yes oh me sure yep calling the meeting to order in a roll call please thank you for that Mr Donnie M quack here Miss McKelly here Mr mmud here miss Brogan here please join me in a flag salute and Pledge of Allegiance I pursuant to the requirements of the open public meetings act advanced notice has been given to the Star Ledger the record and the clerk of the village of Ridgewood in addition notices were posted in the office of the board secretary and in all school buildings welcome everyone it's a nice crowded room and it's wonderful to have the students so Dr schores good evening everyone it's wonderful to have you all tonight I hope that uh this first week of March is uh treating you all well we certainly have some warm weather but it's definitely some uh some wet weather um but tonight we are going to start with a really nice presentation from some special visitors and student representatives from Willard Elementary School we have with us tonight Nicholas jacket Minka cashen Bach Blake Morrison and Katherine Park thank you thank you all so much for being here we're really excited to hear from you first I wanted to invite up uh principal of Willard School Miss Carolyn Hoffman if she wanted to say a few words or introduce her her students thank you I know they're very excited to be here to share with you all the things that are happening at Willard School and these are just four of the members of our leadership committee which consists of fifth graders who are all really working hard together under the guidance of Mr Ang and Mr feifer to do great things and um share kindness and really help Willard become a great place so without further Ado go ahead BL all right guys so you have a microphone which you can pass back and forth as you give give your presentation and it looks like Blake we're gonna start with you good evening we are the Willard leadership Representatives my name is Blake Catherine n and Minka we we are excited to tell you about some of the amazing things that are happening at Ward school we have many Willard events happening throughout the year and I'm here to talk about the current and past activities in the month of September we held our back to school night picnic families and kids came at night to play games and have fun throughout October November and December fifth graders got the chance to be a part of Panther Marketplace to create and sell products for school and parents they donated part of their profits by the best best part is the kids got to keep whatever money they made last month rual Public Library held the reading marathon where students read every day to get a Ben and Jerry's coupon we also held our science fair last week and it was fun to see so many different experiments in April the talent show will begin where students in fifth grade will get to Showcase their talents to any parents and students this month Al also includes circus week the entire school will learn some circus skills and perseverance the fifth graders put on a show for the school and parents at night where Willer always has fun and interesting events throughout the year Willard is a great school because we have a lot of community building to help uplift our students and staff at the beginning of the week we have a show called wake up Willard to fill everyone in on the latest news at school it is run by Mrs Hoffman and Mr feifer the show includes segments such as morning mugshot joke time teacher features and mindful moments of the week we all know the wakeup song played at the beginning by by heart this this year we continue to have many clubs in Ward School including game club Cambodia club and panther pickle ball Cambodia Club is devoted to helping students in Cambodia and donating supplies pickle ball has been a hit at Willard over 40 kids have signed up to learn how to play even our Willard teachers are learning how to play finally our Willard leadership team made up of our fifth graders students continues to bring the word Community together we meet to discuss us how to make our school a better place we also have our safety patrol helping our students each morning as well as our technology crew who helps set up for assemblies and events Ward is a special place because of all the things we do to build a solid community in addition to the learning we do in our classrooms we have special assemblies that help make learning fun and exciting some of the assemblies that we have at Willard are author visits a couple of weeks ago Jaclyn Davies who is well known for a book titled Lemonade War came to our school to talk about her books and teach us about literature and life as a writer another cool assembly that happened is when John pin came to Willard and spoke to the entire school and gave advice on speaking up and the importance of being kind he also pulled a dictionary with his bare hands those are some entertaining assemblies that happen at Willard there are also separate assemblies for each grade so everyone has something unique to look forward to for example third graders get to watch an interact with a weather reporter who actually lives in town fourth graders learned about science through interacting and learning about chemical reactions and fifth graders will have their assembly sometime in April with a colonial presenter named Jonathan C there are so many fun extra experience we get to have at Willard with assemblies at Willard School we practice giving back to our community to start off in the beginning of the school year Willard did the Thanksgiving food drive we donated some regular Thanksgiving food some of those item items included canned corn cranberry sauce gravy and mashed potatoes and much more we donated more than 600 of any of those items and give it gave it all to the Ridgewood food pantry next we did the Kelly crean coat drive for the cold month of December we collected coats to donate each to the many people who are less fortunate who can't afford Co coats for the cold months last month we during the week of the Super Bowl we donated cans of soup and gave it all to the Ridgewood food pantry Willard raised over 500 cans of soup the community service we do certainly shows that Willard is a caring school that helps others in need on behalf of the Willard School Community we would like to thank the Ridgewood board of education for all of their support We wish all Ridgewood students and staff a great last few months of school thank you I just gonna say nicely done thank you very much Willard is a great school and you're doing a lot so thank you for that well before you all go we'd love to get a nice little picture with all of you if you don't mind parents if you want to come up and join us and and snap a picture please feel free and we'd love to uh love to take a shot for all of us too we'll take a picture over here in front of our uh our banner and we love to invite the board members to come up and join us guys all right and next I want to invite up for a very special recognition I want to invite uh Mr Penza the principal of Ridge Elementary School who is going to speak on behalf and introduce Miss Dana Higgins who is retiring this year uh we are so blessed to have Mrs Higgins here serving our school district for so many years and we're really looking forward to honoring you tonight miss siggins good evening everyone dear Dr Schwarz uh Mr Freeman and our esteemed Board of Education in the entire Ridgewood Community this evening it's my pleasure to honor a true professional a colleague a friend to all as she takes the next steps in her journey and of course these moments are bittersweet there's an undeniable Joy of celebrating the remarkable career of one of our most cherished colleagues embarking on retirement but there's also an unmistakable feeling of sadness knowing that we have to say farewell to someone who embodies the spirit of rdge elementary school this evening we honor your amazing journey it was a journey filled with kindness knowledge humor and Boundless Energy tonight we celebrate you our beloved Ed specialist you've been the heart and soul of our Learning Community for 32 years with 34 total years teaching Miss Dana Higgins you are a rock star how do I even begin to express the Gratitude we feel for your dedication and service you've been an advisor a teacher a mentor a role model you're the Cornerstone of our special education department you are the engine driving countless students through challenges and triumphs your wisdom and experience have been invaluable to us all outside the classroom it's your infectious spirit and Electro Magnetic Personality that we will miss the most you are our social butterfly fluttering through the Halls spreading joy and laughter wherever you go your knack for turning even the most pedestrian moments into Cherished Memories is a testament to you you're the MC of every social event and your commentary is topical sentimental and quite honestly legendary and what is the secret to your Boundless Energy whether it's volunteering for every event spearheading initiatives or simply lending a listening ear you never stop going above and beyond the Call of Duty your commitment to Ridge School in our community is unparalleled so as you embark on this new adventure I have no doubt that you will approach retirement with the same fervor that has defined your career while we will miss you in the building each day flitting from class to class with knowledge and a smile rest assured that your spirit will live on in the halls of bridge school as we celebrate you today Miss Mrs Higgins let us honor not only the end of an era but also the beginning of a well-deserved retirement filled with family friends laughter love and new adventures May each day be as bright as the smiles that you have brought to each of our faces and may your retirement be as remarkable As You Are thank you very much uh it is definitely Bittersweet as I can't imagine a day without coming to Ridgewood since I've done it for many many years and education is not only in my family but and I was the only educator of my siblings there's three of us my mom and dad were both Educators and my dad was a uh board member for a long time in the town I grew up in in saille and uh he also was the president at times and know it's a tough job because of all the pros and cons that go with that responsibility so um I can't thank you all enough for the support in a district that really has a rich Heritage and offerings for their teachers to grow and learn and I consider myself a learner even now and people ask are you thinking about the end I'm like no I just kind of go each day and we do what we do and learn along the way and hope that that is infectious to the kids that I interact with and the staff that there a bunch of are all here and uh supporting me as always so thank you so much for the journey and thank you so much Mrs Higgins and thank you to so many I mean your your your the impression you made on the district um is is well known uh but the the the fact you have so many colleagues coming here to honor you and support you as well such a testimony to the what you meant to what you mean to the school and to the culture and we wish you all the best would you like to take a photo would you like to take oh I'm sorry yes of course do not please do not leave we are gonna take a photo and you must hold the flowers yes they're beautiful it's so nice to see the bridge School staff here too so thank you and next we have our presentation our student representative report uh with from Miss Sarah bronstein of Ridgewood High School thank you for being here miss bronstein of course thank you for having me um to begin a lot's happened since I've last been here so this is quite a long one but all good things um the AP environmental science students were brought to the Ardsley Curling Club to try out curling with Mr Lou and three ACC members I had the honor of being invited to this but unfortunately couldn't make it but I heard it was an amazing time and Mr Lou even celebrated his birthday with everyone uh the quiz V qualified for Nationals uh French Club had a crep making for its members uh seniors had their Fashion Show on Sunday which I had the opportunity to be a part of it was a fun opportunity for local Brands to show up their clothes while the senior class can also help raise money for prom and PG um it's one of those things that sort of write a passage for seniors and I see why it was a lot of fun and I know they raised a lot of money I think the Taylor Swift tickets went for a lot of money um the rhs new players has their Shrek performance next Thursday to Sun uh sorry two weeks from now on Thursday to Sunday with all four shows already sold out I also have the privilege of getting tickets to that so I'm very excited uh Ridgewood just finished up sophomore Focus sophomore Focus offers sophomore's outlets and also the best ways to repair and become upper classman while also working on scheduling for junior year uh scheduling from sophomore to junior year becomes very important because this sort of um is the stepping stone to what you'll actually be taking senior year as well uh there will also be a virtual sophomore parent meeting on March 7th at 7M for parents this will help them get familiar with score and other things for um tracking College's junior year sorry the aquapella groups went around the school singing various Valentine theme music on Valentine's Day this is one of so many students favorite days of the year the acabellas and maroon men worked hard all day to sing to all those who bought a singing gram for their friends or teachers in addition the rap cities performed in the Little Theater during lunch it's always a very vibrant and fun day and I know all the students had a great time this year the various rhs trips have all returned students that went to Spain had a wonderful time seeing and getting to spend time with their host families students in Switzerland got to sightsee and visit the epon water Factory Chocolate Factory and much more the Nashville trip went to see performances at the grandal auy and also got a backstage tour there they also visited the Country Music Hall of Fame where the choir performed and saw historic outfits and instruments the orchestra also got to perform and saw an orchestra performance at Belmont University and they even got to record music at the RCA Studio B which is very cool Asian Fest was this past Friday and Saturday for parents and uh siblings as well dozens of students performed various dances skits and uh performances around their cultures and ancestry students got to go during class to watch and cheer on their peers another one of my favorite days of the year these students work so hard and the performances are amazing my personal favorite is the K-pop and the fan dance uh Deca States is this week the DECA members are currently in Atlanta in Atlantic City and have been working hard on their posters and trifolds and getting ready to present this week project interact as always has news they had volunteers helping out at the SSA monthly food drive on Saturday the 24th additionally during the snowstorm on the 13th several project interact members went out into their communities and helped shovel snow for their neighbors members also set up and worked at the super science Saturday which in itself was very successful rhs will also have a college fair on the 19th of March from 7 to 9: in gym 1 I personally went to one of these as a junior and they're very helpful there are many many colleges that go this year there are about 60 colleges attending and rs is expecting more and they're from all distances I remember at my personal one there was Arizona State and Elon as well as Cornell and r po college so there is a wide array and it's a very good opportunity for juniors to get ahead um NJ GPA for juniors is next week from March 11th to the 14th and it's a state assessment for graduation on those days the 9th 10th and 12th grade have a delayed opening schedule which I will personally be enjoying um I had to do the NJ GPA last year so now it's my turn to have the sleep in um so I'm very excited for that uh super sign Saturday as I just said was this past Saturday and it was very successful um I got to volunteer to help set up and I know kids had an amazing time a very big week for sports the girls swim won leagues and won the sectional state championship something that has not been accomplished since 2011 Unfortunately they lost in the semi-finals for the state championship but still had one of the most impressive seasons in rhs history hockey won the state quarterfinal game against Ramapo and unfortunately lost in the semi-finals against Randolph girls basketball team beat JFK High School for the first round of states and had their sectional quarterfinals on the 26th against W West Orange was down unfortunately lost the boys had a big game to win sectionals against East Orange um and the score ended up being 57 to 54 I was in attendance and it was very exciting tomorrow they have their semi-final group four state champion game against Elizabeth at Elizabeth and in huge news uh Luke Pash a junior at rhs has become number one in the state um he ran at the state meet of Champions with an 8592 mile which is almost unheard of the last time that was um the last time that was accomplished was in the 1970s which is very impressive and the girls 4 by8 um got seventh in the state so big week for All rhs Sports and all fun activities thank you so much for that excellent report Miss pronin we appreciate you and your time feel free to stick around with us but also feel free to return to your studies if you'd like to head on out after that open the U microphone for public comment uh please keep in mind the uh four minutes and please introduce yourself and your address good evening uh Lori Weber 235 sou iring Street and um I imagine that the board might announce this this evening but since it hasn't been announced yet and I wanted to say something about it we've had some good news uh we have now established uh a lawful path forward to reestablishing our lawfully required annual Board of Education elections and uh it's been a long time coming uh I really appreciate that and I want to point out that excuse me I had uh approached this with the board back toward the end end of 2022 and when uh this board was I don't know how it came to be that we had a reorg meeting uh in January of 2023 without an election I spoke again and the board the board attorney was present the board attorney said that he was going to look into whether we had to do anything through the courts and yet an entire year passed before he actually took any action and it should be pointed out that that was action that he could have taken at any time there was no magic to this the only magic were two board members who kept this topic in the Forefront of board discussion throughout that entire year and I don't think that it is appropriate to overlook and th not thank Miss hu Quack and Mr sarab Don because the two of you continued to bring this issue up throughout that year and I as a member as a defenseless member of the community who only gets to speak for four minutes at a time these things don't happen unless someone goes to court or we have board members who care enough to about the community to give us back our lawfully required ability to vote so I want to thank you both for that and acknowledge both of you who are keeping this topic alive um on a much smaller note but nonetheless important um I noticed that the um the way that um board agendas and minutes had changed on the uh on the website and unfortunately with that change we have lost all of the agendas and board minutes from July 2023 through the end of December 2023 uh the new format only gives from January on so uh I know they're still around somewhere and I would appreciate it if you would find a way to put them back up for anyone who might need to access them sometimes the community likes to see history when they're looking into a topic and all of the history that you provide going back in some cases to 2007 or8 is actually helpful for community members who are newer and looking to see the history of a given topic it's a great way for people to become familiarized with how the Board of Education Works so I want to thank you for keeping all of those things up on and available and ask you to put those 2023 items back up thank you let's see I think we have some uh people there say um an's phone good evening can you hear me hi this is Anne loving at 342 South Irving Street I wanted to bring to your attention a situation regarding Steven's field where it connects with North Irving Street I have friends that live on North Irving Street who told me really quite to my horror that they regularly have lacrosse balls that come from the field across the street and onto their property in fact my one friend told me that they have collected some buckets of these balls obviously this is very dangerous not only um to their property to their cars windows and so on but also to their own personal health because because they could get hit with one of these balls they have apparently tried repeatedly to get fencing or netting put up all the way along North Irving Street and the field so that these balls can't come over and they have hit roadblock after roadblock with this they mentioned that the village engineer Chris rudower had said something about the D not allowing it and so on recent some sort of flimsy netting was put up that's actually sagging down and she told me that the balls come over that netting she also said that because the netting is low and inadequate some of the kids are intentionally hitting it over just you know as a sport or whatever so I'm hoping that since it is a board of ed field that you will recognize that there are houses directly across from the street and they actually don't have very deep front yards so these people can't park their cars at the end of the driveway and they are at risk just even being in their houses thank you so much for looking into this thank you next uh Dorthy Dorothy bortos I I have nothing to say oh your hand was raised that was I calling on you I'm sorry it must have been a mistake that's fine sorry no problem next is Peter Molton hi Peter Molton 294 West End Avenue I want to start tonight with um great thanks to Mrs Higgins and she's worked with uh my children now for a number of years and uh I didn't see her in the crowd still but hopefully she hears this um the uh unwavering appreciation for her support of our children and um and how great she's been to our community and so uh thank you to Mrs Higgins and uh wanted to support I said to my my wife what Mr P said was VE was very uh um uh on point for who Mrs Higgins was and uh and appreciated those comments um some one item that I wanted to bring up and I I I don't know if has been discussed at all amongst the board that came up during the election period was possibly expanding the board if it be to seven or nine seats and so not sure if there's going to be any any conversation in regards to this at the meeting but wanted to put this out there as an item that that uh to be bringing up as a a conversation item hopefully uh hopefully moving forward thank you thank you I think that was all oh no yeah no there's no one else great okay uh program may just give a couple quick ackn absolutely um just a just a couple of quick acknowledgements um uh Mrs Weber asked about um the availability of agendas and minutes on the website I believe she's talking with Miss corus right now possibly about this very topic um but we do have we are trying to reconcile our desire to make documents publicly available while still uh complying with uh with the Ada accessibility for websites so um we're still still working on that in Pro process and we'll we'll we'll discuss that again did you did you want to speak on that Miss corus uh can we can you just speak into a microphone if you're going to speak this is Miss corus our public information officer for the district hi everybody um not to I just want to make sure that people weren't confused nothing was removed from the website so if you go to the new page that I've created that's more of a table that has agenda Minutes video by date at the very top of that page it says for previous meetings go to the bottom of the page and then there is a link to previous agendas previous meeting minutes and previous videos which are still stored in the old format but the links are there to all of those years that were there before nothing has been removed okay thank you very much I appreciate that uh Dr Schwarz while we are on that topic um I just want to comment we we used to send agenda on Fridays as an attachment um in email right so now we are sending a link to this so when we edit that agenda then the previous version is link breaks no the link link basically just brings them to this page there's no link in the email for a specific agenda or a specific agenda so what you're seeing all the time on the website is the most recent version so if there are edits or changes between Friday afternoon and Monday those edits are not visible to the users so people would not know so it's it's a public record once an email is sent out once the agenda goes out it's a public record we cannot remove a public record record and replace it we can if we are editing then all the version should be available there oh W all the versions right so the um so the Friday version cannot be overwritten by the Monday version we should have access anybody should be able to see what what was sent on Friday and also it might be just a little bit more expedient to have the PDF link directly in the email instead of having um person click on another link that takes you out of the email you know just removes that one extra hurdle to to review the agenda so I I prer the having the PDF directly attached to the email to the agenda you're saying as a member of the public or as a board member as a member of the public do a board members get in advance so it you know I'm I'm thinking more as a community public matter thank you for making those points uh we will certainly take a look at that we certainly want to make sure everyone has access um one of the things that we did change for this meeting particularly is uh there are a couple of items that were retracted so those just showed up the strikethrough so the documents still there although that still show strike through but if anything was removed or added between you would be able to check it then exactly I understand that so if there are changes to keep to to retain a copy of the previously released version would be helpful and Miss qua I'm hearing your request being that um that if we could uh if you're your request is to um instead of having a link having an notification sent that a that a that the agenda has been posted to actually have the PDF attached to the email that's my preference or a link or a link but you know sometimes the link pies you out and you sometimes want I want to stay within my my l little web page okay we'll take a look at how that behaves all right so thank you very much thank you all for that feedback um and then with respect to miss Loving's comments this this was brought to my attention by a Community member we are evaluating it it's important to note that Stevens Field is officially closed for school and related use so I think this is a this is uh individual uh individual um young people in the community members who are who are using the field um I don't know all the history of the uh of The netting and lacrosse balls but it's something that that I know we've received an email on and we are looking into and we'll be able to have some uh some more uh feedback on that some more conclusions on that shortly and I think one resident called in at the coffee also yeah I've heard about it from a couple times so we hope to have a some sort of a conclusion on this shortly thank you Miss Broan okay thank you should I proceed with the superintendent report yes all right so just a couple of quick notes in the superintendent report and then I'm going to go ahead and get into the uh presentation of our um of the outcomes of the uh field Athletic Field thought exchange that we held so for starters um just want to let everybody know in the background of things here uh we are of course moving into this spring we're roughly about halfway through the third marking period so this year is going quite quick um as we head into the spring we are wrapping up our winter sports so congratulations to all of our winter athletes and their their many successful Seasons um and we'll be start heading into our spring Seasons as well we're also heading into testing season and I just want to say a quick acknowledgement to any families who might have students uh engaged in standardized testing um you know that I think it's very important to just reiterate on a reg on a periodic basis that um State Testing is not the be all end all measurement of school quality or student learning or student achievement but it is an important measure so I encourage families to encourage their children to take it seriously we do use the data that comes out of those assessments so this includes the njsla as well as the ngj GPA but data is important to us we report it out here as a board and we do use the outputs of those data as part of our picture as to how we're doing and how we're progressing so uh so I do encourage everyone to be well rested and to take the assessment seriously um because that data does matter um I also wanted to share that I'm aware that the spring season is nearly upon and the weather is not really cooperating for our field cleanup and I know for our uh for our uh spring athletes specifically those who might be using our fields that this is a a cause of duress we've been talking about this quite a bit obviously it's the focus of our thought exchange conversation that we're going to have um but we've also uh been communicating around what our contingencies will be if the fields are not quite ready so fortunately uh our provider has or vendor has been able to begin the cleanup but there is still considerably more to do does not look like the weather is cooperating this week we do have contingency plans in place to try to give our students uh the most seamless start to their season even though that may mean that will likely mean it looks like at this point uh being transported to other locations potentially we will be in communication as we get closer to the start of the Season as to whether or not how important and how How likely that will be uh we are focusing first on Stadium Field and then we'll be focused on Stevens Field as well so at least we can hopefully get one going uh but in the meantime we have uh been looking at our funding sources to ensure that we can uh make some we can uh again ensure that the season starts on time and hopefully does not uh involve too many setbacks if any um and then also in the background it's important to note that with uh all the many things that we all care about we focus on in schools one of the most critical processes that we do as a board and as a school district is develop our annual budget and that has been a major point of focus for us behind the scenes for the last few months this week I had an opportunity to meet with our business department and particularly Miss cot our business official to go over uh the state of our budget for next year uh and where we are in terms of understanding what our budget health is and our budget Trends have been uh I want to I want to thank um Mr mammood and Miss qua who are part of our finance committee who joined us on Friday to go over an initial uh look as to what we where we see ourselves going into next year um I want to commend Miss cot and uh and her team for providing us with some real budget Clarity which I I understand the district has not had in a little little little while um and the news is generally speaking that um we are in the in the not too distant future facing some real severe budgetary constraints in that uh we saw some nice increases in state funding this year as we anticipated as part of the state's correction corrective formula for reestablishing appropriate funding based on the state's funding formula but this is the last year of Corrections um everyone knows that we're in an inflationary environment so the cost of all of our major budget drivers are increasing and yet we are uh we are working within a 2% tax levy increase it is Our intention to stay within that 2% tax levy increase this year um but we will but it will be it will be tight it will be making our budgets will become Tighter and Tighter for us to be able to maintain that so um in the short term it looks like we will we will not we'll be have minimal minimal negative impacts next year and possibly even some uh some some improvements on a few in a few areas uh but we will we have to be mindful that going into next year and next year's budget process really almost as soon as we close this budget we will need to be having some very real conversations about long medium and long-term cost saving strategies um sorry but the um Aid is proposed right now it's not the budget is not approved yet right so that will that may change depending on States when I shows R8 has been announced as part of the as part of the governor's budget address yes but we but but there there are there are several factors that are inlux and to be clear just as far as dates for those who are interested in learning more about our budget we will be doing work between this meeting and next meeting with our with our board committees to have our budget prepared for presentation of the preliminary budget hearing which will take place on March 18th we also will have our final budget presentation in which the formal final budget will be adopted and I'm what's the DAT is in early May oh I'm sorry it is right before the early May so it's April 29th thank you all very much so please mark your calendars with those dates if you're interested in hearing more details around this specific conversation any notes on that while while we're on the topic and know we'll talk about it a little more when the Committees come up all right so if you just give me one second I'm going to pull up the presentation actually Dr Schwarz um while while we're waiting for s that presentation to pull up um I don't think we discussed this at the finance meeting but um if the preliminary budget is scheduled for March 18th will we um and the public have an opportunity to look at it um be because March 18th is the adoption right of the preliminary budget so there should be is there an opportunity for it to be presented to capture the feedback before we then adopt the preliminary Budget on March 18th so so we will be uh working directly with you as a facilities committee I'm sorry finance committee to determine exactly how we want to go about doing that so as board members you'll certainly have an opportunity to review those financials this week and then we will uh figure out together how we want to proceed in terms of releasing information to the public got it thank you so much okay so onto our presentation regarding the state of uh of our Fields um we used a new platform that the district has purchased a sub subscription to this year called f exchange uh the program is not new to me uh we did evaluate several different public engagement platforms but the reason that we decided to look into these platforms is because I had um I found my prior School Community which I led uh really benefited from this particular uh software tool which enables individuals to submit thoughts but then also more importantly rate the thoughts of others and get feedback on their own thoughts and then um and then the analytics from all the ratings of the different thoughts can be used to help uh make observations about trend Trends within all of that feedback so that might have sounded a little complicated but I'm going to explain it as I present to you what we did so we proposed the question when evaluating the challenges surrounding the flooding and limited availability of RPS athletic fields what perspectives should the district consider I'm sorry we have the old date on this we'll have to we'll just we'll clean that up real quick so in this thought in this in this uh in this thought exchange pre uh exercise we had 1,381 participants now those participants are logged anonymously and it's mostly I believe collected via IP address so there could be some redundancy in participants but this the system in our experience my experience generally does a pretty good job of uh separating out um um keeping track of when people use multiple times so this is pretty pretty I would say it's safe to say that we had over a thousand unique participants in this survey practice we had over a thousand thoughts submitted and we had over 20 we had almost 20,000 ratings submitted as well uh to give you an idea of how people uh check the boxes when they when they uh participated we had 74% of participants identify themselves as a parent of a current student 20% respond identify themselves as parents of a former student 2% were students 11% were staff members 8% were alumni 25% were community members and 2% said other and of course obviously you could check multiple boxes and then as far as students for those who were students we asked them to identify themselves by grade and you can see that a majority of our students well we had a pretty good distribution of students actually we had wide variety of students in grades K through five and then a wide variety of students in grades 9 through 12 and we had a pretty close similar amount in grades 6 through 8 um and again this was this was representative not just of students but of parents as well so this is the parents were representing what grade their students were in uh this is a breakdown of participation in terms of how long people have lived in Ridgewood so we certainly had the Lion Share of folks who have been here for quite some time although we had some newer folks join us in this survey as well uh what a simple feature that that but that can give you a little bit of a snapshot as to what some of the what to expect in the presentation is a simple word CL uh which basically lists words by the frequency by which they come up in the comments and you can see uh long-term fix is probably something that's going to come out a lot uh as those words were prominently featured but you can see there's all kinds of around the edges all kinds of other terms that were used uh repeatedly so first we're going to show you some of the uh highest rated thoughts and then we'll show you some different thoughts by topic and then we'll show you some analysis of the themes that came up and the differences that we we saw so and I'm sorry if this is a little small for some of you but uh but the presentation is available um uh the presentation will be available on the website as well so you can go back and read this so the highest rated thoughts that we saw and again these are the thoughts with the highest level of cons consensus because these are the ones that are rated um by people um with the highest ratings and you can see the number of ratings along each on the side so each of these had 22 22 and 19 participant ratings we considering the persistent flooding as a new Norm the district should prioritize long-term engineering solutions for sustainable fields that was our highest rated response also a long-term solution should be implemented recurring flooding issues causes too too many disruptions and then fix the athletic fields permanently please so obviously these are the things that consistently receive the highest scoring the sense of a permanent fix um again high high ranks for long-term solution that was one of the topics that came up another but there are some other perspectives and priorities that came up so Health was something that came up pretty often these were typically brought up by folks who had concerns about artificial turf so student and user safety came up um and that if we are if it's consist if our fields are consistently degraded by flood inundation then they don't perform at their original specifications to it's important to note that we do perform something called gmax testing to make sure that they can still absorb shock even after they've absorbed a considerable amount of silt and we do not open our Fields until they pass a certain score in the gmax testing uh but this is somewhat true uh there's concerns about pous Grand ground contamination um and uh and that we've had have that in some other sites as well um we do know that uh that the um rubber fill in artificial turf um does contain toxic substances so that's certainly a concern short and long-term environment health and safety cost um there's also a lot of cost concerns around this as well so this health is mentioned here but you're going to see that cost is another concern we'll get to that in a second sorry Mark can you just tell me understand of the 22 23 in parentheses is that just 22 users rate rated it correct that's how many individuals rated that so yeah you us see 19,000 rankings but only 22 per topic because it's so much spread out that when people are because there are more than thousand thoughts that's right so when they're looking at it they're only R like like a few that people can rank yeah so the question has to do with how the algorithm within thought Exchange works and because there are a thousand thoughts uh there is a regular rotation of the different thoughts so not everyone rates every thought so even though there is that many participants over a thousand participants each thought only gets somewhere in the ballpark of of depending on depending on how long the thought has been there uh it'll get it'll get uh in this size it's typically 18 or more um but in we there might be a little bit of bias in these having higher scores because they weren't rated as much but nevertheless with in these samples they were rated pretty high who can create a thought any user every user who who logs in can create a thought which is one of the reasons why there's so many thoughts is there a way the system can group kind of similars yeah we'll get to that in a minute so there's also some thoughts that emerged about uh kids needing a reliable place to play so there was a thought that if we do not the general sentiment that if we do not um if we do not uh take care of our fields and have and have a resilient Fields then the kids can't play and and and playing and having a place to play is important for kids there's also some a little bit of a crossover con conversation among those who are interested in returning to Natural Turf and that there's a perception that natural Turf is safer and contains fewer toxins um there's also a topic of the idea of that costing to fix um is offset by the cost to to I'm sorry that's to replace that should say excuse me so there are some concerns that uh repeatedly having to repair our Fields uh is a is a reason why we should consider um a either a large scale solution or some people suggested that we should go to a return to Natural Turf again on a perception it would drain quicker and that it would be uh safer as well and and more ready more easily to play on without having exorbitant cost for cleanup so this is where we start getting into more of the algorithmic and AI functions within thought exchange so what thought exchange will do is it will group uh all those different thoughts out there by theme so um this is in no particular ranking this is just in some of the themes that came up to them so cost consideration was something that was repeatedly brought up in fact actually this this might actually be be ranked I don't this is a new feature so I don't I can't explain exactly how this algorithm works but it lists us that number one is cost consideration I will say by review from reviewing these thoughts that this is a constant theme that comes up I know that it's a concern anecdotally from parents and community members who have come to SP uh to speak at board meetings and at superintendent coffees um I will say uh for clarification the fields are insured and we do have a $25,000 deductible per field so I know we've thrown around some scary numbers with this field uh remediation which will probably total somewhere in the ballpark of $300,000 maybe more but our Our obligation is $50,000 nevertheless even $50,000 uh for for a single round of cleanups is something that's a concern and so people are very sensitive the fact that that our current situation costs the district unnecessary uh remediation costs environmental impact has come up uh a variety of times there are concerns about particularly about uh the chemicals contained in the rubber fill and as well as the other materials um and generalized concern around the quality of water in town um athletic needs is another consistent theme that comes up and the fact that uh Athletics are important to many in our community community and certainly to many of our young people and so uh there's there's a a constituency of folks who uh want to prioritize resilient fields which which in many cases are include artificial turf so that way we can have uh we can meet the demands of the community for these athletic spaces uh some safety concerns I said come up uh in the fact that some folks feel as though um the uh that that safety both in terms of the fact that uh environmental contamination is problematic but also safety in in um concerns with with with the fact that um sometimes our athletic fields can be a little bit firmer and not so great for impacts for kids like physical impact on the field and then uh there's Community impact uh and people are aware there's a lot of awareness about the fact that uh our field decisions impact the larger Community now in my experience one of the most important features that thought exchange provides and provides better than any other provider is this analysis of differences within opinions now uh just as a quick note um the way that this had been presented if anyone has seen my prior presentations in my prior District it looks a little different I'm working with the company right now because I'm not uh too pleased with some of the way that they've changed uh their functionality with how these reports are generated so I had to do a little bit of my own work uh to um to adjust uh the slides the way that I want wanted them to give you a sense uh I had to use different screens and the slides didn't come out the way I wanted to but I'll give be able to give you the gist here um but it might my explanation it might not come out ex might be a little wonkier than I want it to be so one of the key features of thought exchange is it will do this analysis where it will identify as Mr mammood rep uh uh queried about before it will identify common thoughts that are had and it and in addition to just common thoughts it will identify common ways that people vote so it will search through their response patterns and it will find groups that are at opposition General at opposition to each other so what I did it does that for multiple different groups but I looked at these different at at the there's five different diff differences analyses and they all are really largely the same thing there's just some subtle subtlety to language so I'm showing you the the most commonly found core difference now you'll notice side a on the left here has 290 folks and side B has 25 F folks so it's important to note that that together they only total about 500 or so folks which means that the other 500 plus individuals who are participating in this didn't necessarily fall as firmly in these two camps but there are these two different groups uh within our community and they vote very consistently they rate these different thoughts very consistently so what this does what thought exchange does is it provides an analysis of differences between where a likes a set of a set of comments or thoughts and Group B does not like that very same set of thoughts similarly uh there is another set of thoughts that group a does not like and Group B does like and that there's there is strong consistency uh between these groups regarding these comments but then what it can also do is it can identify thoughts that both groups A and B do like and groups A and B don't like so the idea is that we can take our groups that have differences and we can identify some common grounds for which to proceed so um I'm I can show you another view in a minute which will actually show you the thoughts um thought exchange has I think they're a little caught up in the AI craze and rather than showing you the specific thoughts uh that that end up um uh that people were voting on it shows you an AI summary so I'll show you the thoughts in a second but I'm going to show you the summary first because this was easier to to include here so first we have side a and side B remember if we go back one second side a is is a little bit larger and side B is a little bit smaller so side a here rated these R uh basically had the following summary of this is the summary of the different thoughts so this says these the responses suggest a preference for natural grass fields over artificial turf and they're citing reasons such as safety for athletes cost Effectiveness and environmental concerns some respondents believe that the focus on athletic fields is excessive and that resources could be better allocated towards improving education quality or other Town needs there's also a call for datadriven decisions with reference to medical advice against Turf uh a few respondents express a lack of concern over field flooding and questions the investments in some sports on the other side where a rated low and B rated High the responses suggest that the district should consider several perspectives when evaluating the challenges surrounding flooding and limited availability of RPS athletic fields these include the necessity of turf fields due to their resistance to flooding and lower maintenance costs the need for more field space to accommodate the high interest in Sports and Outdoor Recreation and the importance of Athletics and children's development the response has also highlighted the potential benefits of turfing other fields to eliminate flooding issues and the need for prevention measures and then this is the part that is usually the most beneficial from the thought exchange output and that is where we have our Common Ground so particularly um the the I'll tell you the low ground is a little hard to interpret because uh the com there was um there were some odd comments that people just didn't respond to positively such as a suggestion that we should clean the fields with a fire hose apparently l so we'll focus on the left on the Common Ground things that everyone felt was were positive so um there was wide broad consensus on the idea that there the responses that we need to emphasize a long-term and sustainable solution to the recurring flooding issues affecting the our athletic fields so the district is urged to accept the frequency of flooding as the new norm and to invest in engineering solutions that ensure The Field's resilience and sustained functionality uh respondents highlighted a wastage of resources on repeated temporary remediation and the inconvenience caused to our students and they also raised concerns about the safety of fields due to degradation by flood inundation here's an AI summary response which is you can read yourself which I just provided because it was an output of the program but then here are the key takeaways that I put together I just that I think are important and I'm happy to hear any other sentiments that anyone has but I think it's important to note that we do have some divisions and although we asked the general topic about what we should take into consideration as we plan to remediate our Fields what this has really done is it's brought to the for a general concern about artificial turf so those who support artificial turf value its durability um of use as a positive benefit to students that really is the primary driver I think most people most athletes too would prefer to play in natural Turf but it's uh it's commonly accepted by some that we will We that artificial turf is necessary to survive the the demands that exist in the modern day uh in a district like Ridgewood where sports are and sports fields are in such high demand um there are others though who Express concern about the environment student and Community member health and cost and some equate and some even equate natural Turf with better recovery from floods not so I don't know I I cannot confirm or deny whether that's true but that is a sentiment that's somehow it is important to recognize that there is consensus um the consensus is around achieving a long-term and sustainable solution that is responsive to quote the new normal of field flooding so uh I would Point everybody back to this February 8th superintendent coffee where we talked about the fields um I provided some commentary on some um potential Solutions at least as far as I can tell with our research but um we do have uh we proposed effectively three concurrent Solutions uh in the presentation I called them short long-term and uh and short medium and long-term Solutions but in reality they're just all things that we have to do at the same time so most immediately we need a place for our students to play despite some of our concerns about the possible impact of the fields on the environment and potentially on student health uh our fields are currently artificial turf um at least the fields that are impacted by the flood zone um we cannot readily just switch them to Natural Turf that is a significant process that would require planning and uh and contingency planning so in the meantime we will file insurance claims and we will have contingency plans for flooding events the second is that we should be researching options for raising or reconfiguring our Fields uh we have we do have some different sites that we can look at as possible locations for fields um but the bottom line is that we do need to have um we need to think of this from a long-term perspective I also added here and I did not necessarily add this in the the superintendent coffee but this was in response to some of what we read in the in the thought exchange here is that uh there is a very real interest in the community to look at natural turf or potentially alternative synthetic options um I know that there are some uh some some folks who take the position that other than natural Turf there really are no actual safe options that are artificial um I'm not an expert in this space and I know that there are some who allege that there are so I think that's part of our feasibility study we should evaluate what those potential options are especially if we're going to consider a solution as radical as possibly uh rate and I didn't mention it here but raising the field and possibly putting a a um a water detainment solution underneath the field because again don't I'm not getting into all the details here but the D does restrict what we are allowed to do with respect to impacting the flow of uh flood events and then lastly um we are already in process with this we are Consulting in in coordination with the village I should say the village is Consulting with the Army Corps of Engineers and we're supporting them for a more comprehensive solution to uh to to to to um work with the brook uh physically to uh reduce flood Dam potential flood damage not only to Ridgewood um and not only to the schools but to the many residents and the many communities who are impacted by the these splitting events uh if our board members have any questions comments or concerns I would very much enjoy hearing them yes uh I do um I have a little bit of a challenge statement for you uh can you go back to slid Nine's go back to nine and then 15 really quickly uh yeah topic is Health Topic's Health here yep so even uh here where the health topics are grouped I'm not seeing a call necessarily and by the way this is not my personal opinion at all I'm just saying let's look a little bit deeper into the data I'm not seeing a call to move from Turf to grass for the sake of uh the concerns of POS right if you if you look at these what these are saying is the first one that's saying could could no longer be safe for the uh impact aspect right according to original specifications um and the second is saying we should test to be to have kind of a safety feel it's not saying we should go to Grass um and then the third one is we should be thoughtful and assess um right so again I'm not seeing clear-cut statements that say we prefer grass over Turf I'm sure they're in there but we should dig a little bit deeper um and then if you go to slide 15 which is the differences between uh group a and Group B uh similar as well right if you look at what a rates on the left the right the response suggests a preference for natural grass over turf field citing reasons such as again the safety of the athletes which based on the previous comments seems to be safety from Impact primarily I didn't see reference to P safety um cost Effectiveness environmental concerns um excessive resources datadriven decisions so again I'm not reading that that that group is saying we should move to grass over Turf again I'm not saying that's that's right or wrong I'm just saying let's dig a little bit deeper into that but what I'm reading into this is essentially this group if we have stable turf fields that are not getting degraded that are performing their duties it seems to me that even most inside a will be happy with that does that make sense what I'm saying so if I'm hearing you correctly you're you're your hypothesizing without having access to all the comments right now that perhaps a driver of the concerns around the safety of the artificial Fields is specific to the artificial Fields being in the flood plane correct and being degraded consist and cost Etc and and lack of so what I'm seeing here is the major a majority of A and B would agree that if we had stable Turf artificial turf fields that are not getting degraded by flooding there was not let's say they were in a never there was no Brook there these were consistent no issues usable every day never had a problem what I'm reading from what you presented is that majority of A and B would be fine as everything as it is maybe we have 5% that would like to go to grass for all the other reasons we talking about there my hypothesis if it be right or if could be wrong but I'm saying I'd like to dig a little bit de verticy if that's true not well I think even in some of the language here I'm with you that it does part of that is right I think the I think the even on where they agree it raises concerns about safety of users due to the degradation of the turf yeah so that's a really interesting point that we can tease out more deeply yeah and something we can also do just to be clear uh if we feel it's necessary if we want to dig deeper in in these uh within these questions is we can put out surveys and actually thought exchange has been kind enough to give us some promotional uh opportunities to use some of the new a tools which actually can like actually uh in a very real kind of chatbot sort of way interview people like ask follow-up questions to folks so that might be uh that might be a good Next Step um they just recently I saw that the uh Village has engaged with Rutter's University and um students in environmental science I think it is to um to also be part of this conversation and to do some leg work uh some history and data collection on on what's Happening so um I'm not sure if we're included in that and just wanted to put that out col Unity students for I say R yeah is columia okay sorry that's sorry yeah so the Columbia project is part of the green green Ridgewood or Green Team and uh they are uh working on overall sustainability a lot of like everything that we can do about going green and sustainability Fields is very small part of that like it's part of that but that's not their focus their focus is overall uh what can Village do for um sustainability improvements oh okay guess article I read seemed to focus on the fields but right no they are even talking about like the whole master plan and everything thank you that so I think that um what comes out of this Crystal Clear for me is you know the overriding sense that we need to you know permanently fix the problem but not just for today but for the future and I think that you know dub Tales nicely with what Muhammad was saying which is that you know when we look at Turf versus grass there are a lot of factors uh grass regardless of the environmental impact there was a concern and and again I'm going to say the same cavat right this is not my opinion but my understanding is the concern was the grass fields just didn't hold up as well for the amount of traffic and use that they needed so there are um a variety of concerns that we have to take into account and we need to look at you know uh not just them you know what happens when they're flooding what happens when they're not flooding the impact um the use and I think I mean personally I don't want to use too strong a term but it seems like you've got a pretty clear mandate from the community that we need to really look at this and come to a data driven decision for today but also for you know 5 10 years from now to the extent that we we can personally I don't know that it would be really great if the Army Corps of Engineers came in here and solved our problems my sense based on what I've heard is that's not going to happen for the next 20 years so um we have quite a bit of work to do and I think it's great to tease out what the um thoughts are in the community and we do have a very knowledgeable Community but I also think that um to the extent that we're considering a feasibility study we need to be very clear and have a actually a fairly broad um you know broad Direction uh for the feasibility study so um the first I would like to comment on the thought exchange that this is I think the first time we have this detailed uh input from the community so thank you for that um if I know this can be improved and you're working on those improvements with the reporting but this is excellent uh getting more than 1300 users participate in the survey and providing their input and it's revers right because most of the surveys that we have sent earlier we send questions or we send options and users are responding with uh their answer from picking from what we wanted them to pick so a lot of the times those have bias um when we are creating the surveys and in this case it's revers that our users are free to put their thoughts and there's no bias there in what users are talking about and what the users are ranking we are not filtering anything so every Resident was um received this link every it was uh posted on Facebook it was posted on superintendent coffee it was explained and anybody was free to provide their input so there's no survey bias there right so that's a big thing that we are not creating a survey where we want those users to respond the way we want them to respond so they were free to create their answers they were free to provide the input and you collected a lot of good data so that's that's a very good thing from one of the things that came up multiple times here is cost and I just want to point um these two Fields um that we are talking about redoing we have not yet paid their bond so we probably had a 20-year Bond on those um they were built in 2009 or so they were after 2008 referendum right so they were part of uh Mar if you know yeah if yeah if you remember or Sheila or Mary would remember 2010 2010 so they were part of 2008 referendum so I think our bonds are usually 20year bonds so we are already talking about rebuilding these fields in 13 14 years when and we have uh redone The Filling of couple of times already on these and so when we are looking at the long-term solution the money that we spend should be recovered within the time when we are paying for that right so if if you're if you're are paying for in 20 years but it's it's useful life is only 10 years then it's not good enough and we will not be getting any uh Debt Service aid for Fields so um it's 100% paid by the taxpayer um so we should also look at some donations and fundraising as part of uh if we are going to incur a big cost it should not be just pure a 20- year referendum if it's not going to last for 20 years and there's no Debt Service eight there because that the way I remember is 2008 referendum there was no Debt Service eight for Fields no that's consistent with um at the last several workshops when it comes to U construction projects that Fields do not qualify for that service Aid there's no educational curriculum compon to that and I had one more uh point so I saw the pictures of uh the cleanup if cleanup is mostly dirt and silt um I know we cannot change the flow of the water but can we somehow um reduce the sil that is flowing through that storm or to the to our Fields by putting a lot of natural plants around the field uh in the directions from where the water is Flowing if Willows you mean like Willows Willows are historically fast growing and Incredibly um thirsty for water they can just soak up the um excess right so if we have multiple rows of Shrubbery or plants before the water hits the field um and then that can basically it stop some of that mut and dirt that's going in the field because if if Turf is good for water like if if it can absorb water or absor like sustain or not damage because of water and water can flow and then it's ready next day to play then our main culprit there is this silt and dirt so if we can plant a lot of trees we are not doing anything permanent that's not like there's not nothing that D can come to us and say you can't plant because we are we have to stop the erosion so something is getting eroded and that dirt is going there so if we plant a lot and we can have volunteers if we have that many people participating here we'll probably just have to fund the the uh saplings uh and we can get volunteers to plant it I um to add to that Willows are a natural incredibly fast growing uh plant that really thrives and will soak up the water like you wouldn't believe it just needs sunlight so in the areas that that I think um where it has flooded I think there's no obstruction so you will have um one of the growth components which is direct sunlight so I think that's a great idea but particularly Willows they did they did try they began to do that planting and and Stones small Pebbles to to try to collect the silt that that water is a fast-moving River um and it it didn't sustain you know you need they need to the plants need to be able to to you know be uh planted and then have time to grow and their root systems and uh the blood water Cas would a good idea would given that PR experience would having more mature Willow plants perhaps with the you know my maybe it's not necessarily the the species but the maturity level of the planting so maybe um and um in terms of um looking at feasibility studies uh one of the thought that you mentioned Dr Schwarz is that um there's alternative artificial tur that is you know technology is constantly improving um on the same token I feel like um natural grass there could have been improvements with different more sturdier um hybrids so I would not dismiss grass if there have been advances on that front as well so I think as we look at the overall feasibility um the traditional concepts of grass being more vulnerable uh the bounceback period being not as quick as as Turf I think you know it's there's some value to looking at both um field uh types and looking at the N latest technology so just to uh reiterate make sure I'm understanding you correctly um Mrs quac you mentioned a couple points first was that potentially as we're looking at long-term Solutions or medium-term solutions that we're looking at alternatives to artificial turf that we would consider possibly that there are hybrid grasses that were not in place when we used to have natural Turf that could be more resilient themselves um I appreciate that I made note of that and you also noted that willow trees specifically have a have a tremendous ability to absorb water and could potentially help to offset some of that some some of that water that's displaced um did I miss anything from you miss qua Mr Don I I I think I heard I think I heard you were making a point about the specifically the silt deposits and I would say that um uh that that uh I did observe specific I I believe that I've observed and I believe that our some of our footage has captured the fact that um part of the problem is not is yes the silt comes through the fencing part of the other problem is that then the leaves and debris gets caught then in the fencing and it's almost as though our fencing becomes like an above ground pool and it actually holds the water and then the silt candy escape with the water so I don't know the extent to which that would change the impact on the fields and perhaps that might have a positive benefit in that we're actually not losing a lot of the the the Crum rubber into the water systems maybe they're actually still in the field area but it did did raise a question that I had had too is that potentially and I haven't even talked about this yet publicly but potentially there are systems of like fine mesh netting that can go around our external um fence that would still allow water to flow but might capture but might keep out some of the silt and even potentially um you know so that way the water could pass through and we wouldn't be impacting the flow of water but that that the the dirt the the the the silt and mud itself might not settle on the field as much so so um we did a tour after uh storm two years ago there and uh we were told that the The netting that we have on uh on the side where water comes in from uh from the gym gym side M uh DB asked us to create a 6 in or 12 in U REM The netting from there so the water can flow freely so even with the big holes that we have the big holes yeah so they ask us to remove that for first 6 in or 12 in so it's cut from the bottom so the water can freely flow so if we if you put netting that will not on on that side or like for the water to come in they want water to flow to outside so it can be maybe we have a dip somewhere that the water first goes down and then tries to come like make some hurdles for that water to to flose so I I didn't add an AS risk in this presentation for the fact that we are you know we are under D scrutiny so it's a state agency that governs all of our all of our environmental uh water all of our waterways right um and so and we are under very specific rules and so we I understand the fact that we cannot create barriers for water to flow uh for D so the for any Downstream impact but I I don't think d can uh preempt us from REM reducing erosion so if we take any measures that are reducing erosion of and changing U bringing more water for us and if DP says no to that we should be able to go to court and fight that because if we do anything to prevent erosion we saying okay we will not impact water water will still flow through our Fields but somehow we'll just stop any more erosion so I don't know what the right technology for that is Prof probably Professional Engineers will have to be consulted our new Architects or PES or Village Engineers but if we if we frame whatever we do as preventing erosion instead of preventing flood that's an aute point Thank you Mr Donny have we looked into whether or not there might be any potential grants for us for anything in terms of you know from the environmental side either of preventing erosion or blood mitigation or even you know um anything with regard to Athletics I I don't know I I know there's a wide world of grants available you know from a variety of sources I don't know if we're looking into that or if we have anyone who can do that well we have you know we've certainly looked at um for uh when there's a disaster declaration or uh we do we do look into uh any possible federal grants and we have we have made a claim with FEMA I'm almost thinking like more private sources yeah so interestingly I I mean I have not been a part of any conversations around approaching this from the angle of erosion is creative great idea is it Poss other range of possibilities I bet they'd be interested at that Colombia survey right you're on the Green Team right yes so so for full disclosure I missed the last green team meeting and that's why I don't have a lot of information but I plan to go there this Thursday and I'll get you all the information um at the next meeting great thank you please ask them about the Willows if that will work or not B big Willows so I walk away um and I I see there is some consensus that you know there is a lot of consensus about um finding these long-term Solutions so for me it's important to see what's what's what's a realistic timeline that we can start these feasibility studies so we can move on this because the summer will come we clean these fields but if it if the new Norm which appears that it is that we're going to continue to have flooding then we're going to be back here again talking about it and and I don't believe our feasibility study will will stop that but at least we need to have that feasibility study we need to have a plan and then figure out how we move forward so so I so I think that uh we are factoring in for some of the impact of all of our concerns here in the budget process so that's a space for us to speak a little bit more concretely but in the meantime I think it would be within the range of responsibility to say that uh our immediate plan for operation for the next year at least is that we would uh be very hopeful that we will not see uh these kind of flooding events we did do a look back and uh last year there were no flooding events the year before that there were actually Four flooding events and then for several years prior to that there were no flooding events so that is certainly what we hope for but of course realistically speaking we must be real that events may very well occur so we need to be prepared that we will have the ability to remediate uh at least within within our deductible amount of our insurance claim and we also uh must at the same time immediately embark on doing the work of such feasibility studies so uh we are making some considerations for those items in our budget process that we'll be discussing again with the finance committee we'll be able to speak that a little bit more in our budget presentation um in the meantime we have we do have some uh a group of community members with has some strong overlap with our booster clubs and our hsas has uh organized some funds to launch a stud feasibility study this year uh even before we you know have a really strong understanding what our financial position is so we'll be engaging with our Architects and engineers and the finance committee um is regarding what our next steps are with that process in in in the coming weeks great and um uh not to belabor the process but I did just want to share one thing real quick um this is a this is the the new uh look that we have uh within thought exchange so this is a nice view for us as thought exchange administrators but this is not something it's something we used to be able to share with the public but for some reason we can't write now so I'm sure that this will be rectified on our behalf but notice we have the uh liked by a not liked by B not liked by a liked by B liked by both A and B here they allow us to click on the thoughts so at least we have a little workaround to see the actual thoughts and you can see here again on the left side uh again uh General concerns around um using science and data and generally against artificial turf and that's kind of General um we have turfs being bad for the environment our children again we can't we can't sus out to your point Mr M we can't sus out the extent to which people would say this if we weren't having the floods but you can see there is a variety of comments here uh some related to these locations but there is a general sentiment against artificial turf um over here on this side we can see that there is um the idea that you know grass is not the answer artificial surfing key locations maximizes Lower cost so again we do seem to see some commonality here that there is a that there is a um sentiment that we must use artificial turf and then again for the consensus points again the long-term solution the permanent solution um there's General concern about student and user safety um and the deg degradation of flooding both sides agreed with that so uh just this is more of a thought exchange commentary for future thought exchange presentations uh we'll we'll be able to look at more of these comments along with that V diagram so mark this was all uh I think the presentation was regarding thought exchange and what came from that but on the fields going forward um do we have uh a clear visibility of where the need is for like do we have um that's distributed by say schools or uh age group that do we have our elementary Fields enough for our elementary students and Elementary Sports um and where like what age group and which ports need um the fields needs are not being met currently because we have some available space say en rge or some other schools or Glenn so depending on what age group and how far they they can travel um we can probably come up with different options of where if we want to rebuild something or if we want to spend money where would that be outside of the flood zones yes so so that that has to be core feature of the feasibility study right um regard and if I'm hearing correctly you're asking particularly about um to what extent are we evaluating what our real needs are for the fields and and and looking at all of our facilities um you know something that is important to keep in mind is that as a as a board of education we have access to community to Village Fields but the village also has access to our Fields so it's a it's kind of it's a sharing relationship and that cuts both ways right we we benefit by having overflow into their fields but we also Als in that that process carry a burden to provide for all the services within the community and something that does significantly drive up the use of our the need for the use of our fields are the the vibrant youth youth sports programs that we have but also we do have uh a lot of requests for use from uh for adult leagues and even vendors as well so there's just there's a lot there's there's a there's a lot of demand that isn't necessarily just our students and we can also consider um I've been on the renting side of the fields and when we rent um or when I as a community member when I rented say High School cafeteria or BF Auditorium or BF uh uh Auditorium so we had to pay rent but when we rented Fields there was no rent so uh maybe we can at least start charging for the custodial charges or cleanup fee or those type of things um that should be on the table for renting the fields so I'm going to speak as a being on the fields committee um I just I don't know where the decision gets made um whether it's at the board of ed level The Village Council um or their fields but there is a field pricing schedule that has been untouched for years I believe that the last time it may have been updated was I wrote it down somewhere but literally has been maybe 10 years or more stagnant um and it was broached uh gingerly at one meeting um that we have now with Master Library being implemented you have greater understanding of of usage and with that comes the ability to maybe understand pricing so then when we looked at the pricing schedule it turned out that it's not it's probably not adequate to what our costs are to maintain it so on one side we are obligated to provide access based on all these field usage policies also respons for maintenance but they're not offsetting each other our maintenance costs are nowhere near 2010 for example so um that's something I don't know where it gets discussed but that's to your point that we actually do have a rental fee schedule and we just haven't figured out where that decision point is certainly some of the um just at a counter you know the boosters uh and some of our Sports have contributed to building the back stops and uh some of the materials that go down baseball you know so there's there's this give and take that they have been making and drainage and uh irrigation so there's been this discussion about you know their improvements they've made to the fields um help all students not just their particular Sports so I think I think you're um it's it's really a good idea to you know the utilization it we need to know that how many students certainly when I look at uh some of the thoughts about you know why are we paying so much attention to the fields uh for when we look at the number of kids that are students at least at the high school that are participating on a regular basis it it's it's a a a large percentage of our students um just so that that again that's data that helps make these um makes maybe these conversations a little bit more understandable to the public about why we are spending this much time and then we have all of our youth sports um and and we can say well we let the Youth Sports you know I think the philosophy has been in the past that every child is our child in this in this community and we we share the fields between the Board of Ed Fields and the um village Fields so that there are enough opportunities uh for students and when we did that field study you know we we moved ahead with much of uh with some of the things building a new gym at uh GW uh turfing these fields all in um in an effort to provide the facilities um for what we saw as a great need so to your point absolutely without um the different boosters support you know they are absolutely integral uh to the maintenance and and the usage of the fields but the issue is that sometimes it's difficult when you have different booster clubs operating independently when the field is a shared resource that's really um you know managed by the Board of Ed so in one example maybe a year or two years ago um I forget with it was not particularly scheduled like people not people uh the managers at the board of ed level did not realize another company that had been hired at Great expense by one of the teams had started fertilizing or doing some activity on a field which in a normal course would be um would be gratefully received that kind of assistance but it disrupted what had been planned for that field so there's sometimes when it's not um when you have individual contributions that are not holistically managed at at this level it can cause more disruption than assistance but yeah to um it's just it's just something to think about that there's different um uh definitely usage is there and the level of support varies and comes independently from multiple places no thank you all I took a lot of I took a copious notes and uh we will parlay those into uh our Communications with our architect engineering firm to uh to begin some work and of course obviously with regular consultation with our facilities and finance committees great thank you did you have a a report too that you um I G I gave some talking points at the beginning but I think I'm I'm good for now okay thank you great so we'll go on to consent items regular and routine um and just to get it just to kick it off I will will move attendance at conference that we are um still studying uh two um requests yeah there were and just just as a note if I may sure as just as a note uh there were a couple there were a variety of items on the agenda and a few different sections they were in conferences they were in field trips and they were in uh the rod grants at the end where uh just in our final reviews of items just identified a few things that um need just a little bit more time they're not time sensitive so there's no major concerns I just need a little more time to review them so I appreciate your patience as we struck those through uh in advance of the meeting tonight so I move to attendance would someone like to Second did you have any questions yeah I don't see the strike through on this uh professional development um agenda itemo please oh I see it I'm sorry it's on page three yes yes yes it's page three um lines 5x6 perfect yeah so was it already moved or yeah okay okay perfect I'm good Mr Donnie yes Miss qua yes Miss M yes Mr mmud yes Ms Broan yes Administration and we do have uh some policies that are and second reading and some that are abolished um I think we're gonna have to separate some of them out because these were the policies right that we couldn't do last time because I had to recuse myself so um do you want me to move B1 to start with that how did you want to do it yes why don't you let's do B1 and then we'll go into B2 and perhaps um if you we do it in groups right right so you want to move one and four um I don't have four I only have three one two three four is a approval of Cambodia project leao why am I not seeing that s you don't have that that was on the public released version it was was I'm using my yeah I take notes on the original agenda yeah that's absolutely fine thank you we can move one and four I will move one I will move the administration one and four great do you have a second I'll second thank you any questions on those are we okay okay there it is Mr Donnie yes Miss quack yes Miss MC yes Mr mmud yes Miss yes I move B2 and B3 second so okay so Mary can vote on on some of them I have to recuse myself from the new regulation 4212 and I also have to recuse myself from the revised policy 3161 and 4161 as well as policy and regulation 321 2 and policy 4212 so I can vote on the rest um so why don't we separate the ones that you can't vote out the ones you can we'll move so let's revise our movement our yeah can you revise that to I can't move partially she can vote she can abstain just from can I can't vote partially from a subsection yeah they're all club together what what did you say Julie I'm sorry oh you are able to abstain from identified items you don't need to actually have separate resolution she's able to say yes to this and abstain from the remaining I just need to hear them again because not a problem a do you want me to do it at the time of the vote you want me to do it now um you can do it when you vote okay that' be great so I have then we have a first and a second yeah okay Mr Donnie yes Miss quar yes Miss mcel okay so I vote Yes except for the new regulation 4212 attendance I'm recusing myself from that I am also not um I'm also recusing myself from voting for the revised policy 3161 and policy 4161 Examination for cause and policy and regulation 3212 and policy 4212 attendance received thank you thank you Mr mimo yes Miss broen yes okay uh ccul and instruction and tonight we are again um we have one uh overnight field trip that is still under review and that is uh the trip for GW to uh Vienna Austria so that has been crossed out in the right that's that that's right okay so may have somebody move curriculum instruction ccum instruction a second second great thank you Mr Donnie yes Miss quack yes Miss McKelly yes Mr mmud yes Miss Brogan yes the human resources okay of course we have some retirements uh well let's get a second and then I'll do that right thanks we have a couple of retirements um just going to bring them up um and that is Scott Lupia uh fourth grade Somerville 25 years and Lori bani at second grade at Willard at again 25 years of service and we thank them for that and wish them well um in their retirement each are retiring at the end of the school year okay is are there any questions um on human resources no okay thank thank you Mr Donnie yes Miss quack yes Miss Melly yes Mr mmud yes Miss brogen yes Finance someone like to move Finance I'll move second I'll just um a note of thank you to um our donations Ridgewood High School Korean parents Association $22,000 to be used for high school guidance counselors visits to learn about college and universities and then we have 12 uh donations uh for the um Jack B stroker uh scholarship and for rhs Student Activity account $577 195 was a gift and kind of kitchen supplies another um Student Activity account from Ridgewood High School for $ 48968 9 is a gift and kind of a camera two lenses uh bag and memory cards for the sports and theater coverage and another Ridgewood High School student activity account for 6449 gift in kind of um a R racket table grill to be used for club events and Ridgewood Education Foundation $3,000 uh to be used to pay for supplies rentals and pres presenters for super science Saturday and we thank their gen thank all for their generous donations um are there any questions on um Finance so I don't have a question but I have an observation maybe maybe this was happening before and maybe I missed it but uh Mr Freedman I'm seeing more and more curriculum related grants on the agenda um so I don't know what's the magic behind that but I don't remember seeing a lot of curriculum specific grants in the past like today we have this uh um grant for $40,000 for computer science and courses and climate change education so um we had a few more other grants in last few agenda meetings so um I don't know what the rationale or like magic is but I I did not see those before maybe I missed them so thank you well I'd like to respond to that yes thank you and two um I would like to give a lot of credit to honor fryberg who does an incredible amount of work in this area and also one that you just reference the climate grant that was uh Tara Taylor also and um to say they were excited about putting it together you know I give the final sign off but on that one in particular Tara Taylor and honor fredberg really uh did Yan's work with that but thank you for recognizing yeah so thank you thank you to both of them and the person who does all the grounds well we hope we get them then yes after all that yeah okay is that is is there anything else oh actually I wanted to um uh just confirm and to uh give a shout out to the business office Miss cot on the new um service agreement uh which basically replaces our obsolete copers with brand new ones and we save a little bit of money it tools is about I think 2,000 for the year and we get brand new copier so thank you very much you're welcome when with absolutely okay Mr Donnie yes Miss qua yes Miss MC yes Mr mmud yes Miss Brogan yes so resolutions and motions not included in consent agenda they are uh will be back on uh for uh March 18th from a to I a to I uh but we still have uh J right uh approval authorization to transfer funds to Capital reserves does anybody have any questions on that let's move that then I'll move approval to authorize transfer funds to capital reserve second um yeah I just have one question uh sorry mcot I should have answered it before I should have asked it before so is are we still planning to do the V shop project this year or because that that is not being removed from the current year Capital project list it will depend on how quickly we can work with the new Architects and get bid specs out okay and uh hopefully actually get proper bids within our cost range thank you sure Mr Donnie yes Miss quack yes Miss MC yes Mr Muhammad Mahmud I'm so sorry uh Miss Brogan yes approval bills Mary um I had the interesting experienceing all the bills that was quite a an education um uh so I am pleased to recommend uh to move for approval of bills um which I've reviewed can I have a second second thank you Mr Donnie yes Miss quack yes Miss mcau yes Mr Mamud yes Miss Brogan yes board member announcements and so I will just start this off because um uh Mrs Weber did me did talk about this at uh comp um at her comment but last week we did hear from our attorney that our request was granted by the court to allow the board to set the term limit length of one board member's seat up for election in November to a one-year term this will mean that three board members will be up for election three board member seats will be up for election two seats will be for three-year terms and one seat will be for a one-year term in November of 2025 that that seat that was a one-year term will become uh will will be open again and be a three-year term um this means that we will be back in that rotation of two seats being open one one election year one seat and then two seats um so a lawyer from Bergen County's Clerk's Office um was at in the court uh that day that uh the judge signed off on it and uh our attorney will be following up with the Bergen County Board of Elections to uh effectuate the ballot change and then this really um will move forward and we have um we've really attained one of our goals this year so that's that you know so this is good news and and uh you know I I think the this was supported as we talked about it um and all agreed that the attorney should move forward thank you for keeping it on the on the burner um Mrs Gua and Mr Donnie but we're we're there now um should I go on or other people have announcements so yes so I just wanted to comment on um agent Fest that took place at high school on Saturday um that uh I got to watch some of the performances and it's it's always a a good experience um one back story that I learned from my daughter going through that process uh which a lot of people may not know if you're just watching that as a as an audience there and the performance are our performances are great but they also go through um a lot of organization and Leadership experience there because different students it's it's like a well-run machine um where different students take uh part as uh different level of leadership whether they are doing a like a performance leaders or country leaders and then there are the whole asent Fest organization leaders and they grow into that organization and they they are basically uh given responsibility and ownership they own it and they execute it so it's it's a lot of learning behind that for those students not just the performance and performance were were good obviously so yeah just I just wanted to comment on that that it happened this Saturday at rud high school thank you um I there just a couple of things there is the first annual Ridgewood sports equipment Swap and that will be this Saturday um uh at Haw school so on Saturday between the hours of 9 and 12 if you have um equipment sports equipment and you would like to uh declutter your house you can bring it over to Haws and then on Sunday no cost is involved but um ticket holders uh can shop if you will from 10: to 11 through this equipment and get uh equipment for their their children and then it is open from to the public from 11: to 2 and that's all Haws elementary school so I suspect information can go out on that one um I also wanted to um again congratulate all of our students I know um Mrs qua was there Mrs M and I um were there to really see this wonderful presentation of I think it was um was it 18 students um receiving their U maroon Awards so so um a nice event that happens quarterly um if you it's 7:00 in the morning or 7 7:30 in the morning so um but um I'm sure um if there'll be another one in the spring and um if you are um there are two movies that um The Ridgewood health department and um the Board of Education um are going to bring into the community one is like and that's a documentary about the impact of social media on our lives particularly on our students lives and those dates will be Monday March 11th so that's next week at BF in the auditorium at 7 o'clock and then it will be repeated on Thursday March 14th here at the Ed Center I suspect this room um at 11: a.m. so we have a daytime and an evening and hopefully um that will be convenient for our parents and our community members to come and and see that the second film is we bringing back we is called angst and we had this film and I think it was 2018 or 19 um at GW but it's it's it's about um raising awareness about anxiety and that anxiety hand start um in our elementary school students and uh and then um middle school high school and certainly through adulthood uh so this is a raising awareness about anxiety this will be Wednesday March 20th at gw's auditorium at 7 o'clock and also it will be repeated in the daytime on Friday April 5th here at the Ed Center at 11:00 so both movies um are are certainly worth seeing and I think the that received wrote and received a grant to be able to work with the uh producers of these Independent films and also bring curricular uh curricular information um so that our health department our health teachers can also use segments of these films if they so desire Dan hild day um has been very instrumental in in mapping this all out can I just ask um are those appropriate for high school age kids like the evening shows because I was thinking about bringing my daughter um I you know yes good thank you I would say angst I have not to tell you truth I haven't seen like yet I I've seen a little clip of it um okay great thank you thank you great thank you um and then just some uh good news but uh the Ridgewood shade tree committee is continuing with their adopt a sapling um campaign last year they piloted um in the orchard district and this year they're rolling it out for Somerville school area and they um when we're asked the question well why don't we do it you know school you know townwide they are there's a budget and they are trying they had evaluated and it appeared that um there was a loss of a lot of trees in the Somerville area and that would be a next school and then roll it out in in other years for other school communities so trying to keep it um keep it within budget but also making sure that trees are planted and then you they're cared for if you're going to adopt a sapling um you will commit to watering it and caring for it so in the uh town right away on your property um see what else lots lots lot is happening um I think that's it that's I think that was it for Mi anyone else no okay um board committee reports um we've got policy facilities and finance be acceptable to you if we did um facilities and finance and then do policies La policy meeting last so that we can segue to discussion items sure okay great thank you sure did you want me to report on cpeg um yeah that great at this point as well I just want to add that into the rotation sometime before pul yes yeah so um do you want to do uh facilities I did it last time or you can do it okay all right facilities we had um a meeting on February 21st um it it was actually very productive meeting in that we got we really had an opportunity to talk with our uh new architect and engineering firm um and we um reviewed the rod grants and where we were and next steps that need to happen and they will happen um we are meeting tomorrow and be and looking at the summer projects and projects for next budget year next year um and and then we did talk a little bit about the fields and now we will continue that conversation um including concerns from community members but now we have the thought exchange information to um go through and as I said our meeting we're meeting tomorrow so we're trying to work through uh the facility needs anything else yeah uh Finance did you want to do sure I'll give a a quick summary uh I want to thank Miss C for a great Finance me meeting she gave us a good uh summary of the budget a preview of the budget a lot of odds and ends still being at tweaked um but it was easy for us to understand go through uh the numbers made sense as Dr Schwarz alluded to uh definitely uh things are tight um there's a lot of historical reasons for that you all will see as you start reviewing it um so I won't say too much yet I think you'll run through it and then we'll present to the public soon do we do have um another Finance meeting this Thursday so we can talk about um the presentation and and just make further um progress towards that but okay um you know just I I had forgotten this but I'm not gonna talk about it I um I'll talk about it for a minute but I don't know if you all saw um a little there's like a two-pager on the governor's uh budget and I just thought it was interesting and it it g gives a little insight into all of the areas not just not just schools that um so I just thought that was of Interest I may have think too many copies briefly report on um cpeg so um lots of good things still going on with the cpeg community um they you know we had that successful Wizards game which uh uh prior to that on February 23rd there was a pep rally which was sensory friendly and it was a huge success with over 100 attendees and I think that's something that they're going to work on um even beefing up some more for next year uh and they had the steps uh students actually ran concessions made signs so it was a really um it was kind of a comprehensive representation of the special ed Community it was very well received um and they raised $63 through concessions which they uh donated to unified um they had another sensory friendly dinner at puos on the 27th followed by a coffee chat after um both were resounding successes stay tuned for the next date for their next sensory friendly dinner and then coming up this Saturday March 9th there will be a family play date at unique Athletics in faon and uh how you can register for that is on the cpeg newsletter or in your schools IND that's everything thanks they're really doing a lot this year really really busy and and very engaged which is fantastic right with a very nice newsletter that's fantastic isn't it yeah they do a good job uh super science Saturday was able to work with cpeg this year and um we open super science Saturday we we always open at nine o'clock but from 9 to 10 is rather quiet and there's also a science show going on from 9:30 and so um we um talked with ceg to make sure that they knew that might be a quieter time with less people less chaotic because we have about a thousand visitors coming down coming onto the campus of the high school so um Bor into that so yeah oh I I just wanted to add I'm not going to report on it because it hasn't happened but tomorrow is our Fields mon monthly meeting so usually the first Tuesday of the month um thank you to miss corus the information um both the agenda and the link is on the district website it's under committees under Fields committee 7 a.m. gu can also be in person yeah it's also in person too but also okay thank you so did you um want to do policies so there were two policy um in addition to the other ones but these two have to do with board governance so um up for consideration are two bylaws these are bylaws because it has to do with uh board operations uh not District Operations um so these bylaws are 0152 about Ford officers and bylaw 0174 on Legal Services um I did share with you um one version um that has not is it's up for discussion I don't know if you've all had a chance to read it but I'll go through the first one first uh the first first we'll do the 0174 legal services which is a maybe a little bit easier to process so we currently already have a bylaw 0174 on legal services and the idea um to modify it would one be um ensure that we have B anual uh legal uh review of current legal cases that are facing the district um right now uh in terms of an overview of where the district is at from a legal exposure it's very ad hoc or it's you know maybe once a year maybe but to really institutionalize it especially if we do have annual elections that it could be part of the onboarding process and these are legal expenses that we as a district are responsible for to understand where we are in that cycle of each case would really be helpful for us so that just on that um Dr Shores and I have um had been speaking about trying to do it quarterly wow okay well quarterly is fine so we can change modify theage yeah yeah that's great if ctly is something that right now to go from nothing to ctly great we were just thinking by annually but anything you know certainly the desire is there from the from the absolutely yeah so the the language um that was suggested that you know there may be some words smithing um involved is on on 0174 to add the language that would uh read as follows it would be an addition um the board Council will provide by annual I guess quarterly we're going to try forly Okay so so you want me to change that seemed to make sense can I just ask a procedural question which is is that I agree 100% conceptually I just want to say that I think uh quarterly by annual however it is that we can do it does that belong in the bylaws or is that something I I just wasn't really sure because bylaws really govern us and I mean we can certainly request it but at the end of today we're also relying on Council to provide it I I don't you know maybe I'm I'm parsing a little bit too much can go in a policy or a bi one of the two things where do you recommend it well I was I'm asking the question I mean I I think I think codifying the idea that this is what we want to have is important I actually think it might be better to be a policy I always feel like bylaws are more about self-governance as opposed to what we're requesting other people um but doesn't M you know so so maybe so when if it comes to self-governance then we can change the language here instead of saying the board Council will provide by quarterly overview of all legal cases as a memo we can say the board president will request the board Council to provide that can becomes part president that's fine that's fine I just yeah that's we say the board president would request the board Council to provide quarterly overview of all legal cases as a member to full board membership okay so the the board president will request the board Council the board Council to provide quarterly okay I'll just say this the the legal system runs so slow so slow that quarter to quarter I'm not sure that it's worth well you could I mean he may just have a by annual how about minimum by annual minimum and then if there's in you know movement and you get yeah so I mean you know if something's really hot you might we will get those but it's all these other cases that are actually are part of our legal P portfolio we should know about on a regular basis Agreed 100% so the board president will request the board counsel to provide uh minimum at a minimum at a minimum by annual overview of all legal cases as a memo to the full board membership all right just for clarification is it biannual or semiannual at A Min minimum oh oh is it is that the word is it semiannual I think it's semi anual okay semi oh other right semian that's really that's right that's a good yeah we don't want that that's the opposite okay semiannual thank you and then um as part of that so okay so that's number the first one the second one the philosophy in terms of mod modifying this was to try and um ensure that to Foster legal compliance it was a we were thinking of a well I was think of a of a path where individual board members will have access to legal councel right now the policy really identifies certain individuals with the within the district and that is primarily the superintendent the president of the board the school business officer um human resources and special ed so other board members do not have access to legal council um and it would be um instead of any of those individuals being Gatekeepers in a way in terms of having access to legal council is there a language that would allow us um to have that proper guidance um so that we can be you know fully compliant but at the same time not make sure that we're not um repeating requests that you know you and I may have the same thing so how do we so there was one language that was proposed which is what I was shared with you in R it's something that you know is up for discussion now right so I'm trying to figure out the best way for us to to handle this because um there wasn't 100% agreement you know in the policy committee on it um I think that and just to tease it out a little bit more because I think it's worthwhile for the discussion I I think we all know and understand that each one of us have we we are all represented as the board by the board councel and we all have the right to ask the questions um that need to be asked so I think we I think we personally think we have the access where um you and I disagreed a little bit was how you get that access um you because we don't actually have access but we don't have access so so in my in my view um all we need to do is to ask the question of the designated person who at this point is the president Andor the superintendent and then that should be you know kind of funneled to the board Council and so I I I agree with you that no one individual on the board should necessarily shut down a request for legal advice but that it's much more efficient I think if um we have one person who's doing it and also I think you know we have you know people who have experience who might be able to answer the question I have 900,000 legal questions lately and we've been fortunate that a lot of them have been um adequately answered by you know Dr schwar and Sheila so um I think that it's best to continue with a policy that has all of those requests being funneled through one person or one designated person as as identified um but we can maybe emphasize that each one of us has the right to ask those questions so Mary I totally agree with you that we need to uh if somebody knows already then we don't need to go to the council but um that's not in practice that's not happening most of the times right so if uh or or let me ask is Mr Schwarz and Miss Brogan or whoever is the president are you um comfortable in giving a legal advice in writing so we are saying like Okay if I need a question if I have a question and if I want to answer that question um are you willing to to give that advice in writing or not if not then you would be forwarding it to the council right as per our current procedure that you ask either the board president or the superintendent and this is the primary reason that's stated in the policy or in the bws OR is to reduce cost so we are not multiple people are not going the primary reason is not to cut our access to the console and then you get a response so I would just like to Def I Define some time frame for this if we want to stay with that and sometime U like some language that says okay if I have a question within x amount of time I can be that I can receive an answer on that uh or some sort of uh parameters that ensure it's happening I have asked a few questions that okay can I get an this question from our Council and I did not receive an answer so I just want to make sure that there is some language that that ensures that it happens and there's a process to uh get that in a reasonable amount of time also I think the current language um says to go to the board president and superintendent and there may be cases when I may not want to go to the superintendent or there may be instances where I may not want to go to the board president so it should be either or well um okay I just realized something that we did agree in that may help um ease the P the the actual my experience actual bottleneck which is on the existing policy this is not an addition this will be a removal on the existing bylaw in item number two I'm going to read it because you may not have a copy it says all requests for legal advice shall be made to the designated contact person in parenthesis as in writing and shall be maintained on file in the district office okay this is all existing still part of this and this is the part that I think um when we spoke Mary you agreed that we can take out that the line to be eliminated would be be the designated contact person shall determine whether the request warrants legal advice or if legal advice is necessary I think that gatekeeper aspect of it can be should be removed so if that if that's sensus so I that's an existing policy that is an existing policy yeah um well that you it might be that a question can be answered internally it might be a question that um you know Miss Cox can can answer or Dr schores so um it doesn't preclude it going to the but it might be that there might be a new board member or something that that's already known and your question can be answered so I would suggest we don't strike that but if you're concerned about uh the gatekeeper why don't we take the the language that you're proposing and why don't we usually process would be to use our experts so we have Strauss Esme um to take a look at this what are other districts doing is is this not you know sort of what other districts are doing and also asking um our attorney you know based on law what it is because there is that um there is that Financial component that's um and I think it's part of the efficiency um am I correct on that it's part of our efficiency budget where you have to have certain administrative costs yeah but the financial aspect there's a clear law for that that if the legal costs go above 1.6% or 1.16% then we have to start documenting everything so there is a clear um state law that will limit the financial cost and if I think the the gist of this is that if a board member has a question they should be able to get an answer so how do I how do we Define that is the question yeah I agree with that I think U yeah I think removing that sentence so there's no gatekeeper um the only thing I'll say I think probably for why the policy was the way it was is to have communication also streamlined to the attorney right imagine if you're on the other side of the table and you have now five board members and superintendent all reaching out to you with questions yeah is still maintained in in the new proposal that the questions will be communicated through either the board president or the superintendent no they'll be copied so here's the well let's go to the nuts and bolts yeah so let's this is where the discussion we need to haveen so it's you know I think there's broad agreement from what I'm hearing there's broad agreement that there should be a path but how do you how do you get there efficient yeah efficiently and and so the current proposal now has it where like I If I have a question I would just copy the president and or the superintendent and go directly and just email my question to the board counsel if that's not so just let's let's talk that see to me that is not efficient I just think it'll be a lot for the attorney to handle and it can get expensive so we can just send it to uh either the board president or the superintendent and asking that hey can if you already we have something ready for this as an answer in our existing policies or in the state law or something that you have already have it please point me to it or please forward it to the attorney and maybe we can even add a statement like uh board president or superintendent should not deny right if another board member's requests whatever without without reasonable I don't know statements reason maybe it is that you know to the best of our abilities we'll get those questions answered and you know that's fair so then I would just add just in in practice as we're as we are now regardless of the policy um what what I would say that I would do you I do I do personally feel like it is my responsibility to get you answers if you have them um on a consultative basis I'm not true board counsel and I'm not you I don't I'm not here to actually formally give you legal advice but I can certainly if it's if it's something informal and it's a quick question which I think all of you at some point in time have had some sort of legal question for me I try to not just speak as though I have law memorized I try to like check against policy or check against law when I give you an answer and if I and if I don't have an answer I'll usually check with counsel and that's like basic informal questions um if when there are in my experience as superintendent when there are board members who approach me with quite technical questions that require some level of interpretation or there's a level of formality as a general practice without guidance from a policy I would generally direct them towards the board president to see if that can be something that's resolved but I have been in circumstances where um for whatever reason there is a board member who is not the board president who is trying to get an answer to a question and for whatever reason there's kind of a deadlock between the board president and the uh and the member and I've always just generally considered my role as a superintendent to be to just try to make sure that an formal answer gets get provided so so I would just say in practice in to to help alleviate the pressure of the need for this immediately and to buy you all some time to think it through I would say if there if you were in a circumstance where you needed some sort of a formal response if I couldn't cite the policy and the law and put it to you in writing or if that wasn't sufficient for you um I would always advise the board president I I would always advise board Council and board president that we do provide a response to that particular member in writing as a formal response right so that's the de Dr Schwarz that where in our policies or bylaws that is required to go to board president um and that's what we need to change well there's there's two parts one is from an efficiency point of view that makes sense but a keep in mind that um you may be comfortable but other people may not be willing to put their imprint on legal advice depending on the complexity because you will then be on the hook agreed well and that's the thing is and that's and that's where that's where when it when it when we go into a certain area where we're talking about board governance or you know those kind of then you you all know that I'm not going to step into that space in which case that that's the place where I would strongly recommend the and I think when I when I say efficiency I'm thinking also just in communicating with the attorney as well right so there's not five people plus the superintendent reaching out and it might be for example that Dr Shores has a set call or something with theocc you where you're going to cover five items for example right in a 30 minute session so we can just add that item there and that's just a more efficient use of our resources than one individual each individual because each individual Outreach has to be a minimum matter point2 or however that turns Bell um so there might also be just efficiencies that way so looking at the language um I think there's a way to perhaps I'll just read it out loud changing it so that it does um codify or Express what I think I'm hearing which is this is I'm just changing a couple of things any currently seated board member can request written advisory from board counsel with an email request to the board president and or superintendent of schools verbal requests will not be honored all requests and Council guidance will be shared with the full board in week ly memos to prevent duplicate or overlapping requests if verbal guidance by board counsel is warranted for expediency both the request and summary of legal guidance will be shared with the full board in a memo is that fair so I removed I remov being you just had an out straight to I would I put it um can request written advisory from board counsel through designated person or via an email president so just clarifying with the language that the process is I have I need an answer to this question I send a copy to board president superintendent they are then responsible for getting the answer and then the question and the answer should be provided to everyone on the board which will increase efficiencies um I'm not the board president but weekly memos could potentially be a bit burdensome I think well I'm saying we already have the FYI so that was the Avenue that I thought the in the FY okay I wasn't clear that that's I thought that was a separate putting that out yeah so when okay every time the board Council responds he sends it to the well so then that should be in the FYI or right is that what you're saying he used to yeah that's where we used to receive a lot of I don't have questions same FYI yeah every two weeks or whatever well every week are you GNA have are you going to want something from the no I mean as as a request comes in as request as requested so if there's no request there's nothing to include oh so then I would be con concerned about in weekly memers no it's we already have just say FYI yeah we could say in the FYI and and in FYI and just remember that and I mean there's not that much they're scheduled to be C but when there's something to report right well usually I think that's obvious yeah I think the FYI are coming out um if there's a legal update that that two weeks or one week it goes into a special section the fyy that in the language but you can say that you know the requests and the guidance will be shared with the full board via FYI you know um as it comes out I I think I think the idea here is not to increase the the administrative work um and the other thing is you know not that much is that super urgent remember that request could go to the attorney on Monday and you could not get an answer you know for a while it depends on you know the complexity of the question so you have to give them time to answer and and you know get it back okay so why don't um I would say to you why don't you you know clean up the language and then let us um just run it by Strauss s and our attorney see if there's any any issue with that just for an opinion so from a um process point of view Mary do you want me to um because I I was listening taking some notes I'll make the changes I'll send it to you so you can say oh no I actually heard differently or whatever and then and then you and I will'll work it through and then we can send it to Strauss Esme and um go from there and then bring it back to the board that's the way to do it and well then should go to both so you you'll send it to Dr Schwarz who will send it to right this will be the well at least it's clear okay okay is that the way okay fine please so copy Mrs Papa Michael that process as well yes okay okay so that that was one okay and then and then the second one has to do with Z bylaw 0152 which is the board board officers and um the motivation behind that is the idea of promoting um rotation of the leadership roles and um that was the philosophy behind that which I think is Broad um board support but just like the other one it's how you codify it there are other school districts in Bergen County alone uh two I can think of the top of my head that do uh rotate the presidency role on an annual basis um so that's kind of the background uh in terms of um of that so the bylaw 0152 as proposed um would be and there was no agreement on this so I'll just say there was no agreement so one version is although there's agreement in terms of philosophically and then down to the actual what does the codification look like like of that process is where we don't have agreement so here we are for discussion so one one version up for discussion would be to add this language and um the motivation behind that also is yes by Statute 18a colon 15-1 I have it memorized I think that's what it is um you are required to have um an organization at its first regular meeting and you elect a member as president and you elect another member as vice president so that would still occur but um the you know you don't lose your vote but the nomination will be uh will promote the idea of rotation so this is an addition so it would read as follows um the first will be the same the fact that you're going to have an organization of meeting and you're going to elect one of the members as a president another as vice president and this will still remain the same any board member May place a board members another board member's name in nomination for board President and Vice President a second of the nomination is not required that is already um codified the new addition would be the nomination for president will be based on one seniority as defined by years of service in the board and two two board member has not served as president in his or her elected term if more than one member qualifies for the president role the president will be determined based on the number of votes received in their last in their election cycle no board member can serve as president in consecutive years and a board member may not be considered for the president role until the rotation is complete for all board members the vice president nomination from the board from the seated membership will be based on the same criteria as the president role any board member who does not wish to serve as president or vice president during their term can yield to the subsequent Year and no board member can serve as president vice president and consecutive let repeat it again but we don't need to keep it there and uh election for each and then everything else would remain the same so it's an addition really um promoting the idea of rotation and via the nomination process so you still elect per statute uh you still have the annual reorganization by Statute uh and the idea is that um the nomination will give will um promote uh Rotation by these uh criteria and um and the criteria is not prohibited the you can put anything you want and um after having speak spoken with other um boards I'm with njsba New Jersey School Board Association they said these are reasonable because these are concrete criteria as long you can whatever criteria you want as long as it's not discriminatory and this is not thoughts oh thoughts here do you want to you have a question you want to go first yeah I had a qu I'm not positive I understand this so you're saying you're saying the person with the most seniority will start to be the president the person has been on the board the longest would be the first president no so the so the nomination will be based on yes on seniority but also someone who hasn't served as president in his on her term and you would never and just like in HSA you would not have consecutive terms but you're saying on his or her elected term so in the three three year term um so let's say for example whatever next election cycle uh assuming Miss Brogan is on the board she would be the president by no she would not be eligible because she was a president that's a new term for her oh but then she then the this other part this language that says you can't be present until the rotation has been completed for the entire M so I think this just this line as board member has not served as president in on her term this is just confusing if you just remove that okay then rest of that will still make sense so you you just so just say um the nomination for president will be based on seniority as defined by years of service on the board right period period Then You're basically saying just whoever is been on the board longest becomes president for the remaining people so yes but if they have already been president they can't be it again until there another term which says that until everybody has served so then the next person so you're basically creating a queue and that queue is based on seniority and then if two people are elected in the same year then based on number of votes and you can't and you don't have consecutive what what's the if two people are elected at the same year what Whoever has more votes no but when when there's the more votes peace come in I'm not when both people are elected in the same year so when like me hju and Mike we all were elected in the same year for the first time then whoever had the most the senority is the same because the year of our first board membership is same right so for for me or hju the our year of first board membership is same so prescrip very prescri so that way will happen then it's not so my my suggestion when I brought this up was to make it algorithmic so that way there's no um spe like leaning towards or uh biases or anybody trying to convince anybody so it's all algorithmic so that way it's it's uh that's the best way I think I'm just going to chime in here so um I I don't agree with this or pretty much any part of it to be honest with you so philosophically I'm we start with where we do agree right so philosophically I think that the idea of rotation is healthy and a good thing the question is how we implement it um I know that I I said it so many times you were sick of hearing it but the one thing that I think you know first of all it's required njs say 18 15 whatever requires an election which indicates a choice so the nomination language here completely strips anybody of choice that's how I read it that's how I read it but that's not but that's not the spirit or the actual that may not be the spirit of it but I think if you look at it you can only nominate someone based on very specific factors so but you vote no but what's required by Statute is the election and that right is preserv basically reorganization I understand I understand what you're saying but what I'm saying is that as someone who would have the right to make a selection this takes the the prescription of the nomination removes from anyone who wants to vote a lot of other factors that they might want to take into account in determining who they want to lead the board so at least from my P perspective this is overly restrictive and I understand the idea of creating a queue but I think that that's not necessarily best practices because there are way too many other factors that um can come into play on any given year at any given time that each board member really has an obligation to consider carefully I don't think I mean yes there's I don't think that it's I know you used the word popularity contest last time I don't think that's what it is I think that's kind of unnecessarily reductive I think that each one of us has and has been elected to exercise our judgment and we have the right and the responsibility to exercise it in terms of how we think will best be governed depending not just on the individual um skill level experience anything else you can talk about any of the individuals who may or may not want to serve as president but also in terms of the circumstances um so how would you so you know you said that you agree philosophically so could you bring another proposal to the table that would enact that right so I I didn't in anticipation of today because I thought that there would be a lot of discussion about this and what I'm still struggling with um candidly is whether it needs to be changed at all I think at most and and this is you know definitely different than what I said at the last policy meeting but I've given a great deal of thought to it and I think that if we want to to put some language in the bylaws of uh favoring rotation in some way um that's something that I would consider I don't have it right now and uh I I thought long and hard about it I'm just don't have that some point or well I'm not sure that's what I'm saying I'm still thinking about it and and I'm being very honest about it I think that um it's a really important thing to be a able to choose the president and the vice president based on a whole variety of factors which I don't think we will ever adly be able to put into these bylaws so that's not compatible I'm having a difficult time we just not agree then we'll just have to any you know can I can I just ask a followup so Mary can you just give some examples of uh like whole of you said there can be whole lot of reasons so can you give some examples of those reason well you know I can that would be completely hypothetical because um you know it depends on who's sitting where but for example um if we're in the middle of negotiations um either for a referendum or I mean I don't know anything about the teachers contract because I have nothing to do with that but I imagine that um the spokesperson and the face and the voice of the board consistency is something that could be useful so in that situation perhaps rotation would not be good conversely if um let's see that's one um I think we have skill set I think we have uh somebody's ability to give the time uh you know I've been on the board the least amount of time of everybody here so I'm doing the very best they can with a little bit of information that I have but the bottom line is that um we are entitled and really tasked with making a decision making a lot of decisions as we sit on this board but the very first one that we're all asked to do is who's going to lead us uh in The Limited ways that the president and the vice president are allowed to lead us and I think that that's something that I'm not willing to give up to a series of factors that we've put down this year that two years from now may not be good enough sure for example so okay so yeah I maybe you can come up with those reasons later on right right now I'm not getting enough but uh from the you may never get enough from me and and I'm not trying to be I'm not trying to be fresh but trying to clarify what I'm happy to do that and the second part you mentioned was uh the leadership of the board president so what do you feel as the um what do you feel is the role of board president where uh the board pres like the way I see it is board president has one vote the other other four members have one vote the board president runs the meetings and sets works with the superintendent to set the agenda right and those are primarily the two uh roles of the board president and then if there is a circumstance where um the board president has to make a press statement or go in front of the public and I think in those scenarios whoever is the board president will most likely be working with our uh Communications uh leader and discipline and then um and there's a leadership team that that steps up um in in those scenarios so I don't see as it so there is a lot of what I have seen um why I originally brought this up I've been watching board meetings since 2017 I think or or couple 2016 2017 and every time there was a board election or um nominations and finance and Facilities meetings those like before even I was on the board there was a committee of trying to change it to a committee of full Committee of uh reversing it from Committee of full and the people not voting in board member for board presidency people making comments about uh board presidency about their um too new being too new or so it becomes the negatives that I see uh in the working relationships of board members is more than positives I see that of becoming a board member let me let me ask you I mean yeah here's the thing though if you you what if you have a scenario where there's a president that's doing a good job right and three four five board members potentially agree that hey this person is doing a great job running the meetings well speaking well to the public responding to emails presenting the board well why shouldn't that person be why should why shouldn't that person be voted on by the board members to continue or vice versa what if there's a person that's really not qualified to be board president maybe they just doesn't have the time or maybe doesn't speak well to the public or doesn't know how to run a meeting or it's not collaborative maybe don't want person to ever be so that type of so that works when the public is directly electing a board member board President right so when in the scenarios when public elects mayor or the public elects president um then the public is voting for that in our scenario our represent we are all elected by the same public as representative they are not voting for us to be board president or in Village Council mayor right and then the alliances or like convincing uh other board members becomes I think it's best if each rep public representative voice is independent no I agree I agree with that but when you have a voting system between you're making it you're at least having a system where it's based on qualifications if you believe but if somebody is not qualified they should not even be a board member so if if our residents are voting somebody to be a member of the board there's no other requirement here that's what I'm highlighting that there's no other requirement here other than running the meetings by Robert's rules that board president has anything extra it's it's more a Prestige issue and it becomes a problem so you're saying so are you confidently saying that if someone's elected by the public they are they are 100% qualified to be a the best they should they are qualified to be a great board president yeah well I don't think that any any board member should have the deny you know we are all elected by the same public and who am I to say that X Y and Z doesn't shouldn't serve in some leadership capacity because if they are not qualified they should not even be a board member and then the public should be remove public should remove them the next Mee a linear rotation you're basically removing all uh all decision making based on qualifications and marit so because you are treating that position as removing board members uh recommendations or votes for a person based on qualifications but I that's assuming that the board presidency is based primarily on only those qualifications or other or qualifications or merits that's very individual and I will say that there's a reason why other districts have gone to this kind of rotation system to avoid some of the pitfalls so which districts in Bergen County have done that I'm interested uh I think it's faon or fair and Harington Park okay Harington Park is is also a five member board okay and that choose two off the top of my head just in Bergen County yeah so why don't uh why don't we see what their language is well I looked at their language and uh it is Broad because they have been able to work it out internally yeah and it works versus you know we're not the kind of District that is able to well but isn't that within our control I mean you just said exactly what I've been thinking about and kind of to uh even follow up with what you've been saying sarab which is you focused on the negatives and look we all know what happens and sometimes it's less than positive and sometimes things are said that shouldn't be said but the reality is everybody sitting at this table is in control of how they behave and what they bring to the table and so we can work it out amongst ourselves if we're committed to doing that and I don't want to sound like a poana but I think that we can and do quite frankly that's what I've seen in my tenure on the board I've seen us all treat each other with respect and even when we disagree and I think that um we can continue to do that and we can carry that forward into making a selection as to who the board President and Vice President are okay so um it sounds like there could be um there seems to be shifting sentiment on this proposed language so one of the things that had brought appeal unless you've changed Minds which is perfectly fine uh would be to the idea and this is uh there's precedence with the uh HSA and the Federated where you um where there's language that says no no individual can be consecutive in consecutive years so that I you know I think that's that would be a fair thought on that I was the one I was the one who told you that right so that's something that like in Federated for example you can hold actually in Federated you can hold a position position for 2 years and then after that um you're supposed to rotate off and I think at the high school you're supposed to rotate off after one year um however when there's a necessity or there's a reason why then they can go ahead and they can wave that that is something that I thought about um and I have backtracked a little bit from it because I'm I'm not sure you know as it was written it was you know you can't serve in consecutive terms uh baring exent right well that's not in here anymore and I know that was something that we talked about it right so I don't know maybe maybe that's something that we can think about I want to think about that more because that wasn't on the table when we walked in here tonight no I'm proposing it now okay and so um so you're not proposing it so you your position now I just want to make sure I'm clear right um is what o sorry is what's written here no Chang that no okay any anytime that we have a discussion it's a live argument like a live like discussion live you know live discussion live dialogue live conversation so we're jumping off of the page this I just put put put things in writing so it's easier for us to review yeah rather than me talking or you talking I'm not wedded to this this is why we're having the discussion I thought maybe you were going back to that that's why I wasn't clear no I mean this is a discussion so it just goes wherever we are so what I'm hearing is that um and we you know there was um some trepidation initially so that has only solidified for you and so I think even the idea of of rotation if there's a real genuine interest in trying to achieve it somehow I would love some input because what I'm hearing is it may not happen and the closest thing that we could perhaps agree on is this language which is I'm going to propose it now based on what I'm hearing which is no um no board member can serve as president or vice president in consecutive years barring exent circumstances not two years in a row baring extraord not exent I don't know extraordinary circumstances extraordinary so that was something we disc I don't know how you that well that's exactly the issue is that was we put that in there and then and then Mark said well you know what good is out to you and that's the problem is that with this kind of concept it either is very specific and once you get broad then it gets super Broad and that's what I'm personally struggling with um what any so what other do you think actually leave this policy alone it's the policy that we have in place so not even include no board member can serve as president or vice president in consecutive years barring special barring extraordinary circumstances because I think it's a year-to-year thing and that's why you have the election so what do you think Mohammad I need to think about it all right let's think about it so there's I'm I'm hearing let's bring it again next let yeah that's this is why it's helpful to have this discussion right this discussion was great and I appreciate it because it's it's given me the opportunity to hear a variety of you know and and to challenge your own thinking right I mean that's that's the point is to so it sounds like Legal Services there's more progress being made on that and more um uh uh word I'm looking for Comfort level right so that I I can clean up based on the input here and I'll send it to the board on the legal services and if that's okay maybe can go to you know to and all that so there's a path for that on this particular policy everyone will think some more I'll put that one language back on and think some more and then maybe it can be brought up as discussion and then we'll go from there okay sure and for for the policy committee I had one more policy uh so we often in our agendas we refer executive session uh for close sessions and I think I was reading somewhere that um under Robert's Rules executive session and close session maybe two different things so executive sessions are may not be like some sometimes those architectural proposals or audit report those can be an executive session they are not it's not a meeting um but public can still attend because those are presentations uh but closed session is closed session and and I personally like to consider myself as like a a volunteer or representative not a an executive so the whole word executive session doesn't make sense on two different levels one is we are not Executives of the B school and this it's not it it doesn't reflect close session so if those two are indeed two separate things then maybe we should rename them to close session instead of just executive session okay so then um I I have to see which resarch have to you know we have we are you just changing the wording yeah wording instead of executive session to close so why don't we just why don't why don't we just get a an opinion may as to I mean I've always heard it call Executive but it is closed as well so um why don't we just get an opinion from stra ese what what is the wording that needs to be on which policy so that'll be the second thing going to St ese Services that's just a question oh that's right that's just a question that can be change from executive session to close session session and if they agree then that will impact a lot of policies mulle policy impact okay it will be a fine replace of multiple policies okay well this was aast conversation thank you and now more homework more homework for us Mary okay so just moving on just this isn't really a discussion item but um just moving on to it is that time of year for board self- evaluations um um and so I've I contacted mat Le just to see if anything had changed so you would go into the New Jersey school boards Association your portal and you'll see um uh uh board self- evaluation so I would ask that um you complete it sometime this month uh between now and let say the 3 of April um I think that gives plenty of time to get that done uh the those evaluation those um self- evaluations you know go to um New Jersey school boards Matt Lee will will do a report and I asked um if he would be available either in June or July to report so I'll follow up with him because I think I got an answer about go to the portal and do it but not an answer as to a date so I I will it would be the last uh it would be the six o'clock meetings in June or July is where I'd like to do it because I think that very nicely leads us into discussions of any other goals we might want to accomplish next year so um that would be one and it also sets us up nicely gives us a break because in May we'll be doing the superintendent evaluation and wrapping that up um by June 30th at the latest that's our our deadline for that I'm I'm not proposing that we wait that long but we'll have um we'll have time in May to to accomplish uh the evaluation and of course um Dr Schwarz gives us information verifying the um you know the goals met and all that so I'm sorry I forget are the board self evals publicly reported or do we go into exec and you share with us the I forgot publicly reported okay yeah and it's an inra form yeah yeah and and really it gives I I think that it it's that but it also gives us a chance to really individually think what are the challenges and and you know where where is there Improvement needed what are our challenges going forward but the superintendent one is is superintendent different that is closed right that yes that that's Personnel okay um acceptance of minutes um are we all did everybody get a chance to review those I have some how do you want to do this because I have to abstain from a bunch right right so I don't you want so the same way we'll move it and second it and just as we did the policies with identify the ones that you cannot vote on um can we move these um minutes yeah they they're pretty um yeah they're you know they're short because most were um closed executive whatever um so I move the minutes second okay um we usually do it by roll calls just everybody agreement but Mary's not going point to so would you just say which ones you will abstain from yeah please so I'm going to abstain from uh the January 22nd executive session meeting the February 6th special public meeting the February 6th executive session meeting um as well as the February 27th special public meeting and February 27th executive session meeting I abstained from all of those because I was not present yeah that or I can vote on the 12 exactly thank you so I think uh let's just uh do I hear um are all in favor of approving the 12th I those who can vote except for Mary on the 22nd the 6 and the 27th hi oh I'll just vote Yes on the ones that I was present for because I think I missed them yeah that's right you missed the on that I'm missed the 12 right I missed the and so did you m i missed the 12 that's okay yes all right so Mary sarab and I Can Vote Yes I on the also there's your Forum yeah there three of there your three um hoping it's 10 o'clock that there is no more other business uh but I will go to um H are there is there any other business no oh then comments from the public please that's all right no I just I I just said that that you know gets late um here on oh now I am yeah okay sorry uh Lori Weber again 235 South Irving Street just a quick observation going back to that um conversation about uh grass versus artificial turf and in terms of the survey um I'm thinking about the things that Mr mmud said and I have to say that when it comes to any potential risks or dangers or you know concerns with artificial turf bless you um I mean there are facts out there and I don't think I mean I respect the community I am a member of the community but I don't think that that's a question that the community should be pulled on in terms of making a decision the board making a decision I think you really have to let get get the input from the medical and the Environmental experts when it comes to deciding the merits or detriments of One Versus the other and clearly there aren't medical issues with with grass it's you know so I I think that it's important for you to vet those things I know that there are some members of the public who have sent information directly to either the board or the superintendent that have mentioned this to me and I just think there's a lot more out there there's been a lot of presentation of it at the Village Council meetings and I'm sure if you're interested that those same people who presented there would be willing to who were me some of them members of the community that are medical experts or environmental experts that may be willing to speak to the board maybe have a little you know um town meeting on that issue and get some of these things out into the open so I hope the board will make decisions based on on real facts and not opinions when it comes to that thank you there any other thank you um we do have two Laura McKenna hello everyone this is Laura McKenna 861 Bingham Road um thank you very much for a very interesting and informative meeting tonight there's been several really fascinating conversations and uh so um I appreciate the opportunity to speak tonight um I do agree that the fields are um a priority and we need to um and that that as Miss mcau said there is a mandate in our community to deal with this problem with the flooding um I was a student athlete in high school and know firsthand how important sport sports are to uh young people some of whom you know may not be the Stellar students or may be shy like I was in high school yeah you can stop laughing now I was very shy in high school and sports really helped give me a chance to um learn leadership skills so I will always be you know um very much in favor of students having a place to um run to jump to to you know Excel on the field um the other quick topic I wanted to bring up tonight um has to do with test scores which were brought up briefly by Mr Schwarz tonight um I want to talk about um higher ed Trends um just in the past few weeks there's been some big shifts um in higher education um colleges have indicated that um test optional systems no long longer work they turned out to be very all the other variables that they Ed to decide who would be a good student at their college um didn't work so they're R turning back to the SAT scores and ACT scores in a big way um and they're saying that that is the best variable for deciding who would be a good student so our students who maybe not have not been put SATs and acts on the top of their list to prepare for colleges need to start to think about it again and we as a district need to think about how we going to support students to think about SATs and sat acts again um we have to make sure that they're getting prep proper preparation for grammar because that's a part of the um language arts program questions on the SATs we have to make sure that they can answer questions quickly and you know maybe go back to the drill and uh kill methods for math all of that needs to be addressed also schools have indicated that they are stepping away from essays as a variable as a um a method for judging students because too many students were using um that chat GTP to write their essays for them the other big trend is that there are more opportunities than ever before for special needs students in college Coles um from students with autism to even students with intellectual disabilities there's brand new opportunities opening up overnight and so yeah highered is changing really quickly um and um we need to as a high school make sure that we are responding to these changes and lastly I just wanted to thank Miss broken for really great super science Saturday um I was thrilled to have a quick chance to walk through and see the turtle shells and the computer um Parts it's it's really a joy to have this in the community so thank you and thanks again thank you Laura it it was a a team effort on on super science Saturday it's a great group of people working on that but thank you for your comment um is that aan an an sorry uh hello yeah thank you this is Anand from 19 John you know I have I have few um few comments actually overall actually you know it was uh I've been spending some time you know um listening to you guys since last few sessions you know uh I think it's interesting maybe I'm you know I'm kind of regretting for not participating you know since over the years when my daughter was uh uh was was a student there now she's she know she's not there anymore uh you know she's in the college well anyway you know um firstly I want to say about that um that thought thought session you know I just wanted to to express my opinion on that you know it is it I thought it's a good good but the problem is there are you know too many people are putting too many comments there and the thing is you know the the the thoughts are basically getting lost you know at the end of the day you know uh only you can only go uh uh and and read those only so many comments and you can put those Stars you know so that is why some of the you know the the the the star system is is doesn't really work there in my opinion because you know if you if as you saw some of the questions you know there are only like say 20 20 Stars uh or 25 Stars and things like that and it has given like you know 4.5 Stars so that really doesn't mean anything whereas you know because there are like thousands of comments so that should be a a a way to consolidate you know the comments and get rid of this star system and you know the do something else I think the datas are already there so it is how to extract uh those datas to you know uh to to get all the proper information so I think some work needs to be done um uh I guess there you know so that is what I could not I know I got tired of you know putting the putting the Stars after a while you know there are like thousands and thousands of comments there you know so that's regarding that one and secondly I was really kind of surprised when uh uh when one of board members s Dan mentioned that you know the um you know the the surveys I think you guys used to do the survey before and it was kind of uh biased towards you know Bo's Board of education's Advantage you know when I do the survey I have done enough many my objective uh to do the survey is get the exact you know uh the the the the truth basically you know so I I have to give all the options and choose uh whatever you know people people have chosen so I mean I'm that was really surprising to me that you know the survey is basically biased I'm not sure maybe he he he he was thinking something different but for me survey has to be uh you know unbiased and you know the survey has to get the the the real opinion you know from the people so that is regarding that one and the the third one is you know I think I heard the superintendent saying that uh there were so far a couple of years we never had any um you know the the floodings but overall it looks like since since last few years at least if you go back like five years probably there were like I don't know8 to 10 of these floodings and going by this 50,000 you know uh dollars per uh per incident you know I mean basically uh uh 400 500,000 uh you know went went down the drain basically with the floods you know it is totally a waste you know probably uh you know that could have saved or or even the majority of the portion uh could have saved so so everybody understand that you know finding a finding a permanent solution is a must you know and something has to happen and it is unfortunate that you know I mean we are thinking about it now in which the board and you know the the superintendent office and the board you know thought about this long time ago yeah four minutes is up if um you know I mean you know you I I spent I spent like three hours I I spent like three hours three hours listening to you guys you know in which some of the things some of the things which not even interest to any of the people public and you're not going to give me another minute to finish up my uh my I was just goingon to ask you to just to wrap up yeah I will I will that's what I'm saying I mean know you guys you know some of the topics you guys this was discuss was not even interest to any of the people we we still had to listen go through that thing and you want to cut me off or cut people off after four four minutes come on you know there has to be some kind of a thing you know and and otherwise you know make a session for public you know I mean if you got if you guys want to discuss something internally you know go and have a you know executive session and things like that and and we have no issues but but when you are giving a chance to to for the public to talk please give the public to talk yes we do and and thank you you know lastly I just want to say this you know you guys were talking about talking about this you know this leadership for giving a leadership thing for the board you know I just have a you know just just for a suggestion for that you know I mean I do understand that you know it is there are two ways you know I mean if the if the president is doing a good job you know why rotate right at the same time maybe you know the the other person we have to give a fair chance to everybody maybe I was thinking that you know you guys can think more about it at at some point but my thought process is basically you know you can you can basically start with the with the president you know with with voting you know there is a five member board right you know a president can be voted once and then then you know in the next session you know next next session basically mran really thank you so much um everyone is asked for the four minutes it's it's not it is public comment um in in a business setting where the board has their work to do so I thank you for your comments and I understand your concerns about the fields and thank you for that can I just clarify uh one thing so um Mr Anan thank you for uh bringing this up because uh I might have misspoken there uh what I uh wanted to say or my intention was to say that there is a possibility of bias in the survey when we are creating the survey and that possibility is removed when we are not giving any questions it's a clean slate for residents to respond and I I also did mention that there were too many um questions or too many responses so that was uh difficult to filter so I agree on that point but I did not want to communicate that our surveys are biased I was just saying that there's is a possibility of a bias survey okay thank you everyone um at this point we have no executive session so I would move to adjourn the meeting and do I have a second or would you all like to say second second all in favor I I thank you very much um and we will be uh our next board meeting is March 18th and we'll be here at 7 o'clock thank you