##VIDEO ID:vtePNjSae8g## hard jump remember all right we're going to call the meeting to order this the 2025 Lacy Township Board of Ed reorganization meeting everybody I pledge aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible liy and justice for all adequate notice of the reorganization meeting was advertised in the Asbury Park Press and the beacon on January 11th 2024 and as amended on January 8th 2025 and by posting the notice in the forkid river and lenoa harbor post offices and by filing a copy of the notice with the Lacy Township Clerk as required by the open public meeting law all right we're going to start with the oath of office and we're going to start with uh s armado [Applause] I forgot my Bible you're up there so I know but there's no Bible my okay I salvator do solemnly affirm that I will support the Constitution of the unit States and the constitution of the state of New Jersey and that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same and to the governments established in the United States and this state under the authority of the people so help me God thank you I salvator do solemnly affirm that I possess the qualifications prescribed by law for the office of member of a board of education and that I will faithfully and partially and just perform all the duties of that office according to the best of my ability so help me God I do that's it [Applause] thought just going to ask him to repeat it all yeah that's what I was worried about she's going all fast one or two sentences but not not the whole phrase no we can call you a one ter doesn't matter I Harold Peters Jr do solemnly affirm that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the constitution of the state of New Jersey and that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same and to the governments established in the United States and this state under the authority of the people so help me God I I har William J do solemnly affirm that I possess the qualifications prescribed by law for the office of member of a board of education and that I will Faithfully partially perform all the duties of that office according to the best of my ability so help me God [Applause] congratulations yeah all right we will now do the Roll Call of the newly a affirmed board Cheryl armado here salor here uh Dan Bell here Jack HED here Kim Claus here uh Harold Peters pres and Linda Walker present now we're going to do nominations and election of President do we have any nominations for uh president nominate Kim class please okay do we have any other nominations I nominate Sal okay any others can I get a um motion to close nominations motion Peters second okay we'll do the votes for Mrs Claus all right Mrs armado no Mr arado no Mr Bell yes Mr conned yes Mrs Claus yes Mr Peters yes Mrs Walker yes okay Mrs Claus you are President thank you everybody sure okay now we're going to take nominations for Vice President are there any nominations like the nominate Mr conned you are there any other nominations okay I'd like to close nominations can we have a motion please motion second anybody second Peters thank you roll call Mrs arado can I comment too or no yeah yes so I'm voting no not because I don't think Jack's qualified because I do I'm just voting no because only five of the seven board members were consulted and I was excluded from the process if my input isn't valued in leadership decisions I can't support this Choice Mr rato uh no for the same reasons Mr Bell yes Mr conned yes Mrs Claus yes Mr Peters yep and Mrs Walker yes congratulations Mr con thank you is coming today for uh he will not be here he is going to be on the screen oh okay I think we're ready if he's ready okay um do you guys want to go in the audience it'll be easier for you to see watch remot Bruce is remote thank you he's froze already we start good evening everyone and thank you for allowing me to make this video to provide a brief overview of the school ethics act and satisfy our statutory requirements to cover that at our reorganization meeting you will see it on your agenda to adopt the code of conduct for school board members and we're going to do a brief overview of school ethics I know everyone had training this past fall on school ethics so this training will just be a very brief refresher there's two sections of law where our school ethics body of law comes from there's the School ethics Act and the code of ethics for Schoolboard members we are going to focus on the code of ethics for Schoolboard members um but first who enforces the act and these two statutes they are enforced by the school ethics commission which provides you with advisory opinions and adjudicate School ethics complaints the code of ethics for Schoolboard members is a bunch of eye statements meaning I will do this I will not do that Etc you can read through them I'm not going to read them here there's a list of a through J uh and it talks about how you're going to act as an individual board member and the key there is individually the board members cannot act they have no Authority your only authority to act is when you're sitting together a quorum of the board making a decision as a deliberative body usually upon the recommendation of the chief School administrator when you review the code of ethics for Schoolboard members you will see that they generally require you to act as a whole and refrain from acting individually or making promises the chief School administrator of your District the superintendent is the only one that acts administratively you as a body are the owners of the school district think of the school district as a ship and you own that ship you set the destination for the ship and your Chief School administrator is the captain of that ship and guides you to the destination he or she is empowered by the Department of Education to make those decisions and recommendations to drive the ship where you want it to be significantly however as members of the community and elected officials it is your destination that matters but it's the chief School administrator's job to get and steer you to that destination you as board members do not have the authority to steer the ship only to set the destination when we're talking about school ethics it really can be summarized as the four c's and those four C's are confidentiality chain of command conflict of interest and communication confidentiality is one of the most key parts of the for Seas you as board members obtain a lot of information about students about Personnel matters about things that the general public is not aware of the general public knows that you have this information and will'll often ask you questions about this information it is imperative that things remain confidential what's said in executive session must remain an executive session if you learn of something uh through a committee meeting or some other meeting that's confidential it must remain confidential there's several reasons for that one it protects you in the district from revealing information that may be harmful or somehow hurt a member of the community a student or a staff member thus confidentiality is important releasing confidential information could result in an Ethics violation could result in a loss suit with monetary damages thus confidentiality is key second is chain of command people in the community will often come to you and want to see results again as the owner of the ship you do not have authority to implement results but the uh members of the community whether it be a parent or a student has to follow the chain of command the chain of command for a student for example starts in the classroom it goes from the teacher to the principal maybe an intermediate supervisor before the principal then from the principal to an assistant superintendent to the directly to the superintendent and then eventually to the Board of Education things have to follow the chain of command and why that's important is you have a lot on your plate as board members as the administrators of the district if things if every little matter jumps immediately to the board level or the superintendent level it detracts your time from attending to the things that you have to attend to things should get resolved at the lowest level possible where the parties are actually involved in the matter thus following the chain of command is important if anybody comes to you uh in the supermarket or wherever the case might be refer them to the chain of command did you talk about it with your students principal did you talk about it with the teacher did you go to our superintendent things have to start at the lowest level possible conflict of interest we don't expect you to be an expert on conflicts of interest just be aware of a situation that may arise that's why I'm here here Sharon is here uh will is here to help you through those conflict of interests whenever you think you have some sort of relationship whether it be a familial relationship a business relationship a contractual relationship or even a close friend or neighbor relationship come to us we will help guide you through that conflict of interest or determine that it is not a conflict of interest and help you through that most importantly also is communication Everybody Must communicate communicate things through your board president through the superintendent through me if there's any issues open communication tends to nip things in the bud and does not let things Fester so those four C's are how I kind of view the code of ethics for Schoolboard members and all those eye statements of I will do this I will not do that it really all comes down to these four things and if you remember the four C's you'll stay out of trouble those are confidentiality chain of command conflict of interest and communication any questions please let me know thank you and have a great year points okay next we're going to move on to resolutions through five uh code of ethics combined statement of results 2024 parliamentary procedures board bylaws policy and regulations and the meeting scheduled can I have a motion please motion Peters second roll call please Mrs armado yes Mr armado yes Mr Bell yes Mr conned yes Mrs Claus yes Mr Peters yes and Mrs Walker yes okay now I'll be appointing uh the Committees finance and operations committee this is facilities Finance Food Services Personnel technology transportation and Township liaison chairperson Jack conned other board members skip Peters and myself alternate Sal armano policy committee which is policy co-curricular Safety and Security LT ASA liaison chairperson Dan Bell Jack conned and myself alternate Linda Walker curriculum committee curriculum health and wellness communication relations ltaa liaison chairperson Linda Walker Sal armado and charl armado with the alternate Jack conedy negotiations for ad hoc committee for the child study team chairperson Cheryl armado with Jack conned and myself for negotiations in ad hoc committee for the LTE chairperson Sal armado Dan Bell and Cheryl armado you're the chair Jack and myself okay oh yourself yeah okay referendum and the superintendent search we're going to keep that the same so skip Peters is the chairperson Linda Walker salato the alternate is Jack conned the superintendent search and ad hoc committee skip Peters is the chairperson myself and charl rato the delegates and alternates the njsba delegate Dan Bell alternate Jack conned and the ocba delegate skip Peters and the alternate Linda Walker any questions or did you get all that Sharon got it okay all right next we're going to move on to public comment an audience member wishing to make a comment will raise his or her hand when called upon to State their name address or affiliation and intention to make a statement comments will be addressed to the board president comments will be made one issue at a time comments will be limited to 5 minutes no audience member shall be recognized twice until all have wished to comment will be recognized this portion of the meeting is for public comments only and there will be no questions answered the purpose of this meeting is to perform our business in public everyone is entitled to a public comment if there's a question for the board there's an established chain of command to follow does anybody have a public comment go ahead Regina good evening Regina desend the Sunset Drive Sunrise Beach I did send an email this morning to everyone and my question is and I know it won't be answered right now I was hoping to see the topic on tonight's agenda has a time been determined yet for the January 28th referendum information session I notice that nothing is noted on the current website calendar for the school district thank 6:30 6:30 Mr sza 6:30 6:30 6:30 to 8:30 still kind of early 6:30 to 8:30 thank you 28 January January 28th and I emailed you back it's okay any other public comments okay I'm going to close public comment um we have executive session but I don't know if there's any issues to discuss so no okay I think all right board comments uh Dan Bell let's start with you looking forward to another year okay M arm congratulations everyone and um I'm looking forward to this year Mr armado I have nothing to add thank you okay Miss Walker just a Happy New Year to everyone and uh thank you skip for your year as president and Kim as vice president it was a tough year that you went through to say the least so thank you and congratulations for ending it finally sorry Kim you're on your beginning thank you uh thank you all board members for the support as board president for the year uh we had a very challenging year we have some more challenging years coming up like to congratulate Mr rato on his win and being sworn in tonight and uh wish everybody Happy New Year thank you Mr ConEd congratulations everybody and that's it okay and I'd like to congratulate everybody too and thank you for the nomination uh I appreciate it we do have a long year ahead of us a lot to accomplish but I feel like we can all get through it together so thank you and um Mr zalinsky do you have anything you'd like to add um just uh you know I appreciate all the um time that we spent together this year uh Mr Peters our 4:15 a.m. I know I know uh and I look forward to uh uh your leadership Miss Claus um you know as your Acting Superintendent uh we do have a lot of challenges we have a lot of budget challenges we have a lot going on we have a referendum coming up as Mr Senza pointed out uh we'll have our uh big Community Forum on January 28th from 6:30 to 8:30 it'll be senent around the auditorium we're going to have some different stations and things going on all of the public is invited and I do invite all the public to uh start looking at our website if you go to Lacy schools.org we have a lot of referendum information that's getting updated daily um it's going to be on our Facebook on our Instagram Pages uh so you'll get a lot of information there leading up to our March 11th vote uh so we have a lot to do in two months for that uh and this board has a lot to do uh and I appreciate all of you and um Good Luck to all to thank you Happy New Year thank you thank you this CL president CLA thank you this is probably the easiest meeting we're going to have all year so I'm going to soak it in who you not it's 20 minutes all right that's it can I have a motion to adjust motion to close yay there all in favor I