e e public session we will begin with roll call missano Miss Brown here miss crbo here Mr alesandro here Mr Cohen here Mr Langley here Mr Sim here and Miss Kang here um at this time let's all advise for the flag salute I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay um I will read the mission statement tonight the River Edge school district is a partnership of students parents staff and community members we're dedicated to providing a supportive environment in which all students can reach their maximum academic potential while developing as responsible citizens who respect individuality our goals will be achieved because curriculum instruction are aligned with the New Jersey student learning standards all decisions reflect the academic social emotional and physical needs of prek to sixth grade students cooperation and ongoing communication exist between the school district and the community and school Ministries and the Board of Education work together to assess and adjust procedures in response to new mandates and the changing needs of the community um pursuing to the open public meetings Act noce noce of this meeting its daytime and place have been delivered to the post office the municipal building the record and posted on the district website at least 48 hours prior to the time of this meeting thank you moving on to special item a public comment on agenda items only so this portion is for public comments on agenda items only first and foremost please remember that we aim to maintain a level of decorum in our board meetings we expect everyone to be kind and model the type of behavior that we are teaching our students each speaker should be courteous and direct comment to the board president and not individual board members as per policy 1120 a participant must be recognized by the presiding officer and must preface commment by an announcement of his or her name residents in group affiliation if appable to maintain fairness each speaker will have three minutes to speak so at this time I open it up for public comments on agenda items only can I I'll you have to come up to the podium just state your name um residence for our minutes um and just make sure the microphone has the green light on so that um our viewers on YouTube can also hear you testing oh okay hi thank you for having me tonight my name is Ali leckenby 284 Wales Avenue my son goes to Roosevelt I hav't another kindergartener that's going to go in September um I'm here today to discuss the alphab best um for voting whether they're going to continue to provide for our kids care pre and after next year um and I just you know since they have had been with us for the past two years my son has been um every day from 3: to 6 for the past 2 years right as a working parent I don't have any other options this is the only option that I have my my being here is can we do better right understood that there are a lot of considerations at hand um in my experience what I can say is the demonstration that they had for us in person in terms of the curriculum the what what do they say um the special researched curriculum they talked about robotics they talked about engineering they talked about science they talked about uh teaching language right Chinese language which for my background I'm all for but in reality they have not met that right this is based on my understanding um in terms of the feedback that I have gotten from my child when he gets home what have you done today he's done none of that there's some drawing yes there's homework when the weather is nice yes they go outside but it feels like a daycare as opposed to what they you know advertise themselves to be on the website that they are an extension of the school day so it just feels like it is lacking there's also been an incident back in September of 2022 I have contacted alphabest at that point I have not gotten a response from them ever in terms of a particular staff member putting his hand on my son multiple times and also pointed a finger at me during pickup time to tell me that your son is out of control he proceeded to tell my husband that your wife is out of control when I told him something that he didn't want to hear which is you cannot talk to me that way and do not talk about my child that way unacceptable um also in my two years first time ever I was late in picking him up I wrote to them hey the train is delayed I will be late they said hey no problem I got an automated email to say that you've got charged $15 for being 2 minutes late at 6:02 p.m. I appreciate it's automated I also work in Tech I understand how automation works you can code that to say something very different they have since absolutely on the record that they have fixed that right we have complained they have fixed that that email in terms of their promise to be part of our community they didn't hold up on their part of the bargain so all I'm here to say is can we do better as a community in terms of finding another option for care for our children that's it thank you thank you so much for coming out and speaking tonight okay um since there are no other comments tonight uh we'll move on to our reports uh the interm superintendent report Dr Murphy thank you very thank you very much um tomorrow I will be releasing to the Comm Community the New Jersey school reports as they relate to River Edge these are public documents um we normally or most districts just send out the email that says they're available online I think we do something very special here and that is we email out the actual reports so parents don't have to go and find them on the website and while standardized tests are just one area of performance um we should all be proud of our students and our staff our um School District did extraordinary on the school performance reports I mean really extraordinary and that's a credit to everyone in this room and to the teachers and to the students themselves and the parents I just want to um bring your attention to a couple of areas when the report comes out tomorrow one is our special education po population incredible scores okay um and I know we have um very uh a diverse background when it comes to our special education population for for our students to perform as well as they did is really kudos to our special ed teachers our department of special education our teachers and our principles so thank you for that we also did extraordinarily well in our chronic absenteeism um chronic absenteeism is well over 25% Nationwide it's a real issue especially postco and we know you know there are multiple reasons why that number is high but for me um it's all about feeling connected to your school to your teachers and to your classmates we're less than 4% chronic absenteeism and our chronic absenteeism as it relates to our special education population is one of the tops in the state and that's because they feel connected to our teachers they feel connected to our staff members they feel connected to our principles so I want to just again yes a standardized report a good high score is wonderful but when you dig deeper into the data really shows how special a place River Edge is so kudos to everyone on that uh just a reminder that June 4th is our give back day due to weather I'll be making a recommendation to the board at the next May meeting to amend the calendar that's of course if the locusts don't hit us or the zombie attacks since I've now lived through an earthquake and a solar eclipse as your superintendent so June 4th is a Tuesday and that will be our give back day um and it was in the calendar um advertised sort of like that to Ally and I I want to be respectful I did not catch your last name so I want to thank you for coming out and bringing your concerns um and I want you to know that this board of education takes the charge of approving or not approving after school very seriously know that because I've been in multiple conversations about that so I encourage you to continue to advocate for your children and it's not easy to come out after a hard day of working in the city unless you lie to your husband and you're going out after this okay so I I want to assure though the board that we're going to take every um concern seriously there was a concern that was brought up last time we investig ated that as well um the administration met with those students um those workers who are happen to be riverdell students as well and um we concluded that investigation so I want you to know to Not Just Ally but any other parent when your concerns are brought forth to this office we're going to look into it um so thank you and last but not least uh next Monday is the start of Passover for any of our staff members community members I wish everyone a Happy Passover that is my report thank you Dr Murphy any questions comments from board members okay moving on to the principal report uh I Believe Miss heightman is here tonight to give the principal report Mrs Mr Hensel you look different it's the class right yeah all right good evening everyone so we did have our um registration last week for the district and right now uh as we speak we have a total of 122 kindergarteners for next year uh at this time last year we had like in the 13738 range so we're a little bit lower than last last year at this time uh right now we have uh 74 at Cherry Hill and 48 at Roosevelt some of these are still open registration meaning that um you know the family still owe us some paperwork but we're assuming that all of them are coming we also um had the Cherry Hill Shark Tank this past monday it was spectacular uh the sixth graders did um a fantastic job they learned about advertising co uh cost projections and marketing designs so now we are left with um Mrs Moran is going to um come up with the date for the Roosevelt versus Cherry Hill winners of the Shark Tank was very exciting uh we are uh planning uh one Community many stories event on May 29th to celebrate our community of River Edge and we would like commity members to participate in this event if anyone would um be interested uh you can contact Christine Moran or or the principles and that's happening again May 29th it's also International day it's it'll be a fun day for all of us uh Roosevelt had a successful Spring Concert uh on Tuesday evening and our spring concert is tomorrow evening we're very excited for the event the students have been working really hard on their uh talents so we look forward that tomorrow night at Cherry Hill school we had a young lady who was principal for the day her name was Leah Barrera she's a third grader she actually won principal of the day at our uh bags and brunch so she really worked hard um with me on Monday she uh made announcements and she did a good job she did lunch duy one of our favorites she uh read to some kindergarten classrooms she covered helped me cover classes for the concert and she attended the Shark Tank and she got a lot of fun gifts at shark tank so it was very exciting she didn't an awesome job uh the art show in both schools is next week on April 25th um you can tell the Halls are filled with beautiful artwork we have live artists at our show and um the PTO book fair is also going to be open that night for parents so we hope everybody comes um we have a readathon cook uh kickoff for April 19th for the entire um building we are going to do a really exciting event it seems as like the dunk tank was very popular last year um this year we're going to have we're going to let the students decide who goes in the dunk tank so they're going to vote so that'll be exciting uh the teacher of the year information was sent out this week and the nominations are open and we are getting um some some nominations we met with um Ben schaer our uh Recreation and he really gave us some awesome ideas for our our um potential new playground we're very excited about it and I know he went to Roosevelt as well so that's exciting and I just want to mention the solar eclipse was very exciting um our steam coaches had some assem for the for the students the students went outside and practiced with their glasses on it was very exciting we actually had some um PD for our staff but we took a seven-minute break to go see the solar eclipse everybody it was very exciting so that's all I have any questions yeah okay okay uh moving on to the board secretary report Miss Napal Tano thank you um item A6 is the approval of the SOP or standard operating procedure manual um you're required to do this yearly um it's reviewed by the county office when they come in for cusac um it's also a great document to have um because everyone reviews it and updates it so it went through um all the offices I went through it payroll technology um accounts receivable payables and we updated the documents to go with all of our processes so it's a a good um item C1 is the approval of compete Academy to use the field facilities at Roosevelt School in the summer uh item D4 is approval of the radios for admin and staff with the funding from the cops Grant and item D5 is approval of the sprinkler installation at Cherry Hill School under the trees for school Grant questions for Miss Nepal Tana okay moving on to uh the president's report um I just want to give an update to the public um on our superintendent search so on April 13th the board met with our consultant to review the stakeholder input report that was created um from the inperson meetings along with the surveys that um our stakeholders had submitted so I just want to say thank you for everyone that took the time to share their insights it was really helpful for the board to create a profile for our NE next educational leader um from there we reviewed 44 applicants uh for this position uh we were excitedly thrilled to see a lot of different people um who have put their resumes in um and we were very impressed with the level of talent and experience that our candidate pool had and and we narrowed it down to 10 candidates that we will be interviewing starting next week so um there's a lot of board meetings ahead for us but I know that it's time well spent um any questions comments from board members okay uh moving on to committee reports finance and Facilities will be reporting Langley has slides no it's very dramatic the way that slowers down I'm going to put it on my my L yeah what yeah yeah the other the slides though this is the report oh oh you on the slides all right that's right we can we should take this off then okay yeah I'm just going to read from the slides then all right so we talked about uh the boiler project uh part of which is the um abatement uh for the asbestos that is located in and around the boiler area um L I think this changed since the since we met right we we were going to the original recommendation was to replace one boiler at each school first and then the others if possible before October but then we met with um the um CJ vanderbach who was awarded the bid and the decision was made to do one school at a time since Cherry Hill could wait Roosevelt um was critical to do that one first okay so we're going to do the Cherry Hill school and the Roosevelt School boiler first this summer and next summer would be Cherry Hill they're going to do both of Roosevelt spoilers or Ros yeah okay so both Ros okay yeah each school has two um I guess they can run on one if they need so it's a redundant system so the idea was you're going to do one at each school but I guess because Roosevelt is much older we'll do Roosevelt first and then do Cherry Hill next year um the tree Grant uh the pruning will start soon also mentioned the sprinklers will start as soon as it goes through the board approval uh the cops Grant they're doing the window film now uh cameras and doors will start soon and the walkie-talkies are on the agenda tonight um talked about PTO projects and playgrounds um there was a vendor that met with both pto's at both schools to talk about playground equipment and I guess we'll wait for an update from the pto's right on what they did they' officially decide to do anything so um my understanding in talking with both PTO is that it was going to a vote for the Cherry Hill um PTO to move forward and hopefully we'll be on the next agenda for you to approve the PTO donation for the grant for the um playgrounds and also the vendor to put the playground in this summer okay um I did speak to the Roosevelt PTO who met with also um with the same vendor to do the playgrounds um and they would like to fund raise additional for this year and put the playgrounds in hopefully next year next summer all right uh we discussed alphabest the renewal is on the agenda tonight as we talked about already and then the region five lease uh there is a draft of the lease um already for next year there's the discussion of additional space um more to come on that and then we also discuss some contractual Personnel matters um which we'll update we talked about and closed that was it any questions from board members yeah I know dramatically raise the screen now yeah everybody stand up I'm sorry okay uh we will now move into motions to be acted upon can I get a motion for A1 second any questions or comments roll call please Miss Brown yes Miss Crespo yes Mr alesandro yes Mr Cohen yes Mr L yes Mr sim yes and Miss Kang yes can I get a motion for A2 through 7 move to approve items a 2 through 7 as stated second any questions or comments roll call please Miss Brown yes Miss creso yes Mr elisandro yes Mr Cohen yes Mr Langley yes Mr sim yes and Miss Ken yes can I get a motion for B1 move to approve B1 as stated second any questions or comments roll call please Miss Brown yes Miss creso yes M delandro yes Mr Cohen yes Mr Langley yes Mr sim yes and Miss Kang yes I believe we're at C1 okay uh motion for C1 move to approve I am C1 as stated second any questions or comments roll call please Miss Brown yes Miss Crespo yes Mr alesandro yes Mr Cohen yes Mr Lang yes sister sim yes and Miss Kang yes can I get a motion for D1 through 5 uh move to approve D1 through five as stated second any questions or comments roll call please m brown yes M Crespo yes Mr alesandro yes Mr Cohen yes Mr Langley yes Mr sim yes and Miss Ken yes can I get a motion for D6 move to move to approve item D6 as stated second any questions or comments I just want to say on behalf of the board thank you for coming out and speaking I know you emailed us prior and um for taking the time to be here um I know that we are all working parents who have used before and after care in the past or currently and um it's just as important what happens during the school hours as it does after and before because there are students so I think it is our board's commitment to make sure that uh whatever company we um have use our facilities we can also stand by um I think it's definitely on our radar um for our next permanent leader to really take a deep dive into that program and see what is best as you said for our students so um I I just want to say that it's it's on our radar as a board and that we will continue this conversation and discussion in our committees um looking into the future so is there anything else the board members want to add I think there's also an interest to form an ad hoc committee uh to review the commitments uh that the organization that the company has has made so uh to ensure that they through with it and also to really think through what's what's next and to hold them accountable okay uh roll call please Miss Brown yes Miss crossbow this is a tough one for me um I want to say no but I have to say yes just in because I know there aren't a lot of other options right now but I I really do think we have to work as a board to really make sure that we're holding them accountable um so that we don't have any other concerns or issues and thank you Miss Len for bringing this to attention um but yes M elisandra I agree with what althia said and for tonight I'm voting yes Mr Cohen yes Mr Langley yes Mr sim yes Miss K yes motion for 4 D7 through 8 second any questions or comments roll call please Miss Brown yes M crbo yes Mr alesandro yes Mr Cohen yes Mr Langley yes Mr sim yes and Miss K yes motion for E1 move to approve E1 as stated second any any questions or comments roll call please m brown yes m ESO yes Mr alesandro yes Mr Cohen yes Mr Langley yes Mr sim yes and Miss Ken yes uh motion for E2 move to approve E2 as stated second any questions or comments yes um we will be honoring um the retiree in May okay so may the second board meeting yes the second board meeting in May I believe the 22nd okay that sounds about right um I just want to say thank you to miss uh Noel who's been part of our district for 15 years so just we wish her um the best in her retirement and we just appreciate her dedication to our students um for the time that she was here a roll call please Miss Brown thank you yes Miss creso yes thank you Mr alisandra yes Mr Cohen yes Mr Langley yes Mr sim yes and Miss K yes a motion for E three [Music] to 11 move to approve E3 through 11 as stated second any questions or comments roll call please Miss Brown yes M creso yes Mr elisandro yes Mr Cohen yes Mr Langley yes Mr sim yes and Miss Ken yes can I get a motion for G1 through six uh move to approve G1 through six is stated second any questions or comments roll call please Miss Brown yes Miss Crespo yes M delandro yes Mr Cohen yes Mr Langley yes Mr sim yes and Miss Kang yes is there any old or new business that the board wishes to bring up I just had a question about um where are we with the I think we were going to update the website about how we hire Paris or about like calling them back when they apply or did we review the I think it's also like it's Paris it's te the parent teach like all the roles that we have that parents or the communities are are pling Ling for um there was a gap in the system um community members were telling me that they weren't receiving phone calls back um they they put their applications in they followed what was on the website and I think when we last spoke about it it was we were going to look at it and I just I saw somebody had been approved so or is I'll have an update at the next board meeting okay great thanks is there any older new business say that the board wishes to bring up I have one item which is I recall in the interview process for this job you all agreed that you were going to do the fund run on April 27th 5K was that not Lauren was that not you're not running on the 27th did you not that's just a reminder to the community that are on the writing it down so um just to add on I know that's next Saturday I think this Saturday at the Cherry Hill parking lot they're doing the second hand second hand second turn toy drive to recy re purpose or re basically pass on any toys that um you your family no longer needs you can bring to the Cherry Hill parking lot this Saturday and they will find a new home for it whether it's at a daycare or family um so anything plastic I believe is the criteria um okay so we'll move on to our second public comment time um again first and foremost please remember that we aim to maintain a level of decorum in our board meetings we expect everyone to be kind and model the type of behavior that we're teaching our students each speaker should be courteous and direct comment to the board president not board individual board members and as per policy 1120 a participant must be recognized by the presiding officer and must preface comments by an announcement of his or her name residents and group affiliation if appable and to maintain fairness each speaker will have three minutes to speak we also request that comments related to individual student matters be directed to the child's teacher principal or the superintendent as not all issues especially ones involving individual children can be addressed publicly in board meetings so at this time I open up to the public okay uh seeing that there's no public comments can I get a motion to adjourn the meeting Mo to John second roll call please m brown yes Miss Crespo yes Mr delandro yes Mr Cohen yes Mr Langley yes yes Mr sim yes and Miss Kang yes thank you everyone for being here tonight we'll be back for our public meeting on May 1st