##VIDEO ID:lW4OlkILvww## e e e e e hello my name is Victoria picala I'm the vice president of the board of education and I will be presiding for this moment um thank you Mary um I'd like Mary to uh run roll call please miss Sebert yes Miss Kennedy here Miss D Benedictus yes Miss ayon here Mr Mesmer here miss picala yes Miss rep Mr Edwards the New Jersey open public meeting law was enacted to ensure the right of the public to advance notice of and to attend meetings of the public bodies at which any business affecting their interest is discussed or acted upon in accordance with the provisions of this act The Brick Township Board of Education has caused notice of this meeting to be posted on the administration office Bolton board the official District website and channel btv2 and sent to the ebur park press to Brick times Star Ledger and mpal Clerk's Office uh we need a motion in a second um uh to enter executive session please motion bran second alley whereas The Brick Township Board of Education has been for pursuant to applicable New Jersey statutes and whereas the board is charged with the responsibility of Performing all acts and doing all things consistent with the law and the rules of the state board of education necessary for the lawful and proper conduct equipment and maintenance of the public schools and public school property of the Brick Township School school district and whereas section s of the open public meeting act permits the exclusion of the public from a meeting of the board in certain circumstances and whereas the board is determin that circumstances exist for such an executive session and whereas the board has found the action described below to be necessary and proper now therefore be resolved by the board on December 12th 2024 that the public shall excuse me be excluded from discussion of an action on the executive session here and set forth the session will be approximately 15 minutes and the general nature of the subject matter to be discussed is harassment intimidation and bullying report is anticipated at this time that the above stated subject matter will be made public if and when it is deemed in the public interest to do so and the need for confidentiality is no longer required by the board thank you Miss Sebert yes Miss Kennedy yes Miss D Benedictus yes missan yes Mr Mesmer yes Miss picala yes e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e I need a motion in a second please to return to uh General Session motion and second Fran Mary Miss Sebert yes Miss K yes Miss D Benedictus yes Miss Ayan yes Mr Mesmer yes Miss picala yes I'd like to introduce the brick school's Air Force Junior Roc CET Cadets who are going to lead us in the salute to the flag and a moment of silence e e Tom Tom are they first to the public yes Dr Anderson thank you Miss picala tonight we are in for a real treat we have a special performance by the awardwinning voices of fire the honors choir Ensemble from Brick Township High School this awardwinning Ensemble is under the direction of Mr Chris Capone Take a Bow Take a Bow who is recently named the 2024 2025 teacher of the year for Brick high school and you'll see why in a moment uh The Ensemble will form selections from their upcoming Winter concert to help get us into the holiday spirit uh so first you going to hear a song called I and you St I e e e thank you this last one you probably e e h h thank you foring us the opport per for thank you for supports and if we want to see more come out Tuesday night at 7 o'clock Tuesday night 17 at 6 o' oh six o'cl um before you where you going Alisa wait I never made that statement to the public yeah okay good do you want the microphone or do you have a big I'm standing up we got the cameras on me too my dad used to say I had a face for radio so he used to tell me that every year uh when we have outgoing board members for a myriad of reasons we like to recognize them I say every single time that until you're up here and many of you will say this is a very thankless job and a lot of work and I see some new board members in uh new incoming board members so I don't want to discourage you um but it's a lot of work a lot of time a lot of effort a lot of compromizing and really it's about putting the students first to this district and the board since I've been here in my four five years I've always done that um we're losing two board members uh this year first one Nicole Sebert got to come up here when I talk about you too come on up Nicole saver um can you open the plaque the plaque Nicole has been a board member six years Vice President also uh for a year uh she is the one that started the whole cookie thing that I think Mr Benedictus is gonna now take forward so started bringing the cookies so we have cookies for you uh for the board meetings um and she was on on the the board when I was first hired here uh five years ago uh Nicole has such passion and heart for the children of this District I don't care what the topic is she always asks what about the children what are we doing for the children how are we taking care of the children I got this program because it's about the children and um she's just a pleasure to work with she's going to be so sorely missed but I will tell you all the work you've done over the last six years have gone to the children of this District so thank you we have a plaque um in recognition of your six years of commitment dedication professionalism and service on the Brick Township Board of Education board member from 2019 to 2024 and board vice president 2023 thank you would you like to say a few words whole nov so if you guys want to hear it now you unless you wait till the end of for you want my novel now you got some words oh my words I got like two pages kidding serious come on we'll get your time it's your time all right I'm reading it all because if I cry you're not you hold that okay okay hi everybody thank you for coming out tonight to support me I know you're all here for me tonight so um um I can't believe this is my last official board meeting as I stand before you today for the final time as a member of the brick School Board I am overwhelmed with gratitude and pride it has been an honor to serve alongside such dedicated and passionate individuals looking back at my time with the board I'm reminded of the challenges we face and the accomplishments we achieved together each decision we made was Guided by our Collective commitment to providing the best possible education for our students we navigated these challenges not as individuals but as a unified Team all right if I cry you're all dealing with it tonight um to the board members your dedication and hard work have been truly inspiring our diverse perspectives and shared goals have strengthened our community and improved our schools I can't wait to see what you guys will continue to do in the upcoming year and will be cheering you on and supporting you from the other side of the table I'm extremely grateful for the opportunity to get to know and spend time with each of you and I'm going to be seeing you guys every single month sometimes next I'd like to take a moment to thank our incredible Administration team your dedication hard work and support Have Been instrumental in my journey as a board member from organizing events to ensuring smooth operations you have been the backbone of our success on a personal note I deeply grateful for the collaboration and friendship I've developed and shared with each of you the amount of support you guys have given to even some of the craziest ideas I've brought to you truly shows how much you all care I'm going to miss working with you so much but I do have all of your phone numbers so don't worry I know where I could still find you oh your heart to Dr frell your leadership unwavering commitment and tireless efforts Have Been instrumental in our journey as a successful School District your dedication to Excellence has inspired us all as a board member one of my biggest accomplishments in my time on the board was bringing you on a superintendent on a personal note I'm deeply grateful for the collaboration and support we have shared your guidance and wisdom have made a significant impact on my time here and I'm thankful for the opportunity to learn from you not only from a board perspective but also as family also including that I'd like to now be invited to all farell family parties from this time forward so our teachers and staff your efforts and commitment to our students are the heartbeat of our district your passion dedication make a lasting impact every single day I not only get to celebrate you as a board member but also as a parent the dedication to your students and what you do day in and day out does not go unnoticed I've had the opportunity to meet and celebrate so many of you as a board of ed member and I promise to continue to do so just as Bella and Tyler's mom I'd be remiss if I didn't celebrate this up the special education staff they truly hold a special place in my heart if you guys know my kids and how much I know they do for this District thank you for everything that you do and continue to do for our kids and thank you to the staff of our school district for not only being so very inclusive of our students but giving them the opportunity to participate in so many aspects of our district because they want what everybody else wants to be included to the parents and Guardians your support and involvement have been invaluable your trust and collaboration have played a crucial role in our success and I thank you for giving me the opportunity to serve on our Board of Education our students you're the reason we do what we do your growth achievements enthusias ASM as you saw tonight give us hope for a brighter future please continue being the maian kiddos we know that you are and last but not least I want to take a special moment to thank my family they're at the diner right now in case anybody you know I didn't eat dinner yet but they're at the diner enjoying themselves right see they're at the diner that we hang out at the diner a lot you're unwavering support patience and understanding have made this journey possible serving on this board has been such a rewarding experience it is deep in my understanding of the importance of accessible high quality education and the impact it has on our community as I step down from my position I do so with confidence that our district is in capable hands I am grateful for the opportunity to have served and I'm excited about the future of the brick School District thank you for allowing me to be a part of this journey here's the continued success and bright future of our schools and community if you don't if you don't know um the last board retreat we had Nicole and I busted out on karaoke to a jam I thought you gonna sing a song here I don't think anybody want he no I don't think they want to hear me as well we have lots of little parting gifts we have a plaque uh thank you to our board members for a water and we also have some flowers as well got lots of great stuff thank you thank you thank you so much can I just read this uh unfortunately Miss wrab um just recently uh let us know could not make it tonight and I hope she's um feeling a little better um I first met Stephanie when I was hired five years ago as well and I I think back to our first meetings uh with Mr Montenegro some other board members when I was just approved and I I think of the arrogance of myself 5 years ago and now I have grown as a superintendent thanks to this board and thanks to miss wrab as well and I'd like to think that Miss wrab and the board members have grown a little bit too in our relationship um working together but uh Stephanie has served nine years on the board of education which like I said are probably like dog years right nine years commitment dedication and professionalism was always evident she was board president from 2019 to 2024 board vice president 2016 to 2018 and she served for the nine years from 2016 to 2024 um M wreb had a passion especially for our special education and special services department um as well as for improving facilities Capital expenditures and fighting our S2 which we're still fighting with many of you uh I'm grateful for for her for hiring me I always wanted to be here in Brick and I'm grateful to be here and a lot of it's due in part uh to miss WRA so thank you so much Stephanie if you're listening I'm sure I'll see you as well please don't be a stranger but congratulations and best wishes Stephanie I wish I was technically in no sometimes Dr Anderson would you please introduce our student Representatives oh happily Mrs picaro this evening we have our two student representatives and we're going to start with brick memorial high school we have Kristen mcade who's the president of the Stu uh Student Government Association thank you good evening again my name is Christen mcwade and I'm the student government president um tonight I'll begin with the report from Boral Middle School our friends in the autism program had a very few had a few very special visitors from the brook Memorial High School National Honor Society last week NHS members prepared an afternoon of fund centered around a holiday theme each activity was designed with individual student needs in mind and with that said each craft movement break and individual student needs in mind sorry an academic challenge allowed students to get one step closer to mastering their IEP goals the brick moral high school student government Association will be visiting vets middle on December 17th congratulations to the ven Memorial Middle School Governor's education of the Year award Mr Tom tulac and Educational Services professional of the Year award Mrs Laura Maguire thank you to everyone for supporting vets middle annual holiday food drive and annual Giving Tree team two won the first marking period pbsis contest and will celebrate with an ice cream party book fair is in full swing spirit week is starting on Monday December 1 16th progress reports go out on Friday December 13th congratulations to our 11 students who participated in the PTA art reflection showcase six of those students were chosen to move on to the county level best of luck to them congratulations to brand Brandon scripto for making the allshore intermediate band The High School STEM acad Academy applications open December 6 applications are due by December 20th winter sports are in full swing and we are looking forward to being competitive in the division Veterans Memorial Middle School would like to wish everyone a happy holiday season now on to the bmhs report first and foremost congratulations to our Governor's education of the Year teacher of the year Mrs Jackie castalano and service professional of the Year Mrs Amando a of lasus we are so excited to be expanding our brick and roal unified program it was a great experience last month when the central regional unified team visited brick memorial for our first ever unified flag football game over 40 students participated in another great example of inclusion sportsmanship and fun we are excited to travel next month to Central for our first ever unified basketball game at this year's annual alumni networking day Brook Memorial welcomed over 50 alumni back to speak to our 11th and 12th grader students on their experiences in the post-secondary world college students military personnel and V and Vocational programs were all represented it and it was a great day in proving that once a Mustang always a Mustang last week we welcomed the Ocean County vocational program to speak to our 10th grade students about all the opportunities that can be provided to them for the next few years it was a great assembly for our sophomores before their scheduling process begins we are grateful to all the families who are interested and showed up during our stem open house that was hosted by bths last week we're excited to have the opportunity to introduce the program and hopefully soon welcome new students into the program our National Honor Society Key Club and sgaa has been busy these last few weeks we have had our students visit that middle to meet with and engage in activities with our autism programs travel to Herbertsville to read to our preschoolers host our annual ugly sweater party and prep and plan for our holiday door decorating contest and our spirit week and of course one of our favorite events of the year our key club's gingerbread social was held last night our Key Club also helped to raise several large bins of toys with the annual Toys for Tots drive we are excited for our first drama production of the year the holiday classic It's a Wonderful Life takes stage this weekend with shows tomorrow and Saturday evening at 6 p.m. and a Sunday matina at 2 p.m. we hope to see you there next Wednesday is also big night for our chorus and chorus and Jazz Band as we host our Winter concert at 6 pm finally we will be holding our winter pep rally on Friday December 20th we will be introducing all of our winter sports team have some fun battle the classes games and maybe even a surprise dance routine and visit from the big guy himself we are excited to send our Mustangs into the winter recess with some holiday fun and on behalf of all of brick memorial high school we wish everyone a healthy and happy holiday season and a happy New Year now on to the sports report girls swimming the Mustangs are ready to dive into the season hoping to build on their preseason momentum and grow as a team with strong returners and the addition of a promising new Talent the team is focused on improving week by week and competing at a high level the Mustangs will rely on a core group of returning swimmers to lead the way this season senior Samantha jaboni Juniors Michaela dhini lilan Sakowski and Shay bicking bring a wealth of experience to the pool and are expected to be key contributors in a variety of events sophomore swimmers McKenzie vanel Carly Munich and Isabella Morgan will also play important roles with a strong mix of talent across Different Strokes and distances these returners have spent the offseason refining their skills and preparing for the challenges ahead and their leadership will be critical in helping the team stay focused and motivated throughout the season boy swimming a group of newcomer seniors are enthused to join a strong group of Veteran underclassmen in Robert B Jacob Janowski Joe sles Dylan Bower and Lucas Carter with a powerful lineup of returning starters and a fresh eager group of first year athletes ready to dive in our team is poised for an exciting season ahead the blend of experience and enthusiasm is creating a dynamic atmosphere and we can't wait to see what they can achieve together in the pool strength and conditioning this year's winter strength and conditioning program is designed to increase student athletes personal health strength confidence and discipline we currently have the football team and baseball team working on gaining strength in their respective off off Seasons while also have the basketball team working on maintaining their strength and conditioning in their active season the goal is to build a lifelong commitment to overall personal health to see relative growth while processing through the program to overcome and persevere through adversity and to gain and to use the gains in the program to Excel on the field and Court to the best of your ability boys basketball Brook Memorial is hoping its strong junior class can lead them to a successful season they're also hoping its senior class can be leaders on and off the court led by Joe Whitter deanii mro and Bren aluchi brick memorial looks forward to qualifying all the postseason tournaments and competing in the tough a Central Division returning Juniors Sean Collins Austin Bratton Shane Bratton and Jason laar will all play pivotal roles for the SS in this season girls basketball we will as in the past be filling our roster with a few full-time basketball players surrounded by a number of competitive athletes we will be highly dependent on our senior leadership of Brook and Izzy to control our possession of the ball and in the offensive half we will be leaning on the abilities and vars experience of lyanna Lena we look to lyanna to supply the majority of our offense however we have high expectations on newcomers Olivia Manuel and Mia Fitzgerald to help balance this offensive attack we are going to be highly dependent on team defense and team rebounding which will be anchored by the experience and pose of Maggie leech and Brookdale ma we will keep our legs fresh with plenty of senior athletes and young potentials coming off the bench but it will be our trademark team attitude and worth e eth that our success will hinge on girls bowling the girls are coming off another amazing season where they won a South with a record of 52-2 we were Ocean County tournament winners and group three state champions along with a bunch of other tournaments individually senior senior Olivia Salvatore had the highest average in New Jersey last year and finished third and Ninth in the Shoring conference and state individuals respectively she returns to lead a very competitive team who should be in the mix to return as champ iion again this season boys bowling last year we were in third place in a South we were looking to compete for a division title with some experienced Bowlers returning we are also hopeful to compete for a cg3 title our captain is Nicholas manela James Gillan and Zachary rodak have a lot of experience Jr Wyland and quinlin Atkinson will contribute and look to build off last year boys track the boys winter track team at brick memorial High School is gearing up for an exciting season with a blend of season athletes and promising newcomers returning distant distance Runners Charlie Mullen and Charlie pado are expected to lead the way bringing experience and strong performances to the track in the Sprints Ricky dylan Shan Fowler and Tyron Gonzalez are poised to make an impact combining Speed and Agility to challenge their competition Jackson Ellis will once again anchor the shot put team bringing his proven strength and technique despite having just three seniors the team is youthful and full of promise with many athletes eager to step up and showcase their potential through the season with Talent across multiple events brick moral boys winter track team looks ready to make a mark in the upcoming season girls track the girls winter track team has some impressive returners to lead our team sophomore Samar Robinson along with Junior Tor Hayley and seniors Nyla katano and Cali Thompson look to lead our sprinters to a successful season Junior Megan alowitz and seniors Katie Rogers and McKenna Ellis return to lead charge in the distant events we are thrilled to have many freshman newcomers Ellie Randolf Sage Cruz Morgan Bland and Kimberly quate look to make an immediate impact on the team success our team begins their season on Saturday December 1st at the bill Bruno holiday classic meet at the bubble and Toms River finally wrestling the brick moral wrestling team is excited for the 2024 to 2025 season we we returned nine starters one trans and some solid incoming freshmen we are eager to get our season rolling with the southern Rams on 1219 with our senior leadership and experienced lineup we should be in the mix to win a team title at the end of the season thank you so much for listening have a good night thank you Kristen next we have a student representative from brick high school she's um filling in for Paula and it's Isabella Marinelli she's the vice president of the student government Association thank you thank you Dr Anderson good evening I'm Isabella Marinelli the vice president of bths student government I'm excited to share this month's bths Dragon update with you starting with lrms the lrms interact Club collected gifts for our lrms ging Giving Tree to support local families the last day to donate gift cards is tomorrow another way to support our community is through our interact food drive which continues through December 13th all non- perishable food items are accepted donation bins will be available available outside the main office and can also be sent in with your child lrms interact is spreading holiday cheer with a theme days for the 12 days leading up to winter break which include dress like a snowman holiday headgear Show Your Sparkle and more voices from the lake is an after school club led by Miss padina they meet most Mondays after school to sing and learn about how to use and care for our voices students are preparing for a Winter concert on December 18th with some Community carolling planned as well if students are unable to commit to choir they can sign up for carolling voices from the lake and intera Club will be carolling at the Leman High scho Leman School Leisure Village and cherk Gardens the lrms Winter concert featuring the lrms band and voices from the lake will be held on Wednesday December 8th 18th from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m. now the sports report winter sports which are cheerleading girls Bo girls and boys basketball and wrestling are all now underway the cheer season is off to a great start congratulations to our elected captains this year Juliet Duncan lilan Martinez Harper Patrick and Mia Gagliardi cheerleaders have been doing a great job announcing the game schedule on Laker live every Monday they will be spreading cheer by making a holiday photo together and sending cards to staff me members of their choice they will be wearing their Santa hats at next week's game as well as performing a fabulous halftime routine the lake Riviera girls basketball team had an impressive impressive 60 girls try out this year after graduating four of our five starters from our two-time division championship team we are looking at this year as a rebuilding year our young team is excited to continue to learn to work together and Excel on and off the court this season last week at our first game against Toms River North the girls began our the girls began their season with a hardfought win the Lakers wrestling team is off to a quick start they are one andone with a win against Tom River North and a tough loss to point burrow the team has been working very hard every day during practice our next match is on Friday 12:13 against Lacy we are looking forward to a great rest of the season the Lakers boys basketball team had over 70 students try out for this year's team the team has worked very hard at practice every or every practice and has been building a strong team camaraderie although they were not successful in the win column against Toms River intermediate North the team was complimented on their play and sports sportsmanship by the officials they will look to get into the win column with upcoming games against Veterans Memorial Middle School Lacy Town Township middle school and mull Middle School in Jackson now on to bths I would like to begin this evening's Report with sharing the results of our Powderpuff game the senior class beat the Juniors with a score of 36 to13 both classes had a great turnout with lots of student involvement and an amazing game bths hosted its alumni networking Day on on Thursday November 27th we had a great group of alumni present to share their experience guidance and wisdom with our students it was apparent that many Juniors and SE and seniors took the advantage of this opportunity to gain greater insights into future planning speaking of events that took place in November we had our fall drama club production of clue take place last month it was an awesome show with several outstanding performances congratulations to all members of the drama club for their success in this well attended and highly acclaimed event these past two weeks our bths acting classes under the direction of Mrs best have shared their talents with each of our elementary schools students visited elementary schools to put on a performance of various fairy tales to for student enjoyment it was clear that all of our future dragons enjoyed the show now on to the clubs this National Honor Society member of the month is Gavin mafy Gavin is is an outstanding member someone who truly exemplifies character and is always willing to step up and help his peers he is involved in sports school activities and other clubs he still executes his role as a member of our organization making sure to actively sign up for events and step up when it is needed the new bths Spanish Honor Society has elected its board members for the 2024 2025 school year and is currently designing their t-shirts Key Club has planned a candy cane my yard fundraiser for the holiday season children will receive candy canes and letters from Santa with their parents donations speaking of Key Club they recently took a trip to Town Square Senior Center along with bths choir students in their choir sang holiday songs while members of Key Club engaged in small group activities the Key Club members paired up with senior citizens to engage in conversation and together create holiday crafts with ornaments this joint community outreach was a great success and experience for both students and community members the inter and Surf Club promoted their annual flu drive with the St Vincent to Paul Society for Thanksgiving mayor student advisory hosted their annual brick Recreation Teen Center holiday party now on to sports winter sports are often running the boys and girls basetball teams have begun the scrimmage season and are preparing for opening day next week the boys and girls both open their Seasons next week at home both teams will par will participate in the final wobm class Christmas classic over the holiday break good luck to them the wrestling team is preparing for a long season the boys and girls were both particip participate in Holiday tournaments during the winter break the bowling team's season is rolling right along the girls recently took second place at the TRN Ru the river tournament the swimming team had their first meet today vers Lacy both the boys and girls are looking forward to a good season track and field has been has been working hard to get ready for their competition season the meet begin the meet season begins on December 14th for boys and girls at the demarus invitation meet ice ice hockey has begun the season with the one toone record the annual Teddy bar toss or Toys for Tots game is tomorrow at the ice palace 515 start vers Lacy be there to support such a great cause the cheerleading and dance teams are working hard to prepare their routines for halftime during the basketball games our teams do a great job as they and they always support support our teams with enthusiasm and pride looking towards the future this month's Spirit Week starts on December 16th through through the 20th this week's attire consists of holiday accessories holiday sweaters winter white out tropical holiday and an on Friday our school tradition green and white apparel to start the holiday season spirit sgaa is hosting two holiday contests the first one is the holiday door decorating contest where each class that signs up will compete with all other classes the second one is the annual digital card contest in where any class club or team can enter to win the winners of both of these contests will be awarded Donuts or Bagels the bths drama club has announced its spring show which will be High School Musical prepar prep preparations are underway be sure to stay connected to BT bths events inside information by accessing our school website sgaa Instagram at bths sgaa and our school Twitter at at bths dragons you can always see all of our HP happenings monthly through Dr cajun's Dragon review thank you for this opportunity and I will see you all next year happy holidays thank you Isabella thank you Isabella me me me me me girls I wanted to say uh ladies Kristen uh I I'd like to just say thank you very much for coming out tonight I I know you're probably studying hard for tests and um I'd like to tell you something I heard around town um once a Mustang always a Mustang and Isabella thank you for coming out tonight and um I appreciate your thorough reports and I heard this around town too once a dragon always a dragon so thank you for your reports tonight um I'm going to need a motion in a second for the approval of minutes motion bran second second Nicole any discussion okay Mary thank you Miss cber yes Miss Kennedy yes Miss D Benedictus yes missar yes Mr Mesmer yes Miss picala yes we're going to be begin committee reports um on Miss Granger who who were were losing um uh very much to our disappointment um would you go with your report first please thank you Mrs picala the special education committee met on December 4th uh myself Dr Farrell Mr Benedictus Miss Sebert um and Mrs wrap attended the meeting uh we discussed the current items that are on the board agenda this evening Staffing open positions um and some of the added District uh placement contracts the revisions that are on tonight's board agenda we also um discussed some of the things that are happening around the our department uh this week we had our Parent Academy please go to our website for uh listing of parenty they're really great uh professional uh development opportunities for all staff and parents in the community and we also discussed the fantastic job the Unified sports is doing this year with the you know expanding into the uh flag football and the basketball and we're hoping to expand it in down into the middle schools uh next year but we're happy that we're finally getting into multiple Sports uh and that was it that's wonderful Dr Anderson just before if I can add I want to I know I said a few months ago uh to Mrs grer Mrs grer is leaving us in January uh going to a um another district North of us in Mammoth County but closer to her home uh in her I think it's a little over two years here uh if you haven't met Mrs grener or worked with her you found a real human side of her style her leadership style um and a kids first style where she'd get on the floor play with the kids in the classroom dance with them sing with them um I said when I first was waiting for her in her first or final interview here I came out to the four year and she was on her knees speaking in Spanish uh to a student and a family that was registering here in the district at the time and we're going to miss her jial attitude um I know she won't be a stranger because I know where she's going and I'll see her but thank you for your time service and most of all your professionalism for the district so thank you well said Dr Anderson thank you Miss picala I'll miss your sense of humor we all will uh the cnii committee met on December 2nd at 4:30 in attendance for Mrs Kennedy the chairperson Mrs aan Ron Miss Bala Dr Farrell and myself um I reviewed the items on the December agenda which included travel and training field trips and grants um I provide an overview of a new world language course and a recommended uh science course sequence uh then I provide an overview of the professional learning highlights from the first markeing period uh I discussed data analysis uh goal setting progress monitoring our multi-tiered system of support uh instructional focus and professional development and support for teachers and administrators I shared how monthly strategic planning meetings and walkthroughs with school based administrators are used to monitor progress toward our goals I explained how um our Department's efforts are aligned to the district's vision of student center teacher-led and community connected um I then identify the components of our Network for student centered support which include our classroom teachers our interventionists and our academic coaches um next talked about our teachers um and how they are uh involved in leading the district through committee membership and workshop development and then we talked about the mechanisms for family engagement including the back toschool night grade level expectation sheets conference guidelines uh our virtual parenty our inperson family nights and our quarterly curriculum newsl letter the brick Bridge which was published um right by Thanksgiving um and then I uh expressed remorse about uh a member of my department that's leaving Mrs Cain uh during her remarkable three-year tenure at Brick schools uh Mary has been an invaluable asset to my department uh as the K to12 ESL supervisor she spearheaded a comprehensive fiveyear plan to meet the needs of our ESL program which nearly doubled in size just in the short time she was here her Visionary leadership expanded the program to brick memorial and Veterans uh Memorial Elementary Schools uh seamlessly transitioning from our Magnet School model to a homeschool model and Mary's meticulous and attention to detail ensured a smooth transition for students families and teachers alike Beyond uh her leadership of the ESL program Mrs Kane and significant impact in her primary role as Elementary Ela and social studies supervisor uh Mary developed a compelling vision for literacy instruction aligning curriculum strategies and assessments with evidence-based practices by facilitating a rigorous process involving our literacy leaders she championed the piloting and evaluation of six reading programs aligning uh with the science of reading and her extraordinary leadership dedication and passion will be deeply missed by the cni department and by our entire School Community uh we wish her well in her new role as director of curriculum instruction in Somerville so um we'll be celebrating her last day tomorrow and uh we will We wish her well um I shared important upcoming events a parent Academy um we did that uh on December 2nd supporting your young reader it was a virtual session and we it's also uh posted on our website we sent it out to all parents uh via Blackboard we also had a STEM Academy open house which was really fantastic and well um attended at Brook High School um and that was um December uh 5th and then we had njsl fall block testing this week and progress reports will be posted tomorrow in h par portal last week our schools um announced their 2024 25 teachers of the year in their Educational Services professionals these talented Educators were recognized for going above and beyond in their service to our students and their school Community we are so proud to have them represent brick schools and they will be honored with special tribute at our Board of Education meeting in May and our next meeting is to be dep determined and there's actually two slides um we do uh inform the the winners of both the educational services Prof professional and the teachers of the Year recognize them in May and both slides and both um are on the website uh since last week but we wanted to share it out this evening as well thank you Mr Edwards can you talk to us about facilities please thank you miss picala the the facilities committee met on December 4th at 3 p.m. and attendants was Miss WRA Miss Bala Mr meser myself Mr peur our director of facilities Jason duwit from fvhd Architects Miss gar leardi from spel Architects and Miss Cashman from speal Architects uh Lake River Middle School air conditioning I informed the committee that we have not issued the final payment waiting on closeout documents one of which is being held up by the districts need to acquire a third party inspection for the steel fasteners the company that we alined up to provide the work has not been responsive and we're currently looking for an alternate vendor uh veterans moral Middle School Boer replacement and air conditioning informed the committee that Neta has indicated that there are three change orders uh that are up for consideration uh related to heating issues two of them at veterans moral middle school and one at Lake River Middle School Mr proro informed the committee that they are related to the hot water flow issues and lags in the heating response of certain sections of the building and we've not gotten the opportunity to dig down into the numbers to determine if best course of action and funding source Drum Point Elementary School Boer Replacements Mr picoro informed the committee that the contractor has started to demobilize from the site the balance reports have been issued and closing documents are coming Lan Bill Elementary School Miss scardi informed the committee that speed will receive the balancing reports for the engineering review and once they are done uh and completed the closeout documents will be finished Emma Haven Young Elementary School and Veterans Mo Elementary School air air conditioning I informed the Comm that these two projects are both uh under the preferred mechanical contracts and are approaching finalization uh the district has received Maven young balancing the veterans Mo Elementary School balancing was completed this past Friday and the reports are coming midstreams and osbornville air conditioning Miss Cashman informed the committee that they are currently working through the submittals for the project with the contractor they're providing a schedule of work with the expectation to begin mobilization within the next couple of weeks war hwf and Herbertsville air conditioning I informed the committee that these projects are still un schedule to go out to bid in January Osborne Ville kitchen Edition Miss Cashman informed the committee that the contractor had a pre-construction meeting with the district on November 25th and they anticipate mobilization in the next two weeks and then midstreams kitchen uh I informed the committee that the we had a job meeting with the contractor happens to be the same contractor that I do in the Oswell kitchen and uh there was a coordination meeting held and they again they plan on mobilizing within the next two to three weeks and the next meeting is January 3 13th at 3 p.m. uh we then moved into finance committee and the finance committee was Mr Mesmer Miss wreb Miss Bala and myself uh first item was the community solar and building performance project I informed the committee that dco energy is working on the RFP documents for the community solar they've indicated that they would like to review in the coming week they also not they are still on track with the bill tracking and that uh they just received October's bill so we'll be putting them together for a presentation at the end of December early January Brick Township facilities uh inform the committee that the uh Township appraiser has completed the appraisal of a building on Chambers Bridge Road uh We've now given that appraisal to the owner of the building to see if there's any interest in moving forward the uh property on Lanes Mill uh has not been responsive so we're not sure if that appraisal is going to take forth and then uh other property that we're looking at we are waiting for the township to authorize the appraisal electric School Grant uh I informed the committee that the federal EPA has granted an extension to January 16th uh I also informed the committee that the state EPA has offered a grant opportunity for $7.8 million but it cannot be stacked with the Federal grant uh noted that us the state Grant makes the project cash flow positive for the district Dr frell indicated that he will discuss the electric school buses no thank you on at December 12th tonight's meeting and if the bo would like to proceed we could do so at the January meeting uh I indicated that we would notify vendors if they were able to attend the 12th meeting which many of them are here in the audience so thank you for coming um to help answer any type of technical questions that the board or public may have effective School Solutions addendum I informed the committee that we need to do an addend of the contract for the substitutes to bring the employees within that contract up to the minimum wage for January 1st 2025 that's on this evening's agenda the 20232 24 audit I inform the committee that the audit is addressing without issue I know the only concern so far raised by the auditor is the endof year Surplus which will need to be addressed when we're building our 2526 school budget and then 2526 school budget myself and Dr F discussed proposed legislation in regards to the 2526 budget that could assist the district with potential Financial reliefs in regards to special education funding and tax levy growth and again the next meeting is established for January 13th and that was that thank you Mr Edwards um at this point we're going to um have some comments from our superintendent Dr Thomas farell thank you Miss picalo again I want to um recognize and thank miss wab and miss Sebert for volunteering their time as Board of Education members for Brick schools their commitment dedication professionalism and service to our district does not go unnoticed no thank you we we always bring the cookies out when Mr Edwards gives his committee report that's been kind of the trend the last few months also happy birthday tomorrow I think to miss WRA um welcome again to our new board members um Mr Henry and Mr malgeri as well um welcome hope I didn't scare you guys off uh talking about all the work we do here uh with the holiday season in full swing as you heard from our student Representatives as well uh I been incredibly fortunate to attend a few of these concerts at some of our schools uh each performance has been a magical experience uh the hard work and dedication of our students teachers and staff truly shines through during these events it's inspiring to witness the passion and creativity on display as our young musicians and singers share their talent and the parents in the audience usually Beam with pride um uh last night the night before before I was at Emma and osbornville during the morning actually when brick High came and did a holiday uh play uh these concerts and Productions are more than just performances they're a celebration of our school community and really the spirit of the season so I look forward to attending them more there's a bunch on next week as well you can see them on the on the calendar um I think brick high school has a fall production of clue and brick memorial has the fall production I think tomorrow night starts It's a Wonderful Life and congratulations to the cast and crew of both NHS induction ceremonies winter coral and band concerts a lot more to come next week and moving on uh just a great time of year celebrate the holidays with our students um congratulations as you saw to our Governors educators of the year and our Educational Services Professionals of the year uh we look forward to honoring them at our May 2025 board meeting as we've done in the past um and happy holidays as we say goodbye to 2024 and ring in 2025 let us reflect on the importance of caring kindness kindness and resilience remember the new year is not just about a change in the calendar it's about setting fresh goals embracing New Opportunities and believing in your own potential we here brick schools we're committed to embracing New Opportunities working together to our greatest potential and the best service to our students staff parents and Community happy holidays best wishes to you and yours for peace happiness and health in the New Year okay let me just pull this up if you don't mind so I hope this works this clicker but we're going to get to it so I W to I want to recap everybody remembers about a month ago I know I've met with a few people even uh and spoke to them I got many emails a month ago um we talked about it was actually an agenda item um and I want to start by saying there is no agenda item on electric school buses tonight there is no vote on it so I want everybody to digest take time uh this will happen at the end of January with the new board we're going to have things posted we're going to have any questions you would like that you don't think of now we're going to put on to our FAQ so I want to you're going to hear me say that a lot tonight so I want everybody to hear it um because I've done a lot of thinking and uh research over the last months so to give everybody a historical perspective six months ago maybe longer um we were really lauded um for obtaining a a $5 million Grant uh for electric school buses as we're constantly being asked by the public and the board to solicit more Grant monies um we discussed the proposal in our Board of Education finance committee at nauseum over the last 6 months um and quite honestly if you're here last month the original Grant uh really did not provide enough money in general for the infrastructure charging stations and and the big upfront cost so at last month's meeting uh we and I mean Administration did not have many of the answers to some of the questions so we tabled that original proposal right we're going to meet I think the following week um and that proposal last month really was a break even at best financially that was through the federal EPA uh the meeting scheduled for the following week was really canceled because we still didn't have a lot of answers to the questions and it was such short notice to get vendors and some people here uh I really kind of got on Mr Edwards I never use the word directive but I have here I directed Mr Edwards to kind of um see if he could get an extension with the federal EPA contact the State find out more we could do inquiring to possibly obtaining more money well that's that's the good news um because we are able to work with the state directly as of last week I want to say at the finance committee um we got notified from the state with through the state EPA and through a new Grant I'm calling this kind of electric buses proposal 2.0 and we got more time we got a deadline uh where we're receiving an additional $22.76 million additionally which really changes is uh the financial picture again I want to reiterate we are not voting on this tonight is not an agenda item or a vote um the new board will vote at this at the end of January in their in the working meeting um again I ask any questions whether you have them tonight tomorrow night you get them to me we'll get the answers if they're not already on this FAQ which I'm going to go through which were a lot of questions from from last month um the new Grant quite honestly ly is a lot better um and so before I dive into some of the numbers I'll share with you as an educator and a researcher because at heart I'm kind of a geek when it comes to that I guess through my doctor program and I spent a lot of time over the last few weeks uh looking at information going online uh from a lot of the questions we had last week and at first I really looked at it from a financial uh Viewpoint only and I still do in a lot of ways uh and I'm going to share that um but in doing my research I want to share for some I'm sure some of you have heard I actually talked to Mr bacon about this last week about what's called confirmation bias um you know in research confirmation bias stands for the general proposition that there's a common human tendency mostly unintentional for people to accept information and evidence that is only consistent with what they believe or their own preconceived supposition um to be true while ignoring or rejecting information that challenges those beliefs I am privy I have done this and sometimes when I dig into a concept or a proposal I find myself relearning and reteaching myself uh some things and just looking at some facts and I I think when you look at I'm I'm big about process before product if you look at what happened at our last month board meeting that process was I know few people that were here last month they're here tonight and also said that what happened was there were questions we didn't have some answers we tabled that we went back and we have a better proposal and we're going to take our time with the process to really go through this um so let's get I hope this works a I want to get into some numbers so I I I start by saying you know if I was of course that's not I knew it no no no you got to say that and then it will work can I see it no but it's it's AR button on oh that's on right there we go okay so it helps oh and I'm gonna talk about research on some technical stuff that's great um if I was to tell you for you Financial people out there if I was to tell you I could get you a stock at 24% return on investment a four-year payback and have immediate cash flow of almost a half a million dollars in year one of your budget we'd all say hey why wouldn't we do that especially in the fiscal State we are so I want you to look at it through that lens because this new proposal I'm kind of calling electric buses 2.0 um we would receive 7.76 million in a grant it would be a 24% Roi for your payback have immediate positive cash flow to hire additional teachers comes out about six FTE and I want I'm going to take you through it um and the and the reason is if we if we do nothing next year we have budgeted we're budgeting five Diesel new buses I think the cost approximate cost without infl is just $140,000 so about 700,000 we have to budget next year for the diesel buses um if we do the electric buses we save over 500,000 and I'm going to take you through each step of this in next year's budget right away which would help us reduce class sizes add teachers or FTE now this first slide I'm going to bring up the first point it's kind of hard to see but it's going to be all on the website I'll just take you through some simple simple math basically over over 12 years the cost of ownership of diesel buses on the left electric buses on the right 25 buses over 12 years the cost of diesel buses without inflation is $3.5 million about 140,000 a bus we got an estimate on electric buses um and again these are estimates because I know we got vendors here and it's going out the bid eventually these are estimates but with the grant the $7 7.76 million Grant which which covers 13 charging stations we have a net of 3.32 just that without interest or anything savings zero hard Savings of almost $200,000 just the cost of 12 Years of a 25 diesel buses 25 electric buses over time nothing else hard cost fuel savings the fuel savings um come out to a Prof proximately and these are again hard savings 1.7 again this is over 12 years million dollar for a hard District savings and that's what I highlighted of 1.9 million over 12 years or I equate everything to FTE which are full-time equivalent and people because we've cut so many or 23 FTE now I have some what I call soft savings that you can't guarantee and it came up last month there is a million doll tax credit don't know if that'll be around or not someone asked it we can't guarantee that there's also maintenance savings that are projected um in here that are soft savings all in all the net District cost at the end of the day the net District cost over the 12 years is 500,000 which saves us 34.4 positions now what does that mean really easy just talking next year's budget next year's budget we are budgeting for five diesel buses I think the following year we have four then three then five then four and three and then seven there's one lump that are that are going out of life the budgeted amount for next year's diesel bus is five at 140,000 is 700,000 the least financing of our net cost with this new Grant which is 2.76 million more comes out to 365,000 again this does not take any inflationary cost this does not take fuel savings right now or maintenance savings just there the savings is about uh with the 145,000 fuel savings I'm sorry is 480,000 that's a hard savings next year would be budgeted and that would account for six teachers just in next year's budget alone if you put in the maintenance savings which we project at about 62,000 for a year annually you have over five a half a million dollar in budgeted savings which would equate to 6.4 uh FTE now this is going to be posted so I I don't want you know I've been going through this so everybody's going to look at this um but it's a simple cost analysis composite I I tried to break out the hard savings highlighted which we can guarantee and then show some soft savings which I really believe are going to happen as well um and they're conservatively uh projected uh there's a key actually here so we show that the cost per bus is 140,000 and again that doesn't take into consider inflation over the 12 years I got to believe the cost of a diesel bus is going to go up over 12 years but we put that in um the cost to replace five buses are budgeted for next year there's a 12year lease financing payment uh buses warranty on average are 12 years so we did a 12E cost or life cost of ownership for it and the maintenance savings does not include labor so these are what I think pretty conservative uh projections so I and just financially you know and you're going to look at it I don't think we could afford not to really move forward with this and explore this further just because the money in our state um in our fiscal state currently is so dire um for lack of funding I mentioned last month that especially now that it's a state program you know um you know we've been clamoring ing the state Mr Bacon's been asked everybody's been we've been going to the state over and over again I actually contacted them and met in a virtual meeting last Thursday uh regarding the new funding and the budgeting along with uh some other grants um to get the money um so I think it's important uh that we not only take this serious that we look at it from a fiscal standpoint first which is the first step which is what I'm detailing here the next part of this presentation are a few slides with some frequently asked questions and this is all going to be posted tomorrow and I hope and expect for any of you have questions that either aren't on here answered to email me we'll get them on we'll get some of the vendors and some of the experts uh to put them on as well but some of some of the questions that came up and we got a couple slides that came up last month uh you know how do we calculate maintenance savings as I said there're soft savings we calculated and they're soft they're not in the highlighted they're in addition uh we calculated them as about 25 100 per bus per year conservatively that's just the maintenance savings that's not the fuel savings or the hard savings uh they were asked did we contact the town did we contact local fire department yes had a conversation with them and obviously they'll be part of this as well as the safety training and OEM emergency procedures um we were asked about our Fleet this is less than a quarter of the fleet if we go forward there's over a 100 buses there's 48 54 passenger diesel 15 54 passenger gas eight small diesel 28 small gas uh do we have mechanics qualified to work on electric buses who repair them training yes our mechanics and they will be trained training is included in the purchase price uh of the buses um from what I'm hearing it's because it's not transmissions and and diesel or gas engines it's a little uh simpler um we were asked what is the range what is the cold weather range approximately on average and there's different Buck buses and batteries about 120 miles is the minimum range on average um there's about a 10 uh to 12% reduction on average due to weather um for that we were asked and again this is all going to be posted we were asked how long is the warranty of the battery the cost life expectancy on average and again it depends on the battery and the vendors 8 to 12 years are the battery warranties batteries cost approximately ranges by the kilowatt you use but about $40,000 and there's a 15 years average life expectancies on the batteries um to fully charge and fully is important so if a electric bus was uh totally I don't want say dilapitated but totally at zero charge um a fully charged depending on the size of the charger can range anywhere from 2.5 to about eight hours with an average of six hours depending on the size of the charger um are the buses safe during wintry snowy icy conditions was asked last month electric buses I am told uh are heavier than the diesel buses which is usually better on snow icy roads um what's the difference with electric bus brakes and how will the drivers hand electric buses come in both with air brakes or hydraulic brakes um and drivers will be trained matter of fact I want to say a month ago either right before or after the meeting um our drivers I don't know our drivers were able to drive uh one of the electric buses I think and and take it for a spin and lur wor and work on it I think Dr o con was with them and they they did some of that um which parts are more costly to fix on electric buses and vice versa obviously the batteries on the electric buses but yet the engines and transmissions for diesal and gas are more costly there um think I have one more one more and I I'm sure will add to this um over the next month and a half how long will it take for delivery and how do it compare with diesel buses electric buses could take up to 12 months for the delivery after we're approved and everything on the grant diesel buses typically take on average six months for delivery um and what happens to the batteries when they're done they're typically recycled or repurposed those were a majority of the questions I'm sure I don't have all uh the questions um I also I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that besides the financial benefits right of the fuel and maintenance cost savings because that's obviously a pro um we know there's environmental benefits of a healthier and quieter environment for the students on the bus I know Mr sluka talks about that as well a lot as we feel educationally uh there's a huge there's huge curricular uh benefits but like I said to me the first step was really financially and fiscal um and I started with that lens and I didn't think we overcame that first part last month I do think we do now with this new proposal and then we're going to really progress and go through all the other questions and concerns uh so that the new board coming in in January at the end of the board uh can make a decision on it um so I wanted to put that out there for I know a lot of people are here with that um and I think at the second public comment session if someone has other questions even if they don't have them tonight please feel free to get them to me if we don't have the answer but we do uh have some experts and some information here for you all right all right thank you this will be the first opportunity for public comment and it will be for agenda items only the board invites thoughts and reactions on agenda items each participant is asked to give his or her name prior to making a statement all statements shall be directed to the presiding officer comments shall be limited to five minutes and each speaker may only speak once the board will not during the public portion of this meeting discuss matters involving employment appointment termination of of employment negotiations terms and conditions oflo employment evaluation of the performance of promotion or disciplining of any specific or perspective or current employee and or students uh is there anybody who would like to make a comment on agenda items only the EV buses are not on the agenda that would be in the second public comment okay so um we're going to move on with the agenda Dr Anderson will you please introduce um uh the curriculum and instruction uh recommendations thank you Mrs WRA under curriculum and instruction the superintendent recommends that a board approve items one through six thank you can we have a motion and a second motion Ally second Nicole loud any board comment um I just would like to say on number four for the Grant application for the New Jersey State Golf Association I'd like to congratulate coach Ryan Graham on a really super fantastic program over at brick memorial um and also give him a shout out that they are featured on the cover of the winter 2024 New Jersey Golf Magazine with our students on the cover from that program so it's an amazing program that um my son who's on the golf team looks forward to participating in um next year as a senior so congratulations Mr Graham and and number four that's also for the entire PE program that's not just for the club or the team or that's really great um any other public board comment uh Mary would you um do roll call Miss Sebert yes Miss Kennedy yes Miss St Benedictus yes Miss aan Ron yes Mr Mesmer yes Miss picala yes the operation uh portion Mr Edwards yes this evening a superintendent recommends items 1 through 19 is there any board comment oh we need a motion in a second I'm sorry motion Fran second Mike can't talk Mary Miss Sebert yes Miss Kennedy yes Miss Ste Benedictus yes Miss room abstain on number 6 21 43 2 1 21 43 51 21 43 52 21 4335 2143 354 21 4412 21 4434 21445 51 21 44 52 21 44 52 and yes on the rest Mr Mesmer yes Miss picala yes that was crazy um I ju any board comment I'd just like to say how happy I am to see our teachers um reaching out and getting grants um free money is always good for our kids um Mar you want to um give us the vote please second we're not on nro we're on operation oh okay Mr Kiser will you please introduce human resources thank you Mr picala tonight the uh superintendent recommends to the board items 1 through 36 for approval I'm I get a motion in a second please motion bran second Nicole is there any board comment see none Mary would you um call the RO Miss Sebert yes Miss Kennedy yes Miss de Benedictus yes Miss aanon yes Mr Mesmer yes Miss picala yes and Miss pical if I could just interrupt um we hired a number of new staff members tonight and I believe we have one staff member here in the audience tonight uh tonight we are welcoming Kim Gorman who's going to be one of our clerical staff members here at the board office welcome Miss Gorman welcome and congratulations and I hope I didn't forget anybody else is there anybody else out there else okay thank you Dr Anderson thank you Mr forb under policy and oh I'm so sorry Mr palla you look so much alike we do under policy of planning the superintendent recommends that the board approve item one can I get a motion in a second please motion Ali second FR any board discussion seeing none Mary will you miss yes Miss Kennedy yes Miss de Benedictus yes Miss aanon yes Mr Mesmer yes Miss picala yes wasn't that smooth this is the second opportunity for public comment each participant is asked to give his or her name prior to making a statement all statements shall be directed to the presiding officer comments shall be limited to 5 minutes and each speaker may only speak once the board will not during the public portion of this meeting discuss matters involving employment appointment termination of employment negotiations terms and conditions of appointment evaluation of the performance of promotion or disciplining of any specific or perspective or current employees or students um is would anybody like to make a a comment come on up Mr bacon good evening superintendant Administration and of now I know why he gave us cookies without I was to give you sugar you need I want to thank the uh board Administration for deferring the vote on the elected buses I thought the back and forth questions back in the November meeting was fantastic a lot of great questions came from the board event as well so certainly appreciate it and quite honestly the public comments because I about buses too uh a couple housekeeping notes U I have two documents I'm going to give Dr car so you'll have everything I'm going to kind of talk about I try to uh what I'm going to talk about was gug off the November meeting preparing for the special so I have these two documents I'll give you uh the first one I want to give you is when I talked in front of the mayor and Council back in October about a problem we have and it's a chronic problem with people going through red lights in this and multiple people spoke about that prior to be and then uh I spoke in front front of them back in November I had a lot of concerns I work in Tom drier I actually did a day of the life of Charlie bacon going from brick to Tom dri all the intersections I hit I think that's significant when we talk about uh buses and some of the questions I have as well uh the other point of reference I want to make my questions were solely based on preparing for the uh the special meeting I appreciate the effort you did the work you did to approve uh the finances of this and that's wonderful so thank you for that effort as well uh I'm kind of as you you folks know you've been very nice to me to let me speak but I'm going to try to respect the five minutes so actually put my recommendations up in the front and then I have a series of questions I try to go through which ones I'd like to say in public and then the rest I'll give to Dr frell for the team to look at um I've always believed this and I've said it many times in front of this board as well as the mayor and councel that I'd really like to see a time and effort really dedicated to go after more funding not only at the federal level but as well at the state level right and we talk about the deficiency we have with some of the title 3 funding and things like that and I've spoke to some of you folks individually or in front of this and I think that's kind of important I still believe that um also as I educate myself and listen to the public and experts on this I actually have more concerns about electric buses and the other recommendation I had is to do a pilot program I don't know if this new money that you have potentially could do that I'd like to see a pilot program with a little bit less number of buses we can get them out into the district the different types of buses we have I think that would be helpful so we could do a little bit more analysis in the field study of the buses before we make a movement in that direction uh I also believe and I don't how much has been done at the district level an independent analysis of the EV bues and Diesel buses and report back to the public on that right and make decisions I know we're we're talking about the finances but there's other things I think we need to address as well and the other thing I'd recommend in January Dr frell you spoke about having a meeting probably the end of January in front of the new board which is great I'd like you to consider maybe a special carou meeting it could be I don't know if you call an agenda Caucus meeting where it's truly dedicated to meeting in front of where you're going to ask the board to consider this for a vote so that the public it's well uh announced in the town they can come to a meeting like this whatever questions they have just in front of the that would be my recommendation so my questions I talked about were kind of Geared for the special meeting the questions I I kind of leaned on was type- C electric buses I know there's many different types and things like that uh one of the things I did research on and we got experts in here maybe they can address it as what's called a thermal runaway all right and what I understand from uh my knowledge is it's kind of an uncontrollable self-heating state in lithium ion batteries and one of my questions on a type-c bus is how many cells are in a batter okay so that's a question I have there initial PL already wow I'll try to move it along if you don't mind you can finish your thought Mr bacon the initial plan is to have all the EV buses next to each other in New York I remember seeing that in front of the November meeting my concern there is there any safety precautions we need to address between those buses are all going to be in a line if God forbid something to catch us fire how close is the proposed location of the EV buses to the fuel tanks at New York uh where are the batteries located on these buses now I know that might depend on the manufacturer things like that are they between the frame are they in the back of the bus are they on the side of the bus that's important I just talked about some of the issues we have going from traffic lights around here all right if you can just wrap it up Mr bacon thank you thank you U if there's electrical malfunction on the bus is there a manual override to opening the doors and the rest I'm going to give to Dr frell thank you very much thank you Mr bacon yes bring those to me and I'll make sure we update all those questions as we've been doing for the last almost five six months maybe year uh you know the first public comment session is more of a Q&A because we have agenda items to vote on so the board in the second public comment we like whatever you need to comment Q&A if I could get you to answer after at the very end of everybody's I'll get it to you if not I'll get back to you with it or I may point to someone to try to get you that U that answer um but thank you for those I have a couple of notes that I can't answer tonight on this for you is there anybody else who would like to make a a public comment somebody's coming up Mr Cohen's coming up good evening Board of Education administrators um like to thank you first for putting this vote off I believe that putting this off until the new board is seated um was absolutely the right decision to make um I do have prepared statements uh question I'd like to ask Mr Farrell though before I give those statements the numbers that you gave us what bus what bus manufacturer are those numbers being based off of well first of all I'll answer everything at the end in the second P but it's just an estimate because we haven't taken any bids yet right so it's just an estimate they're all averages on those numbers with the grant so um but I will at the very end of all this I'm writing down all the questions ones that we can answer we'll get to you okay so well electric buses um and let me start just by saying I am a transportation professional I hold a certification I'm an instructor for the Ruckers um class for transportation supervisors um so I've got a background of what I'm going to speak about which is really all about electric buses while electric buses often held as the future of public transportation it is crucial and critically critical to examine the implications of this shift despite many promises of environmental sustainability and reduced emissions there are several important concerns that must be addressed before fully embracing electric buses firstly the environmental impact of manufacturing electric buses and their batteries cannot be overlooked the production of electric buses required a large amount of energy and resources particularly lithium Cobalt and rare earth minerals the mind of these minerals is often associated with environmental degradation human rights violations and exploitive labor practices additionally disposal recycling of used battery remains a significant challenge with the potential for harmful chemicals to leak into the environment unlike a propane bus um but I unlik propane bus I'll speak about that later electric buses tend to be significantly more expensive in their diesel counterparts or their gasoline counterparts both in terms of initial purchase price and the infrastructure cost for charging stations and maintenance even with the grants available the life expectancy of the battery is 8 to 12 years the bus under New Jersey Law could be kept for 20 currently um that was by executive order that was not changed by the legislature so next incoming Governor could change that then it needs to be the battery needs to be replaced we all that or sorry the bus will need to be replaced we will at that time have no choice but to replace it with another electric bus the current cost of an electric bus is 400,000 at the time of inflation or at the time of replacement using a rate of inflation during the Trump years of 1.9% that would make electric bus cost $ 532,250multifamily is the average you cannot take that bus from here to a hockey tournament in North Jersey because it will not get there and back while they are um suitable for shorter distance routes they struggle with longdistance travel particular an area where charging infrastructure is underdeveloped this lack of range and the time required to recharge can lead to delays and service interruptions which can negatively impact our students and reduce overall reliability of the school transportation system while the idea of electric buses is appealing from an environmental stando we must carefully weigh the challenges that come with this technology the environmental cost of manufacturing the financial burden on the taxpayers performance limitations are all factors that deserve serious consideration before we rush into the shift I am all about going green did you know though that propane is cheaper than electric buses has a range of 300 miles plus our current mechanics can work on those buses without any additional training the maintenance costs are less the infrastructure is free and I say again the infrastructure is free they will come and install the propane tanks plus the district nothing electric cost is $225 per mile at or 12 cents a kilowatt diesel is $221 per mile at 350 a gallon and propane and I'm not pushing propane but I want it to be in there because it is an alternative uh propane is a doll2 a gallon that price is always stable because we produce the majority of C of propan that's used in the world right here in the United States um I'm not trying to push propane um that has almost zero emissions I'm showing that in the long run electrical cost more we currently cannot fix them inhouse they need to be sent out to back to the dealership um and I deal with this all the time and it's nothing against the dealers I know most of the people here in this room they're my sales reps um it goes back to their goes back to I'm going to pick on Ming goes goes back to wilington a diesel bus is there for four to 5 weeks a um electric bus every District having to go back to them it could be there for months what do we do and I will finish up it's essential to take a balanced approach exploring a range of Transportation solutions that do not overly rely on one single technology um I attend a lot of Association meetings where electric buses have come up and transportation supervisors across the state I asked how many of you are interested in electric buses not one hand goes up in that room that says a lot there are currently only 2,000 a little over 2,000 electric buses on the road on the road across the entire country that's a number for 41 states that says something also um the technology is just not there yet to jump at the 25 buses that's crazy Mr arage why can't why can't the board decide to purchase less buses and see how it does we Dr F I have that answer for you we answered that last month as well I'm sorry okay and then I want to ask you off of this subject on another one Dr f a very quick question can you tell me and you should be able to answer this tonight not have to get back to me what is the largest current class count and what grade is that also what's the average class size currently thank you thank you for your comments uh what anybody else oh come on up Mark that's not Mark oh oh no that's Justin sorry I'll be Mark um first real quick I just want ask M Granger um sounds like she's moving districts to be closer to home maybe we could talk her into moving home to be closer to good job try she's not biting that's very nice I don't want to repeat a lot of said about the electric buses um I just wanted to bring a few points up um we talk about the Savings in gas we haven't talked about the cost of electric um so that will kind of offset the Savings in gas and how much electric we're spending also I know last month was brought up the infrastructure and how it can handle it one thing I would recommend would be to look into way of the busers charging later at night when the infrastructure has less of a demand so it doesn't cause any problems um also with the bus garage does that have a generator to the bus garage now and if so would the buses charging stations be hooked up to it because if we have a power rout foring the night and come in in the morning our buses don't have a charge so we have that to attend with as well um again I want to thank you guys because I think last meeting most people had questions uh it was a good discussion uh I think everyone was agreement there were still some questions to be answered I would just like to ask uh Victoria if she has any insight we don't have she was the only one that kind of want to move forward last it's lot of Q&A would anybody else like to make a public comment go ahead Mr Reed thank you Larry Reed I guess you have my name already can you hear me right first of all I want to wish you a happy holiday a Merry Christmas and a healthy one of both and I want to thank the board members again for volunteering their time of all the people up there at the deis those are the only people that volunteer their time for these meetings and it's wrong should be paid board coun I mean the council meeting in town they all get paid why is it the board members don't get paid at the board of education on a big bigger budget okay as far as the buses I think uh the propane buses are new to me I don't know anything about it I I think it should be explored because there are a lot of propane buses in the city so there's probably a lot of data on that uh uh third thing I wanted to bring up it's kind of a housekeeping thing or bookkeeping thing maybe Jim could answer this for me I know we pay our taxes quarterly and the town collects the taxes for the Board of Ed in the county and when is that money given over to the board of EDS since the town collects it is it set by Statue or is it an arbitrary time frame so that those are my questions thank you thank you Mr R would anybody else like to make a public comment yes please come on up sir please state your name hi my name is George catus for the record I'll spell it out K TS o u r a d i s and yes there's a pop quiz at the end for you to spell it again so good evening superintendent in board I'm going to State the obvious first you're not the first and you're not the last District to Electrify if you want pilot programs There's real data in New Jersey to pull from other school districts in terms of fire EVS in general not just buses but all electric vehicles are generally 61 times less likely to catch on fire than a traditional vehicle schol in a 12year span from 2010 to 2022 only 300 carf fires Nationwide were EV so if you're looking for a safer bus for the children EVS are your preference and to answer an earlier question all batteries are at the base of the vehicle any EV they're at the base of the vehicle and they are self-contained what that means is there is a insulation wall which allows significant time in the event of a fire for passengers to leave safely in terms of performance a comparable New Jersey school district has currently today five EV buses that they've been in operation since 2022 with their five buses in use fully across the two years they've saved over 50,000 greenhouse gases it's the equivalent of planting over 1300 trees and letting them Thrive for over 10 years so you're potentially getting four times that amount with this grant by the math you're saving over a 100,000 greenhouse gases per year with these buses infrastructure wise the charging stations are affordable and are available on state contract which if I read the agenda correctly you just approved use of tonight additionally and this was probably not part of your numbers um though I do commend you for all the work you put in superintendent there's utility incentives that are additional funds that are allowed to be uh tacked on to the state grant for you to use towards the infrastructure cost now you mentioned that budgetary number includes 13 Chargers assuming they are all fast Chargers which you do not need in this case you maybe one or two you realistically can get away with all level two which will significantly drop that cost however assuming they're all fast Chargers that's an additional $325,000 that the district can get through the utility incentive available right now also answering another question Chargers have load management that means they can adjust the charge rate to meet Peak demands and limit your energy costs charging the bus overnight is the solution it is the way to go and in the event that you do have a out of District trip or field trip or what have you that's where the fast Chargers come into play lastly and I'll keep this as unbiased as I can EVS are not a political issue they only became a political issue when some wanted it to be the previous administration who will soon be the new Administration again was in favor of it sure they didn't talk about it politically or publicly but these programs existed back then they're still going to thrive we're still going to continue and EVS aren't any more a concept it's not a hey let's try it out and see they're here they exist they're not going away so it's not a matter of if it's a matter of when thank you thank you for your comments is there anyone else who would like to come up and share um their thoughts or comments you're next Mr saluka good evening my name is Wyatt her I appreciate um I want to add my thanks to all the board members those that are retired and retiring and those that are coming coming in um it truly is a thankless job I I'd add that I also think that they deserve some kind of enumeration rather than uh the grief that they get and you'll find that that's the job because unless my kids got the star of the play you guys all stink no whatever you get it you know what I'm saying but no seriously thank you and um and and the professionals Mr superintendent frell I appreciate all your hard work and the stuff you've done on this and your appreciation for the facts um I also want to thank the teachers because let's not forget this all doesn't work if the teachers aren't teaching our children and they are and and the support staff is tremendously important uh you can't do anything without a ditto I don't know the mograph I'm an older guy that blue paper that dunk so the old folks know what I'm talking about um but anyway and I just want to add I just want to just hit that point and uh I did some of that same research 61 not percent 61 times 300 in the number of years 12 years or whatever 12 years 300 fires think about that I I don't drive a ton how many fires I've never seen an Eevee on fire I know they on TV I did they don't show on TV when a car catches fire but I bet you I see a car fire on the side of the parkway once a week um the other thing is diesel gas even propane when they tend to burn they burn fast and quick um it was the if you look at the research batteries start to smell they get hotter they smell they're fire and and it grows it's hard to put out but you've got plenty of time to get out of the vehicle so um those are just some of the points I know you're going to do a lot more and and I appreciate you're going to do a lot more investigation as a taxpayer in this in this town I truly appreciate anything you can do to save money and I'd sure hate to think we'd leave money on the table when at the same time all the knocks and socks and the kids on the bus breathing the fuel and I put my 5-year-old on the bus I got my three-year-old there and the bus goes by and puff stuff in there so appreciate all your hard work appreciate the work you're going to do to continue investigate that and find the best ways and uh I I guess we have a couple vendors here so you'll beat them up and get the price even cheaper so don't think just because he gave you an estimate us taxpayers wanted to get the best price so we're going to be up thank you so much for all your hard work have the best healthy safe holiday however you celebrate cou thank you for your comments Mr suuki you're up John sluka 950 Sil your call uh is that on yeah okay uh first of all just the air pollution wise these buses I don't know about propane at all but they're definitely better than the Diesels it doesn't and most the problem we have in this this whole area is you know now we're taking advantage of the children actually ones whole overall area needs to be cleaned up as best they can uh the only problem I had the question I had was about water with the buses but I I don't think it's a problem I know the bus drivers off worried about the buses going through the heavy water because this this district has a tendency to be half you know when it gets a heavy rain and stuff like this it gets flooded and stuff like that uh a little chancy on that but the air pollution wise it looks very good I don't really care about anything else I mean that's the only thing that faults me any I pay taxes like everybody else okay thank you thank you Mr saruca please come up please state your name good evening my name is Curtis Fischer I'm a resident of brick and uh I I want to thank everyone and your time and your service uh here is uh really appreciated um and the work that went into the presid I think is really uh outstanding in terms of being a taxpayer we all obviously care um about efficiency but I I I do want to just name something that hasn't been directly stated uh for the record and um that the US Environmental Protection Agency and I just want to make sure I'm reading from the American Cancer Society website specifically states that diesel exhaust is a likely carcinogen to humans okay the National Institute of occupational safety and health uh part of the CDC which studies exposure in workplaces has determined that diesel exhaust is a potential occupational carcinogen so I just want to take a step towards you know a lot of times when we talk about electric vehicles we talk about climate change but this is a real health issue for students for workers and support staff and it's unfortunate and uncomfortable sometimes to talk about the things because obviously we have an infrastructure and many of us have fossil fuel cars and trucks and we're all part of this right we're a community um that is struggling to deal with very substantial public policy issues and they make sometimes very hard decisions um but I want to bring up excuse me one National Institute of Health another quite credible source and I can send you these links but they did a study that while riding in a school bus for one to two hours a day 180 days a year for 10 years might result in 23 to 46 additional cancers per million children and I did a quick look you may all know this some people may not but there's 1.4 million students in New Jersey so I want to know the school district that wants to continue to buy diesel buses and accept that we're going to send 23 to 46 children uh to that fate and we're talking about deaths not getting diagnosed with cancer and luckily being saved by a doctor and amazing Pharmaceuticals that saved my son when he was 15 years old and got cancer so I just want to speak to a tough issue that I think should be part of the presentation in addition to the fiscal issues and I hope that would be considered appreciate your time the last thing I want to mention quick um comment on how many buses there are in the United States currently operating uh my research again I can s you the uh sorry it's obviously somewhat emotional uh situation um 5,000 buses are currently in operation in the United States um approximately a 7,000 additional buses are in order and in the queue remember we're just talking about the United States people drive buses all around the world we're not also talking about commercial buses there are uh approximately over 5,000 electric buses serving public transportation systems and of course we know um that that's the case as well so like you mentioned at the beginning tax are really important sources are really important and I hope the board continues to do the great work that you've been doing have a great night thank you um would anybody else like to um make a public comment M Miss Bal we we invited different vendors that we've been talking to about the electric school buses are here tonight and I don't know if they're shy or not I was going to lead to that yeah was any of wanted to have a public comment that'll be a good time if you had anything that you wanted to add to the discussion can I just prop that for a second because I got I'd like I'm going to lead into that because we do have some experts and people we brought here and just for this and again this is going to continue so we said at the second public comment session I would address some things I can answer tonight uh so I want to I want to start with a couple things thank you for putting them in writing for me Mr bacon because I'm going to be updating this PowerPoint ad nauseum over the next month and a half for everybody um I know there was one question I think it was Mr Cohen um asked me about the class sizes right um so you you say it's it's not as easy to say do I have the answer yeah I have an answer with our projections but as you know October 15th is our deadline our snapshot I could tell you that from what we projected in the budget to reduce class sizes we projected having a high class I think it was fourth grade across the District of 28 we a little increased enrollment our average class size has stayed around the 23 24 as we projected in the budget thanks to adding those teacher positions back um in the summer I I want to get I want to get to the EV buses to kind of wrap where my head is and I want to make sure when we're giv these questions that I do want to talk about facts and site sources I think someone had an article that if you look in September to University of Miami there's a study out there please go to it about the fire because that's what I heard last month and I thought it was so important so like a geek I went and and did the research and said you know let me look at it so just this September University of Miami they were talking about EV batteries and fires on electric buses very rare as Mr Cohen just is acknowledging to me so it was 25 out of a 100,000 electric buses and in comparison Diesel and gas buses had over almost 1,600 out of the same 100,000 so when someone said it's 61 times greater so I I want to alleviate that because I know that was an important issue that came up but I'm going to start only because my finance hat is always on me unfortunately I say to many of my cabinet members my five years here I come into meetings we want to do this in curriculum we want to do this for students and I say what's the cost right because we have a rough issue here and we're always lobbying the state looking for money grant monies all these things if all things were evening and if the last month's proposal like I said was a break even at best with some of the numbers we had in front of us I get it I get that we look at risk reward and I know we have environmental benefits here and a lot of other benefits that are brought up and I'm going to try to break them but I want to say right now there should be zero debate on the financial side because very simply with 7.76 million being given to us up front for the cost the cost of the EV bus is right now now cheaper than the El the than the diesel bus when you when you because they're paying for the charging stations and the infrastructure now which we didn't having the other Grant so financially I want to just put that aside for a second and we were very conservative we didn't use inflationary costs because as the cost of diesel bus going up so is the electric we didn't do an existing kilowatt that could go up electric to compare to gas we it was very simple simple math and I know all of you when you look at it I know Mr Reed will look at it even more you'll look at the cost analysis you'll see it's very simple so to me like I said last month financially it is a no-brainer because we're leaving money on the table now yes is there risk when you talk 12 25 years whatever the co the cause of the bus so I want to go through some things um and it's important again with your sources so we like Mr Cohen said the batteries are 8 to TW 12 years the warranty on a diesel bus is about 12 Years A Life expects those buses are 20 where they go out of service all similar all similar remember years ago I'm going to date myself to the 70s and I used to be in the lighting and energy efficient business but remember to get people to get rid of you know fluorescent bulbs and go to LEDs and incandescent and go to compact fluorescence the government had a give an incentive because by Nature we just don't want to do that we see a 26 Cent light bulb we're going to buy it instead of buy the $7 compact fluorescent that not only save the environment that's going to last 10 years and save you all this energy and pays for itself in a year right nobody's going to just buy it Apples to Apples we had to wait for the government to give the incentives the same with electric vehicles you saw with cars and hybrids the money now is getting and I said it last month the five million was just enough to wet our whistle as Mr bacon said to me a month ago kind of we were blinded because it was just 5 million but now when you talk 7.6 it drastically changes the payback drastically it's $2.7 six million I don't care how you slice it it automatically next year one budget cycle alone saves us almost a half million just in next year without going 12 25 years so it's important to look from that perspective I know there's environmental benefits I know there's health benefits we hear Mr sluka uh many times about all those things propane was brought up Tom driver is struggling and having a lot of problems right now with propane buses I'm sure you know um we we've you know Tom drier is a local District that started piloting them we're asked about a pilot I would love that there was a pilot but there's no pilot with this money that's the way the grant was made we said that uh last month meeting it's a 25 Bus thing that's what the grant was uh approved for you can't kind of put your toes in a little bit but I will say this is less than a quarter of our Fleet so when we talk about long trips you have three quarters of other buses to rotate if we talk about a bus out of commission we have three quarters we have our transportation director here as well he's probably telling me we don't have enough sitting there um so do that as Mr Cohen is is acknowledging um so I wanted to get to that um you know um Mr bacon asked about an analysis a separate analysis I mean that's what I'm doing I can't do it any better I know um you talked about other things about how the board operates on these kind of meetings and I think you and I had this discussion a little bit um you know I want to remind everybody um first of all we are not a Town Council I am not a politician I'm an educator and I have to run the operations dayto day and this board is a policymaking board now they are your elected official and it's a tough gig but they're your elected official they're your representative we are committee structure board there are many board meetings where we may have a vocal minority here at a board meeting but it's not the recommendation or the right education decision and it's my job to really educate and recommend to a board of education and get them up to speed on what it is because you elected them to sit in that seat as a committee structure many of these questions were answered some were not and I said I did a bad job as the administrator who does this every day and gets paid to do it in communicating that last month and I want to make sure that we take our time to do do it right but I don't want to confuse the financial issue with the other issues I don't want to mesh it because if we weren't in the state we are budgetarily and this was just an even or proposition I'd say most of you I'd say to Mr Cohen you're probably right but there's too much here to turn away um I am going to check out the thermal Runway because we got some experts here we're going to look at we're going to talk about that a little more and get you some answers on that um and and all your questions Mr bacon um just bear with me and we're going to get some of the experts um I think we have a a bus garage generator um I wasn't sure about that do we have a generator over there no no generator so that's something um what we'll look into yeah we don't have a generator over there but I I think and I'm I'm looking around the room I think one of these individuals is going to tell you about the benefit of the buses and the batteries that when you do lose power that those could be a source of power oh as act as a generator yes yes I see a few people shaking their heads yep um just going back to some of Mr Bacon's points to to wrap up and we'll get some of the EXT you know nobody's been a bigger Advocate and I think you've actually learned some things from me regarding title three and going to the state lobbying with our demographic Shi and student population and funding I joke today I think to someone that I'm becoming like a funding expert along the state and I still wish they wouldn't have all these legislators running these committees and get more practitioners involved in that and the way I look at it since we're not getting it on the state level in our funding and Equalization Aid and we're not getting it on the federal level I'm I don't want to turn around this because at the end of the day it impacts our budget immediately next year immediately um off the bat and at the end of the day as you know eventually whether it was last year we went out for a higher tax levy we don't want the owners to fall back on the taxpayer at the end of the day and we don't want to look back at this and say that is there a risk I would say almost any business decision of financial but is there a substantial risk I you know I say I'd buy the stock at a a 24 uh percent return on investment um you heard where the batteries were located um oh there was also a question Mr Reed on the taxes collected if you want to get to that yes so it's we are paid monthly our we take our tax levy we divide it by 12 months and they send us a check monthly y um so the charging stations was the big difference in this new proposal the 13 the money involved in that infrastructure that was really hurting us in the last proposal um from the federal level so that was a huge issue because of the 13 charging state and again that's a little over my pay grade I thought I was getting pretty good with the technical side with a lot of this information uh whether it was the numbers there is another source like I said besides school buses Mr Cohen's numbers nationally were right the number of school buses is not as low though Texas California's two Florida's three obviously size they there's a number and again these are all in uh reports uh uh that are out there and if you go to that University in Miami I think a local paper actually printed the one report um if you check that actual report it's a good source with just simple data on electric buses but when you get into other buses commercial buses and you're talking a bigger picture which is a a bigger n number statistically to look at some of the safety issues uh that we're looking at as we said electric buses EV buses are heavier the weight I I was told that so that helps Mr Su was talking about whether and and uh rain um now I want to get into some of the EPA um stuff a little bit too and and I'm going to get more of this for next month to me that's a great benefit right you talk about the health benefits and the uh the environmental benefits and I used to always you know when I used to sell lighting retrofit jobs that was the last last page in our proposal because we had to get the facility guide a yes right so it had to have a financial payback but the last page talked about you know getting rid of fluorescent lamps and you know saving all the Mercury that' be dumped into the lakes and how many trees but that was important now was it important enough for someone to pull the trigger and make the decision probably not in the commercial sector where I was selling but it was important for them whether it was for media Outlets or to educate their staff on what they were doing or for us to educate our students on things we're doing um but like I said the first hurdles Financial but that is a benefit that uh I know some people talk about that I don't want us to forget to me that's an extra benefit that's fantastic um and again this is a collaborative I we got plenty of time I say plenty of time to that end January meeting got plenty of time to get questions in get answers up and to we're going to be you know we we vote we don't vote on submitting grants we submit grants all the time we're voting on The really the least financing I believe at the end of January which would really be what we're voting on which we had and submitting the application the application submitted correct yeah the the application submitted we we' be voting on the lease financing and the award to the architect to begin the project right we we submit Grant applications all the time right accepting and then putting out for the lease financing is really a board oversight which they'll do in the um probably the end of January um for that so we have plenty of time again I'm going to ask you only because I don't have a great memory I wrote down as fast as I can anybody that got up and spoke please email me directly tarrell brickschools.org list your questions exactly I'll add update keep checking the website we'll update these so we have with us now I wanted to bring up I know we have a a few experts and vendors and people here uh that may have be able to answer some of the questions you've heard I'm hoping they're going to be back in January as well um because that's really an important meeting um but if anybody any of the experts would like now and thank you Mr Edwards for getting to get up and comment on is some of the um questions or concerns that you heard or maybe uh to our edification um correct some issues he's looking at you apparently so my name is Alro and this is spencor we are the dealer for ride buses and he represents the manufactur okay Dr feral I'd like to just say I'm glad you mentioned the 70s because plus salesman since 1977 I just want you to know I was in school in the 70s by the I just I just wanted to say Mr Edwards this vehicle to Grid it's a great idea I don't know that new that's something we should probably fight for battery packs to you know buing that's out of power power we're here to answer any questions you have um thermal runaway that's always something we hear about we've seen we've seen Tes go up in flames on YouTube videos uh battery technolog changed a great deal um we use a uh actually we make our own batteries we make make batteries in fact we had a razor flip phone back in when they came out Wasa by that made batteries we make cars we make trucks and we just celebrated 10 years of being in the transit industry in the United States so we have transit buses which we are building our school buses you know from that platform so we've got a lot of experience in in those business so thermal runaway uh we've changed our well we've gone with lithium iron phosphate batter it's a blade type battery it's the saf aailable today and maybe Spencer get a little bit to it yeah hi guys I'm Spencer sedoro I am the manufacturer rep for ride uh we actually had the electric bus here that was referenced the day before the November 14th uh board meeting which I watched way too many times to to mention have preparation for this um but it's good to hear that a lot of the questions if not all the questions were answered and the proposal that's excellent news uh one of the things to note is some of the drivers that got on some of the senior drivers that got on very hesitant they were like oh what's this electric electric they both drove it they both left very impressed and changed their mindset so it is one of those things that people that are against it I I hope that you do you know look more into it um I also want to say as we mentioned with the thermal Runway that that the battery chemistry really does matter a lot of the events that that we talked about the 61 times safer that's even in Battery Technology NCM or nickel Cobalt magnes that isn't as safe as what you're seeing now lithium iron phosphate so most if not all electric school buses are moving to the safer battery chemistry so when it comes to that it is something that you know you guys should really take into account and then when it comes to the generator you talked about these buses can and have been used as a generator in the issue of a blackout and I the goal at the end of the day is safety and um we're just happy to help questions we'd be more than happy to answer and we'll be back in January one thing I wanted to mention too is we were talking about range and we've taken buses out on demos and we've got a lot more range out of the bus than we were advertising and just so you know that when we advertise the range and I think as most manufacturers do it's a fully loaded bus so it's a fully loaded bus in and that's when you see 120 M estimate that's what saying thank you guys hang thank you sure but I I just want to say um besides that we have this video too and we'll get these I'm sure you'll be getting more questions from Jim or my office um to update this site too um board members you have all the questions that you want if you want to wait till the end can I ask one real quick uh just curious how many electric buses do you currently have in New Jersey so in newers Jersey we do not have any right now and why is that we so we are a battery manufacturer and we started as a trans company so we've had electric buses on the road for over 10 years we just had our 10 year anniversary we only transitioned to school buses in 2021 so we had our first deliveries last year we're at 200 plus uh deliveries so far and we have our first deliveries in New York being in next year it's more of just entering the space we have the proof of concept we've been doing it on the transit side like I said for 10 years so we the technology on a much more complicated Transit bus and made that transition to school buses and just for Mike so in my research there's only about three dozen operating right now in school district of New Jersey electric buses with 150 on order um yeah my concern is why are districts so hesitant to implement electric process I don't think this grant was available to there's a lot of reasons yeah I mean early technology a lot it's funing right right now if you don't have Eder or state funding you're probably not making that decision as you guys have made those financial decisions and some of the early first generation buses may not have performed that the way that people have anticipated but the technology has gotten better A lot of Manufacturers have switched to safer and they were reliable uh battery chemistry so you're starting to see both Federal and private money flooded to the space which is only going to lead to better and better products so great question our biggest market right now too true is Califor right that's that's where we build the buses in California you know that's whereing so um I'm a parent I'm a disabled child like many of the people on this on this bus I am was said on this board on this board is and my big question was and my big hold up one of my B holdups is is um the little buses and goab bid something does happen and on those buses typically could be one or two children in a wheelchair there could be another child that will freeze if there's a fire another child who you have to unbuckle six or seven you know things to get them out um how long does it take for that bus to go up into flames and second I know our superintendent doesn't want this because he's wants about the money I'm about the children sure and um to get those children off the bus there's an aid and a bus driver how do those buses get put out is it true that they can't be put out they burn so it is true in terms of the thermal runaway uh comment that was made that is what happens right if the the battery chemistry starts to go out of control that's what it's called it's called thermal runaway the good like I mentioned the the lithium iron phosphate U technology the battery chemistry is the safest in in in battery chemistry so it's almost twice as safe as the other chemistries and so in terms of how you what the timeline is there's no specific timeline but there are warning signs that were mentioned you know smells and the timeline that it will take there should be enough time to make that those evacuations but I'm not going to you know state that that's a guarantee but so when it so when it comes time for that to get those two children on the bus off the bus with a wheelchair does the lift work because now you have an old person who's an aid trying to get one or two children off a bus that has a wheelchair is it advisable to get these buses for the disabled kids you know what I'm saying yeah so I mean first off if I'm not mistaken the the plan is the 25 buses are not 88 so that doesn't technically apply to this that is not the plan the new one no the 25 total wasn't it five of the small buses you were looking five special out of the 25 correct yes five so it is five okay so it is two separate batteries right the 20 the 24 volt battery is operating separately So in theory you you can still operate as it's happen so so my son-in-law is a fire chief and um of course I've really looked into this I used to own a gas station I would get into a car and I could fix your engine if you want um you cannot stop a stop a fire I mean it it for it to burn out is very scary of course right I mean but you can on a regular bus yeah when when a battery goes into thermal Runway is basically a chemical reaction you're not going to extinguish it in our wheelchair buses that we sell the state requires us to have a fire suppression system suppression not extinguishing so it you time to get the wheelchair occupant out of the bus whether you pick them up out of the chair and gogen I'm going to bring up not even fully developed yet talking about it for Ev we deal with the fire supression companies for our wheelchair buses and they said I talked to the president of the company he says you know before a bus goes into thermal Runway which is what you don't want it emits a gas and then they have in the works a detection system basically a sniffer of gas and from that point when the alarm goes off you have about minutes not a lot of time but they need to look for something else because to get four or five kids that are my daughter freezes when she sees a fire she just will not move and if you have 175 pound kid and you're trying to get that kid off a bus and a kid on a wheelchair and another child I mean in my head that's on my hands to say yes or no there's no fire and as we've stated the the odds and of a fire happening with a diesel and gas bus versus an EV you know it's it's actually more likely on those buses so and when it comes to chemistry the lithium iron phosphate is the safest battery so if what you're worried about is safety the lithium iron phosphate battery is the saf are those the batteries that catch on fire with the the bikes that everybody's using and all that's a common misconception lithium ion typically means it has lithium in it but it's like usually it's nickel Cobalt magnes so a lot of the early Tesla cars that you see with the fires those were that Tesla has now shifted to lfp just like most manufacturers we've been doing lfp for over 10 years because it is the safest technology just to go back and and mine you brought up a good point and I I was telling I said to Jim you know as we're moving forward this maybe we don't want to have five Ada buses out the 25 um but just go back to the stats just so you know it's 61 more times the fires in the stats in that report in September are more likely on the gas diesel than on the electric not saying doesn't happen obviously but you're talking about 0.002 out of 100,000 buses electric bus and you're talking almost 5% out of the gas diesel but we can obviously look at that because there is more management more safety concerns with our classified students and our Ada um student population so that should be something we looked at um if we move forward with it as well is that something we can bring to like the January meeting we're a very heavy special district as we that we have some more like research if if we're going to like that on the table we got to take get 25 buses in the grant right doesn't say we have to take 20 and five for our Ada this is less than a quarter of our Fleet so oh understood you know we've been talking about piloting in the sense that we maybe we'd take the 25 larger older population gened type buses that are used in the daily runs not the bar runs and we start with that kind of um strategy so that's a way to approach this as we're looking at uh the possibility of ordering so thank you gentlemen I know there's some other I I just had what one um point I was with the New Jersey uh clean Community commission the other day this to the grants that are available in New Jersey and they said there are specific grants for the um the conversion or the mechanisms needed for special education buses that wouldn't cost the district anything I'm just it's out there that's all that's all I know they were very important to me do you have any of the of the ADA Compliant buses actually in you use now you do okay okay I have a question but I don't I don't know if it's really for you guys or you Dr firal but um 25 buses 13 charging stations right is that what we said 13 charging stations if you have to charge the bus overnight so the buses are charging when no 's there but we only have half of the number of chargers to buses not every they don't have to charge they they have two ports so you have Chargers withs so they all in yeah so they plug charger managem thank you that's all and they go on automatically in the with cheapest they're charging at the cheapest rate and eventually you use VG sell it back to the good do do any of the other Representatives here want to come up and offer anything go ahead thank you guys thanks guys thank you my name is Randall Ray I'm with IC Corporation I'm a regional sales director for the Northeast and the Midwest um I was on the initial launch Team for Ev buses and so i' just give you a little bit of um commentary there um great I really appreciate you guys inviting us it is um great that everyone gets to hear everything at the same time so real quickly um I do you know this fire thing I know it's huge but we put our children on diesels gasolines propanes and somewhere in Kansas City some some compressed natural gas units and don't think twice about it and we all know those are volatile fuels every single one so these statistics that are quoted are 100% correct they are very safe we've been lfp uh technology on the battery since day one um Dr frell on the FTE real quick um there is a maintenance savings so as technicians are very hard to find nowadays you can put the techn technicians that you still have remaining onto the Diesels to put injectors in to swap out turbochargers and all that sort of thing um there's literally Cooling and some filters and the traditional breakes to do on the maintenance of a of an EV are there repairs perhaps nobody is opening up the big electric boxes when we take them to wolfington is our dealer on northern Jersey um Allegiance trucks formerly truck King our we have um you talk about training our dealerships they have to be trained they have to be certified in tooling and they have to have both AC and DC charging equipment um we're not opening up boxes there either they're going to take them out they're going to swap them out of the parts in the warehouse and they're going to put them back in 99% of anything that we've seen is some sort of connection usually at the charger at the charge for so they work really good um issues that arise is generally in that first 60 days in charging you make deliberate actions you don't punch the button like that it's little things like that but it makes all the difference in the world so enough on that um v2x so you're talking about um a vehicle to grid and they uh mentioned v2x a little bit v2x is going back to your building that way you don't have to do all the technology and rigoll to get all the way to the grid with the power compan but you can power your school building the cafeteria the refrigerators or in my favorite irony is you could power the fuel pumps so that you can go push snow with your diesel trucks um uh we've actually uh sold an EV truck to a fire department in Cambridge Massachusetts their Hazmat uh response truck is one of our electrics um so the maintenance thing is real um the brakes are saved you get double or triple the life of brakes because of regenerative braking when you lift off the accelerator on the electric it power back in but it slows the vehicle down significantly that's real um our very very first sale we put into British Columbia where the mountains are to test those that wide range of climate etc etc the mountains were great the drivers absolutely loved them driver trainers said I have more control over this bus than I've ever had before because of that regenerative braking um to where the batteries are yes they are between the frame rails yes they have cages like the fuel tanks do yes they've been poked proded and smashed we do the the full nits of gamut of of testing on the EVS because at the end of the day it's still a school bus so as far as your technicians can do all the 12vt side of the house is the same the lights the strobes the radios the that all runs off the 12vt and there's two various switches there's a 12vt shut off there's a high volt shut off um don't need get but that whole 12volt side of the house doesn't change so your technicians can work on them pretty much as as they like today yes there is training and essentially that boils down to us what can we touch what should we not touch and therefore called the dealer um real quick on money if you did buy 25 which is a good number and and he's exactly correct it's a quarter of the fleet you are going to take the diesel to the State final that's a simple fact however that's a great size but you have locked in your pricing so when you talk about 5 four three five when until you get to 25 those buses are going up there's a major EPA round of emissions coming in 2027 your diesels are going up can't tell you how much that's still all TBD but they're not going to be as cheap as they are today um gentleman talk about the industry a little he was 100% correct on the various EV things um shot a little low on the industry the whole industry is 450 to 500,000 buses um just miss the counter there so it's 500,000 buses roughly around America um got the 25 the environmental effects is is correct when this whole thing kicked off years ago it was about the environment it wasn't necessarily about the pricing it wasn't about the rebates it was about the environment to get diesels and internal combustion engines off the road the side benefit is they're very quiet inside your discipline improves inside the bus and the drivers tend to love it they really do um we have some major contractors that are purchasing our buses I use a contractor as an example just because it's it's big volume but we've got districts from nowhere Tennessee to student transportation of America buy them so they are real of that they're here yes they are here um and we have doubled our capacity um for EVS at our ploma and anybody wants to go plant can always come to so that's all I have questions for me or I give it some time for the other manufacturers I do I have one um a gentleman asked um where would you store the buses would you store them next to gas buses um and when they're charging could they be charging by gas buses or whatever kind of us other than electric yes there's no sparks there are no sparks that is a low power connection until the ver the vehicle verifies that I am connected I am connected correctly no high voltage flows so yes you can park them next to a gas bus um you don't want to park next to a gas bus you don't have to but generally you're going to park them where your power company or your facility kind of needs them so can the battery overheat without it being being turned on like I mean ah great question I'm glad great one batteries are thermally managed as well as talking about theral runaway they are thermally managed for Optimum um um output and I'm pretty certain everybody does has thermal management they are cooled when it's hot so they literally have a chilling system they like to run about the temperature you like to run about 70 72 degrees when it's cold out that's part of the range degradation when they're cold out out they are warmed so when they're charging and it's zero outside part of that charge time is going to warming of them as well so they are both cooled in the heat they're warmed in the cold a lot of people are giving um a lot of people got up and spoke said you know diesel runs dirty and and everything else I have to tell you I went to a bus terminal of a new diesel bus and he said to me stick your hand in the pipe and feel it there was not anything the newer buses cannot run dirty you are correct uhhuh but so but do does everybody know that because we're hearing diesel buses are bad they're not healthy they had to change yes in my 38 years at International I was in the engine group and it's exceptionally frustrating when they say dirty diesel um the industry has spent billions cleaning them up yes and uh in the early you know we did our own marketing with the white hanky test with the white hanky behind it you running your fing finger inside the exhaust pipe is exactly correct um you tend to get unintended consequences um I will break bad on California California as well know went heavy when they did the original Green diesel 25 years ago all it did was kept everybody kept their old diesels therefore they lost the advantages of new technology inside the bus and they lost the new technology of lower emissions yes they are exceptionally clean so the life of a diesel bus opposed to the life of an electric bus being that diesel buses now are running much cleaner and um that's not really truly the concern the concern is an electric bus is quieter there are listen I'm I like green but I don't like the fallacy of you know diesel is bad and electric is better because a diesel bus lasts longer than an electric bus the Diesels are exceptionally clean yes the the the technology that came in with 2010 emissions especially with What's called the diesel particulate filter and the selective catalytic reduction is amazingly effective amazingly effective and running it in its Optimum On heavy trucks Sor to digress it's even more effective so you're going to see you will continue to see diesels in heavy trucks amazing technology thank you so just just for mateline just so you know the the life is the same um and the warranties are the same and there's another source I want to uh give everybody where was it American Medical Association General Medical American March of 20124 what they're talking about a gas and Diesel is the fumes from outside the bus or if the windows are down not the running clean and all that but in you know inhaling those fumes obviously there's no fumes at all in electric but if you you go to that Journal of American Medical Association March 2024 there's actually a s of leading what it says is leading cause of chronic absenteeism that was Spotlight in New Jersey Spotlight in in uh for New Jersey which had to do contributing to asthma in students in it so there's one source that talks about just it's about inhaling the fumes not as much as how it runs and the length of the run but again um many of these qu I I want to go back to just for I don't want to say that I don't care about the kids like the financial concern was my first hurdle but obviously I am very concerned of our students and the safety um for for our students on those buses but I do think it's important from our perspective here and brick and Mike and I have spoken about this is the financial hurdle was the first hurdle and we would be even where we are tonight if the numbers didn't J because I wouldn't be recommending it as a superintendent at that point until it get made Financial sense not that it makes Financial sense it is my recommendation and now we have to vet out all the ancillary concerns and questions to make sure that we're willing to take that Financial benefit because of these other benefits or concerns so I'm trying to frame it for everybody as we're approaching this um Ding and I know these are vendors too I want to State the obvious sorry guys I was a Salesman once myself but let's State the obvious these are vendors who are trying to sell buses uh and electric buses and they'll be bidding on this um but I I want to keep us straight and narrow uh to the facts on how we come about this decision um because it wouldn't get to this point if the financial decision wasn't there and yes I do care about the safety concerns of our our students what is the approximate cost for a um battery so they're saying 40,000 so 40,000 okay so they the diesel buses last somewhere in the like 20s year range and um the batteries are for the electric they're 8 to 10ish years so that means that we're going to in the life of the structure of the boss we're going to have to at least replace the battery once to a tune of $40,000 correct per okay so just just to add though but Jim can to add to that so FR I think the one thing that's being missed there though is on our diesel buses even though they are 20 year we can use them for 20 years probably around the 15 to 16 year mark we're replacing a transmission we're replacing an engine we we've got big expenses on the diesel buses too so I don't want everybody to get mixed up on that and think wow we got to spend 40,000 perhaps 12 years from now when the battery goes bad because we're probably spending 40,000 on diesel bus right now replacing the engine it's the same Jim just to cuz we're getting a little bit in the week but in my presentation Fran we showed that we talked about maintenance savings and tax credits which I'm showing a soft savings I'm not even showing that the utility rebates there's a lot more but the maintenance savings alone which I'm kind of putting over here are phenomenal right and we and we don't have enough diesel mechanics I look at it like if you if we have 25 electric buses I still need more diesel mechanics to work on the other buses because we don't have enough we we have two openings now um with to to work on the 75 buses but there is a huge maintenance savings rebat that arri not even in they're kind of down here in the in the financial analysis so um the cost of ownership over the life of the buses which are the same obviously it's it's very finan not even close the cost of ownership is a lot cheaper on the electric bus with everything included we just were trying to be conservative because of the questions last month and address more of these um other concerns ter that we had I just ask one record we don't want R 20 years you can replace an individual battery pack um and one thing that is to be considered in any purchase of any high value item is the extended service contract which can run up to 12 years they're not failed until they're at 70% capacity so those still run we anticipate them to go the life of the vehicle however as we all know the industry has not been around for 20 years yet so I can't in full confidence say that I can Rec in the Serv yes yeah I just wanted to ask that same question I asked the first vendor how many buses do you have currently in New Jersey and I'll say the reason I'm asking that is because clearly financially it seems like we've made up a lot of ground I'm more concerned from a supply chain logistic and distribution from you know this company has zero buses in New Jersey we're actually committing about 35 to 40% of our full full-size bus fleet 25 buses we have 63 full-size buses so it's actually 35 to 40% of that Fleet that we're committing like what confidence should the board have that you can deliver on an order like that uh we're 270 days order to deliver we uh Jersey how many do we have in Jersey I can tell you that we have8 registered in the United States just this year in 2024 so we've got them out there okay um New York is a little ahead of you guys we got a bunch in New York um we have had some small fleets do 100% which even we thought was perhaps not the wisest because again you know 100% is it's a big SA um but yes we have a running in your type of conditions that's kind of what okay yeah because from our perspective this is a big commitment for Brick you know 40% of our Fleet of full side size buses this is a big decision this is why all these questions this is why we delayed the meetings we want to you know understand all of this so does Philly get the flight floor yes so those are 88 buses so we actually at launch we had ada8 size what we call it 217 wheelbase or full size in Jersey a 54 passeng thank you so yeah thank you thank you appreciate come on up he covered a lot of what I wanted to what's your name please uh my name is Bill schud with AJ Dart and Son Thomas Bel buses um there's one one thing that I think we forgot to touch on and it's not so much with batteries it's not so much with the function of the vehicle it's New Jersey is participating in act that's Advanced Clean truck rules along with I think it's 10 other states yeah so what that does is it's going to be following California's rules it's going to be following car rules that are also going to be double-headed implementing coming in 2027 so with Advanced Clean truck and the way that the state is approaching this with the V these vehicles are going to steadily be implemented into into The Fleets over the next up till 2035 I think is depending on the class weight of the vehicle could be up to 75% of what the what what they're expecting to be produced and implemented across the participating States so to take advantage of the funding opportunities now especially for the infrastructure to get everything prepared for ahead of this it's probably one of the smartest things you could do this is not going to be one of those it's going to go away we are actively as a state pushing forward with this and this is not only on the medium heavy duty side but there is a certain expectance with car manufacturers which they can move credits around it's a little bit easier with cars but with heavy duties there are specific States California New Jersey I think it's Massachusetts they're you know they're they're all over where they're participating in this so and in two years it's going to be expect up to 20% entering into the state so infrastructure yes that's that might be the scary side of this but brick you're probably poised in a very good position you have a lot of school districts to come up here for you know track meets softball and everything and other districts are looking to actively continue participating in this so that they can help expand that infrastructure the state's moving forward they've offered I think it was like two or300 million dollar to start putting Chargers along the the turnpike and everything else so the BPU incentives and everything they are actively pushing so it's it's not going to go away and the funding will not always be there so that's just that that's something I want everybody to kind of keep in mind because as a taxpayer myself not in this District but in another District yeah I'd be concerned to take advantage of what you can when you can get it thank you Jim can I just ask you a question um when did you put the application in and when were we when did we hear word that we receive that Grant and did it go through the finance and Facilities committees so so it's the state Grant there was no application um Maria just Maria emailed the not the state the the other one oh the federal one oh goodness I'd have to do research I don't have that on top of my head I have to go back and look back in yeah I was think it was spring we got the award in the spring um anybody else please anybody here liver brick oh come on up my name jasona I'm with Island electri head inever Massachusetts and appreciate all of the comments that my colleagues have made before one of the things I think I I'll just bring to attention is the importance of having good logistic support um to to implement the project Highland is a company that specializes in um providing financing and charge Management Solutions to the customers that we work with we've got over 350 buses uh under contract across the country um with 35 districts around around the US uh we helped a lot of districts uh take advantage of the EPA funding through rounds one two and three and we're hopeful of round four that's coming up um I think we you know we're helpful with getting the state grant that nearly 8 million Grant you've gotten which is extremely um one of the things that I like to point out when I talk to groups is there were a lot of early adopters when this technology first came out uh particularly in California and the Lessons Learned are that you know you owe it to yourself to to engage and there are other vendors out there that that do what we do uh but you owe it to yourself to to Really uh work with a partner that has expertise in all of the fine details you know working with your architect and engineering firms to uh put in the infrastructure professionally safely and properly coordinating with the utility and make sure that the Chargers are right size to meet your routes because that's critical too you've got mileage uh requirements for your routes and you want to make sure that the the buses will be effectively charged uh so the buses can go every morning um so I just I wanted to to uh express my appreciation to be invited uh to speak with you um and uh thank you very much and I look forward to uh the next meeting thank you I I just want to reiterate again if people could also email me so we make sure all these questions and answers get put into our FAQs and I'll try to update that a couple times a week over the next six weeks for everybody um and I think the LA I don't know when we we're going to be voting at the reorg meeting on the meeting schedule but it'll be in the end of January the January board meeting um which obviously there'll be a finance committee meeting prior to that and we're open to see some of our experts and vendors and people uh there as well for that and hopefully we'll have a lot of the questions answered prior to that and we'll make an educated decision best interest of our students here in V thank you CL okay um how about some board comment um Mr Mesmer I'll be quick um a lot of good information on the buses so this this session was very helpful thanks to the vendors too it's not easy to come up and you know answer questions on the fly so uh appreciate appreciate it uh learned a lot and it's going to be a tough decision but uh I think we have enough knowledge now that we can go back and make make the right decision um and then Nicole it was great working with you so I wish you all the best and Stephanie if you're listening as well same for you it was great working with you thanks that's it okay um missana Rome sure first I want to thank everybody for all the information it weighed heavy on me at the last meeting we did not get answers and um it was very important for us to make get those answers because on this board we're making a decision for everyone and it's a decision that's on us and that decision is going to last 12 years so we need to make sure we're making the right decision for everybody financially safety and everything and I appreciate all the answers you gave because you answered a lot of my questions um and we'll we will discuss it as a group which is nice and make the decisions and I love all the people who came and spoke and gave um their input on it it was very very important um because when I came in in the beginning of this I was very upset because the last time we canceled the meeting there was a whole big thing about us it was political there's nothing political about our children there's nothing political about this board this board is for the town this board is for the children and the people we need to make sure our children are safe and we need to make sure our taxpayers don't get a heavy burden we also need to make sure that the boards after us can be able to hire teachers and do the things that we have to do with the money that we need and with our superintendent I know we're going to do just fine because he's very concerned about financial um we're a good group of people and we're going to make the right decision and I appreciate everything everybody said tonight and uh we have great information thank you happy Merry Christmas oh and Nicole I am really G to miss you and Steph and Miss Granger I'm really going to miss her have a nice Christmas Merry Christmas everyone Mrs de Benedictus um yes to all that they said um it's way past my bedtime so um but thank you all the vendors for coming out you guys are wealth of knowledge I mean this is new to some of us and luckily I I know some people who are in this field so I could say hey what does this mean but thank you guys for answering any little holes of questions that we had and um we really appreciate it we obviously we're going to look at this and read over and discuss and O um but thank you guys and um congratulations to all of the award-winning teachers you guys are all amazing Mr tulac you dealt with my Kenzie last year you're you're fantastic um and thank you to I'm not going anywhere Cole my Colonia girl um and um Stephanie wherever you are and also miss Granger you are amazing and you will be so missed um but we know that you're still just a call away so we will use and abuse you still um but Merry Christmas Happy New Year happy K Quanza happy Hanukkah happy whatever you celebrate I hope you guys have an amazing break and we will see you next year yes Mrs Kennedy I didn't know if I had to wait for you to say my name um I just thank you again for everybody coming um the vendors the town's people you know we appreciate you um Nicole I'm G to miss you my bub thank you so much um I learned so much from you from sitting out there and then sitting next to you and I know you better be out there I know Molita left already but you better be sitting next to it's at the next meetings right well these are few in far between now um and Steph you know thank you for everything um looking forward to working with John and George and listen this is not the us we like to be out of here before 10 so let's let's just you know make sure we 2025 we make work quickly um your first agenda Jen Granger I love you we're going to miss you good luck in your new District um our loss is most definitely their gain um Mary Kane if you're out there you are phenomenal super stoked for your new position and um we will miss you greatly um congratulations to our teachers of the year and our Educational Service Professionals of the year I think five or six of those names had Kennedy children in their classroom so I am truly blessed and it is why I love this District because those teachers and educational support um Educational Service professionals um you guys are the backbone of this district and we owe so much to you and you guys are you are the unsung heroes not anybody else you the teachers um so thank you so much for all that you do Merry Christmas um happy Hanukkah happy whatever you celebrate happy New Year bring on 2025 thank you do I get to talk again no come come on give it your best shot no thank you all for coming to my goodbye party um I saw it was a great turnout tonight so thank you uh for that um you heard me before um there's not much to add I'm a little sad to say like the last two meetings though were like the best two meetings we've had over the past six years and this is what I'm stepping away from so I I love this Rapport keep this up vendors guys thank you um share your info because we have to ask lots of questions and make sure it's the right decision but we've said it before a bunch of you have said it as well it is truly a thankless job you know um just an Insight you see all of us we're board members up here but I work a full-time job I probably work 80 hours a week um I run the diversity Equity inclusion committee at work um and we're taking the program National I have two special needs children in the district you know we do a lot of handful of things so it's a very thankless job it's a very hard thing to balance but I'm not lying when I say like this group is like the most welcoming group that you will ever work with they are the ease of the couple hours that we've been here the reason why I'm still awake is the coffee in this thing but um thank you thank you for giving me the opportunity to be up here I will be in those seats I promis Dr frell I will be sitting there and supporting you and being loud and obnoxious so um thank you again Happy Everything merry everything I hope everyone enjoys it and I will see you all in January lovely lovely thank you um I just want to say the way the meeting started with a such good cheer with our uh bths holiday course presentation I thought that was a great way to be begin this meeting and end the year um I'd like to speak about Nicole and Stephanie um you know people do say this is a thankless job and people did come up tonight and thank board members for what they do and I just want to shout out Nicole and Stephanie because they have complicated lives and special needs children and they carved out time to come to these meetings nine years for Steph six years for you to attend Workshop to uh contribute greatly to our committee meetings and our um discussions here on the board and you know I kind of feel like if you could do it anybody could do it Nico and I feel the same way about Stephanie and um I also want to thank everybody for the meeting I would specifically like to speak to our teachers and staff I want to say happy happy happy holidays and um I um have the pleasure to serve on multiple committees across the state and I'd like to just give a little um uh report on those um on on November 15th a Friday night I went down to Trenton and the board of directors of the New Jersey School Board Association Matt and they discussed um uh training and board resources uh finances nominating committee and a new deput deputy director and it was nice to meet with people from all over the state who feel uh strongly about contributing to the state effort on be behalf of all our public CH school children on uh Thursday December 5th I had one of the greatest experiences in my life don't tell my husband I said that um Thursday December 5th at 1 pm the Senate Education meeting um Senate education committee met and um some things some statutes and bills were just discussed and released um and some were just discussed for um discussion only and I'm it it's a thing the cell phone usage by school children is a thing in New Jersey um uh um school-based mentoring is a huge thing across the state and uh there's a um a bill going to the legislative floor for that that was just released um and we also had people speak on behalf of uh requiring additional High additional financial literacy instruction to our high school students um it was a real pleasure I I I didn't talk I just listened there were a lot of people at that meeting a lot of board members a lot of parents a lot of teachers the NJ the New Jersey Schoolboard Association a lot of people who came to give input and um I want to segue into um the New Jersey Department of Education is asking for feedback on school funding this is your chance everybody who doesn't think we're beating the drum loud enough it's your turn because we they are going to have four public meetings around the state beginning on December 17th January 8th putting it in the packet as well J 14th and 16th the link is new jersey.gov education um this is kind of unprecedented the doe doesn't come out and really ask um us what we think about funding thank God for Dr F he's made it known um um the last thing I attended on December 7th at meren County College last Saturday was the New Jersey school board ass Association delegate assembly and I've been attending that assembly for seven years and apparently it got past me that I was supposed to come back to the Board of Ed and um report um the delegate assembly is the major policy setting body um that supports school boards and sets policies and advocates for laws to our um legislators and to the doe and um they the were seven resolutions considered from leat Kong kittin Verona Livingston planfield plan fields and there's they're all mapped out for us in a summary that we get on our computer and we discuss it and people talk in favor of supporting a certain policy or against supporting a certain policy policy and we we have a lot of influence in the sense that the New Jersey Schoolboard Association has a legislative guide who goes to all these meetings and speaks on behalf of the public children of New Jersey and based on what the feedback they get from the boards of Education this delegate assembly uh every school district in the state is uh encouraged to have a representative there um I think the reason I'm on it is because nobody else wants to drive to Trenton on a Saturday but um I really do enjoy it I've I've uh got a lot of information this time um one of the resolutions just for a sample came from um k atini um it was a resolution about a attendance regulations related to military activities and apparently the New Jersey uh uh schools have attendance regulations and a state excused absence is not granted for those students who are completing procedural steps necessary for enlistment in the United States military so if they have to go to New York or see a recruiter here or there they're they're marked absent and that goes against our our attendance record and so this is something that we discussed voted on and is now going to go into the policy manual and will'll be advocated for on the state level so um that's just one example um uh thanks for listening and um I just I just as far as the EV thing goes I um I I was on the board when it was discussed that we would be submitting this application and I was a member of the board and the finance and Facilities committee when we were granted that application and everyone applauded every single board member all of our administrators and um as far as what happened last month I'm sorry we weren't better prepared um I'm sorry um the questions that were raised weren't raised in the five or six months since we've had that um Grant uh submitted um awarded to us um I am not alone in um wanting uh Financial benefits to our school district and for the environment and the health of the citizens in Brick and our school children uh that being said happy holidays and um please be careful it's windy out there meeting oh the next meeting is uh December 20th we have an early dismissal the 23rd through the 1st is our winter break and our reorg meeting is back here at 6:00 p.m M on January 2nd um can I have a motion motion BR second alley Miss Sebert yes Miss Kennedy yes please miss deadi dictus yes Miss yes Mr Mesmer yes Miss picala okay Victoria would you take the flowers to