##VIDEO ID:aQnFDm_29Q0## e e e I mean they made a great head coaching hire so that just they need a quar exactly exactly yeah that yeah he's from couldn't just he said got take it easy a r coach you still on this topic I was explaining to her she wasn't sure why it was such a sore thing I'm an easy target oh yeah right now I hear your e we've all had our [Music] day people I don't know need more chairs got one more left on the end there oh my gosh I lost taking a short I lost my I off Wai I'd like to call this meeting to order adequate notice has been given this meeting as required by law notice has been forward for publication District official newspapers Post in the absam Cedar Creek and O high schools and fored to all the clerks of municipalities within the school district there are two opportunities address the members of the board the board values and welcomes comments and opinions from residents as long as remarks are not personal or experien the public comment portion of the meeting allows the board to listen to community members and to hear their opinions on school policy and operation the first public portion is reserved for persons wishing to speak about agenda items only and the second opportunity following the action items when residents May address the board on any school related issue each speak each speaker is asked to limit their comments to three minutes and you're not permitted to yield your time to another the public comment portion of the meeting during both sessions will not exceed 30 minutes upon being recognized persons wishing to speak should stand and identify themselves by name and town please stand for the flag salute to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation God indivisible with liberty and justice for I ask for a moment of silence edin present Garrison here Gunther present Hartman hassa you have a COR I need a motion to approve the minute some moved second the minutes have been um moved and seconded any questions comments or corrections to the minutes Edmond yes Garrison yes Gunther yes Carly yes right yes H yes motion is approved got some special presentation we do we have a full docket um I'm going to start off by asking Mr Olen from Cedar Creek High School to come up and introduce the Cedar Creek students and their presentations all right good evening everyone um Sean Olson I'm here to introduce our first presentation we have Mrs Martinelli and student they're going to talk to you guys guys a little bit about their work that they're doing in the steam tank challenge Miss Martinelli good evening as part of our environmental science Capstone class these three students chose to participate in the steam tank challenge which is sponsored by the New Jersey school boards Association um they can tell you about their project and how they arrived at their project and how it's going it's going very well hi my name is Ava uland my name is Sonia Patel and my name is stepen Flynn each of us are in the environmental science magnet and our experiences in the environmental classes led by Mr Martino and Miss Mart have furthered our experience in the sciences and given us opportunities to um gain experience in these fields such as through Environ and through science League we are now in the environmental Capstone class uh with Miss Mart and it's a culmination of all that we've done um in Miss Miss Martinelli's environmental science class we were able to participate in the world food Prize New Jersey youth Institute we all had the opportunity to write a paper on the food insecurities of specific countries to present at Ruckers University and two students from our school one of them being AA who got selected to move on to participate in the global youth Institute this conference gave me the opportunity to hear and learn from various world leaders and influential individuals where I got the opportunity to present my paper on food insecurities in France and bof fuel from food waste a second time to a board of experts the experiences there and through all of our classes gave us more knowledge on these topics and made us want to know more about Solutions of this nature and inspired us to take the environmental Capstone class the purpose of our project is to efficiently produce biofuel from food waste to address the commonly faced issues of food insecurity and environmental degradation since 2007 the midwestern United States has experienced an expansion and land used for corn and soybean production leading to a displacement of farmers harvests and increased erosion and soil degradation this results in reduced yield and therefore profits for smallscale farmers in the region also the increase in biofuel feed stocks has exacerbated pre-existing conflicts with food prices and Global Food insecurity learning this was our initial inspiration to pursue our project to develop a r renewable fuel source um using as few external resources as possible we want to determine a way to produce an efficient fuel which doesn't have such negative effects on the socio economic climate in the midwestern regions and does not deplete the land of its regularly fertile conditions to combat the current issue of food waste we are determining optimal ways of processing food waste into ethanol biofuel using method of hydrolysis and fermentation combined with hydrothermal liquification to releas traditional processing practices and speed up the hydraulic process we recently submitted this project to be considered for the njsba steam tank challenge which is an Entre entrepreneurial design challenge which Sparks students to invent solutions to pressing local and Global issues we got accepted into this and will now be participating in this challenge for the steam tank challenge we're going to be continuing our experiments um and meetings for the environmental Capstone class all while simultaneously meeting with mentors preparing us to eventually present in front of a board of experts we spent the first four months of this class completing research to learn about food waste ethanol biofuel production and enzymes in order to determine what would be most efficient in our experiment then we conducted an experiment using an already existing procedure to produce ethanol from cellulose grass clippings and glucose solution this helped us get an understand of protocols to use in our own procedure for food waste into biofuel which is what we're currently in the process of finalizing for the remainder of the year we have many more experiments and research planned we are running Hydro hydrolysis and fermentation tests utilizing food as our biomass two enzymes mlas andas and yeast we are also planning on running tests beginning in March using a hydrothermal autoclave to speed up reactions to potentially make processing more efficient we'd like to say that most of and all of our progress is thanks to the assistance and encouragement of all the amazing teachers here at the Cedar Creek science department without their encouragement we believe that we wouldn't have gotten where we were um and we think that without these school and these classes we wouldn't have enjoyed our time in this class as much as we have and we'd like to thank them for all they've done for us thank you hold on don't go anywhere we might have questions yeah they may have they uh they will compete in this in the in the regional round um at the end of March so they'll be submitting the research that they've done since the re they got into the Regionals then so any wonderful I I've got to say not only do I find it interesting I kind of feel like I need to go and up on um I don't think I know enough to ask questions you guys um but warmed my heart like not only to hear students come up and talk but to talk with such enthusiasm so I thank the teacher and all teachers that Inspire students but I thank you for coming and sharing because we need to hear this kind of information to know what's going on and to know how you are doing um so thank you very much and we'd like to hear back How It Go in absolutely keep us updated go ahead yeah I just I was curious how's this uh opportunity influence your future like College and Career aspirations um I know know I can speak for myself that this is definitely something I'm really interested in and I'm trying to study this in college so it's definitely giving me opportunities to really like experience these fields and things of this nature yeah they're doing some pretty high level research to be quite honest and um it will transfer and I think it gave you all things to talk about in your college essays and interviews so it's a great opportunity the evbb class and the environmental catstone really give the student you know how it's going to be at College a view of what they can do and where they can go so excellent excellent my favorite class please make sure you you keep us in the loop as the year moves on I just want to congratulate all three of you it's not easy to get up and speak in front of people you all did a great job so go walk away exhale and say okay I did it you did a great job not that you haven't already presented but it's never easy so congratulations on that um I just have one question being um originally from the Midwest as a couple of us are did you come across any of the conversation about small farms Family Farms being kind of eaten up by corporate farms and is that part of this conversation yeah I think it's one of the big parts of this conversation because in our research um of the Midwest and how biofuels are produced today um we found a lot of like facts and information and data about how these um bofu feed stocks are run by like major large farm corporations and it's um especially like economically it's really eating up all the small farms and they're taking up a lot of land that would be used um by these small Family Farms to produce food but it's now being produced for sewing corpin sowing yeah yeah Eva got the opportunity to go with me out to Iowa in October so she had to see it firstand which was and meet some of the farmers and meet Farmers from all around the world who are dealing with these problems that's awesome congratulations great for the Cedar Creek teacher of the year in Educational Services professional leader Mr olon you want to start us off again yeah so yeah now we'd like to take some time to um recognize and celebrate two of our staff members one being Mr John Gazo teacher of the year and also Miss Molly clay Educational Services professional of the year so we've got some help in talking about these individuals we're going to start off um introducing District supervisor Mrs Nicole gazia just going to tell you a little bit about Mr Gaza Mr Gazo has been a dedicated professional for over 20 years of service here at greater Egg Harbor Regional High School District he was first at oakrest and then one of the founding members here at Cedar Creek Beyond his exceptional work in the classroom he has led consumer Bowl teams Academic Teams mathematics competition teams to countless victories so many so that our trophy case is bursting at the seams one student captured his impact perfectly in her nomination stating when your teacher is enthusiastic about teaching it makes students enthusiastic about learning Cedar Creek is proud to present the teacher of the year award to Mr John [Applause] Gazo 23 years for this moment I'll be short promise good evening everyone first of all I just want to say How Deeply honored and humbled I am to stand here today to be recognized as educator of the year is not just a celebration of my work but a reflection of the collective Spirit and the efforts of all the students parents colleagues and administrators who inspire me daily so far it's been 23 years of success in this career I'm so glad I chose to be a teacher I'm grateful that I am one of the few handful of teachers that open the school in 2010 I remember James Rea sitting us all here in this library and we were so excited to start a new building what program should we run what club should we do and I said I'll do math club I'll run an academic team and that's just how we got started and here we are and then I said to the school can you give me a trophy case and I said okay here's a case put whatever you want in it and it's full 10 years later it's full so I'm just so thrilled about that uh my proudest moment here for sure was when we won the New Jersey consumer B State title they didn't think schools down here in South Jersey can do that because we're competing against the bests of North Jersey schools you have to beat over 85 schools to win this title we've done it twice in Cedar Creek history in 2018 and 2022 we got to sit in the Justice complex up in the state capital we got to meet with the attorney general shake hands get signed letters from the governor spending countless hours studying State consumer laws these kids are memorizing every word every law and they're being tested on it and in the end they're better consumers they're more aware so they become less victims of fraud because these are all laws that we should all know not just the students but anybody who's a consumer in the state of New Jersey I never thought we'd go all the way let alone done it twice the countless hours we spent have made me a better teacher and since the Inception of Cedar Creek we now have won over 30 academic titles and Counting in the classroom Hands-On learning has been a vital tool for me it's so rewarding as a geometry teacher watching my students remain engaged off their phones while constructing three-dimensional solids such as polyhedrons drawing two-point perspective City drawings and just recently they drafted floor plans for their house finding area and perimeter I also organized all the math club events here because we were brand new school so I started Pi Day and origami day to show kids the importance of math and help them develop their spatial awareness their logical thinking and their problem solving skills and I was so grateful when James Raina hired me to start the boys tennis program because for many years I coached alongside the great Tony ponzetti at oest I was excited and thrilled I had 14 kids out there who' never held a racket before and they were all freshman playing a VAR City schedule going up against 20 seniors but you know what we persevered and we grew as a school and now the program is has done so well in the last few years we've had multiple players get Cal recognition and I'm just so proud that we got that off and running so thank you James for that opportunity and I also want to note this is my 15th year teaching mathematics at Stockton University I've been an adjunct math professor there and it's such a thrill to know I have three students that are former CED Creek grads who couldn't race quick enough to get into my class on College and night and I said you're free of me and they're like no we want you again keep teaching we'll do this to your last breath and it was just so thrilling to know that they still appreciate what I do and lately I'm sometimes there 9:00 at night because I care so much about this career that I chose that sometimes I don't go home at 9ine o' so I appreciate the people in my life who deal with my late hours um I just have immense gratitude for everybody and finally when I was a little boy I dreamt of sorry I dreamt of being a teacher I used to come home and make math tests my father was here thought it was strange but but my mom would sit and do the test and I put these little scented 80s you know those stickers and 80s I had to smell I put them on the test and my mom would sit and do them and the next day I'd make another test and it was the signs are there that this for me this isn't just a profession it's a calling and I do believe if you truly love what you do you'll feel like you've never worked a day in your life and here I am 23 23 years later and I'm still excited every day to show up here at the creek seeing what these students are going to bring to me it's that spark that ignites curiosity to help students discover not only what they can do but who they are thank you again for this incredible honor I will never forget it I promise to continue striving for excellence and give my very best to the students colleagues and Community every single day I am and will always be a proud pirate thank [Applause] you come on up come on Family Affair come on my wife Gina everybody she's a history teacher at Williamstown a holocaust teacher want don't you guys stand right over there I'll get a picture of the four of you yall call and get the colors coordinated good Cedar Creek good Creek colors there we go one two perfect thank you guys congratul [Applause] congratulations all right next up I'm going to have supervisor Mr Sean suvin come up tell you a little about our Educational Services professional of the Year Miss Molly clay thank you tough tough one to follow there um and I'm going to start by I think this is the third or fourth time that I have introduced a educational for service professional the year winner and I apologize but I did tell Miss clay I you don't have to worry about giving a speech so so just wanted you know apologize uh that that is something that I did tell her so but I wanted to kind of say something especially before I get started to introduce uh Molly to you guys is really um the efforts I want to thank the Board of Ed to be supportive of our effective School Solutions um and the programs that we have in our in our schools at tier 2 and tier three services and and Molly Clay is a tier 2 ESS uh student support coordinator uh this is her third year that she's been with us and a lot of what she does here with our students and I get the privilege of actually being my office is right next door I don't know if you consider that to be a privilege but my my office is right next door so I know really the impact that she's making on our students is the high level of support that she's providing our St students with brief treatment and this goes through um students who are struggling with going through uh grief loss um some anger management maybe going through substance abuse making decision makings and giving them some brief treatment for about 6 to8 weeks to kind of get them um back on their feet making better choices and getting them to be successful in our in our schools in our classrooms um the other part is really what she does um is is handling all of our crisis screenings of students with suicidal ideation she will screen with them talk with uh the parents to see if they need to go out for a psych psychiatric evaluation and then on top of that which has been huge is all the re-entry part of that instead of kids just coming in after that what happens now working with the families and the students to have that re-entry um into our into our schools um the other thing is working with families and I and I'd like to really thank Molly for um as students are going through these programs even if they're not even appropriate or maybe they need a higher level of care um Miss clay will really work with the families and work with them to get outside Services she even will have the parents come in or do it through a virtual or even a phone call to take them set up with resources that are within our community so even if they may not be appropriate for tier two and they need a higher level of care she doesn't just say I'm sorry I can't help you she will take that lead um her work also extends in our pirate pantry you will see um she's helping to make sure our families are getting the food um that they may need toiletries clothing and it's really a huge part of the behind the scenes part of what we do here with the pyate pantry so um again I just thank the board for their support with our effective School Solutions program um and really like to thank Miss clay for she does here for our students um to get them accl you know get them the support and the services that they need um to be successful here so without further Ado our educational uh service professional of the Year Miss Molly clay so as you know I didn't have a sweet prepar but I would just like to say thank you again I know this is a huge honor especially because um I am part of ESS so as somebody not fully a part of the district I feel very welcomed and supported here um you know I really try to make sure I work with as many people as I can whether that's with just students and families but also with teachers bringing that connection full circle because you know they spend a full-time job's worth of time here and so to bring that connection is really important so that they're successful both here and at home and that everyone's a team um so I really appreciate it um my parents are here and there as my boyfriend and his mom um I come from a long line of people who work in mental health profession session so continuing that Legacy in this kind of capacity is amazing so thank you so much [Applause] three two one Chiefs there you [Applause] go before we move on to what would could only be described as The Logical followup and audit report um I I do want to take a moment and um I I want to share a little bit about Mr Gazo and and Molly as well um John is he touched on it but if we go back 15 years ago when was around August 25th of 2010 sitting in this library and we literally said okay if we've got to get stuff started Ed who wants to do what and John just kept raising his hand and kept raising his hand and kept raising his hand and for the six years that I was a principal here and and John was was working we were working together um there was not a single time that John didn't begin or end a conversation with is there anything I can do is there anything you need and that is something that you were born with it's who you surround yourself with so congratulations on that um and for Molly you know you touched on being from a a line and having family and friends connected to mental health and you know this District made a commitment and a tremendous amount of credit goes to John Keenan when he was a superintendent for bringing mental health and that the willingness to have that public conversation to the Forefront and Tom and I and have worked hard to try to make sure that we can continue to provide these opportunities but this board deserves a tremendous amount of credit also because we are running things that you just do not see in the overwhelming majority of Public High School schools um so a thanks again to all of the board but Molly you know that tier 2 specialist is is one of the most challenging jobs in the district because you have no set schedule you have no idea what is is walking around the corner to come to you who it is is it a new face is it a familiar face what what is going to be the stream of emotion that you get so the utmost confidence and respect for the job that you do helping our students every day so thank you Mr grai okay now to the main event well got questions did you just say you want to see if people want to leave yeah exactly exactly if if you've already received your award you might not want to sit through AUD it we won't hold it [Laughter] against you guys don't know what you're missing that was good py that was good thank you Casey I will see she okay in front of the the board there's a couple documents I left out for you um uh first of all I'm going to go through first of all I want to say thank you to the board for your continued support uh giving us the the tools that we need to make sure that audit is done properly each and every year um first report I want you to look at is the fck binder the audit uh CA annual comprehensive financial report uh obviously I'm not going to go through Page by page but this uh report is broken down into sections a is districtwide B are the local fund statements see it will be your um budgetary funds which will be going over shortly and then we get into areas like spe special revenue and the E schedules capital projects are the F schedules debt is the I schedules so if you want to want night have a hard time sleeping you're more than welcome to pull this out and bring it to bed with you but all kidding aside when I'm done with the presentation if you guys aren't going to use any of these I will take them back because they do uh get handed out to people if you want to go to page 66 of this report this is the budgetary schedule this is the heart and soul of what we have in our um fund balances at the bottom there you see our fund Bal is every page 66 um the bottom is the breakdown of our fund balance this is what we have at the end of the year reserved for different things the first number you see there is reserved for excess Surplus that's $1,742 th000 that is the amount that we have to use for the 2526 budget to help under our budget the number below that you see is very similar to that number and that is 1,742 also and that was the amount that we designated in our current year budget so that tells you right now we have at least the same amount that we had in our current year budget to help us fund next year's budget um what we try to do over the years is try to wean ourselves down a little bit off of that if we have good years with state aid which we're not expecting this year to be a great year with state aid so I'm very uh confident that the 1.7 million will help us out when we get to that budget stage the next amount there $831,000 is our maintenance Reserve that SS uh you'll see during the year there'll be some agenda items me pulling money out for certain projects um uh we did did the um culinary room here at Cedar Creek through uh maintenance reserve and some other projects the next number you see there is capital reserve of 951 th000 um we've been building that up over the last few years uh in fact I think we just increased it by another 250 this past year um we have a u a regular operating District Grant a rod grant that we're coming up for hbac work at abami it's a $2 million project our portion is $951,000 the state will pay the remaining $1,503 56,000 unemployment Reserve that is the money that we Fund in our unemployment account to pay for any employment claims that we have during the year below that is the reserve for incumbrances that would have been any incumbrances that we had at June 30 that we have to pay out in the following school year so we reserve that so we don't spend it up and finally the unassigned balance is $1.9 million so we have over $8 million in fund balances at that point in time so we're in good Financial shape as it comes to fund balances for our future year uh the next I want to take you to is the smaller booklet which is called the auditor's management report again a lot of good information here but I'm going to take you to page 13 the audit recommendation summary uh as you see there are 10 SE sections that we have the possibility of getting any recommendations on uh admin administrative practices and procedures we have none financial planning we have none School purchasing we have none School food service we have none student body activity accounts we have none application for state school aid we have none people transportation we have none facilities and capital assets none miscellaneous none and then we have the status of prior year audit findings again we have none so we have a clean audit this year um again it's doing part to not only my staff which I can't do any of this without especially my supervisor County Kim hows and all the rest of the staff but to the board also for all their support and never giving me anything I don't need to make sure that this is done properly the only other thing I want to go over for you right now is I gave you the corrective action plan you might say to yourself why are we doing a corrective action plan you just said Tom there were no comments well the state of New Jersey requires us to file the corrective action plan whether or not we have comments so you'll see in here it says None na na na I still have to file this with the state of New Jersey if I don't I get in a little bit of trouble so in a synopsis we are in good shape moving forward um will this be a tough budget Year we're not sure yet we have to wait to see what our state a might look like but I think we're in good shape moving forward anybody have any questions thank you Tom so much year after year after year it's just can't I just can't imagine I mean I can a little bit but we appreciate all the hard work and in the whole your whole office they're just amazing you guys are amazing thank you you're welcome and I I know I say this though we really appreciate you and all your staff for all the work you do to keep us where we are so we can hand everything thank I just want to say he's okay that coming from you is the greatest compliment I've ever yeah that's a big compliment um when we get to the business sections item B6 and B7 are the two items that you'll be approving for the com for the audit thank you uh I see no committee reports I'll move to board member reports I'll start with chish for gamy hello um going to start with Athletics as we speak there is a double header being hosted back at abami and the boys did win against Holy Spirit 46 to 43 and the last update I got was the girls were leading Holy Spirit at halftime um our senior guard um girls basketball player ree Downey is only 58 points away from being the highest scorer in female uh highest score female athlete in school history um she would be beating Tara Booker if that his name familiar to anybody wow wow yeah um and our first home wrestling match of the season is this Thursday at 6 p.m. um other school news that I had was abami had almost 20 volunteers at the arthan stem night on January 16th and something that the tribe um Club had planned and successfully executed was the secret teacheron spirit week last week so all the students were wondering why certain teachers had it so one of the days was anything but a coffee mug day so there was like a lot of creativity between the teachers on what they were going to drink their coffee out of or water out of so all the teachers did a really good job on that and last update is our library is officially under construction and we already have a lot of new windows installed and they're going to be working on the doors very soon thank you okay Adriana hello hi what's it called um I'm here today for adri my name is Fatima sugara um I'm a senior um so I'll get into it uh at the beginning of December we brought back the spir uh spirit stick at ois if that's sounds familiar um we found it it gave classes like incentives to um have more spirit and collect more uh cans for the food drive and such and such and at our uh winter pep rally we decided to uh give that spirit stick out to a certain class the seniors won um we also decided to um call out our varsity and distinguished Scholars at our winter prep rally we've started that um that makes them feel you know more uh included um instead of it just being a event to um help out uh Athletics um uh since being back from break we've had our biomed and media days at oakrest and the William Davies uh sixth and seventh graders come to oest and they walk around the school talk to different students and teachers and um per like do activities with us um hopefully that gets them to be more interested in our magnets and um have any questions cleared up before they have to um apply to any high schools in 8th grade um I also wanted to mention a student um Gabriella Fox who won the Poetry out loud competition um in the beginning of January uh it's essentially a national competition that encourages um public speaking throughout poet poetry uh uh re um um that's pretty much it though thank you thank you you're welcome Ana good afternoon so on January 15th we hosted our winter student work showcase and it was really fun to see all of my friends have like their different style of dances and we held our first annual thes showcased on January 23rd and here in the library we also hosted poetry out loud congratulations to our first place winner McKenzie and our runner of Mana they're both Juniors and C Creek High School's um honors our portfolio development students had fun participating in a mixed media line drawing workshops presented by records Camden Center for the Arts Museum on tour our future pirates from our sending schools um visited on January 23rd they had a chance to hear from a panel of our current students take a tour with our student ambassadors and hear a video message from three distinguished alumni and Cedar Creek High School won the 2025 Atlantic County Consumer bow title the advisor from the consumer Bowl Mr Gazo as we now know um won the teacher of the year and CED Creek High School um sorry R Ryan hassa and Andrew Parker um won state runner up and P vault at the group two relay state championships thank you thank you um any other board members have anything to report Mrs Garrison I think our board meeting is after abami drama performance I think it's the week after the week after so I just wanted to mention that would be the that week February 20th 21st 19 2021 um you'll you'll send us a paper or an email with all the the shows and their dates and and information on that okay great thank you that way people can sign up let me know we'll get tiet set aside for you yeah thank you anyone else uh just an update I just got the text this the gamy girls won wow so honestly I can't remember the last time one of our schools boys and girls swept Holy Spirit boys and girls on the same night it's been a long it's been a long time yeah very nice yeah I just wanted to add that and January but they nice that's wonderful very good okay [Music] um I'll move to open to the public anyone wishing to speak on agenda items only can come forward okay seeing none um there's some information items listed on page two page three business agenda items uh business items B17 Town PES I'll make a motion for B1 through B17 Pages 3 four and five second okay B1 through B17 have been moved and seconded any questions or comments on these business items yes yes yes yes yes yes Transportation items Transportation items1 t39 5 I move T1 through t39 second T1 through t39 we moved and seconded any questions or comments on these Transportation it yes yes yes yes yes yes education items I move E1 through e excuse me nine E1 through E9 need a second second E1 through E9 down on pages 5 through 15 and 16 have been moved and seconded any questions or comments on these education items I do Garrison on E9 I just wanted wondered are there additional students going is that the reason for additional chaperon well and and in two cases it's individual tied to the program um to the to that program specifically that are going just as additional advisor okay all right thank you no additional cost to the board okay great yes right yes yes yes yes Mo approve and I have Personnel items I move P1 through P2 12 second P1 through p12 been moved and seconded any questions or comments on these Personnel items I'm sorry I'm sorry I hate to interrupt but um I I think we should add with regret for P1 and P2 okay I'm sorry I was just forget to do that right yes yes yes yes yes yes um before we move on real quick while we're still in the Personnel um I had the opportunity to work with both Miss deeni and uh Miss Shanker over the years especially my time here at Cedar Creek and as I shared with you in my FYI they were both wonderful at connecting to students and building relationships and getting involved I also want to take a moment and I want to introduce coach Smith stand or sitting in the SE second row uh if you want to come up and say thank you I know you had asked about that this is uh coach Smith this is the new head football coach at abami high school thank you uh good evening and thanks for having me um I'm honored to be named the next head football coach at abami um this is a dream come true for me and my family um I'm looking to make absy gamy my forever home and um football is a privilege not a right and the I'm going to hold by our student athletes to the highest of standards of discipline on and off the field in the classroom and at home and um I'm excited to say the least to get started and again thank you for having me and uh we'll see you guys soon thank you [Applause] very k um I knew uh I knew we were in a good spot with with Coach Smith when he was at a basketball game about two and a half weeks ago um he had been selected by absam he wasn't on the agenda yet he still came to a basketball game was introducing himself to students um he got dissected by Mr Parker for about 25 minutes in terms of football and and uh Scott came back to me and said we're good he's he's gonna be good so we got a blessing right off the bat from that night so congratulations and welcome um you got a handout from uh recognizing Steve foris for uh his time and his commitment and his work to and for the cape Atlantic League um so I you know Miss Garrison had brought that to my attention I was gonna mention it but the I didn't realize it was an article in the paper so thank you for sharing that with us um you know 17 years as an athletic director is a 100 days a year of being one of the last people to walk out of a building um it is phone calls at 9:30 on a Friday night it's phone calls at 6 o'clock on a Saturday morning when there's no bus for an away wrestling match um and 17 years is a long time and Mr fores did it admirably and with success um and as you all know he's kind of moved a little bit sideways and a little bit on in terms of being an assistant principal and now falling back into his social studies Roots as a supervisor of social studies at gaming um I need a policy meeting so I will send an email out in the next two days to everybody on the policy committee we'll start looking at a time Mr Carly you and I I'll pick a couple nights first and then we'll go from there um actually we have new committees don't we coming they're coming they'll maybe we can send them out I'll wait I'll wait till they're finalized um so anybody who's gonna end up on policy you're gonna be getting an email and a packet for me shortly um as we had as we had discussed at the Retreat um notification went out on Thursday to oest staff and families that April 18th would be a noon dismissal that is the makeup day for the date that was lost in September so all notifications have been made to all staff and all students and their families um as was mentioned the abami library is in progress It's pretty amazing if you you've all been in the gamy library kind of similar to over there those big window sections they build a whole big wood I don't know cabinet Tom for lack of a better word on the inside so it's airtight and then they rip everything out from the courtyard and they're replacing it from the courtyard in um they're two units down and they're moving across the wall and then the doors will be next so it's good to see that progress being made there connected to that we're in the progress of scheduling a meeting for the AV projects that are remaining in the three packs myself the three principles I've shared before Mr Wright is um integrally involved in helping us to make sure we're doing the right things in those spaces excuse me for staff and students so what we are doing now is our final review with the engineers and with the designers to make sure we are suiting the goal of those those projects um HVAC at abami you've heard over the last couple of months we've had some ongoing issues we still have unresolved issues um I'm available to go into more detail with anybody who would like it but I will simply state so the staff hears it as well as so the board hears it Tom and I are actively working with both our Architects and our attorneys to make sure that these issues are rectified as quickly as possible and at no additional cost to us right so we are addressing these issues I'll say to the best of our abilities Tom anything you want to add to that no it's uh timing is very important to get everything done projects that were used money federal government um was kind of I thought one of the kids was going to mention it but we did mention it but I'll go into a little more detail we are in full swing with seventh and eth grade visitations across the district right now um Cedar Creek I think I forward the board an email from a Cedar Creek from a a staff member talking about the conversations going on in the household among eth graders after that visitation day it's just an example of you know we know um high schools are now a competitive business and and we need to be working very hard with our middle schools to make sure that everybody is aware of everything that goes on here what's available to them the opportunities all of the buildings are having contact and communic with the seventh and eighth graders we are actually preparing in February last next week and that two weeks after that we'll start scheduling eighth graders so this is our time to really make sure we are having conversations and building relationships with those eighth graders and their families um and then the last thing I just wanted to hit real quick is I wanted to also um kind of jump on the BW bandwagon and thank Tom for his work not only with the audit um but you know it is so nice to know that you are working with a professional who is going to do the right things for the right reasons um you know Tom and I had our midyear budget review with the Atlanta County uh Department of Ed maybe two weeks ago and there's just a foregone conclusion from the county well Tom I know you've got this let but let me just ask what is this and Tom gives him the information and say okay that we know we never have anything to worry about with greater EG and it is just that professionalism is that we are always kind of a step ahead of where we need to be um so again as your partner Tom I just wanted to extend an additional thank you thank you thank you um just a few things uh don't know where to start okay um January 9th there was a uh Atlantic County Board of Ed meeting and it was hybrid but if anybody else was there it was going over goals and CSA evaluations um Michelle Kennedy did it from school boards it was informative but honestly a lot of it is stuff that we've already been trained on and know so that was good um I will be inviting her to give us our ethics training um in the next couple of months so I will set that up um working with Tom and and James to make sure we have a date that every works for everybody um the next County meeting will be uh the I believe will be the eth grade dialogue but I don't know the where it's going to be at it's Thursday March 20th if you've never gone they have eth graders from the different schools come and talk about things and it's very interesting to hear their perspective on school and you know what's important to them so when we get more information I'll make sure that's shared with everybody um looking ahead in May May 8th is a spring celebration and if you can't make a lot of the meetings it's a nice one to come to it's when they recognize different people within the county for um could be the years they've done if anybody's earned anything and just a chance to kind of see some of the people from other places and a chance to kind of uh Network a little bit and find out what's going on in other districts um I wanted to tonight even though last time we were here uh will was here Mr donio and mentioned Casey but since she's here tonight I'm just going to say congratulations Casey on making partner we're very proud of you yay um oh yeah um and just welcome Mr Smith um very nice to have you and I look forward to seeing at some football games uh and just again to thank the students that are here tonight um I really think it's so important for us to kind of keep up on what's going on I I thank the students that presented tonight because I know that's always hard but we appreciate you coming and being part of the board and sharing what's going on because we may see it but we see so many things or you don't hear so many things that are happening it makes us feel a little more a part of what's going on and if we want to try to ask any more questions it gives us that opportunity to find out information or find it what's important to you guys and what's happening in the school so thank you I think that's it for the board members I have um just one more thing and then tomorrow your uh policy and all the other committees will be coming out to everybody so I'll I'll um let you know tonight um who's on it but Greg you're the chair and I'll talk to the other people the policy how did I get that again you know what because you're doing such a good job at it um you're not allowed to quit either okay at this time I'll go on to Old business anybody with any old business to bring up quiet tonight new business I know there's an I move new business one and new business two second thank you okay new business one and new business two found on the addendum have been moved and second it any questions or comments yes yes yes yes yes yes any other new business he this time I'll open the meeting of the public anyone wishing to speak on any matter all right do we have a resolution for executive session Pur to section 78 the meeting act following subjects will be discussed in the session of board oftion Clos the public personnel and contracts that thetion resolution can be disclosed in public when decision made upon the same or in the case of personel issu confidentiality session need a motion to go into make a motion to move into executive session all favor he quick break couple minutes thank you