes with classes at 2 and even higher in some cases I don't know how the teachers will be able to provide enough individual attention to the children this is not a reflection on the teachers themselves I believe they will do the best they can with the hand they are dealt but we are not setting up the teachers or students for Success large classes prohibit teachers from providing sufficient individual attention which kids need in these formative years this not only affects the children who struggle academically but also the gifted children who need that individual attention to be appropriately challenged how will the district plan to support these teachers and students to help them be successful in those classes that are excessively large meaning you know 24 25 and even greater 26 27 how are we going to support the teachers and students in those classes if you aren't able to to create more classes due to space constraints the phase one classrooms obviously aren't finished have you considered adding par professionals to these classes even better having them co-taught by a second certified Elementary level teacher I'm sure you all know the benefits of co- teing for differentiation and the greater individual attention that can be provided through this model if you want more information I would be happy to share it but having 25 and higher greater numbers of students in classes is is not setting anybody up for success thank you hi my name is VI um I do not want to address this in front of the group but I just want to um be assured that I came to this meeting because I wanted to speak to four specific members um personally um and because I've left some messages and haven't heard back um and my situation has not been straightened out um I wanted to make sure that I could speak to Mr rer Dr Suter um um M fenos um so that I could get through to Dr to Dr Suter um and I happened to know Alison kogan um personally um and um just wanted to you know appraise her of the situation and ask her advice so after the meeting um I'm hoping that you guys can you know give me a little time um and I've been a parent and and working and worked in the district um you know for many years so um you know you guys could give me some time I didn't want to share with everybody okay thank you yes all right I'm sorry ma'am I didn't I didn't we didn't catch your name you were kind of walking up to the microphone when you said it Vicky LaVine Vicky LaVine thank you yes good evening everyone I hope all of you had a good summer I'm not going to repeat a lot of that stuff I just have few comments about the cell phones I know with the high schoolers and things like that um ma'am if you could give us your name oh I'm sorry my name is lamia and I'm Pary resident so us as parents we also struggle with especially our high schoolers or as they age elementary school with cell phon so as a parent I think if there is a policy to kind of have them concentrate into schools especially with the influx of more students that are going to be around our schools I think you know I'm just a single parent but I'm just saying it may benefit the students especially now if we're expecting more children to be in the classrooms and they're already being distracted being on their cell phon so imagine if we have more students um that are going into their classrooms the other thing I know school's about to be roughly in two weeks so has there been any study I understand there's concerns about the class cap and things like that but registrations are in we kind of have an idea of how many students will be there so can the you know board have some sort of study coming out hey you know for Pary Hills High School for the other schools this is roughly how many students are going to be there my I moved to this town back in 20 2006 200 or you know or or 16 whatever the year I don't remember right now but my children till now I don't remember any less than 23 24 so it's not like something new that I'm expecting or if it's but I think we may want to just know how many since the registration is in we can't really talk about the buildings and the students that are coming you know even if people are expecting more children or they're moving to town I think that um so I would think just something like that um the other thing I wanted to bring um like with the students if there's more like I'll keep that question for another time because um it's okay but thank you have a good thank you lamia are there any other members of the public that like to address the board all right seeing none I'm going to close the uh the public session Mr D I'll see you after and I can give you that information that you requested thank you Miss lvan I'll see you after and we can discuss what you want to discuss I want to thank everybody for sharing their feelings and thoughts about the necessary waiver of policy 23 312 again the board and administration are not abolishing the policy it does not benefit our parents students staff and administrators to have a policy on the books for the upcoming 2024 25 school year when the financial situation which the district faces would not make it possible to adhere to the dictates of the policy I do not believe that is fair honest or disrespectful Our intention is to revisit the policy next summer to assess available classrooms and classroom space presently our average class size in our elementary schools is currently 20.5 students per class this is an average therefore some classes may have more than 20.5 and some classes may have less than 20.5 our district has been fiscally prudent with our funds with a 2% budget cap each year our interim business administrator and her staff have received the associ iation of school business officials certificate of excellence in finance reporting award the sheer fact that year after year the district has been able to manage staff pay increases which have been above 2% in addition to healthcare costs liability insurance costs Transportation costs Building Maintenance and upgrades all of which have been above 2% this is a remarkable achievement other districts who have had to cut employee positions have not been so fortunate the district continues to plan for the anticipated student growth expected due to the many new regular building developments and pilot building developments in fact the district has managed to fund out of our operating budget phase one of a six classroom Edition project at the Littleton School while saving for phase two of the project which will include an additional seven classrooms these school classroom enhancement construction projects will provide an additional 13 classrooms at the Littleton School again this is an incredibly prudent fiscal management which is allowing these additional classrooms to be built at this point there are no other options other than to expand class size if we experience an influx of students at this time we simply do not have available classroom space the additional Workforce required or the financial ability to support additional teaching and support staff moreover the Boe has been preparing for additional students as evidenced by the near completion of phase one of the Littleton project as well as by the hiring of statistical statistical forecasting LLC to complete demographic studies in both June of 2020 and June of 2024 our June 2024 demographic study highlights the following information on page 48 which states in total there is the potential for 2,300 nonage restricted housing units all of which will consist of multif family units such as apartments or tow houses page 52 of the study explains that an estimate was made of the number of public school children that could potentially come from the approved and proposed housing developments in Pary Troy Hills it should be clearly stated that this is a rough estimate as the bedroom distribution of some of the developments was unavailable which is needed to estimate the number of public school children then on page 53 the study highlights that a total of 618 public school children in grades K through 12 are projected therefore according to the latest demographic study in June of 2024 if we receive the expected influx of students into the district it will require require more classrooms more teachers more salaries more Insurance more furniture more Transportation costs and the list goes on the present model of Educational Funding is not sustainable particularly if we want to maintain the quality of the education that we provide here and the breth of offerings at some point the Boe the superintendent and the business administrator will need to consider whether a referendum is necessary to build additional classroom space or to to build another school or to provide facility upgrades and so forth however a referendum is not going to pay for yearly salary increases yearly Insurance increases yearly Transportation costs and yearly maintenance costs these costs will have to come out of the operating budget which is capped at 2% if the Boe and Community decide it is time for a referendum then it will be up to the voters of parcion Troy Hills to decide whether to increase funding to provide for additional space or facility upgrades I understand that many do not agree with the decision to wave policy 2312 for the 2425 school year however we have the obligation to educate every student in the parcion Troy Hills Township School District this decision was made after considering all of the very limited options available to our district in closing I have no interest in politics or political discourse as a super endent of the parcion Troy Hill School District my main objective is to present the public with the serious issues facing the district and work with all parties to find a solution that will benefit the students of the parsipany Troy Hills School District thank you thank you Dr cter you know the comments by the by the members of the public are definitely Salient and they're you know on point um do any board members want to have comment um we'll we'll start to Mrs kogan I just wanted to confirm that the average class size is actual general education classes correct so those are all General Ed classes that you came to for the 20.5 I wanted to make a comment that other towns around us have tried to go out for referendum and they have failed and once you go out for referendum and you fail you cannot Implement what you asked for in that referendum so that is not something to be taken and lightly I also wanted to just confirm when Paras would be added to classrooms we will have to look at the classroom size and make a decision at that point at this point as we said before we have additional Powers available and not of all of our classes are over 25 right thank you thank you Alon uh Jack please just a couple of points um one of them is the 2% cap that Dr Sutter mentioned for years in a low inflationary environment it was the 2% cap was workable in the last few years we've had substantial inflation that has impacted the ability to create our budgets so that has put a lot of strain on the and of cost some of the problems that that we're we've been talking about in addition last month on the um we received results from the New Jersey graduation Pro proficiency assessment showing the results for the Town versus the results for the state overall and in math parity students this is um 11th graders they ranked 19 points better than the state average uh last year or class of 20125 which was 11th graders uh 73.4% were proficient versus 54.7% of was the state average and the uh English results were a little closer but they were still parity did it more than exceed the state average so those are things that need to be considered in addition to the the actual costs we want to talk about the results that we're getting with the costs so throw that out there thank you Jack Su oh no I just wanted to say also I did meet with members of the public I did meet in particular with one individual who brought with her excellent ideas I listened to her many of the of the items that she brought up we have already considered we are in fact instituting one of the examples that she provided to me which is contacting all of the surrounding colleges around us trying to solicit student teachers for the classrooms that are over 25 students and we are in the process of doing that now thank you Susie um I just wanted to make a couple of points with with respect to where um information for additional housing we're putting the demographic study online and on page 53 it actually shows the all the addresses of the additional housing um developments now um that will probably impact us and and these are only the ones that have been approved to be built we don't know of any that haven't been approved yet and whether they're Pilots or not um the the other thing is is that one of the reasons why we one of the reasons why we go through training and we and and are on our own we go to additional seminars and such is because the state of New Jersey is so it's got so many mandates it has you know it it's got um it's got per room caps it's got you know it's got [Music] um special needs classrooms have to be you know have to be set up in a certain way and they could only have a certain number of students so that when you you when you when you hear of a general classroom having 25 students and when we say we're we're not we're waving it and not abolishing it the difference is that waving it means that maybe the class size goes up but abolishing would mean that we're not following it at all and we will continue to follow it because if there's more than 25 students we will put an additional par we will you know look for a student teacher so Golder go ahead that might not happen so we can't say that to the public that that might happen when that can't happen well when the title power professional sorry but we will make sure that the teacher has right that the teacher I mean we still will make sure that the teacher has um support in the classroom okay now the other the other thing is is that again it's going to be looked at every year it's not it's not a one-time you know thing um and just the fact that as I said the mandates that the that the mandates that the state of New Jersey puts upon us are not easy to understand sometimes and and confusing to us board members I'm you know andan I'm sure it would be more so to to um to the general public now what I'm what I want to say is that yes politics should not you know uh come into play here and one of the things I did on Tuesday say to our mayor was that um I implore that you meet with the Boe and do the people's work politics should not enter the work of the municipal government and school district of the same town the community at large is more important than anyone's ego elected officials for the town don't have to like each other to work together as long as respect and courtesy are extended to each other professionalism is important as a taxpayer I would like to see whatever amount of money you're spending on this audit to be better spent on the needs of the Town other T that other needs that the town may have bet better yet since this is a political retribution it should really be paid for out of your campaign funds so with that I as a board member am willing to negotiate sit down and whatever differences the mayor may or may not have with me personally or Etc um should not matter because we we have a job to do and that job is to get together discuss how Pilots how increased enrollment is going to affect our district and that is what I I can only speak for myself I am willing to do is to sit down and talk and not have any politics enter the conversation because there is no place for that we're both entities are here to do the work of the people so thank uh Tim thank you Mr President and from speaking only for myself I think the questions from the public were awesome um one of the uh a comment was made about uh taking politics out of this back and forth and the pingpong effect of this thing and um I absolutely agree I I'm begging for you to stop um so in this little our little meeting you've kind of seen in a in in a microcosm of the months years of work in trying to prepare for the Redevelopment that we knew of before November of 2023 and now this hit us in the face um all we're asking for or I'm asking for is for this school district to get its fair share we're not asking for or I'm not asking for anything other than the fair share I think count I think uh board president chafo mentioned Handover Township they were at the mayor's Round Table they have an agreement um with the districts gets 50 some OD perc of any pilot money we have other towns um that are have disarrangement it's a Cooperative it's not an adversarial I don't know why here um you know as you've probably heard everybody spends a lot of time as we're all our volunteers we do not get paid um going to meetings um getting our governance under control understanding what's going on talking to the the uh district and when I go to a council meeting and I've been to everyone since November and you raise a concern and first you do it politely and then you do it you push back and then you do back Channel Communications and you're told yes no problem we're going to take care of the Board of Education and then 6 months nine months later you're told to go pound sand um it personally you know I my children are older now they graduated college they're in the workforce they got the greatest education of the Paran School District my wife graduated the poran School District I'm not a republican I'm not a Democrat I'm not an independent I am a person fighting to make sure that we could at least guarantee the Next Generation to get the same education quality obviously won't be the same education the same quality education but maybe leaving it just a little bit better than we found it most of us around this table have been working out hours and days and nights trying to come up with another process another way to do this um when we were talking about our cap and what we needed to do by the you know when the administration came to us I don't think there's a person sitting around this table that sat there and said oh that's a great idea let's do it it's not a you know we we all had our concerns many people around here express the same comments made by our great public in the audience and I think um if not our superintendent but our board president said we're if you have a suggestion if you're saying that our plan is wrong and you have a suggestion we're all ears but don't tell us we're doing nothing because we got to do something that's where we are right now our backs are against the wall as the district so I mentioned referendum you know our nextdoor neighbor Montville had a referendum okay it failed so they're going back for another referendum and it's less than [Music] half and if you go to a referendum as one of the board members here said and and it fails you're done that's it there's nothing to do you can't go and say okay we'll try this that's not the board's desire that's what the state of New Jersey that's what is told to us I heard someone mentioned there were four or five children in the classroom and why you got this big classroom for four or five children well we have a lot of students that have special needs depending on what that category is the state mandates that hey you can't have more than a dozen you can't have more than five you can't have more than nine you need nine nine students Max you need a uh a teacher and you need a you know fill in the blank specialist okay we see a classroom that can fit 25 kids sitting with three sitting with four sitting with five you know we well I'm not an educator okay as as the political arm of the board of education but I'm sure the educators will look at it and say boy I could use that classroom space there is no place to grow in pipany I think we did uh we talked to our engineer and right now the best we can do if nothing changes today is build up you know just add another addition so what we do is we rip the roof off of like a lake haath school and we build another floor well that's going to cause disruption we're already disrupting the folks over at Littleton and that's a good thing but we still had to disrupt them you know do we put do we go get trailers and put them in a parking lot is that the idea we're going to do that Morris County's one of the Premier District school districts and we're going to sit there and ask our kiss on the trailers I don't think that's the right answer but you know at this point in time the public has got a great answer or great a great idea I think we're all ears but please don't tell us do nothing because we're not there we can't do that anymore our backs are against the wall we're fighting it and I'll be honest with with you if we could get a proper response from our colleagues over at the Town Hall and stop being ridiculed because we're asking for a fair share we be in better shape today than we we are current we'd be in better shape than we currently are today but right now we're we are where we are and and we have the plan for tomorrow and if we're not going to have the cooperation of our partners uh over in town hall cuz again we serve the same Community we serve the same taxpayer and technically we serve the same school children we're here for the school children I think Dr Frank calabia God bless him said doing what's in the best interest of children that's what this group does every day and unfortunately sometimes that does have a dollar sign in front of it I thank you for your time uh Wendy I just wanted to emphasize um you know one part of what Dr s said and what part of my colleague Jacka said um so the 2% cap which is uh in place statutorily from Trenton is not structurally functional in a different inflationary environment okay but if we think about these health care costs 10% think about our annual raises which are above which should be above 2% because otherwise we're asking teachers to take a pay cut every year but what that does is it prevents us from actually investing in other places expanding where we need to expand and so I say this not as a pass the buck but rather as a call to action you know New Jersey right now is in a prime legislative moment to take up the next stage of Educational Funding reform there was some recent uh you know the the state put to bed a previous kind of set of funding reform questions and I think that Trenton needs to hear from us and I know I mean they hear from me like all the time um and if anyone really you know wants to get involved and figuring how we speak to Trenton about revising this 2% cap in a way that both does not destroy our ability to live in these communities because I don't know about you all I got my property tax like you know the the certificate the other day I was like um this is important work that needs to be done and we needs to be know by all of us and I I also want to say I have a rising first who actually is in uh Lacy's class uh or one of Lacy's kids classes um so I I mean I absolutely share these concerns with all of you thanks Judy I'm I'm sorry Dr Suter did you want I just I just wanted to make a point of clarity The Architects have been to our schools and many of our schools are in elementary do not have footings that would support a secondary level going on so that option has been investigated the reason that the Littleton School was chosen is because they have additional area space to build onto so we have been diligent we have been looking but when you look at a schools at the elementary level that do not have the proper footings for a secondary story it's pretty difficult so that's why we are putting our efforts into phase one at Littleton School phase two at Littleton School and there is a phase three which we haven't talked about but we will at some point thank you Judy um I was fortunate enough to be a teacher in this district and I taught Elementary and I know how class size is important I mean I've had kids in my class I had 18 one year then when year I had 25 and I taught second grade it's tough but you do it and you know Dr stutter is familiar with Elementary he worked that that level he knows it's not something that we want to do to hurt the children so I think that we need to like step down a little bit and Trust his Judgment at that point I taught at Mount Taber school and there was a time when we needed to build on to mount Taber school I was the last room and they built on which was wonderful you know for a while we were great but now things are starting to rev up again but we were able to build up cuz there was room to decide so we didn't have to go up we went over I mean that was very fortunate but know that nobody wants to hurt our children I mean my three children went through all the schools in Paran they had class sizes that were small they had class sizes that were large you know it's hard on the teacher I will say that you know I taught second grade it was tough but you know you got to do what you got to do and I know that in the end Dr Suter will use his judgment and only do what he feels is the right thing and the best thing for our kids how is I just wanted to we keep talking about the Littleton Edition but the plan for the Littleton addition is to help move some of the kids from other elementary schools into Littleton to relieve pressure in other schools so while the addition is going up at Littleton it is not only going to affect the houses that are districted to Littleton right that's an important point agre and I i' just like to add that um even though you know even though you might think um that I don't want anybody to think that anybody's lashing back out at anybody um I did say this also on on Mon on Tuesday as um an elected official is accountable for what goes on in their respective office it is definitely appropriate to question and verify we can disagree with someone without ever making it personal and I I am grateful to see the community here I would love for the community to be here all the time asking questions you know verifying that we're doing it you know we we do like to answer the questions you know we do you know it's like we we do the work of the people we that's that's what we you know that's what we run for that's what we've been elected for and though we have even though board members are held to very high ethic standards that municipal government is not I can tell you that we will try and give you as much information as we legally can at any point and again I am very very happy for everyone that is here and please continue to come and please continue to send you know you're not going to like every answer you know but one of and you don't have to trust us because you know you guys don't know us personally but but we know each other and we don't always agree and it's not like we we tummy with each other or anything like that okay but like I said before we don't have to you don't have to like someone to work with them and I can tell you that the nine board members that sit on this board are professional and we make sure that we ask the right questions of the administration and we don't make it easy for them and that's why we respect them so much because we know that we don't make it easy for them and time after time they do not disappoint but again thank you for being here thanks c um I can't speak for everybody on the board but you can trust the fact that I'm telling you the truth and I will tell you the truth I can't speak for the other board members but I know them very well and I expect them and I and I know that they'll be telling you the truth as well you might not like what you're going to hear but you're going to get the truth thank you Michelle I was just going to highlight that um again in follow to uh vice president Golder we do like your questions we do want to answer them for those who are not here who cannot ask them there are other means to submit questions we have an FAQ that is out there on our website so you can see what questions have been asked and what answers have been provided if you don't see your question there ask it Y and we will provide you with an answer as best we can as Dr s said we will give you the best information we have available at that point in time there is no one up here you know twisting the facts we are going to post the details that we have available and you will get the facts from us that are available at that very moment uh thank you I just have a couple of comments um did you know that the the 27th best ranked School District in the state of New Jersey 27 out of hundreds and the decisions we make are always going to be in the best interest of our of our students um not because we want to have the 27th best ranked School District New Jersey um badge to to to pin on our chests but because we con we're concerned about your kids um Mike both kids went through the the district and I want to see kids who are coming to the district now have at least the excent the same excellent educational um programs that we had when my kids were in school um to to the nice lady with the purple dressed with the black U the black sweater made a couple of comments um Nicole Nicole thank you very much I apologize um I think you may you alluded to that we kind of just woke up yesterday and and said oh these all these housing units being built um and some of my colleagues somewhat addressed that that's not in fact the case at all um in fact the planning for Littleton um goes back years to just be able to do phase one six six classrooms see if a phase two of seven classrooms is viable because we knew enrollment was going to increase not this school year slightly next school year but our demography report lays out how that increase is expected to go um we've also and perhaps we've not communicated this as well as we could have explored numerous additional way ways to house students um we talked with developers we had our Architects visit along with some board members of the Administration vacon Office Buildings in town to see if we can convert those into a school um Office Buildings and school buildings were are not built the same so that was very cost prohibitive we've looked at mobile trailers uh We've considered referendums knowing that I think everyone of the most recent referendums in Morris County has failed taxpayers don't have an appetite with high inflation to pay more taxes un you know and I I understand that um so we we are going to continue to look at everything that we can possibly uh find to not pack classrooms um it's not our intent um and I I also want to address some things and I do want to make a statement um just for clarification the and I I I think Nicole it was you that alluded to political aspirations of board members and there were some things written um in social media about that and you know personally uh over the last 10 years I have been asked numerous times by mayor Barbaro numerous times by councilman neglia numerous times by former council members Gran Yani and toiro and most recently council member Mella to run for Town Council my answer has always been a polite no uh I have no political aspirations above what I'm doing here um I don't want to be a Town Council person I enjoy being a board education members my 15 15th or 16th year doing this so for me when I assertively defend the position of the Board of Education to whomever it is that has a counter opinion it's not motivated motivated by politics in the least but when misinformation is out there in the public um I I'm going to address it and I this is exhausting uh I I am not an adversarial person by nature and to to do this publicly um and to confront people publicly is just not in my normal nature and it's exhausting um we should be talking about the first day of school coming up in a few days but here here we are um you know 1515 someone said is going to start leasing in December we can find a way to house the students but it's a pilot program there's no Revenue behind those kids so how do we hire teachers how do we provide technology how do we how do we transport those students without the funding even if we can place them in classrooms it becomes very difficult to do that that's why we're so anxious to get back into meaningful negotiations with the township and as I said um there this may be addressed on a a State Legislative basis at some point to to share this pilot Revenue because right now um towns aren't compelled to do so I just I want to again go back to this this audit because the the mayor is is now using this audit and the Spectre of um the Spectre of the school district not being good storage of taxpayer money I think was his quote and we we've gone out of our way and will continue to go out of our way to be as transparent as we possibly can with information um I I'm not sure I know of any other way than you know a State Certified Public School auditor who's looking at our um Financial transactions and processes to to do that but I do I do want to make a distinction of why we push back to the town um you know the mayor says what are we hiding well we're not hiding anything we're being as transparent as we can but I do I do want to spend a minute talking about how Municipal governments and school boards work in New Jersey uh the laws of the state of New Jersey provide a clear separation of powers between the authority and governance granted to school districts and the authority and governance granted to the township the New Jersey statute's annotated title 18a covers all authority of a board of education and how the education system functions school boards report and receive their guidance and regulations through the New Jersey Department of Education the New Jersey statutes annotated title 40 cover all authority and governance governance of local municipal government and how they operate cities and towns such as parcion are constrained exclusively by the authority of title 40 and receive their guidance through the New Jersey Department of Community off s these two statutes clearly demarcate that the mayor and Council run the township of parsipany Troy Hills and the parcion Troy Hill Hills Board of Education runs the school district again there is full separation of responsibility governance reporting structure and budgeting there are only a few places where the municipality and the school district by law must cooperate first local governments must collect property taxes for all other entities that rely on these taxes for their budgets this includes school districts counties open space trust fire districts Etc local governments must must must pay a school 100% of the taxes that collects to fund their approved budget even if the municipality does not collect 100% of all property taxes in other words if the town has a tax collection rate of 95% they still must by law pay 100% of the school district share now in addition to that over the years the township of parcion and the Board of Education have entered into shared services agreements for things like school resource uh officers uh and other shared services and we're anxious to have a conversation to expand those we're not just looking for a handout of pilot revenues to help us we want to understand how these two groups that represent all of the residents of parity can collaborate to make everyone's lives better more cost effective and more efficient but it does take two sides to have a conversation the mayor has absolutely no Authority over the independently elected Board of Education none he is diverting attention away from his decisions with developers that will strain the Township's resources and infrastructures the fire districts have no idea in some cases how they're going to properly service the town with all of the new residential developments that's a problem uh I absolutely implore you to contact Mayor barberio and council members call him at 973 263 4262 email him at the action.net attend the next town council meeting on September 10th at 700 p.m. at town hall or write on his Facebook or Instagram pages and tell him to stop his harassment and get back to meaningful negotiations with this board of education we are here we are open we are receptive friends the pity school district and the pity Boe operate within the parameters established for it by Statute as you saw earlier the district is subject to a legitimately independent audit every year that has found no deficiencies for the past several years the district also undergoes rigorous County and State uh assessments and oversight to ensure we are compliant this district is rated the 27th best school district New Jersey out of hundreds of districts and we are fortunate to have a comp competent administrators and staff supportive parents and wonderful children who aren't a burden but a blessing mayor come back to the negotiating table we're here and waiting thank you okay any other comments before we uh move to end the meeting no no we got to vote Yes I know we do so uh roll call vote on superintendent bullet number two items 1 through 52 with theendum items 53 and uh to 77 and readings may I have a motion please motion seconded by Tim roll call please Mrs Abraham yes Mr baros yes Mrs kogan yes Mrs mayor yes Mr Rea yes m Mrs Chapelle yes Dr Wright yes Mrs Golder yes Mr choa uh yes motion to adjourn Judy seconded by Michelle all in favor I