all right good evening everybody uh we already met um in exact session and we also had some training so we have done our flag salute um uh we uh are up to just the um I'll read the statement um this is a regular meeting of the Board
of Education of Bernard's Township notice of the time and place of this meeting was provided and copies of that resolution were forwarded to the official newspapers as designated by the Board of Education and to the Township Clerk and a copy of the notice was posted on the bulletin board of the Board of Education offices for those members of the public who cannot attend our meeting in person live stream link to the meeting is posted on the district website www.
bernardo.inn related to the schools when you approach the microphone please state your name and address each statement made by participant shall be be limited to three minutes duration no participant may speak more than once during a given public comment session the first public comment session will be limited to 30 minutes and the second will be Unlimited
in order to run efficient meetings and to allow maximum opportunity for members of the public to speak the board reserves the right to set a different time limit for individual comments and the overall time limit for the public comment portion of the agenda all statements shall be directed to the presiding officer no participant May address or question board members individually no public comments will be accepted before s or after item uh 19 um public comment on the agenda ends please understand that public comment portions of our agendas are not structured
as question and answer sessions but are offered as opportunities to share your thoughts with the board the board Administration will respond to public comments to the extent possible any board responses to public comments will generally be addressed during board Forum or committee reports however all comments are considered and will be investigated and addressed as appropriate please be courteous and mindful of the rights of others when speaking comments may not be abusive obscene threatening or irrelevant please understand students employees have
specific legal and privacy protections the board is not permitted to respond in public to comments about students and employees and please understand the board will not be responsible for the content of comments made by public member by members of the public members of the public are cautioned that they are speaking at their own risk and any personally directed statements that they may subject them to legal liability to the affected individual okay and um that's it
um so um we'll do the roll call M white here miss m here Mr Molinari here Mr here M chipo here M gado here Mr Shaw here Mr tal here mral here okay we are up to our student representative report and I know you have one for us today you're feeling in
for Joseph thank you very much yes hi everyone my name is Arya Ral and I'm the student body treasure at Ridge High School tonight I'm filling in for Joseph because his track state sectional meet was rescheduled due to the snow I'm excited to be here and to share updates on our sports teams as well as insights as to how our Wellness day went and our free days went last week to start off I'll talk about the sports teams who have been making Ridge proud with their incredible performances so first up we have the boys basketball team they've been dominating the court with an
impressive 174 record including 8-1 in conference play and they have won six of their last seven games including a decisive Victory against Bernards this Saturday they will be competing in the Somerset County championship tournament and we wish them the best of luck of course moving on to girls basketball the team Advanced the Somerset County tournament and made it to the second round before falling in a close match against Somerville they played a great game and put in a strong effort next the boys ice hockey team has been maintaining consistency throughout the season
holding a record of 1182 they've been putting in a solid performance all season long next up the boys wrestling team has been on fire with an 185 record and is currently undefeated in their last five matches one of their most impressive performances came in with the 770 victory ictory against Glenn Rock additionally Gavin Duran reached an incredible Milestone of a 100 career wins and shortly after coach Roy Dragon also achieved his 100th career win these are huge accomplishments
and we are excited to see if they can continue this momentum into the state tournament coming up the girls swim team has been excelling with a 6-1 record they are number two seed in the north 2 Group B section and will soon compete against either Summit or watching Hills for a spot in the sectional final nj.com currently has the ranked as 10th in the state and this includes private schools which is a huge deal for boy swim they stated with the 03 record after competing against uh the three top 10
teams in the state however they made a remarkable comeback by winning their last three meets however they are now the top seed in the state section ranked 12th overall by nj.com and this has been an incredible turnaround for them the girls fencing team has had an undefeated season until last week finishing with a 12-1 record they're only loss came in their match against hun and Central similarly the boy fencing team also holds a 12-1 record with their only loss occurring in a tight 14-13 match
occurring in mid January we would also like to highlight an amazing achievement in our Unified sports program one of our Ridge unified athletes Luke wiel made history by signing on Ridge signing night to Red Bulls New Jersey Special Olympics team as an alternate this is a huge accomplishment and we are all incredibly proud of Luke of course the truck field teams have also been outstanding with the with the boys and girls teams winning the Skyland Conference Championship the boys were initially considered underdogs Hillsboro but they pulled off an incredible
upset tonight they're competing in Tom's River for the state sectional title hence why I'm here and we wish them the best of luck Finally Rich High School recently celebrated a fantastic National letter of intent Signing Day at the Ridge High School pack our students a student athletes who will be continuing their Sports careers at the next level were honored and the event was made possible by the rich high school booster club so thank you to them and congratulations to all our athletes so along with sports our forensics team has been excelling in
competition over the past few weeks last weekend they competed at the pensbury Falcon Invitational where they won first place in team sweep Stakes they also competed at the Freehold winter Invitational securing an impressive second place in the team sweep Stakes additionally this past weekend the team competed at upen and they continued to Showcase their exceptional talent and dedication congratulations to all the team members for their hard work and success now Switching gears I want to talk about our phone free P practice
days the next two practice days will be held tomorrow and Wednesday February 11th and 12th after our first practice today we received feedback from nearly 200 students and 75 parents and families via Google forms and even more share their thoughts in person so we learned a few things um students definitely had some mixed reactions some found it challenging to adjust While others appreciated the opportunity to regain Focus I'd say it was pretty split parents Express concerns about communication but we want to remind
everyone that the students in grades 9 to 12 can still receive emails from outside addresses and parents can also contact their children via the main office phone number the goal of these practice days is to help students prepare for the extended pilot program students should plan ahead by bringing wired headphones checking School emails and carrying cash for vending machines uh if you're interested in more details you can V visit the restoring Focus website where you'll find the full rationale which is basically just like a big breakdown of the dates
procedures and supporting research a one-pager which is a quick reference guide to everything that is going on and the big four which are essentially answering the top questions from students and families uh next I'll be talking about our Wellness day so last week Ridge hosted an incredible career panel which I had the honor of Co mcing with uh Timothy way we heard from an amazing group of professionals who shared their insights and experiences including Dr coral oeni a medical oncologist and cancer
researcher David Liston who is an assistant prosecutor fine Kadir an entrepreneur investor and Coach Christy papika an English teacher at our very own Ridge High School Morgan Wei and rhs pathway student Jason Hutchings who's an electrician Michael Le Fountain a Dean at se in H University and Sergeant Brandon dowy who is a former Marine and military recruiter it was a really engaging and insightful event and all the students really enjoyed it and we look forward to Bringing more career
F opportunities to Ridge students in the future moving on this year's spring musical will be Roger and Hammerstein Cinderella this dazzling Broadway adapt adaptation brings new life to the Beloved classic and features the enchanting music of Richard Rogers and the Timeless lyrics of Oscar Hammerstein the second it promises to be an incredible performance that audiences of all age will enjoy for ticket sales and show dates you can check out the official flyer and it will also be posted across social media platforms for
some other upcoming events and important dates the freshman sophomore Spring Dance will be taking place on Friday March 14th at 7 p.m. at Ridge High School the midwinter recess will be on Monday and Tuesday February 17th and 18th um I think originally we were going to have school Clos on on the 19th as well but now it will be open because of the snow day and that is going to be an a day and the next Wellness day will take place on Wednesday February 26 so that concludes my updates for tonight thank
you all so much for your time and I hope you are all as excited as I am about everything happening at Ridge let's continue to support our teams engage with our initiatives and take advantage of all the Fantastic opportunities provided to us have a great evening and as always go ridge thank you so much for that report it's always so exciting to hear everything that's going on and I love seeing the sets and I can't wait to see each time I come it's bigger and bigger and I can't wait to see the show um does anybody have any questions uh
not a question just um my kids are going to Cinderella with us um so we're very excited to see the show as we always say to Joseph we know you have a lot of work so do not feel you have to sit through the entirety with any point you need to leave feel free to do so all right thank you so much uh with that we are now up to superintendent report and there is one item um do you want to say anything
you wanna just HIV no it's just the HIV report for that's me okay um can I get a motion Brett and Janice does anybody have any questions about okay can we do a roll call M white yes M mun yes Mr Molinari yes Mr
am yes M chipo yes M curado yes Mr Shaw yes Mr talit yes Mr omana yes okay Mr M karon's gonna add one thing thank you so uh are you remembered already about February 19th so just another reminder that that is our makeup day for the snow day we had uh last week uh and I just wanted to ask folks to uh respond to the uh four strands on the
uh strategic plan I sent those out on Friday I'll continue to send folks reminders for that but I really appreciate the input from student staff uh residents parents uh so we'll keep that open until the end of March thanks with that we are up to public comment on agenda items if you have any comments on an agenda item please come down to the mic sign in and state your name and
address okay with that we will close public comment and we are up to approval of minutes I got a motion Dave and Mike and a roll call Miss White yes M mun yes Mr Molinari yes Mr am yes M chipo yes M
gado yes Mr Shaw yes Mr tal yes Mr omala yes okay we are up to finance and there is a report um there are four items on our agenda but there there it's also an addendum if you have your computer it has been emailed to us there are three items and Mr will you would just go over them yeah the addendum items five six and seven uh item five is for inservice day workshop for Finch writing Club in the amount of $1,000 item
six is another inservice day workshop with Dr Kristen holy Turner in the amount of $1,500 and item seven is uh to approve inservice day workshops for AI in the amount of $4,500 and the last one is shared with uh which last meeting we talked about the last one at the last meeting it was where we were working with wung hills to
do the project to do a AI plan you want to do U report or questions first are we doing questions or reports amen okay yeah uh item on theend but item five and seven are pretty self-explanatory I just wonder what item six entails with the to um
Dr Christen holy Turner what is that sure yeah um so we've talked about her in a few settings she's been with our teachers before she's a professor at Drew University and she has done in service work with us um related to the information literacy standards and digital media literacy she she served on the state's uh committee that wrote the new information literacy standards that we haven't seen yet so she's working with our teachers at our next in service on the topic
of information literacy thank you okay can I get a motion Keith and Robin since that was the only question we can go on roll call Miss White yes Miss mcon yes Mr Molinari yes Mr yes M chipo yes Miss curado yes Mr Shaw yes Mr talit yes and Mr alala yes Mr sha you have a report for us yep and it's
fairly short today so the first item um was also discussed of facilities it's about the new phone system upgrade um the age of the system as we discussed already it's very old U maintenance costs are expensive and keeping up with the laws is very difficult with the current system um we saw proposals from multiple vendors the best vendors extel um approximately 600 new phones would cost about $93,000 and
monthly maintenance is about $3,200 a month uh the committee supports um this now but ask Mr beavers to reach out to Verizon to get one additional quote as they're in our town um the next item was the audit um um and the cap the committee reviewed the one finding from the last audit the finding was related to the Student Activity fund where not all the receipts were deposited timely this is a minor finding the
corrective action plan included communicating with all staff of the policy related to the Student Activity fund um the next item we discussed was the health benefits um we went through a preview for next year the committee asked for the insurance broker to meet with the committee at the next meeting and um we'll discuss more of that in the future and the last item is confidential so that's it thank you we're up to personnel and
there are seven items May I have a motion Janice and Brett are there any questions okay can we have a roll call M white yes Miss mun yes Mr Molinari yes Mr yes M chipuk yes M Cado yes Mr Shaw yes Mr talit yes and Mr yes and there's no report correct Robin no
okay um we're up to policy um and there's no report on that policy's meeting this week on Thursday uh curriculum meeting on one second okay Wellness I do have a report from the January 22nd meeting um the wellness committee will be visiting schools uh in our next several meetings uh on the next meeting February 27th we'll be visiting William Aden Middle School where we
will meet with student representatives to hear their thoughts um on March 27th uh the committee will be uh going to Cedar Hill School uh where we will again meet with their student Representatives an additional Elementary School visit will be scheduled um counceling programming updates uh the theme for the January 29th Wellness day was academic and career planning um 9th
10th and 11th grade students visited the course Fair in the ridge gym where they had an opportunity to gather information about specific courses meet with teachers and review recommendations from students who had previously taken courses seniors had a separate dedicated session academic planning night for 8th grade students and their families uh was scheduled for January 29th from 7 to 900 p.m. details about that work could be
F found on the academic planning website which is linked in the minutes a panel of eight professionals uh which we heard about from our student representative uh from a variety of careers were featured during the January 29th Wellness day um and that was very uh successful very well um received and we look forward to doing more of that um we had a demonstration about the
Panorama um platform Miss hudok gave an in-depth presentation to the committee on how William Anon is using the Panorama platform for both schoolwide and individual student data the panoramic dashboard provides student information for five categories academics attendance Behavior responses to social emotional learning surveys and responses to well-being surveys changes in
responses from Spring 2024 to fall 2024 are indicated by color with green showing positive Trends yellow showing no change and red showing possible need for intervention counselors and some teachers are using the Panorama dashboard to identify Trends and create small groups for targeted lessons and discussions one of the advantages of the Panorama platform is that it integrates
data from Genesis survey responses and disciplinary or Hib incidents in a comprehensive and efficient way Miss Fox informed the committee that administrators are researching other providers to Compare costs for services similar to Panorama this information will be shared with the committee and then with the full board in advance of upcoming budget discussions Miss hudok shared that the administrative team is using schoolwide Panorama data to develop the
next Joy Roots professional development sessions for Wham staff which was held January 29th and again will be held in February on the 26th for example student survey responses on the topic of cultural awareness and action showed that Wham students scor in the 20th percentile nationally indicating the need for additional lessons and activities the wham's administrative team and Miss Fox are already at work developing
these professional development sessions and student lessons uh regarding the cell phone PL uh pilot Dr lavic updated the committee on the ridge off and Away pilot which began the first week in February um the committee agreed on the importance of sharing timely and accurate information with students and parents and uh Dr lavic and his team developed a comprehensive document restoring
focus at Ridge High School which was distributed to all Ridge staff students and families uh Dr lawick assured the committee that the administrative team will be monitoring feedback from all stakeholders including students parents teachers supervisors and administrators throughout the pilot on the open Google feedback form the next Wellness committee meeting is scheduled for February 27th in the William Anon school cafeteria where
we will meet with student representatives to hear their thoughts thank you does anyone have any questions regarding the report Mr sha uh yeah so I got to see the demonstration of Panorama and I was so impressed by it it brought data together from all different systems it gave you plans things to think about um how you can help different students lesson plans for it so um and it brought in AI as well so I thought it
was really really impressive I know we don't know the cost yet for next year so I'm hoping it comes in where we can fit in the budget but we'll talk about that Finance thanks thank you yeah I was just going to ask I apologize if I missed it but has that report that you referenced has that been disseminated to the full board or not I don't I don't think remember seeing it the meeting minutes are you saying no the uh the Panorama um results that Dave was just referencing couple
times Keith I I'm sorry Mr molar I think we did send that but there was a executive summary from um panorama that I thought was attached to one of the other Wellness committee minuts but we'll look for it and make sure we'll recirculate it to make sure the board like I said it could be me I could have missed it it we might not have attached it but we'll look and make sure everybody gets
it thanks anyone else okay uh we're up to facilities and operations when are you meeting we're meeting on the 27th yes sorry I was still thinking about where that report was stored uh yes we're are meeting we moved our meeting because of the the snow date we moved it three weeks out to Thursday February 27th yep okay uh and we're up to Le on reports are there any uh
Le on reports anybody has Mr yeah so uh Somerset County Educational Services committee met uh last week and just uh as a general FYI they're expanding um they're going to be taking on additional 30 students which when you consider their numbers is a pretty big pretty big expansion uh they changed your administrative structure um um they now have two principles that covering their entire all their facilities suppos before I believe was uh assistant superintendent and princi anyway that minor change but you know a bunch of stes might be that they're expanding their facilities the amount
of students they can take in anybody else I think as the just had our our new um assignments approv so I know in the coming months we'll have Municipal Alliance in Township all that will start um up again so there will be more reports uh we are now up to public comment on non-agenda items if there's something that you'd like to come say please sign in state your name and
address good evening uh Kirsten light 13 Victoria Drive hi guys um in the past month president Trump signed a series of executive orders which under the supremacy clause of the US Constitution are applicable to to the school D District they are one ending illegal discrimination and restoring merit-based opportunity which eliminates affirmative action policies as a means to undermine hard work excellence and individual
achievement and decision processes two keeping men out of women's sports which forbids biological men from competing in women's sports under Title 9 three defending women from gender ideology extremism and restoring biological truth to the federal government which defines that there are two genders male and female and that those those genders are determined by the sexual organs present at conception I.E xx and XY chromosomes and four ending radical and doctrination in K12 schooling which provides for the elimination of federal funding
for illegal discriminatory treatment and indoctrination based on gender and Equity ideology in K12 curriculum instruction programs or activities K12 teacher Education certification licensing employment or training and interference with parents Federal statutory right to information regarding school curricula records physical examinations surveys or other matters under PPR or fura or a violation of title six or Title 9 this also provides for
law enforcement actions against KRT teachers and school officials who sexually exploit minors unlawfully practice medicine by offering diagnosis and treatment without requisite license or unlawfully facilitates the social transition of a minor student and in addition requires patriotic education prioritization of American hi history and Civics among other priorities as such how is the Boe going to pursed with the implementation of these executive statutory orders in a manner that
is transparent to the community in addition I request that policy 5756 transgender students 1140 education Equity policies affirmative action 1523 comprehensive Equity plan and 2260 equity in school and classroom practices be rescinded and the following policies be reviewed for compliance with President Trump's executive orders in alignment with the supremacy clause of the US Constitution and for language and terminology the policies that reference
gender identity are 24156 2419 5512 5600 8465 an additional policy that reference Equity is 2510 if this board has no intention of following these executive orders please provide the plan to replace the almost 1.3 million in federal funding budgeted for the 24 25 school year and in future years if the board in board intends to raise the community's taxes rather than scale back on these expenses the board should
be upfront and transparent related to that however given the excessive amount of spending that goes into these projects budgeted um with Dei related programs perhap that perhaps the district can show a windfall by creating um continuing to receive federal funding and cut expenses for these now illegal programs thank you thank you Miss L for your comments is there anyone else see that there
no other comments we will close public comment that brings us to board Forum um our last meeting we talked about our board goals um and we agreed that we would vote upon them um so I'm just going to read them out one work with Administration to facilitate an updated strategic plan two
to engage in professional development on the subject of board governance the chain of command Communications the role of the board and board policies and procedures and three to collaborate with the administration to approve multi-year Financial plans addressing en enrollment trends facilities and staffing needs and I'm glad to say we already started working on number two today in our training um before we vote on on these I just want to make sure is
if anybody else had any comments upon them can I get a motion Dave and Robin and then roll call Miss White yes Miss mun yes Mr Molinari yes Mr yes M chipo yes M gado yes Mr Shaw yes Mr tavit yes and Mr yes okay and Mr Marken is there anything you want to address thanks
Miss White so uh just with regard to the public comment um I think from an educational uh policy and procedure perspective um all superintendants have been trying to digest um some of the executive orders um that Miss light mentioned so I just want uh the public to know that it's certainly something we're keenly interested in following exactly how this is going to play out and working with our uh policy firm as well as
board counsel in making sure we take the appropriate steps over time thanks does anybody else have anything that they want to discuss for board Forum okay with that can I get a motion for adjournment Dave Mike everybody agree we all done thank you I Just sh
that's what happens when you start you out a little ear people don't know that you guys work hours I just shared the presentation with you I kind of remember what happened we can talk about it tomorrow if you want but or later and then they yeah so that's why I shared it with