[Music] one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice ra thank you roll call Mr Toad yes Mr B Patel present Mr Romano here miss Pang here miss White here Mr Schneider here Mr Riva here Mr vichel Patel president miss Ana Patel here Mr Lille here you have a quorum thank you opening statement yes in accordance with the open public meetings Act 1973 c231 Sunshine Law the Edison Township Board of Education has caused notice of this meeting to be published by having the date time and place thereof posted in the Board of Education Administrative Office copies of this notice were sent to the home News Tribune and the Star Ledger thank you at this point we will adjon to previl session in accordance with njsa Section 10412 the dent Township Board of Education adjs to a confidential session for the purpose of discussing the following personal matters and superintendent evaluation right uh motion to adjon to privilege session motion second right roll call Mr to Mr Lugo yes Miss Ana Patel yes Mr visha Patel yes Mr R yes Mr Schneider yes Miss White yes Miss Pang yes vice president Romano yes president Patel yes motion carries so we'll let John now and we'll we expect to come back shortly Ro call Mr to Mr Lugo here M Patel here Mr Vish Patel president Mr AA here Mr Snider here miss white here miss Pang here vice president Romano here Mr or president Patel here everyone's here thank you uh first uh I'll do my report and then go Dr aler ear so welcome to the personal reappointment meeting May 7th Action meeting as we celebrate teacher and nurse appreciation week I want to express my heartfelt gratitude to our teachers and nurses our teachers's dedication to students's growth and success along with their hard work passion and commitment play a very crucial role in shaping the future of Our Generation similarly our nurses exceptional care and support for the students is health and well-being Ure a safe happy healthy learning environment for every single child thank you so much to all the teachers and all the nurses and we you all do a great job and you know we can't thank you enough for that so happy Teacher and nurse appreciation week thank you so much I'll pass in on to over Rockstar dry thank you board president Patell I just want to Echo the uh the sentiments um of our board president in relationship to honoring our teachers our School nurses as well as our um all of our support staff and everybody that makes the uh the school district one run smoothly and effectively uh thank you so much I know that this is a week that we honor you um uh and formally recognize you but we do recognize your efforts each and every day so thank you for the work that you do um and I just want to also take a moment to acknowledge our board president um uh Mr buau Patel uh he was honored I think on May 1st uh by the middle SE County uh School Board Association uh for uh certified board membership is that is that correct uh Mr pel arduous process um yeah Round of Applause I would definitely I think that that's um shows his dedication to not only the work that's done up here but also uh his commitment to professional development um and uh his uh commitment as board president president here in in Edison Township so um didn't want to let that go unnoticed so congratulations and that concludes my report thank you so much right so now we will on move on to uh before we go on to public comments for the resolutions we have one more resolution that is being added today and I will let Mr to read it we have a readin resolution to certify 10e charges on May 7th 20124 sworn tenure charges against employee number 103 410 here and after the sworn tenure charges together with a sworn statement of evidence and support of the Chargers were filed with the board Secretary of the Edison Township Board of Education by Dr Edward aldarelli superintendent of schools and whereas on May 7th 2024 a duly convened meeting the Board of Education consider the 10-year charges and sworn statement of evidence in support of the charges against employee number 103 410 together with the statement of position and supplemental statement of position of employee number 103 410 Council submitted on his behalf and whereas on May 7th 2024 the Board of Education determined that there is a probable cause to credit the evidence in support of sworn tenear charges and that the sworn tenear charges are sufficient if true to Warrant the dismissal and or reduction of salary of employee number 103 410 now therefore be it further resolved that the N me n member Board of Education hereby certifies the sworn 10year charges against employee number 10341 to the commissioner of Education be it further resolve that the Board of Education hereby suspends number employee number 103 410 without pay effective immediately in accordance with the provisions of njsa 18a colon 6-14 the Board of Education approve said vote uh board president if I could just add two uh two items with regard to that one I note that the employee at issue has requested that this vote be in public normally 10e charges are the only things that the board can actually like officially do in closed session they've asked for this vote to be in in um in public session and I'd also note that the employees attorney is here um and uh I would recommend to the board that to the extent that normally the attorney would have the right to speak at you know Normal public session but um I I understand the board is probably you know going to you know Vote or take action on this now I would recommend to the board president that uh we open up and we allow Mr KCK who is the attorney for the employee uh if he wants to say anything to the board to allow him to do that prior to the board voting um rather than voting and then having Mr Kell speak at the uh at the Clos session um and that would be my recommendation to the board thank you so that can be a part of the public comments right the attorney can come during the public comments for Resolutions yeah it just I just want to make sure it depends on if if the board is going to vote on this resolution now prior to everything else I would just make sure that Mr KCK as the attorney for the employee has an opportunity to speak prior to the vote uh rather than afterwards okay if you're going to vote on it you know as part of your other agenda package then you can do it later just Mr Kell is here all right so that being said uh all right anything else you want to add Matt anything else you want to add good all right so that being said uh we have this resolution that was read by Mr to and uh Mr M added things so we are going to now do public comments on resolutions only um the attorney of the employee in question will have the first opportunity to come and speak for six minutes if you would like to add anything go Ahad uh please recognize yourself good evening Board of Education my name is Paul KAC I'm the attorney for the employee that you were referencing I didn't expect to be at the meeting tonight so excuse my dress um Board of Education I implore you not to vote on this resolution tonight there's been offers of settlement to resolve this matter and I truly believe that the parties can come to an amicable resolution regarding this matter I have major concerns with the way these tenure charges were served I have indicated that in my statement of position of March 8 2024 it's clear that these 10e charges were not served properly they were in complete violation of the law I identified that in my March 8 statement of position the charges were attempted to be cured afterwards let me just tell you why they weren't served properly they need to be certified and signed initially when they were served upon my client there was no signature and they were not certified clear violation about three weeks later my client received a FedEx with two pieces of paper in it signed certified Pages that's in violation of the law if you wanted to cure the ineffective in improper service what should have happened is that new tenure charges should have been provided to my client signed the way they should have been then I would have had 15 days to resp respond to that and then you would have had 45 days to act as the board under the law I just need to tell you as a board that if you act on this resolution tonight it is completely in violation of my client's rights and you as a board put yourself in Jeopardy and liability you have 45 days to act after you've served the charges you are outside of the scope of your 45 days completely without question you're outside of your 45 days also I need to remind you Council said that my client wanted to compel the vote of this in public session not true what my client wanted to do was compel the discussion of this matter into public session based upon a rice notice that he received saying if you want it in public session let us know he did that however please note Board of Education please that no discussion or vote on a tenure matter can be taken in public session it's in njsa 18a it's in njac 6A no action could be taken in public session on any tenure matters none it must be an executive session the fact that you take it in executive session now will automatically mean this matter it gets dismissed if you certify it if it goes to the commissioner of education so if it gets dismissed by the commissioner of Education all the work that was put into these tenure charges and all of this action will be for not because everything that's been done up to this point again repetition is the essence of education is in violation of my client's rights so again my ask to the board at this point is do not vote on this resolution now table it continue to talk talk to me through your Council whoever that may be and let's find a way to resolve this because if it moves forward it just gets ugly there's more litigation and the board of education is going to find itself in liability that I'm begging you not to be in I don't want to be in this position I want to settle this matter amicably and make it go away not here to beat up on the board and beat up on councel I just want everything to move move smoothly towards an amicable resolution and I've been begging for that for months I know this can be done by the board so please do not take action tonight because one it's illegal and two if you do take action it's just going to engender more unnecessary litigation for this board which I know you have way more litigation than you want to even think of right now please don't add another one to your list thank you any more comments on um public uh sorry about that yes Mr Mitch the only thing I want to say on that as I uh agree with Mr kelik with regard to I would like this vote to be in closed session I guess Mr kelik and I were not on the same page with the difference between the right notice the discussion and the vote so I have zero objections to the board um you know voting on this enclos session based off of what Mr KCK said in my agreement with him with regards to the law governing votes on this matter um you know the the rice notice was what the was the issue about public discussion versus that so based on Mr kck's comments with regard to voting in close session I don't have any objection to to that and would recommend that the board do that which was you know my my preference front Mr MCH is would the recommendation be to go to close session yeah yeah we can do that we can you can do at the end of the meeting if you want to this point I mean I don't think you have a lot of agenda items so you could get through the rest of your meeting if you wanted to and then and then go in a close session at the end solely on that issue for the vote uh there would just be aware that based off of the rice notice um that's was confirmed by Mr Kik if the board wanted to have discussion on the item uh you know a debate about it or or a discussion that would need to take place before you go into close session um which again you could at any point in time okay so let's go to close session towards the end or can I I know I have six minutes and I didn't utilize all thank you uh so we will the board will discuss in the close session we can always come back out if we decide to do so but let's uh for now we want to move on to other agenda yes just to be clear when the board goes into close session on this uh because the employee has asked for discussion to be an open session when you go into close this will be like a like a a 30 second close session it will be a roll call vote uh board president I would suggest we do that now if it's only going to be a 30 second it would have to be because we can't have any discussion on it in close session so if the board's ready you can we can literally walk to the back vote and come back out if it's a 30 second if that's for your recommendation then we'll do that we can do that yeah the only problem folks the only problem the only problem with that is you sent him a rice notice and you request it asked him if he wanted the discussion to be held in public once you send that rights notice and that discussion is asked to be compelled in public it's to be held in public but you can't take any action in public but you can't just switch around and say oop sorry my bad now we're going to hold it in public session you would have to wait until the next meeting to do that you can't cure it just like that we going to follow our council's advice the board the board's going to vote you don't the board's going to vote uh based off of your comments that the discussion was the only thing requested in public but the vote should still be held in in close session that's what the board's going to do right thank you so that being said motion to ad on to privilege session motion second all in favor all right we'll quickly go to the Clos session reconvene to open session uh roll call Mr to Mr Lugo here miss Ana Patel here Mr visha Patel yes pres Mr Brian Rivera pres Mr Schneider yes here miss white here miss Pang here vice president Romano here president Patel here have a uh now we'll move on to public comments on resolutions only no not you sir sorry arish go hi oh broke 45 M read um I am pleas to see the that money has been allocated for GMI T but it disappoints me that the bathroom renovation thing has been tabled or cancelled whatever it is also regarding GMI I wanted to point out that we have one of the oldest and the rotten most rotten trailers in which uh Spanish music bands and strings and even the GNT the reputed g&t classes are being held so I would really appreciate if the board and the administration could take some decision about uh moving on moving ahead with the phase one construction projects I know John Marshall and jmi were one of the top priorities among the elementary schools but recently we are hearing different things about new schools being pulled into that construction right so this is for the resolutions only for so you can yes mention about the turf field but we'll move on to public comments for when you can mention all that at that time okay so so how about the bathrooms yes you can talk about bathrooms oh that's not in today's resolution so no okay so I guess there isn't much to talk about resolutions okay thank you any more public comments or resolutions only Jerry Jer she Edison uh I see a a finance resolution to uh go ahead and uh do the um Success Academy so through the chair to the uh facility committee uh what is the rough idea per square foot for the roof can answer later Mr she yeah the gentleman over there his name is Mr hos yes you can give Mr hos your contact information and I'm quite sure I'll be able to contact you okay so thank you right any other comments on reservation yes I'm glad the bathroom is off the list uh no induction Ider I know what he will do to twist effects so for the record upgrading the entire District's bathroom was decided last year under the leadership of shanon pan it started last summer and more were upgraded just last month a suggestion to Doc Schneider the chair of the facility committee is to ask the facility director for a plan listing when the bathrooms will be replaced in the next couple years this will help the board funding accordingly to avoid last minute allocation since it will cost Millions a lot of times the co-ops do not offer best practice best prices it is okay to Bid And if too high switch back to co-op but make sure the administration team is proactive so you have more time to it the board members are elected to provide oversight to the administration team oversight is not interfering the day-to-day operation if the district is giving out millions dollar worth of work the committee should request the ad Administration team to provide more than two proposals two proposals for a uh for million dollar project I don't think it's sufficient uh use of taxpayers money if you do not have the guts to say that to the administration team because you have multiple family members work in the district then you should not sit there please do not use interference as excuse to make the district runwell over site is a must trust but verify thank you thank you any more public comments on resolutions saying none uh motion to end public comments on resolution motion second all in favor I I right uh next we will do motion to approve personal report for all um if you have any conflicts just go through the page and say the page number and section number or uh whatever it suits you otherwise uh in that in this section so motion to approve personal report motion Mr Romano second second Mr Vishal Patel uh roll call Mr to Mr Lugo yes Miss Patel yes Mr visha Patel yes Mr a yes Mr Schneider uh yes with the exception of all of my known conflicts as reported on the school ethics uh website through the state of New Jersey I will note those OBS thank you yep Miss White yes with the exception of my conflicts my two conflicts noted thank you Miss Pang yes Mr Romano yes vice president or president Patel yes motion carries right thank you uh congratulations to everyone who got renewed motion to approve Administration curriculum and instruction pupil Services report motion Mr Romano second second Mr Schneider uh roll call Mr to Mr Lugo yes Miss anen Patel yes Mr visha Patel yes Mr AA yes Mr Schneider yes Miss White yes Miss Pang yes accept obain from the this item my it noted yes vice president Romano yes president Patel yes motion carries thank you next is motion to approve Finance reports motion Mr Vishal pel I'll second it roll call Mr to Mr Lugo yes Mr an Patel yes Mr Vish Patel yes Mr AAR yes Mr Schneider yes Miss White yes Miss Pang yes vice president Romano yes president Patel yes motion carries thank you that concludes all the Motions for approvals uh next any board member comments Mr Riva I just want to wish uh Happy Teachers Appreciation week and I also want to recognize our kids I hope they're they're sleeping they're getting rested up for njsl testing and best wishes to everybody testing and everybody that's administrating it's a tough week and I hope you guys get through it but we appreciate you thank you anyone else I'd like to uh congratulate our teachers and are amazing nurses uh for all their hard work and all and everything that they do you know we so appreciate you guys all of you you're just so outstanding and I would also just like to remind everybody too we all know that uh the subscription busing started for May 1st and it's ending June 30th you know if you have any issues or problems I know a really good letter went out it was very clear very thorough please use the help desk that is what it is there for it's there to help you and it should make your life just a little bit easier okay so don't hesitate to use it and um and that's all for me thank you very much thank you Mr V I add on top of what Genie said right some of you if if you if you have not received the email about subscription bus just open a help bus ticket and they can make sure that you receive it next time or get the copy of it thank you thank you all right now we will open to public comments sh we J Madar Allison courot I'm here one moment please I apologize anybody that wants to talk about Transportation please go see Mr hos Mr hos will take your name and your contact information yeah Mr Romo let the public come and start let the people speak uh and we'll see what they speak about because we don't know what the speaker is going to speak about so um Shi madhukar n Alis Addison uh first I would like to begin by expressing my gratitude to all teachers and nurses for what they do um and the second I want to talk about I've been getting a lot of messages from a lot of parents about uh you know their subscription busing getting cancelled or not getting it and I'm just here to remind the board about um why those subscription busing exist in the first place now many many many years ago uh these were called hazardous roots and they were called hazardous Roots because it was not considered safe for children to walk to school children living in those neighborhoods they had to cross a railway line there was a lot of traffic high speed There Was You Know route one so um but at that point the Hazardous Roots were funded by the state so the state gave money to the school districts and there were designated hazardous roots in every District now around 2010 2011 when the funding was taken away for these hazardous Roots erison School District decided to convert those roots into subscription busing and charge the parents for those bus routs now parents are getting emails sorry they're getting messages saying that those routs have been cancelled because they don't meet the mileage requirement well mileage was not the reason they got the busing in the first place they got it because these roots were hazardous for them so I would request the superintendent um if he could you know work with transportation department and or whatever you could do to ensure that children are not you know uh put in hm's way because they have to cross these busy intersections and that's all I'm here to say thank you so much for your time thank you uh Dr Al you want to comment on that just a just a brief comment so um that actually sheds a little bit of light to be honest with you on a uh a subscription busing process as well as a street index that that Mr to and I kind of inherited without rhyme or or reason as to why certain streets and neighborhoods got Transportation uh for free on a subscription route and why others didn't um and as you know last year in order to provide Equity we moved forward with uh the one mile and the 1.2 mile um I have had conversations not only with the board president um but also the chair of the transportation committee um that these will be items that will definitely be discussed moving forward um one of the things that I can that I can easily stress is that we take student safety um as Paramount is one of the things that are the most important things that we do here in the district so those will be part of our discussions in the transportation committee with that being said regardless I mean I would I would urge parents to fill out that subscription route anyway in the process if you haven't done so um if you were in one of those areas um we will review all of those pieces moving forward and and um and follow through accordingly and more information will will be forthcoming in relationship to those um as we kind of move forward not only with conversations with our board but with our committee as well too thank you um next for public comments yes good evening uh good evening everyone and um gratitude to nurses and teachers my name is Rinky your name yeah my name is Rinky and I live at at 47 Gate House Lane um I'm here to support and raise a concern that recently I learned that take your micophone recently I learned that okay did you hear my name yes okay go ahead good so um listen I live I'm sorry it's too okay um I live in Park gate which is close to next to Enclave community and I learned that the subscription bus has been taken away for Woodbrook and uh WRA Wilson and uh the path to Enclave to Woodbrook and Woodson is Haas so that was the ground they were given the subscription buses at the first place in continuation of what shivi just mentioned and I think it should not be taken away it has taken a huge toll on the parents and they just got a surprise that subscription buses has been discontinued and they they feel helpless so we are here to support I am here to support them and then I would pass it on to amrish he's going to explain the Hazardous path to from Enclave to woodo Wilson to Woodbrook thank you good thank you so uh regarding the subscription bus getting taken away so I think the street index that was changed last year was changed uh with an intent to bring to give more subscription busing to have more students opportunity to have buses if if there are buses and drivers available so I doubt um unless Mr to or Dr H or wants to correct me I doubt that with any with just the communication going out that go ahead and apply for busing uh the district did not intend to take away any buses uh I would really encourage you to speak with Mr hus and share your contact and he will really get back to you on that okay and definitely fill out the busing subscription if anyone wants it thank you good to hear thank thank you so much thank you uh next yes first of all thanks to the board members and uh respect your name sir name in where my name is Amish Gandhi uh I I'm a resident of uh Kings Food Code Edison uh and Clay white so just going back to uh the comment that I heard can you take your uh microphone nearby sure just come to your microphone we can hear you so little we had a subscription busing option I mean this year my kids are going using the subscription busing option and if you go to the parent portal there is a form there that you need to fill in in order to register for that that was taken away which was there last year you called in transportation department they clearly mentioned that your street index has been removed from subscription buing in the uh upcoming year uh so that's how we have come to I mean that's how we are aware that it's removed if that's a mistake yes we will definitely talk to him uh but I just wanted to confirm few things before we go further like uh once again come near the microphone because you may not be able to be heard on the video if you're too far away okay so what I was trying to communicate here is as per the New Jersey school don't design chapter 2 uh the things that I consider hazardous is high traffic volume like if you go on talage road by Enclave I will tell you in the morning times and the afternoon times especially when the schools are like off and when the schools get in you won't find a second where you won't see a car cross that intersection like it's impossible to take left turn for us in our cars when we try to get out of the community so the kids I don't believe can at any point in time cross that the second point that this article says is uh traffic speed the speed limit on that road is 35 mph and people are always speeding there at least 40 45 miles trying to get their way across there's a bus stop active bus stop right in front of our gate uh many times cars don't even honor when the bus is waiting kids are boarding I have video evidence we are working with traffic uh police on that uh they have given us assurance that they will look into the matter there are kids who try to cross to get into the bus cars don't yield for pedestrian there so it's that hazardous we have a blind turn right on the Talmage Road by Enclave where the traffic is going this way so any kid that wants to get into our community in the afternoon just it's a accident waiting to happen it's a big trauma if somebody gets hit by The Cars who just don't seem to care about pedestrians at that any point in time there unfortunately they're in a rush all the time so these are the three key reasons why a kid Elementary kid who I I mean who doesn't even understand how to cross a road when the cars are going at such high speed I I don't think it's safe for the kids so that's why I was just uh recognized that the board understands the gravity of the problem if it's a mistake that's fine I'll talk to the person you mentioned but if it's not a mistake and if this has happened knowingly then I just want to make the point that please do consider bringing it back thank you thank you so yeah so the safety of the students should be of in utmost priority and we have to really take that very seriously so I'm thank you so I'm really very confident in Dr H's ability because uh I'm personally aware in last few weeks he has visited followed certain bus routes and you know visited certain parents and students and seen um really taken that as into consideration so yes I'm hoping Dr hus you can connect with the residents and take a visit and see what you find out and you know um take a take an action from that point on so we really hope it works out for all the parents thank you uh next for public commer Joyce your ship Freeman um first of all I would like to give um great extra kudos to the nurses from Robert Wood Johnson who withstood four months of being outside and for the patient ratio they were very concerned about us all of us and they endured a lot for the four months so for those nurses plus all the rest of the nurses I want to give an extra clap for them I also would like to uh mention the teachers in the school because the teachers take a lot they have the parents they have the administrators everybody they have to answer to so I give an extra extra clap to them also I think it's a lot and they was talking about the hazarded busing I know I'm back in the old and buggy days but uh I think it would be good if we had more sidewalks in Edison that's what we're lacking we're lacking sidewalks because I know I walked out in the street a couple of times young and you need to have sidewalks so somebody so you know all you know cars some people are not paying attention distracted driving all that so that's one of the things that we really really do need and a question I asked last time that I was looking for the answer for is how much you spend for your website and how many people do you serve at that particular website thank you thank you so I forgot to answer a question last time put the website I believe it's around $40,000 so from the information I got from overb roughly around that bura it it's actually just under 40 under 40 okay thank you how many people do you serve a lot the entire Community a hugee school district and Beyond right thank you uh next for public comments yes sir please recognize your name and address sh can you hear me clearly good evening my name is gutam De I live at 41 rev food court in Enclave first of all my admiration for The Enclave teachers and the support staff for helping our kids to grow and as well as I like to take this opportunity to express our gratitude for introducing the before care and after care we never got an opportunity before so thank you very much uh uh my um neighbors have already expressed their um comments so I just wanted to add that if cost is of any Factor we would be fine if you uh introduce a tired fee structure in case uh Enclave residents have to pay a premium because they are closest to the school there is a valid comment at the same time we need take care of the safety of the kids so we should be fine and we will welcome that decision very much but final decision we will definitely defer to The Honorable board thank you for giving us this opportunity so thank you for speaking about that I know Harish is also here and you also in the past mentioned about the T structure so just so everyone knows the cost of subscription busing is $625 but it ends up the district paying much more for each busing so not a bad idea it's not my decision personally it's something that needs a lot of um research homework and you know it's Administration who has to come out with the different thoughts and ideas but um to put it out there the cost is really not that the district uh pays a lot more money for per student probably double close to double right Mr to um for a student to be transported uh for the subscription busing so thank you for the comments next for public comments yes ma'am good evening board members I'm SMY Kumar from copper triot uh my neighbors have already mentioned our con concern regarding the subscription busing for our kids of elementary and middle school and I'm glad that you have taken cognizance to the fact the only thing I'm concerned about is that the board member just mentioned that the forms we can we we should still fill up the forms and the forms should be available whereas when we tried to contact the transportation department we raised tickets and everything we were told that because of the 1.25 mile uh decision that we cannot even fill up the forms we will not get the forms so I wonder how are we supposed to fill up those forms and where should we get those forms because as you know uh if we don't fill it up we'll again be at the losing end of not getting anything once the decision is made can you please give your compliment and all your contact information to Mr hos Mr hos will make sure that happens for you ma'am okay thank you so much so and I also encourage in in that case to I will work with superintendent Dr Al Ali about a communication in District part Communication in what to do in case the form someone has not received the form because we don't want anyone want to miss out later on that reason and also while you are here while everyone is here like Mrs White says always help us sck it and uh we want we intend to in our Communications committee we intend to go over that in the next meeting to go over what are the transportation help the ticket are really look into that further so yes help D ticket see Mr hus while you are here see Dr hus and yes let's work on a communication to send a link out districtwide thank you so much thank you so much yes ma'am hello bo uh my name is sa konala I'm also from The Enclave Community uh we actually tried to raise the help dust tickets and all of us got the same response that we are not eligible for the subscription busing so there like more than 50 families who have been affected by this decision uh tonight I have bought a petition signed by all of them uh and I just handed it um over to that gentleman over there thank you very for comment thank you very much for your help thank you so much uh thank you so much uh so Dr Ali can we please uh work with uh the transportation director and uh make sure the help desate response is not standard like what we have been hearing here like you know you you're not eligible let's let's hold on on response and let's uh your team in and Dr har and everyone work into it so that people don't end up getting that same response thank you sure thank you next for public comments uh Anthony right there Anthony Damon 25 Wy um I just wanted you know I just was looking through this I I see that you guys renewed some of the uh R um school resource officers and that's terrific uh I remember when the we had the debate a few years back whether or not we should have him in our schools or not and uh in very Lively debates um you got that board made the right decision clearly and uh you know someone uh who who sees it firsthand that the the schools are pretty damn secured so that's that's that's kudos to you guys so I uh thank you for doing that um and just something uh off little off topic but um it's concerning to me um because I went to school here I graduated in 99 and I noticed I I believe uh Susan s Sarandon the actress is in the Hall of Fame and uh here at school and I think she should be removed immediately from the hall of fame um her her rhetoric is just absolutely disgusting it it's just gets worse and worse um I suggest people just you know do a simple Google search on her but um it it's something that I hope I don't know whether the board has any control over that or if it's you know Mr Ross but I could I could give you a list of a 100 other graduates that went to school here who are who have gone on to do some terrific things for the community and I I could also assure you that her values are not the same she don't share the same values as most of us in this community and um it's it's it's it's really tough to watch sometimes and uh you know I don't pay somebody actually just happened to pass it along to me I don't I I don't follow or anything so but um you know she she represents our our you know she's in the Hall of Fame she went to school here and and the fact that we honor her is just I I think we could do a lot better job here at this school so I I I think uh whether it's the board again or Mr Ross hopefully they uh at least look into it and and uh consider that um and that's it thank you uh thank you board president thank you next public comments arish Harish ttin 45 M Street so uh besides busing we are also hearing a lot of concerns about the bathrooms and that's the reason I tried to Interlink that earlier uh anyway so without taking the names of the schools um unfortunately as someone joked uh a couple of months back back uh the pot and partty are kind of interrelated uh it's a disgusting but that is true and we need to see some serious action and steps fir steps in that regard I mean 10 years back uh there was a famous Rich Democrat uh Dr donor Democratic donor who had this meeting uh at his or her place and then we came up with the idea of uh web detector I know couple of months back we are planning to install those the acquisition went out uh and we also know that unfortunately they won't uh work 100% so I have a couple of crazy ideas first one I'm just mentioning it for the heck of it because I know that's never going to happen if the bathrooms are common for staff and students this problem will be resolved by more than 50% trust me and I know that uh this is not going to happen and already a lot of Administrators teachers are already cursing me so let's come back to a more practical and realistic idea can we have a supervisor level person taking frequent rounds of uh bathrooms especially in high schools both the high schools that should resolve some of the issues I mean if there is no punishment there's no fear then why would uh everybody follow the rules there is a penalty and punishment for everything for every law every policy that anyone breaks either in the society or corporate world or government or anywhere else so please consider the second idea that should be doable on a lighter note uh Dr alderi I'm absolutely not trying to imitate you or Mr Jeff bzo it's just the temperature so talking about temperature we have to go back to our favorite uh old topic of uh fans we had this long discussion AC versus fans we agreed on the fans we already had 2 84 degre days summer is coming predictions are that there will be it will be 3 4 degrees more this year and of course they are also predicting a lot more hurricanes but that's different thing so any update on the fans I keep coming here I have been coming here for last 9 months I have a list of nine things uh which I haven't received any updates from either the Boe members or the administration so for some reason everyone seems to be in a good mood today and I see that uh some questions are being answered so I will try my luck again I will read that list one is the fans second is auto email when we raise a help desk ticket or when we fill out the subscription busing form then I talked about um respective School principls uh or their delegates going and checking the food quality so that we can uh improve the food ratings I mean I feel like I'm repeating myself I'm just barking here every month and it's like I'm talking to a wall I can keep on talking about for like two hours explaining in detail each of those nine things but we need some responses the amount of time our lawyer spent two months back in explaining why board members need not respond or Administration need not respond in that time we could have answered three four questions anyway less than two minutes so there are a lot of other facilities updates that we need jams traffic started not started jams after care uh the walkway slabs lowcost item I I don't see that for some reason so some great things that you guys have done is obviously the help for the non-privileged students the online help about that but I'm not very sure how many people are sold on the parent University so there are other things which I can meet and talk but if we are not going to get any responses or no action is taken whatsoever then what's the point of even allowing the public comments so going back to the facilities most important thing Phase One Construction jmi and John Marshall they were the priority they should be done I'm hearing new requirements about some 10 classrooms in some other schools which are not in phase one as much as I hate to say this but I will say it in a polite way without without taking names either of people or schools just because some BO members are up for elections it doesn't mean that all the funds need to be diverted to schools in those areas if we keep on breaking our own rules like this that would be a shame we agreed upon a long-term facilities plan we allocated that we also agreed that there are some some more fine tuning needs to be done to the demographics report there are a lot of issues in that so why are changing things now without completing those things first either you change the demographic reports report by ordering a new one by including more factors or stick to the original plan and do the phase one first thank you thank you so yeah since you acknowledg that we in a good mood today I'll answer some of your questions Dr Elder Ali who is also in a good mood will answer some of your questions so so unlike uh herish who chose to shave his head mine actually just never grew grew back in so I applaud you it does look good on you though um yeah uh just a couple quick highlights listen any building principle that reaches out in relationship to the utilization of fans as long as we have the bandwidth in there you know we we have no problem in purchasing those pieces but it's got to be based off of a need right so as long as as the building principle is always always the liaison to th to those uh types of conversations um I I will tell tell you that I literally have staff I hired staff to just clean bathrooms in the high schools that's all they do is they rotate there are extra staff members that do it on a rotation basis I believe they're substitutes that come in and clean high school bathrooms um I can tell you I've I've been in Edison High School and in JP Stevens on numerous occasions over the last couple months um you know listen they're they're relatively clean in relationship to a boy bathroom I I have two boys in my house I can assure you that I wish that bathroom was cleaner as well um but I can tell you that if they're if they are dirty at a particular time they are being routinely cleaned at that at the middle at the middle school level it's probably something that we can look to do as well but we haven't gotten any formalized complaints in that capacity too but it's something that we would definitely look at um I know there was nine of them but I'll touch BCE a little bit later on so yes so uh Dr hus here is not the only Transportation guy he's he's assistant superintendent of operations so I think what we can do is between now and next board meeting you should also reach out to Dr hus and meet with him and Dr Al if he's not busy with the parent University maybe he can join as well so uh you know you guys can talk and you know let's see how many issues we can sort out thank you so much for you know serving for the community uh next for public comments uh yes go ahead I I have given my introduction uh my name is that's fine you recognize all right thank you Harish um gentleman I have been thinking about talking about cafeteria issue the time for whatever she left for a very very long time my son was in elementary school he's in high school he will prefer to stay hungry but he would never eat in cafeteria and he does not take lunch also from home because he likes to eat hot food so he would not take all day long so when he was a child his preference was a tasty food so he complained food is yucky he not yummy and as he Grew Older he says it's not healthy so it's not tasty it's not healthy so we definitely want to bring your attention sir my kid is has been complaining and I heard from many parents but you know what we are we are so busy in our life we just are happy if we our get our kids get a transportation and they are come back coming back safely we're fine with that and we do not really come for every other every small things it's not small my kid is hungry all day long and it has been happening for 10 years now and I today I'm here to talk about it and that to when this gentleman came so you can understand that parents do not come for you know even the big things we come when we feel that our child is not safe um another thing is AC with the chain board members I have faith and believe that AC will come back please bring AC to the schools our kid definitely they they work so hard they do deserve AC this is a minimum requirement and minimum you know we can expect from school when we are paying so much high taxes when we look around other cities they have AC's so we are not asking anything more this is very minimum we can ask for so please bring AC we'll not be happy with fan please put fan for now but please bring AC all right thank you so someone wants fans one wants AC that's great so so here's the thing about fans and AC I think everybody wants AC can you right so you can have a seat and then I'll I'll respond to your comment sir one more last I have not finished finished my six minutes I did I oh you're allowed 3 minutes it's your second time up I apologize so our whoever keeps the clock did not do it right the first time so I wanted to say bathroom too thank you yes and you can connect with Dr har again he's not the only Transportation he's assistant super operations but just to just to touch base on that point right so AC fans and all these are all the points we all as board members also hear from the community right and you know we hear from the staff members very valid points right um is you touched on the construction right phase one phase 2 jmi jams EHS and Marshall and all the schools or any of the schools that are remaining down the road right should we do should we put AC's on the schools yes 100% we should put aces in the school should Wherever fible by structure by architecture should we have fans yes until in the meantime the principal should request fans should we uh upgrade all the schools 100% we should upgrade all the schools we have we should have the best of the best facilities for our students right from four years now 4 years we have 0% tax increase your tax tax dollars have not gone up one single penny from the school portion of the taxes right so if if the board had increased taxes from four years I'm a part of this board from last four years where we had 0% and I declared about this last meeting if the board had increased 2 years from all the 4% including myself um you know I would have had four paid more taxes myself too but then some of these facilities would have came to the schools right but when I personally I can speak for myself when I speak with the residents which one you like people say oh yeah yeah we pay too many taxes so definitely not the taxes there's always a tradeoff right there is finance fortunately we have been getting good amount of stated due to which we were able to move forward now let's touch B another point which I mentioned earlier subscription busing cost District almost double so the district pays a lot more from the general budget towards subscription budget subscription busing so everything is a cost right it will be really nice to have all those things but at some point collectively it really comes down to the money the finance right so again um I'm personally not in disagreement for any of this but U the board together has to eventually you know start working on things the board and administration combine according to its priorities but great points and thank you so much for coming here so you can express your concerns about all these things uh Dr Al would like to share something so in I just talked with board president Batel in relationship to jmi and phase one um jmi just went out to bid currently right now so we are moving forward with those pieces um we're in the process of going ahead and doing that Mr to is finalizing some of those pieces in relationship to meetings with the Architects I don't know if Mr to wants to elaborate actually yes uh tomorrow we'll be meeting with USA AR Architects to put together the bid timeline get the bid out on the street so hopefully we'll be awarding that uh in June thank you Mr to Mr to yes mran what's the timeline on new switch gears for jmi John Adams Ben Franklin lynen all Edison High you have any timeline on those for people that know or don't know switch gears are the electric power that's coming into the buildings now it jams we need more power in the building so we can put plugs in so we can put fans in that's been discussed for well over two years by yourself sir the fact of the matter is is that switch gears is the electric that's actually in your house but when you have to upgrade your electric in your house it's the same thing is upgrading the electric in a school system it's just not just put another plug in the wall I wish it was that easy we are doing everything we can to make this happen thank you for your comments I really appreciate them but people have to realize we have a limited amount of budget and you are correct the amount of taxes that you pay but can you do me one favor I'm not asking for a lot I want you to look at your tax bill I want you to see what your local Levy is for school taxes then look at your county and your town you break that up you look at it and then you take and decide how many children you have which is fine but you have to take everything into realization you have to look at it all so the taxes that you pay and the subscription busing that you pay only half we're doing everything we can to keep the zero tax increase and upgrading our plants which would mean upgrading our school system upgrading the the turf fields up upgrading everything at our system we're doing everything that we can it's not the amount of taxes that you I please can take and raise your taxes by 6% I'm quite sure the auditorium would be filled the fact is that we're doing everything we can and if you want air conditioning in the schools I have no problem Get Up Stand at the P at at the podium right there and say that you will not stand for the schools to not be air conditioned then when we don't have the money I have a way of doing it it's called a referendum you take and vote for a referendum probably five or millionar per facility maybe more for a facility of this size and then you come up with we don't have enough classrooms so please understand what you want is understandable I do I understand it we can only do what we can do you do deserve a school system that's air conditioned absolutely I do know that the that the climate is going up by two or three degrees I know that I wish we could stop that but the fact is is that we do not have switch gears big enough and the best part this is the best part psng will not give us switch gears big enough they've actually already they've actually told us that they're not going to give it to one of our facilities they just don't have the electric there's not one board member up here not one that doesn't want to take and improve the school systems but the fact of the matter is you don't understand the problem is is there's not an understanding by the electric companies by the power the power that we need so please work with us when when a decision is made listen to it we'll discuss it with you no problem but we don't have the power see at home you just have another plug or you put an extension or you take and you put another box in the wall okay and you put instead of two plugs you put a box that has four plugs in it we can't do that in our schools we don't have the power in any of our buildings some of our buildings have a plug in the front and a plug in the back of the classroom with the technology that we have it's just not enough please work with us please come out please come out and if if in fact there's a way to get more Electric in the schools or to improve the size of our schools there's not a board member up here that's not going to go to bat with you but the fact of the matter is is what I heard tonight with all the taxes that I pay the fact of the matter is if you take your tax bill and you break it down you'll see the school taxes aren't the problem thank you I'm sorry to take up your time anyone else public comments Jerry after after that since you guys in a good mood today I got to take advantage of that you answer questions so first Mr hos will take all of your question and your contact information you can you can pick and choose look at look at that piece of in the ceing that has been there since January when can we get that fixed that's question number one second we've been asking about the uh the bus tracking system can we put a damn air tag on a bus so we don't have to spend money to buy all these different softwares M and wait my my time so uh B vice president mentioned about power and so just in the same line where is the uh the the update on the solar panel installation of the 19 schools we can't give you power Mr let him finish his comments go right ahead J that's you give you give you 15 seconds back you can have much as you can have whatever you want he's going to ask for time so let's let him finish his comments thank you Joe so uh yeah you know Harish mentioned about the U development plan that was puted in by dou Schneider uh two years ago and uh in that plan we caus 10 classrooms for John Adams schools and right now there's no no John Adams on the plan so Doug schneid is not even following his own own plan um just change the topic a little bit um there's an election going on which is the teacher Union president election which started yesterday and our Bo member duck Schneider's brother-in-law uh Bill Don is running for the president so uh the members you know in the union think about it if Bill Donna becomes the president D Duck Schneider cannot do anything he has to recuse himself from all the uh uh uh issues I recuse myself now from all Union issues nothing changes right so okay no you don't not all Union issues yes I do so there I saw a flyer with a a um a ship on it and uh it was very disturbing there are a couple areas that bill Doner mentioned about one is about the salary first bill has never involved in any contract negotiation in the past 10 years he lied on the Fly about the percentage increase he should be noted the district has taken steps to ensure very competitive salaries for new teachers and uh we addresses the long-term concerns for non-certified staff and provide a fair contract for the rest of the staff it is crucial to for the member to set a realist expectations and understand if you think build honor can have 20% satary increase across the board I'm letting you know that's not happening second he talked about building morale having a pleasant working environment starts from the top Jeff Bowen who has worked in the district for 40 years on his retirement party on Friday he said um this district has the best one of the best Administration teams right now and Bill Downer just did the opposite he tried to paint this is darkest darkest time please remember it was his brother-in-law who tried very hard to not get Dr AR appointed as a superintendent he wanted to get the interim super position to someone who's retiring if any of the JP staff thinks you had a bad leadership in the past two years the full credit goes to to a Bill's brother dou Schneider separ a very qualified excuse me I I it's my platform a very qualified candidate apply for GP leadership position when Doug Schneider found out the candidate was Chinese he went to this candidate's social media site and ducked out a picture with this person speaking and me and Shannon on a background it was a it was a protest protest against anti-asian hate and uh Doug and his wife use all his connections to work with a person who's in charge of the uh uh interview committee to make sure this person does not come out and right now this candidate is a principal in one of the highest performing public schools in New Jersey and talking about facilities uh Doug never submitted the JP Stevens expansions the facility committee did not have a meeting for seven months when he was the the the chair no input from the supervisors no inut no input from the building principles now the new labs in JP are too small to uh fit for wet Labs so Doug should get all the credit for all the debacles at the building so the question to the union member is what will Bill Doner do when you actually need him to represent you seeing the actions of his own brother-in-law you should know the answer again you know Harish Mansion J John Adam J um jmi Marshall they were all on a phase one plan now they have been you know John Adam has been dropped jmi was bit ready in January right now we're just going out to bid five months after winter time is the best time to bid with the best price now the price probably going to go up by 2 $3 million so you know just when you go to the when you go for the ETA vot vote for the ETA president please remember who you're going to vote for voting for Bill donor will bring the ETA ship down to the bottom of the ocean thank you very much next for public comments Beth oh God good evening Beth taly 15 Midwood Avenue I'll change the mood of the hall right now talk Insurance thank no I'm not going to bring that up I'll ask you after that I'm sure you've guys have made your decision it was stun May 1 I'm hoping it's good for all um just to once again thank all the teachers and the staff of our great town Edison for teacher appreciation week for all our certified non-certified and all our staff it's got to be great cuz I've stayed here my whole life educated here stayed here for my kids and I still continue to work here so thank you to all of our teachers and staff for all they do for our kids every day um secondly I just want to bring up a lot of parents here tonight complain you know not complaining voicing their concerns about cost of busing cost of you know food air conditioning in our schools is there any way we can go back how we did in the olden days and in our minutes and stuff that we publish kind of show more of where the money is being spent like we used to so that maybe the public would have some more awareness as to where the money is actually going that there's such a big pile and it's being spent here there you know salaries insurance facil something broke you know just to even like our contractors and stuff like that so that they would have some idea more specifically of where the money is being spent and that's all I have to say good night thank you good thank you so um the budget Beth is online on the district website to take a look and you know you can certainly take a look I think the audit report is also on the website right everything goes on the website if there's something missing in terms of that please let Mr to know and we can yes nothing no problem just doesn't seem to be as user friendly as it used to and I remember Mr to your first year here your big budget presentation you got up here and really explained everything seems like it's been toned down a little bit so just you know if it was more available for everybody to see and easier to find it would be great because I know we're working new with those what that new dock the board do thing and it's really hard to kind of maneuver it and find everything so just you know T ourselves transparency all this stuff let's let the public you know know where everything's going that's it so with Heather here yeah so she real quick that the presentation that I did is on the website with Dr Al okay you'll see all the all the stuff that goes into the capital projects I think there's a I act I actually think uh I remember your first year coming here and now here and we thought this year's was better I actually thought this year was better so I'm little hurt but I I actually went into a little I apologize that's okay it's all right it's fine I'm I'm hurt all the time um but I thought I did a better job of going into a a further detailed explanation um of the local fair share and how we're under the local fair share there's a slide on there take a good look at that so when we revisit this in a year you'll understand how we Clos the Gap and we did it with all that state aid that we've we've been getting so it's a good slide check that out I'll recheck it but thank you I think you have my number you can call me with questions yeah thank you thank you all right anyone else public comments no your 10 seconds okay you go for 10 seconds this my time got interrupted a couple times I still have 10 seconds just for the record bth the uh the the committee the Finance facility committee work with him on the presentation we spent hours on his presentation that's why it's good that's 10 seconds right any any other public comments uh yes Dawn Penny second vice president elect for the ETA and ETA members would really appreciate if the public would stop commenting on our internal elections they are not public elections and nobody other than an ETA member needs to discuss them thank you any other public comments saying none motion to end public comments motion motion second second uh all in favor I I right motion to adjo the meeting motion second second all in favor meeting is ated [Music]