to order I'll say that again the meeting is called to order pursuant to the open public meetings ACT public notice of this meeting has been given by the board secretary in the following manner posting written notice on the official bulletin board at the Vorhees Township Public Schools administrative building on octo on August 17 2023 sending written notice to The Courier Post on August 17 2023 filing written notice with the clerk of Vorhees Township on August 17 2023 and posting on the Vorhees Township website on August 17 2023 please ride rise for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with libery and justice for all yes okay so Mr Bryce is going to be sworn in now as our newest board member good evening Mr Bryce could you join us at the podium please good evening even kindly raise your right hand and repeat after me okay I Jason Bryce I Jason Bryce do solemnly swear or affirm do solemnly swear or affirm that I will support the con Constitution of the United States that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the constitution of the state of New Jersey and the constitution of the state of New Jersey and that I will bear true faith and I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same and allegiance to the same and to the governments established until the governments established in the united states in the United States and this state and this state under the authority of the people under the authority of the people so help me God so help me God I Jason Bryce I Jason brce do solemnly swear or affirm do solemnly swear or affirm that I possess the qualifications prescribed by law do I possess the qualifications described by law for the office of member for the office of member of a board of education of a board of education and I am not disqualified as a voter am not disqualified as a voter pursuant the statute pursuant the statute and I am not disqualified and I'm not disqualified du to conviction of a crime or offense conviction of a crime or offense listed in statute listed in statute and that I will faithfully and that I will faithfully impartially and partially and justly perform and justly perform all the duties of that office all the duties of that office according to the best of my ability according to the best of my abilities so help me God so help me God congratulations thank [Applause] you and I just want to acknowledge that you have received and will sign the code of ethics thank you Mr Ry welcome okay Miss Haley the role please Bryce here over here Mr Rosen Mr Rosner here Mrs Rudder here Mrs Stewart here Mrs ster here miss verie here Mrs Watson here Mrs Watson is attending remotely okay Dr hacket I'm going to turn it over to you for our special treat tonight absolutely thank you good evening everyone I am so pleased tonight that we are going to get a sneak peak of the musical 13 that will be performed by the Vorhees Middle School drama club I am so um excited for this play and I'm will be there on March 9th but tonight they're just going to give us a sneak peek so so I would like to invite Miss Keith her team and the students to come forward so that we can see just a little sampling of the musical 13 I believe they're gonna make a grand entrance let's see should we go down yes and board members would like to go down because they'll be facing this way fing [Music] my name is Evan Goldman I live on 224 West 92nd Street in the heart of Manhattan and my life just blew up you want to talk about turning 13 it's a nightmare first of all my parents are splitting up and second of all can you see this what is this what did I do to deserve this I've got one good thing happening my this whole entire year my bar mitzvah the best party on the upper west side the Jewish Super Bowl I don't care how much my parents hate each other they better pull it together and make sure this party is absolutely positively for once please God perfect well you old everything that used to be good as gold to crumble and rest your mou once it was joke now it's really counts and there's no turning back life goes wrong sudden yelling cu hair is too long or you Liv clean Roll Along every conversation is another last cause thisen my and I'm just about to turn just about to turn God I'm going to turn 13 India no seriously my parents split up my life falls apart and now I'm in a town where UFOs go to refuel come on Patrice there's got to be some place in this town sorry but your choices are like my life here Limited wi it to what down the road there's a Dairy Queen up the block there's a Walmart there's a place you can accessorize your pets a school a tree a couple of churches and no matter how hard anybody searches that's about as thrilling as this stupid Village gets it's the lamest place in the world but it just got a little bit better so don't disappear it's the lamest place in the world and I'm pretty sure it's not as lame as it was before now the you're here let me introduce you to my friend Archie hey Evan do you think you could help us get a date with Kendra look I feel terrible really but I can't get you a date with with Kendra I do one stupid thing and suddenly I'm exciled to Loser table for the rest of my life I'm on Major probation here listen if there's one person in this school who can help us out that person is you there's the cool kids there's the preps and there's the skap punks and the jocks and then there's us there's the losers there's the nose and there's the Stoners and the Goths and then there's us but then there's you cuz you're the new kid in the school you're not defined my one specific greed so you're free to flip from from SE to se cuz you're the conduit the means are perfectly positioned to get us what we need but how do we get Kendra well first we have to get through Lucy the most popular girl in school [Music] I can see being Brett's new girlfriend we could be king and queen of this school OMG and you know that he wants me but since it's Kendra Ash and there's nothing to say unless I scheme and I plot till she's out of the way if it didn't make me hate myself I bet I could create myself an OP opportunity op opportunity op opportunity op [Music] opportunity God what a good girl I could be if I only had an itty bitty opportunity God boys are so stupid no wonder they're not girls can't you just talk from the heart tell her how you really feel tell her you thought about what happened tell her you [Music] haven't want to make it right tell her you know you w perfect tell her you waited way to tell her you're sorry tell her you mean it tell her you just were wrong [Music] tell her she shouldn't have ignored you or dissed you in front of all the school tell her the minute she got out of touch you felt like such a fool tell her that's stuning together was so nice you prayed it wouldn't end say you forgive her say you were jealous ask if she'll be your friend tell her that people get things wrong cuz people are afraid they won't fit in your word in your life but things will work out fine if she will only [Music] L tell her that all you've ever wanted you ever was maybe a smile or a GL tell her you're sorry tell her you mean it ask for another chance tell her you just want another [Music] chance [Music] I'm not ready to put down my pencil just yet there are too many answers than I didn't yet I need a little less pressure and a little more time I'm trying to follow I'm trying to lead I'm trying to learn what is true I'm trying to be what you want and I need and we all a little more all have a little more we all have a little moreor to do a little more homework to do a little more homework to do a little more homework to do a little more home [Music] I hope you enjoyed our preview of the VMS drama club's 13 The Musical come see our show with over 94 more cast members on March 8th 9th and 10th tickets are for sale online and at the box office before the [Music] [Applause] show like you're not on stage you can see everybody's face yes and the harmony was excep we have some gifts for the students for coming out tonight and we'll give them to one of the advisers to give it to them thank you so much you were amazing I can't wait till March 9th I'm glad I have my tickets you're amazing amazing you want guys want to come up and get your gifts thank you so [Music] [Applause] much thank you I'm just going to give everybody a moment to depart if they'd like thank you Gabby thank you Miss Keith thank you kids you did a wonderful [Applause] job as a drama parent myself I know how much work goes into these shows so I encourage you to come see it the kids have been working so hard next weekend uh the 8th 9th and 10th so we will not be going into executive session tonight can I get a motion to approve the board minutes from the January 31st 2024 regular board meeting so moved second that was me thank you online voting is open there have six yeses and two extensions the abstentions are Mr Bryce and Mrs ster motion carries thank you Mrs Watson do you have any comments this evening no comments okay information items fire drills and safety drills as shown on the attachment as well as suspensions bus evacuation drills as well we had one Oprah request this month and that request has been closed so now we will have the board secretary report Miss Haley thank you uh the budget timeline uh is nearing the end of uh the day that we're waiting for um yesterday was the governor's budget address and tomorrow we receive our state aid figures so that's what we really need in order to close out our budget um then the next important date is March 13th which is our next board meeting and that's where we present the budget it's a preliminary budget adoption to approve the budget to submit to the county uh the budget has to be submitted to the county by March 20th the county has until April 19th to review the budget we WE Post uh an advertised budget in the paper that has to be done well we're doing it on April 24th it has to be done at least four days before the public hearing on the budget uh we are having the public hearing on the budget May 1 and that's part of our regular board meeting as well but there'll be a public hearing at that point uh the next item is personal relative Financial disclosure statement uh those are filled out by um administrators in the district and board members and that is due by April 30th and then the last item is the preschool building update under our buildings and ground section there's an item for the fourth addendum to the purchase sale agreement of the building uh that releases $10,000 of the deposit that we have there um that's an amendment because we were not releasing that 10,000 at this point but we we changed it to do that uh settlement was supposed to be on the 21st of February but it's been delayed we're hoping to go to sement in April at this point so that's why we're releasing another $10,000 to the seller so that way they can cover the cost of keeping the building you know situated there that's all I have thank you thank you very much Miss Haley superintendent report Dr Hackett okay thank you again and good evening again everyone I want to begin by inviting Miss Donley to come forward she's going to give the student safety data system ssds report for the first period of the 2324 school year um we do give this report around this time every year and then at the end of the year we'll give the full year report and we'll do a three-year comparison when we give the full year report so miss Donley that would help I guess I'm not singing so uh as Dr Hackett said this is the first reporting uh so we report from September 1st through December 31st uh then we report again in August which will report the second reporting period of January 1 through June 30th and then in the fall which would be in October we would report on the whole year so at that at that point in time we would have a comparison of three years total data um so for this evening I'll be sharing with you just the first reporting period of um incidents that had occurred at the school levels and then districtwide so if you take a look at the slide it's kind of small so it's a little hard to see um we had a total of 12 incidents that were reported uh we didn't have any incidents reported um at ET Hamilton nothing was reported for Cresent Ade had one incident of violence Signal Hill did not have any for the first reporting period uh the VOR Middle School had 11 uh for a total of 12 incidents that does include um HIV investigations that are affirmed to be not included those that are not affirmed so alleged Hib does not get reported but I did include that on the report as well um so overall we had three at the middle school U harassment intimidation and bullying investigations that were alleged and not affirmed um and then we had 17 other incidents that didn't meet the criteria for the ssds reporting um of violence and vandalism but other reasons for having to be removed and suspended from school which did include in school suspension as well uh the next slide please we also need to report on our um trainings and programs that we do so in the beginning of the school year the the districtwide we do our harassment intimidation and bullying trainings so we had three trainings we had one program districtwide um broken down by school we had three at Hamilton three at Crescent four at oage three at Signal Hill and three at the middle school they were the trainings for staff um programs again districtwide we had one four at Hamilton six at cresen four at oage four at Signal Hill and eight at the middle school so that's our total of all of our trainings and programs we are going to begin another program starting um we're piloting it now and we're going to start it in September called character strong and we do hope that that comprehensive guidance program will allow for more consistency in our programs and trainings throughout the district any questions thank you thank you very much Miss Donley I'll continue with my report I just want to once again thank Miss Keith her team the students and their parents for coming tonight and giving us a sneak peek at um the musical 13 just as a reminder um the performances are Friday March 8th at 7 o'clock Saturday March 9th at 1:00 Saturday March 9th at 7 o'clock and then Sunday March 10th at 3 p.m. so the first thing I want to talk about is the high impact tutoring Grant so there was a delay in the start of our grant that we received from the state we received um $230,000 from the state um but there was a delay because the state required us to go for a request for proposal after our Grant application was already approved um the plan consisted of using two tutors from a company called heytor during the day and we were going to uh use them from April 8th to June 7th and then we were going to have a summer program which we will able to hire um 18 of our own teachers and tutors from heytor so given the grants late start we were going to start in April um you know concerns were raised which I absolutely understand about the effectiveness of having tutors come in the classroom so late in the year and and having time for the teachers and the tutors to build relationships for partnering together so in hearing those concerns um we've decided to move solely to a summer program for the high impact tutoring Grant we would hire 12 teachers one Lead Teacher two physical education teachers two music or art teachers and then 12 tutors from hey tutor so each classroom would have a teacher and a tutor for the students um and we would be able to have um six third grade teachers and six fourth grade teachers we wanted to include include physical education and music or art because we think that that would help entice um our students to attend the summer program so while this adjustment means that we will not utilize the entire Grant application we will use the majority of the funds and we will create a robust and impactful summer program through a collaborative effort with our district and the police department we are proud to say that there are communication boards installed in every Township playground we are very excited about that and I want to commend Dr agre and Miss Ross because that is amazing um that we have those communication boards in every Township playground and to Mark the collaborative event Dr alagria and Miss Ross and the special education teachers and some students visited a field on January 31st um and they the communication board was unveiled at that time so I just want to congratulate our special services team and I think that's wonderful and a wonderful addition for our students in addition every police car in Vorhees has a communication board in their police cars just in case they ever encounter a student who is nonverbal so I think that's just amazing and then my final announcement is that there will be a parent virtual workshop on Monday March 18th at 7 o'clock and Dr alagria and Miss Ross will be spearheading that workshop and it will be on inclusion so for our parents if you're interested in learning more about inclusion Monday March 18th 7 o'clock on our website you'll find the zoom link thank you and that ends my report thank you Dr hacket okay committee reports Mr Rosen is not here Mr Rosner will you please provide the finance committee report and also update us on the meeting you recently attended you got it um we held a finance committee meeting on Tuesday February 13th here at the township building um we discussed standard Financial reports just to sort of acclimate everyone to um what's going to happen during the budgeting process and just um items that are shown on the sort of board report every single meeting which include the treasurer's report the board secretary's reports and the monthly transfer report we also discussed investment options for cash that we have in some of our accounts so that we can get make basically more interest on that money than what we are currently doing so we're currently investigating that as well and that was the content of that meeting um I also attended the njsba Camden County virtual meeting um that was on February 8th um there were several different topics discussed I think it's sort of a standard agenda they do a board of directors update field service updates on like open positions and leadership programs and then there was a government relations update highlighting new laws impacting schools and future laws being considered but the focus of the session was on the njsba firearm task report and um sort of the the gist was that being that gun related injuries are the leading cause of death for kids there was a discussion about teaching gun safety education in the schools and in the community at large through a communitybased Alliance and where uh Boards of Education can uh help support those conversations so um that was the njsba uh Camy County meeting update thank you Mr Rosner Mrs Stuart will you please provide an update on the policy committee meeting sure the policy committee met for an hour earlier this evening Dr Hackett Mr moscowitz and board members Julie Kover Moren Rudder Julianne verie and I were present for first read we discussed the following revised policy policies and regulations policy 0155 board committees which was tabled and will return for first read policy 1140 educational Equity policies affirmative of action policy 1523 comprehensive Equity plan policy and regulation 1530 equal employment opportunities and equal employment opportunity complaint procedure policy 1550 Equal Employment anti-discrimination Practices regulation 2200 curriculum content which will return for first read policy and regulation 2260 equity in school and classroom practices and equity in school and class practices complaint procedure policy 2411 guidance counseling policy 3211 code and ethics regulation 5440 honoring student achievement that policy has also been tabled and will return for first read and policy 5570 sportsmanship for second read we reviewed policy 0164 conduct of board meetings and we also discussed a a uniform procedure for handling meeting minutes for all board committees policy 6700 Investments and proposed neighboring policy 01641 conduct of board members during public meetings and 0164 point2 request for information by board members thank you thank you audience participation guidelines for agenda items only anyone wishing to address the board please approach the side table on the right and write your name and address on the login sheet while the board is limited in its ability to respond to the public on matters involving Personnel litigation negotiations and attorney client privilege the board will now hear comments from the public relating to items on the agenda for this board meeting comments are limited to three minutes the board will not take action this evening you will be notified at some later time by letter electronic mail telephone or in the context of a later board meeting of any action the board does take hi I'm Sharie Kaufman I need to take this opportunity first to say how amazing the drama kids were I'm a drama mama my kids have been doing theater since they were 10 years old they went through BMS they went through Eastern High School and my son is actually in a show in college now it is a major part of both my kids' lives and who they are because of what was done so I want to take this opportunity to ask ask you to fund the drama Department I have never had this opportunity with the kids singing my kids never got to do this the drama department is self-funded the basketball team gets money to play and money to go on a bus they get money for uniforms the drama department has I am so sorry this is not an agenda topic this oh they told me it was yeah I apologize it's not at the agenda items I'll come back okay come back for the next section thank you I believe he will thank you anybody else audience participation on agenda items okay moving on to board comments on agenda items can I get a motion to approve all items under policy so moved second online voting is open six yeses two extensions one by Mr Bryce and one by Mrs ster motion carries can I get a motion to approve all items under curriculum so moved second online voting is open seven yeses one abstention by Mr Bryce motion carries can I please have a motion to approve all items under Personnel so moved second online voting is open seven yeses one abstention by Mr Bryce motion carries can I get a motion to approve all items under transportation so moved second online voting is open seven yeses one exstension by Mr Bryce motion carries can I get a motion to approve all items under buildings and grounds so moved thanks second online voting is open 7 yeses one abstention by Mr Bryce motion carries moving right along can I get a motion to approve all items under Finance I'm not sure when the appropriate part time to ask for this I just want to be able to explain my vote there's usually there can be discuss discussion corre discussion correct ask for comments and then vote okay so can I get the motion B moved second M yeah comments yes so um I just wanted to uh comment on the uh Award of the contract for a high impact tutoring program first I want to um thank um superintendent hackit for listening to the concerns of the community and uh our our faculty um on this issue and um I think I I really appreciate the fact that you were able to be nimble and adjust accordingly um and so I just wanted to say that that is why I will be voting yes on this uh because of uh the ability to listen to the community so I just wanted to thank you for that thank you online voting is open we have six yeses two extensions one by Mr Bryce and one by Mrs stuper motion carries public comment for any school or School District matter anyone wishing to address the board please approach the side table on the right and write your name and address on the login sheet while the board is limited in its ability to respond to the public on matters involving Personnel litigation negotiations and attorney client privilege the board will now hear comments from the public comments are limited to three minutes the board will not take action this evening you will be notified at some later time by letter electronic mail telephone or in the context of a later board meeting of any action the board does take so hi in case you didn't know I'm my name's Sher and I'm a drama mama but seriously um unless things have changed 10% of The Middle scho school is involved in drama whether it be behind the stage or on the stage and like I started saying before all of sports are funded they get buses they get uniforms our children have to work they have fundraisers the tickets that are sold are turned around and back into the show and the people that are doing the jobs that they're doing are not getting paid what is equivalent to what the coaches are being paid they start in October they end at the end of March they spend countless hours and what they give the children is you you just can't get that from anything else that they do my daughter presented at a national Neuroscience conference this year and I know that part of the reason she did that with confidence is because she was taught on the stages of this school district as well as well as Eastern High School so I know over the years with different boards people have come up and said stuff I've never had the opportunity to but I'd really like you to consider looking at the funding that drama gets and comparing it to all the other events and sports and clubs that happen at the middle school and see the difference in the funding and what they do versus what the other things do and look sports are very important and there are kids that learn so much from sports but I just would like you to take the time to do that please thank you thank you any other comments from the public okay board comments yes all right I'm going to try to get through this and not get emotional I'm also not feeling my best tonight so please be mindful of that as I Stumble over words I want to take a moment to honor and speak the name of NEX Benedict a 16-year-old non-binary student who used they them pronouns who died this month after being bullied and attacked in a girl's bathroom in their Oklahoma school while we don't yet know the exact circumstances of next death we do know that they were regularly subjected to transphobic words why am I bringing this up this happened in okl Oklahoma not bores I'm bringing it up because unfortunately hate has no Geographic boundaries and we need to be vigilant so that this never happens here as the first openly and now thankfully not only lgbtq person elected to this board I have received my share of hateful homophobic and transphobic rhetoric thrown at me from a vocal minority of members of this community I want this Community know that those words have consequences our children are listening no one is born hateful hate is learned and hateful words are the first step towards making children like necks unsafe I applaud this district for its inclusive policies including a parent workshop last year on gender identity because if we want to protect children we must protect all children including trans non-binary and two spirit children what happened to next cannot be allowed to happen to another child again their name was next Benedict thank you thank you miss veryy any other board comments okay we are not going into executive session the next board meeting will be a regular meeting on Wednesday March 13 2024 at 7 pm in this building can I get a motion to adjourn the meeting so moved second all in favor I I thank you thank you than you