j A NJSA 104-10 thank you roll call please miss Churnney here miss Continanza here mr fedorzic is not present miss Jeie here mr hearn is not present miss Msa here miss Terowski
is not present miss Washburn here and Mr sarno here we have a quorum thank you please join us in the flag salute i pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands one nation
under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you all right next item on our agenda is the approval of the agenda as it stands can I get a motion to approve the agenda please so moved second
roll call miss Churnney yes miss Continanza yes miss Genie yes miss MSA yes miss Washburn yes mr sarno yes motion carried thank you item six on our agenda is superintendent remarks
comments if you have had anything Dr law uh you know obviously normally we do our um updates and whatnot but um we'll do that at the regularly scheduled meeting so you know outside of uh just you know reporting back to the board that we've been working diligently to look at areas for improvement and looking forward to
presenting some of those to the board tonight and uh to the public shortly thereafter and uh we've been spending the bulk of the last uh the end of last week and today uh reaching out to uh many of the parents that spoke at the board meeting um so I appreciate all of their time and and uh you know their
dialogue and continued efforts to continue us to give us feedback and whatnot so that we can consider that for obviously areas for improvement so thank you very much thank you um item seven's president's remarks just a couple things on my end um tonight was originally supposed to be just
pertaining to the budget because um the state broke the budget up this year into two different sections so we had to schedule two different meetings that's what this meeting was originally for just for that um specifically um and I know maybe there was some confusion out
there with the posting and um where it was at but I know everything I double checked last week and again this week to make sure everything was posted where it was supposed to be make sure we're in compliance and we were um again on the board's end I know um these last two
weeks have been not been easy um but like Dr watis had said um we were working with the administration um on our end uh we did uh put together I I put together an ad hoc committee that is going to work specially uh spec
specifically with the special ed and ASUS program moving forward we're trying to develop how that is going to look um you know next steps um you know to kind of review everything we want to review policies we want to review in the in the
in district's procedures um we were talking about hiring procedures so there's many things that we're looking to um go through with a fine tooth comb moving forward um we still have some other things that we are you could see
on the agenda tonight that we're dealing with um and there will be probably more steps over the next coming months and discussions that we're going to have so um again it's a it's a process I think we're going through as a board as an
administration to ensure something like this never happens um you know nothing like this ever happens again in our district um and again I know a lot of parents and and uh members of the community have reached out to me other board members
i've tried to start like Dr out was said reach back out to some of them back slowly here and there as I can um and if I haven't yet I will over the next couple days um so again I appreciate it appreciate the feedback the information
that you're giving us the board and um you know like I said we will get back in touch with you um shortly but thank you next on our agenda is public session the Baranka Township Board of Education
appreciates and welcomes public comment advice and suggestions especially when it is intended to assist the board of education please feel free to speak to the board during the public session comments and discussion will be limited to one five-minute period per individual unless requested by the chairperson to
continue on point of clarification public comment at special meetings of the board shall be related to the call of the meeting in accordance with the board of education policy each person must be recognized by the presiding officer and must preface their comments by an announcement of their name address
and or group affiliation if appropriate your anticipated courtesy to the members of the public and the board is appreciated thank you can I get a motion to open public session please so moved second roll call miss Jurnney yes miss
Continanza yes miss Genie yes miss Msa yes miss Teranowski yes miss Washburn yes mr sarno yes motion carried okay thank you is there anyone in the public like to
speak right on the end here good evening jill Sedot 81 Capston Avenue Manhawk in New Jersey um thank you all of the board members thank you for everything that you're doing right now and so far to make sure that this never happens again in Barnaga
Township School District um the best that an educator can give is um to get somebody to be self-reflective i think you are being self-reflective but uh it's a little bit too late for that um my goal tonight is to share with you a
petition uh that is okay a petition um that is about 48 hours old um and has generated about 325 signatures so far and I'm going to read that to you
now and I'm speaking on behalf of uh the parents families community members of the Barnick Township School District and my goal is to implore the board of education to immediately initiate legal proceedings for the termination for cause of Daniel Gunderson our demand is
based on the following critical concerns a loss of confidence the overwhelming sentiment expressed at the special meeting on April 9th demonstrated a profound and inreparable loss of confidence in Mr gunderson's leadership the numerous public speeches delivered at this meeting were a powerful
testament to the deep-seated concerns regarding his conduct and its detrimental impact on our children's well-being and educational experience harm to students we believe his negligence of best practices and apparent ignorance of relevant laws have
harmed the children of this district particularly those with special needs prioritizing staff over students credible accounts suggest there's a pattern of prioritizing the protection of staff over the well-being of students retaliation against concerned staff
allegations of retaliation against staff who speak out create a climate of fear and hinder ethical practice misplaced priorities we believe Mr gunderson values his authority over the principles of equity access inclusion and individualization this misplaced
priority has created significant barriers and has negatively impacted the educational opportunities and well-being of our children unsuitability for any administrative role the community perceives him negatively and believes he is insu unsuitable for any
administrative position within the district concerns regarding demotion the recommendation of demotion over termination especially giving the harm to vulnerable students is deeply concerning and unacceptable the
superintendent and the board must put aside any personal feelings for Mr gunderson and prioritize the best interests interests of the district and most importantly its students this move is unclear in its implications and leaves critical questions unanswered particularly regarding the extent to
which he will continue to have access to and influence over the special education department um and its students or any student in general risk of continued harm allowing Mr gunderson to remain in any role will continue to cause harm and
further erode trust in the district's leadership we urge the board of education to take immediate and decisive action by initiating termination for cause proceedings against Daniel Gunderson to restore the trust of the community and ensure a safe and supportive learning environment for all
students um I do have three children who went through this district they were students from 2003 through 2021 during that time they were redistricted twice resulting in them attending three of the four neighborhood schools um during that time I got to know many of the wonderful
staff members of this district i also worked within the district from 2012 through 2019 as a coordinator of the before and afterare program housed in all four of the ele elementary schools and the Bengal Cubs early learning center which was housed in Donahghue as a result I got to know even more of the
wonderful dedicated staff uh the secretaries custodial maintenance transportation and the administration and well over 2,000 families and that's probably a low estimate i was here when hundreds of concerned families came out to the public meetings held in the high
school auditorium and spoke out about their concerns with the grade bending the wheels were already set in motion and those meetings were really just a formality but they the community expressed their concerns and they were not listened to there was always a buzz about the district climate being one of fear and
retaliation i didn't want to believe it but then it happened to me i was marginalized by Mr gunderson and Dr latis in 2014 or 15 board members were worried about retaliation if they did not vote for Mr sarno as the board president three of those members were
removed from committee chair positions for speaking up against him and since 2018 we've witnessed many good teachers tenured and non-tenured leave the district through non-renewal motions forced resignations or they saw the writing on the wall in his vision
statement Dr latwis shared that his vision is to strive to provide an amazing complete and appropriate educational experience for all students to nurture our students with empathy and sympathy that everything we do here regardless of role is within the family
and will be done with pride respect and maximum effort that highly skilled professionals will partner with with dedicated committed parents and families and that the Barnagan Township School District is a family that is inclusive of parents guardians community members
teachers administrators staff and students a family will where every individual matters dr lapis' words are you still living up to that hopefully all of you are in those seats because one of your goals was putting the
children first it's time to live up to that goal you're elected by the people not paid by the district so aside from losing a committee chair position what do you have to lose you have the power to change the
future the one Barnagate community is crying out for you to vote for change and protect the children or just see the writing on the wall yourselves thank you for your time i do have copies of the petition with me if you would like them
thank you Mr dodie anybody else like to speak um on the end of here I think you're prepared that's quite all right my name is Aaron McGlaclin um I currently reside at 19 Oak Leaf in Little Lake Harbor but I wasn't born my
son did attend the ASUS program um was also assaulted and abused for months um I got sent to him not he would not go to school so I got legal action from the courts from him not going to school um that was disclosed i ended up leaving uh
Barnagan in general and I did f did I did file a police report as well because he came with scratches on his face his body he went to the nurse's office was not notified at all and it was going on for months nobody did a thing megan and
Morgan administrative of the ACES program just pretty much laughed on my face that's all I have to say thank you thank you anybody else go ahead my name is Kelly Walsh i live at 8
Rockberry Drive in Barnagut New Jersey um I have I'm a BCBA i have clients in your district and I have family members in your district and I have five children that went through your district um two years ago I went with my client's father to do process against
the ASUS program it's seclusion and it's wrong first of all they take all these children and just put them away in a locked hallway and they don't have any neurotypical peers to to use as peer
models um at that meeting before we went to due process Megan D'orenzo Stacy Jackalo Dan Gunderson the client's father and I we all met to discuss our concerns and when
I asked where my client would be placed instead of the ASUS program Mr gunderson replied "A less appropriate setting." I paused and waited for Ashton Kutcher i thought I just thought it was ridiculous and I said to him "You do realize that
that's illegal." And there was a basket of fidgets in the middle of the table he went and got one took it and just looked down and Megan Dorenzo did a lot of the talking when I asked her about um they kept they kept trying to sell it like
these paras will be highly highly trained and I said "Well what does he have now who is he with now are they not trained?" Then I asked what the training was that these highly trained paras received and I didn't get an
answer that being said further on in the meeting I asked if the ACES curriculum was from the New England Center for Autism because they have a curriculum called ACES similar to a VB map an assessment
tool and Mr gunderson replied to me I didn't steal anything and I said "I didn't accuse you of stealing anything." And I went on to explain that the New England Center for Children has this it's just bizarre that somebody in that position could act like that in a
meeting with a parent and that you know somebody concerned for the student we went to due process we lost the parent didn't have the means to you know hire an attorney like my other parent did to get her son out of there um but it's
just sad it's it's so sad that you feel like the children here are chess pieces in some game that comes from the higherups i have another client who's in another school at this district same
thing we asked for a one-on-one par this child is acting out in ways I don't even want to publicly describe because I don't want to embarrass anybody but he's has autism we're working with him this is the first year he's acted like this um
and I've heard things about the teacher she was moved from one program to this program and we asked for a onetoone no he'll have access meanwhile his behaviors constitute the need for a
onetoone it just you know the the games that they play with our kids aren't right i was never going to say anything because I felt he would be my clients or my my grandchildren would be retaliated against but by staying silent that doesn't teach him anything either thank
you thank you [Applause] is there anybody else that would like speak i'm assuming you'd like to speak sorry I forgot to raise my hand that's quite all right matthew Salvatore 46
Savannah Drive Barnett um thank you school board members for for taking this time to to hear us and to have this meeting tonight thank you administration as well um we didn't get as much of a turnout as we got the last time but thank you everyone who could make it here tonight u I know it's hard at this type of hour to get everyone here so I
want to thank everyone that came to for this meeting um I want to apologize i wore like a really old worn out shirt it's actually the ASUS shirt i got it a couple of years ago uh back when my son was in Miss Alison's class we miss her we miss her um but I can't get rid of it because it has a lot of meaning to me i
I would imagine the ASUS program has a lot of meaning to maybe some of you maybe some of the people in the audience um just because my shirt's all worn out probably needs to be thrown out i'm not going to we can make just ASUS program we don't need to throw it out we can make it better we can do that all together right
um you know I used to play rugby and uh one of my my coaches or my my uh captain he gave this one moving speech once i kind of want to do my I'm going to butcher it here tonight but I'll try to do my best um it was right after a hard practice we're all exhausted drained and we had a playoff game coming up our you
know for the first round and he wanted to motivate us he said "Choose your hard." And it was like what we were he wanted to explain what that meant now I'm not going to bring it in rugby terms because that don't matter but for here tonight you know as a special needs parent especially of a non-verbal autistic son it's very hard little
things like little tasks that normal non neurodeiverse children do take sometimes years for a child like my son to to to be able to master it's very hard uh every day is a struggle we all know every day is a fight as a parent special needs people in the community whether
they're teachers buses aids those type of people um it's hard to get to to work with these people um but they they need our help um and even though that's very very hard I'll choose that hard as opposed to looking at the faces the people in my community knowing that I
didn't do enough for our children i don't want to look at the mother the mothers of the incident that most recently happened and say feel like I didn't do enough to help make things better um it's just I walk around town I'll see many people maybe people like yourselves or whomever in the community
i don't want to look at you and say "I didn't do enough to make things better." Um so we have an opportunity here to make things better um you know I'll work with anybody to do good because that's that's what we should be doing so I want to know like will anyone here work with
me to do good let's make the ASUS program good we know there's some problems we know those things got to be addressed we know there's changes that are coming let's let's again as I said last week let's make our program the best in the state best in the country we have that ab opportunity now these
things don't come very often let's make it better let's choose our hard because for me I'd rather do the hard work to make things better than go around and feel like I'm guilty because I didn't do enough so I just want to thank again everyone for giving us this audience
thank the audience as well many people say many wonderful powerful things so let's just do that and that's all I have to say tonight so thank you very much for having us allowing us this opportunity thank you thank thank you again for coming out uh tonight and I I agree with your
sentiment as far as um everyone's got a piece to do here um and to unfortunately have to learn from the situation um that's in front of us i mean you know the the the thing that on my end is to
step up and again like you said things need to change there's things that have to happen um in front of us and again as a community as a board um and like I said earlier that I did create a committee of board members again they will be looking to be
reaching out to people especially a parent like you that has a background in this has a child in it um to get input it's important that we hear directly from people that are there that have children there that go through this i mean I know in the meeting today I I talked with Dr lis about some of this
you know my two boys were born non-verbal um I went through a lot of the things you went through um with my kids 20some years ago i had a very bad incident with my oldest son and again trying to explain to other people um the
stress of at home dealing with you know the surgeries the physical therapy the speech therapy all the stuff as a family and as a parent and then having to deal with any extra stuff within the school whether it's with um you know the IEP meetings the the I'm just trying to
think of some of the other stuff we went we talked about today and not getting the correspondence back as a parent that you feel you deserve and you need um it puts the stress level even higher as a parent dealing with a child like that i understand that i most of the people up here understand that um so again like I
said I take it personally myself um about this incident and about what I hear and what we've been hearing at these meetings but again it's important for us to hear that um it's important for us to get that feedback from you so we have kind of a direction on things that need to happen um so again I I know
Mr vorsic just walked in he will be the chair of our our new committee that I created um so we will sit down and talk about next steps about how to include parents in this how to include parents with directly with the board um on decisions we're making going forward um so like I said I know a lot of people
have reached out to us we haven't had the opportunity i haven't personally i've replied to some i will reply to those that did reach out to to me um again and look for your input look for your you know whatever you can bring to the table i think all of us up here are
willing and and ready to listen to to bring what you bring forward so again I thank you again for coming out tonight is there anybody else that would like to She had her hand up back here first you'll be next hi my name is Sarah Lynch i live at 58
Hillside A in Barnagate um I went through Barnett School District K through 12 um it's very different than it is now just the whole atmosphere walking through the schools i know there's a lot of different security measures and stuff but it's it's very
different it used to be very wholesome everybody in there cared it it's just very different i feel like just very closed doors and just not as much of a friendly environment as it used to be um I remember starting in first grade I
attended Mrs blekeley's class right across the hall was Mrs nelson's special ed class um from then until I graduated high school we had heavy heav he heavy interaction with those students whether it be in the hallways in assemblies
school dances um a lot of interaction all throughout school everything nominations for homecoming queen i mean it had a huge impact on me today um having that exposure as an adult being
in the public in my field of work just knowing and having that patience to work with those people and I feel like excuse me my son is missing out on that exposure and he's going to grow up not
knowing how to treat other people upon those students leaving the school to be in complete social settings and having that lack of social skills of interacting with neuro neurotypical children
um I appreciate you guys making the changes that you have and I know that we as a whole look forward to the time you've spent listening to us and we all look forward to the additional changes you make further thank you thank you
[Applause] hi my name is Sean Kelly i live on 17 Cape Cod Avenue um I first wanted to start off by thanking you for uh for this meeting and voicing uh giving us the opportunity to voice our concerns um I'm actually an educator in another
district but I live in Barnagate um I mentioned that just because as educators we try to help our children grow and even as adults we try to grow i believe every day we should be trying to grow and I say that not as a way of criticism
more of as a goal because I bring that up because I try to see how I was better than I was the previous day and I tell my students that as well um so I just wanted to say that I'm just ready willing and able to help as a parent in the district i know you mentioned a
committee i came in a little late mentioned a committee to get more parent involvement and I do appreciate that and I look forward to updates about that um I have a son who's going to be coming into the district soon and based on some early tests he's going to be needing some services so and I I just wanted to
send the message that I'm just ready willing and able to help the district and all the parents who are here too or anyone who needs support with that as well because I just want to see a way that we can grow from here and like I said I mean circumstances aside I look
at this as an opportunity as growth for everyone and whatnot so like I said I'm not coming up here as a criticism i know you've I know it's hard I'm sure to hear all these things and whatnot and sort of it's easier to go to uh negativity versus ways of we can move forward from there and that's not to disparage
anything that's happened but just a way as looking for ways to grow not even just as educators but just as people and grow as a district i heard uh someone mentioned making this program the best program we possibly can i absolutely believe in that as well and just believing in giving the best education
we can as a district so um I'm looking forward to helping my uh son's teachers uh he's going to be going into Duny next year I believe and I've heard great things about Dumpy and I want to continue making sure that he is uh receiving that uh great ed start on a
good path and move forward from there and like I said I'm looking forward to seeing how we can grow here as a district thank you thank you very much thank [Applause] you is there anybody else seeing none can I have a motion to
close public session please so moved roll call miss Journey yes miss Continza yes mr fedorzic yes miss Jeanie yes miss Msa yes miss Terowski yes miss
Washburn yes mr sarna yes motion carried thank you um All right next on our agenda is executive session can I get a motion to move into executive session to discuss um budget personnel matters please so
move second roll call miss Jurnney yes miss Continanza yes mr fedorzic yes miss Jeanie yes miss Msa yes miss Teranowski yes miss Washburn yes Mr sarno yes
motion carry thank you um not sure exactly how long it'll be in there i wouldn't anticipate that long but um I know we have some things to discuss but um we'll try to be out as quick as we can as if anyone wants to stay around and again thank you everyone for coming
out and thank you for um sharing your thoughts and kind of words of wisdom for us honestly um you know it's it's appreciated and needed so thank you
Very good mhm like to call this Barnagle board of education meeting back to order please roll call miss Churn miss Churnney here miss Continanza here mr fedorzic here miss Genie here miss Msa here miss
Terowski here miss Washburn here and Mr sarno here have a quorum thank you all right item number 10 personnel motions we have two motions can I get a motion to approve number one motion to approve John Furantino from vice principal at
Bman to interim director of special education so moved second roll call miss Churnney yes miss Continza yes mr fedorzic yes miss Genie yes Miss MSA yes
Miss Teranowski yes Miss Washburn yes Mr sarno yes motion carried thank you uh motion number two on a personnel motion to approve Frank Panulo from vice principal at Bornneut High School to vice principal at Robert Brackman School
nope so moved second roll call miss Churnney yes miss Continanza yes mr fedorzic yes miss Jeanie yes miss MSA yes miss Terowski yes miss Washburn yes
mr sarno yes motion carries thank you item 11 on your agenda is finance motions we have motion number one can I get a motion to approve that please so moved second roll call miss Jurnney yes miss
Condinanza yes mr fedorzic yes miss Genie yes miss Miss Msa yes Miss Terrinowski yes Miss Washburn yes Mr sarno yes motion carried thank you um item 12 there is no new business
so can I get a motion to adjurnn please so moved second roll call miss Churnney yes miss Continza yes mr fedoric yes miss Genie yes miss Msa yes miss Terowski yes miss Boschurn yes mr
sarno yes motion carried thank you meeting is adjourned thank you