good evening everyone welcome to a meeting of the 10 Central Regional High School Board of Education please be advised that this and all meetings of the board are open to the public and media consistent with the open public meetings act and that advanced notice required therein has been provided meeting notice was also posted in the
boardroom of the upper school campus sent to the courier news star ledger express times and the Hunton County Democrat and sent to the clerks of Delaware Township East Damwell Flemington Burough Raren Township and Readington Township the public will have an opportunity to be heard as shown on
the agenda can I get a roll call mrs spitzer mrs dugen here miss Gong mrs gray here dr halpern here mrs kellogg here ms lacosta here mrs
peterson here mrs rothell here and Mrs santangelo here all right would everybody like to join us in a flag salute i aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the
stand indivisible with liberty and for all okay Leslie you'll read the district mission statement hunter and Central is an innovative educational community dedicated to the intellectual social and emotional safety
and growth of all students while fostering curiosity and promoting wellness we aspire to create powerful learning experiences establish strong partnerships and serve as a contributing member serve as contributing members of society
thank you i'd like to make a motion to approve the minutes for last month's meeting or last week's meeting rather uh moving items 5 through six can I get a second second thank you can I get a roll call please
i apologize is this for February 24th and March 20 March 17th that's what's on here correct yes yes both okay thank you uh Mrs dugen yes mrs gray yes dr halpern yes mrs kellogg
yes miss Lacosta yes mrs peterson yes to number five abstain from number six mrs rothell yes and Mrs santangelo yes all right thank you so we received
two correspondents that will be kept on record and I will move into the president's report at this time so the topic of having a board member comments section on the agenda has come up repeatedly and therefore the central regional high school board of
education has sought guidance from both our legal council and the New Jersey school boards on this matter first and foremost the role of the board of education is to serve as a as a collective body at the board table it is not nine individual voices operating in
silos but rather a unified body working towards the best outcomes for our students and staff this isn't just a principle it's part of the oath all board members take the board is a policymaking body and is tasked with enacting effective policies which is the core of good school board governance we
provide guidance for the operations of schools and ensure compliance with state and federal law we understand that no single process will satisfy everyone's personal preferences and that change especially when it comes to long-standing practices can feel frustrating the reality is that leading
a district means balancing many perspectives and while not everyone will agree on the nuances what we can all agree on is the board's responsibility to keep the focus where it belongs on our students and staff and we would encourage the public to support us in doing the same discussions and decisions
do not happen in a vacuum between board meetings the board engages in committee meetings email correspondents and collaborative discussions to th thoroughly debate refine and challenge ideas every board member is actively involved in this process ensuring that
by the time the board votes in public they are informed prepared and ready to take action to that end the board has been advised by legal to refrain from board comments on any matters that do not pertain to action items on the agenda board members are free to speak
ask questions and engage in dialogue on all items listed on the published agenda this is in direct alignment with the New Jersey School Board Association and the mandated training that each member is required to take this keeps the board focused on serving the most important constituents our students first and
foremost moreover during the public comment section of the agenda the public has the right to address the board on agenda matters or issues that impact our district the public comment section is reversed reserved for the public to address the board members who were elected to serve our district so we can
hear from our constituents it is not a time for board members to leave the deis and address fellow board members and circumvent the board of education's collective decision to remove board member comments from our agenda board members have ample opportunities to speak on agenda matters and the public
comment portion of our meeting is reserved exclusively for hearing from the public we serve we appreciate the passion and investment of our community and we encourage board members and the public to focus on things like curriculum extracurricular activities and other ideas that will help set our
kids up for success we thank you for your co cooperation i will also add just as another aside we seek legal counsel on many things um fairly frequently and one of the items that came up was the legal ad hoc committee so I just want to
assure the community that we did seek legal counsel on whether or not it was a conflict of interest for Mrs peterson to sit on the legal ad hoc committee we received a resounding no it is not a conflict of interest in fact I would say that having Mrs peterson who is a lawyer
herself in those meetings was common sense and added great insight and value so I thank you Rebecca for your tremendous value ad and we can also assure you that we try and cross every tea and dot every eye as much as possible thank you with that I'll pass it over to uh Jessica for the
superintendence report thank you Lisa good evening everyone happy start of spring i love this time of year here at Central we start to see many students outside again after school for athletics and it really makes the campus feel alive again after cold winter although
today was cold and rainy so I might be completing my statement but this month has been very busy as you all know with your approval last Monday we successfully submitted our preliminary budget to the county last week we have also been reviewing candidates for our
legal services contract i am pleased to inform you that our legal services RFP committee has selected a firm at Praisei McDermott Mastro and Murphy for general counsel on for action tonight i'm also pleased to tell you that this decision
was unanimous among the committee our committee reviewed all the applications and rated them according to criteria outlined in the RFP the full details are also available in the document that is attached to the action item on this agenda thank you to Mrs spitzer and our
BOE members on the committee for the time and attention spent on this search process also on for action tonight is our calendar um approval revising this school year's calendar as we have been discussing we were able to move up the end of the school year with graduation
being moved to June 19th due to the two unused emergency days i want to give you two other brief updates as I noted in February we are working with our partners at the Flemington Raritin School District to explore a new transportation arrangement similar to
the shared services agreements we already have in place with other sending districts in order to continue our long-standing cooperation to provide safe efficient and cost-effective transportation a shared services proposal was provided to Flemington Raritin for review but unfortunately I
do not have an update for you tonight as we are still awaiting a response from them mrs spin Mrs spitzer excuse me mentioned during her budget presentation last week but we have moved forward with creating our 2025 2026 bus routes as it was necessary for the development of our
budget and we have left options open to keep as many routes tiered with our sending districts as possible for the most cost savings we hope to hear back soon from Flemington Raritin so that we can finalize all routes go out to bid if necessary and coordinate with our contractors i will continue to keep you
all posted and as we approach the time of year where we take action on staffing for next year I want to let you know that we have recently conducted a review of our human resources operations to ensure we're maintaining an efficient legally sound and coste effective administrative
structure as part of our ongoing efforts we are exploring the best ways to strengthen human resources oversight while being mindful of budget considerations and legal compliance needs we will discuss this in further detail over the next few weeks last month Lisa spoke about the
incompatibility between President Trump's executive orders and the laws and mandates in place in New Jersey i wanted to follow up again on this to let you know we are continuing to await more guidance on this thus far our guidance has been to continue what we are doing
with this potential confusion I think it's so important that we lean into our mission which Leslie just read hunter and Central is an innovative educational community dedicated to the intellectual social and emotional safety and growth of all students while fostering
curiosity and promoting wellness we aspire to create powerful learning experiences establish strong partnerships and serve as contributing members of society i wholeheartedly believe in our mission here at Central and I know that each of you do as well what is critical for you to know is that
we have not lost sight of our mission and our goals here within the district i have the honor of witnessing this every day but I know you do not this is one of the reasons that I look forward to our monthly meetings i see this as an opportunity for our students and staff
to showcase some of their impactful work to you and to our community i feel humbled that we have so much good work that it is difficult to determine what to bring to the board meeting each month i hope we can continue to keep the focus on our students our children this is why
we are all here and I want to be sure each decision we make has them at the forefront i want us also to remember that we are serving in leadership roles and as such we are serving as models for our students whether you realize this or not our children are watching us not
only the decisions we make but how we make them how we interact how we discuss them how we listen value and respect one another's perspectives i've said this before but I believe it's worth saying again i value diverse perspectives this is how we accomplish our mission to
reach and serve every student and also how we bring forth innovation so I am putting forth a charge to reaffirm our promise to our students their education and their well well-being are at the center of our decisions so with that I think it is a perfect time to highlight
a few student accolades and achievements we recognize our second round of student and staff allstars on March 4th these individuals were recognized by a student teacher or other staff member for doing great things at Hunter Central and going above and
beyond our unified basketball team won the group A state championship excuse me championship on March 16th at Ruckers Arena for a second year in a row congratulations to all the players and coaches on a great season hunter and County College Fair
was held at Central on March 18th last week with representatives attending from over 120 colleges universities and the military central hosted a speech and debate tournament as well as an indoor color guard competition this month additionally five speech and debate
students participated in the New Jersey District tournament this past Friday and Saturday subash Derba was selected to compete on the world schools debate team that will represent New Jersey at the National Speech and Debate Association's national tournament in Iowa subash was
also honored as the National Speech and Debate Association Student of the Year for the New Jersey District our robotics team held a stemposium to thank their sponsors mentors parents and other distinguished guests they provided a tour of their labs as well as a robot
demonstration and thank you to Lisa and Leslie for attending i'm sporting my DAC shirt tonight to support our robotics team the music department held a string ensemble concert on March 20th with a band concert coming up March 27th at 7
pm next week we have our second annual career and service learning fair for students to explore careers and volunteer and part-time work opportunities and with all that I want to make sure we thank our custodial and maintenance staff for helping out with all these afterchool and evening events
so I'm now going to ask Dr laura Arodondo and her team to come up to present information about the opportunities within our world languages department and we will move so that we can see the presentation thank you testing okay hello board members my name
is Laura Arodondo i'm the supervisor of world languages and multilingual learner programs i'm also a resident of Raritin Township and I'm very excited to be here tonight this is my favorite thing to celebrate all year we have some young people here who have achieved a great
award and I'm so proud to bring them here um let me just go on so um as Mrs kangalloi Hay said in this confusing time I think it's very important that we always go back to our
mission and here at Hunan Central we truly believe that the study of world languages and cultures is essential for our students success not only will they be representing a diverse community but they're going to have to compete in a diverse community
that's increasingly more diverse and global here at Hunton Central we love to recognize the knowledge that our students have whether they've learned that in our classrooms or whether it's home knowledge that they have that they've learned from their
families in New Jersey uh New Jersey uh starting in the year 2015-16 is participating in the seal of biiteracy we have the New Jersey seal of biiteracy and I'm so proud that at Hunton Central our district has been a
leader in the county and in the state in the number of students who have earned this recognition our board has supported us in the past all students enrolled in upper level world languages classes including
ESL take a uh proficiency test in the language that they are studying students who are not enrolled in a world language are invited to complete a survey and take a questionnaire and sign up and take a test of their choice if they wish to demonstrate proficiency in a language
other than English so congratulations to all the students who are here today uh we have a sampling of the 109 students this year and if you notice that's a double asterisk because the number keeps growing we anticipate
we have 15 students seeking uh graduation through an alternate pathway and we have a couple of other students who completed makeups i also this is probably a good time to say that I know that some of the students were delayed by traffic and coming back from a field
trip so we are going to recognize students i would also like to recognize a sampling of my wonderful department staff and just uh please keep in mind that these students have benefited from many teachers and these are just a few
teachers that are here tonight i'll talk more about this in a moment but if if you noticed our highlight came in 2021 when we nearly had a third of our graduates earned the New Jersey seal of biiteracy it's been a real challenge
since then and we know what happened at the end of 2020 in that year that school year but we've steadily increased uh right now we expect to be on par with last year is that good enough no I don't think so so I think good enough would be
surpassing the number we had in 2021 and I think despite declining enrollment overall we are on our way to that number so I'd like to introduce to you some of the teachers who are representing the department tonight if
you could just stand as I say your name we have Maria Amaram teacher of French and Spanish evelyn Diaz teacher of Spanish deb Frank teacher of ESL heather McBride teacher of
Spanish mirha Paula teacher of Spanish and Scott Saxs teacher of Spanish and I'd like to call up Mrs paula Mrs amarim and Mrs mcbride and they are going to introduce our students who have been kind enough to join us tonight
um good evening everybody so I want to congratulate to all the student that are here tonight when we call your name we're going to ask you please to standing up uh we're going to start with uh Luke villain Spanish and Japanese
luke Luke Alan Bravo Perez Espani Mrs france Grace Card is Spanish Mrs amarine [Applause]
teacher Tanishi Desai Spanish Mr tatiana Hincklad is Spanish Mrs pa Mia Landy is Spanish Mrs amarine Elena Oidian is
Spanish mrs mcbride we will continue with Jason Hosen Spanish Mr saxs dala Skoolucas uh Spanish Mr saxs
jonathan Valencia Calderon Spanish Mrs paula alexander Vargas Garcia Spanish Mrs paula christopher Vales Spanish Mrs frank and finally Martina Vab Spanish
mrs paula just one further comment to uh present and and highlight uh something that we're very proud of in the world language departments when we have some students that can not only learn but excel and to receive the seal of bi literacy in more than one language so we'd like to give special recognition to
our seniors this year luke Ban who's in the back with Spanish and Japanese and down in the front one of my students personally Elena Oira with Spanish and Swahili so very proud of our students for two languages so quite an
honor do you want to introduce her so Tatiana Linka is going to share some of her experiences good evening everyone uh board members board members faculty and fellow students my name is Tatiana Helinka and
I'm a senior at Hunter and Central um and I'm going to share a little bit about how studying languages has shaped both my academic path and personal growth but from the very first moment I stepped into my Spanish to honors class freshman year I realized that learning a language was so much more than just
memorizing conjugations as cliche as it is to sound it opened up a new world of perspectives cultures and connections for me and at Central I found an incredible environment that really nurtured my passion for languages i challenged myself moving from Spanish
honors 2 to now taking AP Spanish lit and taking Spanish over the summer through the department to keep up my momentum but many asked why I did this it's because language isn't something you just study it's something you live and through Senor Sax's travel trips I spoke Spanish in the streets of
Barcelona Zerugosa and Bilbao navigating unfamiliar cities um and realizing that communication is just more than words it's about understanding it's about stepping into someone else's world even for a moment and seeing things through their perspective but this realization
extended beyond my travels and at Central I found that same sense of connection through the Red Devil Ambassador program mentoring ESL and foreign exchange students as they adjusted to a new school and a new life but just as I once struggled to communicate in a foreign place I was now
helping others find their own voice but with the support of Central's world language department I found excitement and motivation to keep pushing myself further exploring also other languages like French and Italian on my own but earning the seal of biiteracy means more than just an academic achievement and
academic accolade it represents the power of languages to amplify voices and foster understanding among people so as I look forward to a career in international uh relations and law I know that Spanish and my love for linguist linguistics and language will
remain integral to my journey so I want to thank you 100 central for giving me the tools to make the world feel a little smaller and more connected each and every day thank you [Music] to add to that Tatiana is really patient
teaching me Czech as well so she's she doesn't she also speaks a third language in Slovak so um our world language program starts very young at the at the elementary schools um middle school um some of the schools have Spanish um as early on um and then middle school
through 12th Spanish French and Chinese is offered our our lang our Latin and German teachers head to the uh middle schools sometime throughout the year to be able to kind of share the program so if they're interested in learning Chinese interested in learning Latin they have the chance and the ability to
be able to be introduced to that come 9th grade in 9th grade through 12th grade in addition to the three above in Chinese French and Spanish we also offer German and Latin as well in each of our programs we have two tracks we have the college prep and the honors AP track and
then a couple of other additional special programs that we have we have stairs which is our special a special education course for for students usually in 9th and 10th grade and then lastly is our heritage Spanish students which we have two levels of that course as well so thank you very
much oh yeah sorry I did have one more thing i apologize um so the while while the world language requirement is two years in school um we like to really encourage the students not even stop at three uh really go all four so it's it's really neat to be able to see the culminating and be able to see where
they're able to go by the end of whatever language that is that they're taking so thank you so we've had various um areas of focus in the past years um which you can see um this last year um it was really teacherdriven the focus on artificial
intelligence i'm very um honored to work with this department and I would say that the teachers have been a leader leaders in the district in terms of integrating AI into their classroom instruction ai really has a great special use in the world language
classroom because students can get really quick accurate feedback on the language that they've produced and I have two teachers um Mrs amaran and Mrs diaz are going to share with you a little bit about AI in the world
language classroom okay in our world language program we are using AI tools to make language learners to be um uh efficient and to be engaging and to personalize um their
ideas and their speaking in the classroom um we are using at this point uh brisk we are using um a snorkel we are using um school AI so students can practice their speaking and their
writing in the target language um and these tools give instant feedback so students can you know improve in their pronunciation grammar and improve their skills um tremendously so it's like one
of the things that we are doing in our classrooms okay okay so let's dance all right with AI we're preparing students to confidently use the language in a techdriven world so Brisk uh school
AI and chatbox tools are AI powered platforms and applications that I have been using in my classrooms and they really enhance a lot of the student learning is very personalized i'm one person but the chat box can actually
identify the needs of every student i've had students tell me I really like the automatic feedback senoras it gives me instant feedback of what I'm doing wrong so it's definitely a good platform to use um and it it gives interactive
engagement um in the context of world language education Brisk is a platform that focuses to adaptive learning which really helps for differentiated learning meaning that a student that is kind of
struggling with vocabulary the AI could automatically adapt itself to the needs of that student and to the needs of a higher level student within the same classroom which I normally do but it takes me a long time but AI can do it in
a blink of an eye as I supervise right uh so school a AI can provide tools for curriculum integration and progress tracking i love the idea i started to implement this where students are tracking their own growth in the
language um through through AI uh chat box enable conversational practice simulating real life language exchanges these platforms collectively support teaching and learning by using advanced
AI to create dynamic interactive and student centered educational experiences thank [Music] you so where are we going well our enrollment is um we have overall
declining enrollment uh numbers uh Mr hall assured me Dr hall assured me today that we're going to be increasing um and if you notice we many of our recipients here tonight um studied Spanish we don't have representatives this year from
Latin German or Chinese that's not usual but we that we do have those are smaller language programs so we want to continue to increase the interest in pursuing world language study um right now uh we have a lot of students choosing to study
over the summer tatiana mentioned that she did that that's why she's in the AP Spanish literature this year and another challenge is we want to meet our seal of biiteracy achievement levels of 2021 when nearly a third of our students
graduated with this distinction the seal of biiteracy by the way just so you know students need to attain an intermediate proficiency level something that is definitely attainable for students um the New Jersey student learning standards um stipulate that students
should have a novice high uh proficiency level we require an additional year of world language study so achieving the intermediate level is something that should be attainable for all students so in the future we want to continue
rethinking our outreach to the sending districts and to underclassmen um communicating with students and families about all of our language programs and the importance of language study and I also want to continue supporting teachers in integrating AI
feedback to enhance student performance which has been really um a very organic and wonderful movement to watch so thank you very much thank you guys very proud of you we're all proud of you woo can I ask you to
stand up nice yeah that's a good one let me get my camera smile at me [Applause] thank you very much everyone i can't even just say Dr arerodondo our teachers you're amazing thank you so much and
thank you to these amazing students we're so proud of you next we have another honoring that I'd like to do um this is about our national merit finalist so Mr brandt may I ask you to come up along with Alex
Zatuchnney alex I saw you here you are so Alex a senior at Hunter Central and Emma Lentini who could not be here tonight were recently recognized as National Merit Scholar finalists i'll let Alex make his way up
right there face you don't have to face that so well deserved well deserved okay so the mission I'll read this as they take their photo the mission of National Merit Scholarship Corporation is to recognize and honor the
academically talented students of the United States nmsc accomplishes its mission by conducting nationwide academic scholarship programs the enduring goals of the scholarship programs are to promote a wider and deeper respect for learning in general
and for exceptionally talented individuals in particular to shine a spotlight on brilliant students and encourage the pursuit of academic excellence at all levels of education and to stimulate increased support from individuals and organizations that wish
to sponsor scholarships for outstanding scholastic talent to give you a sense of the accomplishments of Alex and Emma the NMSC analyzes over 1.5 million students each year with just 15 to 16,000 students being selected as finalists so
congratulation Alex and congratulations to Emma as [Applause] well okay I will now pass it over to our student representatives Brahmwin and Aaron for their report good evening everyone our names are Bron
Downey and Aaron Johnston and we are student representatives on this board of education tonight we will be giving a report about events and ideas directly from central students first we are happy to report that all performances of our school musical Hello Dolly went extremely well
the directors cast crew and orchestra all worked together to put on an amazing show for senior citizens students teachers and community members in addition the orchestra concert last Thursday which featured songs like Ray's theme from Star Wars and more classical music like box concierto and D minor
went very well as well for those who would like to hear more from our talented music students we encourage you to attend the spring band concert on Thursday March 27th and the jazz band concert on April 10th which will also feature middle school students from our ascending districts central's Thespian
Society will also be holding a lip sync battle on February or excuse me Friday April 4th that will showcase the performing and dancing skills of theater students both in and outside of the society spring sports have completed their try out weeks and had scrimmages
throughout the last week from March 20th to the 23rd the softball team was in Florida playing against new competition to prepare for this season the boys golf team is ranked ninth in the preseason poll and they are determined to make a strong run this season we are excited to have girls flag football here at Central for the second season with almost double
the amount of players from last year who went out for tryyous we're looking forward to the spring season and what our athletes have to offer to finish off this school year's athletics central students have also been taking advantage of a variety of opportunities that our college and career counselor has provided including a first
responders fair at the beginning of March a college fair on March 18th that hosted representatives from universities trade schools and the military to allow students to ask questions and better prepare for their future and we will also be holding a career and service
fair for students looking for employment and volunteering opportunities on April 2nd and so whether through speech and debate or colored guard competition a spring dance for equips able and achieved students the robotics team symposium and other theater and music
events Central students have been and will continue to contribute their various talents and ideas to make Central a better place dr hall Miss Moss Miss Mr brandt and Miss Angelie Haid held a meeting with some students who are interested in improving the club funding system we
brainstormed ideas to ensure that our clubs were equally funding funded while having access to transportation and other expenses needed for everybody's success we decided the best approach would be a Google form accessible during the summer for advisers to advisers to fill out this way administration can efficiently allocate the budget
thank you so much for listening to our report tonight and we are looking forward to continuing to share the passion students have for essential as we enter the spring season thank you Bronwin and Aaron and lastly for everybody you will see our hib and suspension report i had a report
on those hibs that were affirming last month and I'll have a report on additional hibs this evening during executive session so this concludes my report this evening and I'll pass it back to you Lisa thank you everybody all right thank you Jessica all right at this time we have our first residence
forum this would be for anyone interested in speaking uh to the board on agenda items only i just ask that you sign in and you state your name and your uh township hi my name is uh Ted Huff Raritton
Township let me um first thank the president of the board for clarifying matters with respect to how the legal council search went and so forth and that's actually what my question is about because um I'm still puzzled you know not having been privy to the
process uh so maybe I could ask a couple a couple questions i mean I mean if I were in front of the Ritan Township committee and they had put out uh RPF and they had chosen number two over number one there'd be people in the
audience asking them like why have you chosen the number two choice over the number one choice uh I read your um explanation for this that uh um the chosen firm has more experience has experience in complicated border
education matters and two that you're keeping um Yakab on to do uh legal services when it comes to uh labor negotiations uh I'm still not completely satisfied with those explanations um I
mean I assume that mean since Yakabe has been that firm has been your firm for the last several months clearly they were able to do the job um and B uh when you look at the scoring uh Yakabe scores higher a little bit i I have no idea
what to make of those numbers right i don't know what a distance of three and a half means on a scale of 0 to 100 but whatever um they scale they score higher on the technical aspect which I assume goes to the quality of the legal advice you'd expect to receive from a firm um
and additionally of course they've been doing the work uh and probably just as significantly for the first several months they were doing the work Yakabe was just getting up to speed on what the hell central needs and you know what what's the infrastructure here what are the startup costs in actually learning
all of that information about Hunter Central's legal situation uh so basically you're paying the new firm to do the same work all over again um and of as you know this is taxpayers money um it's like like an extra $35,000 that didn't need to be spent uh on on having
somebody else come along and do the same spade work that uh Yakabe had done i guess that's my only my only concern is how how two becomes one and uh the kind of the um and why for example Yakabe
couldn't do both the labor part of the negotiation concerns that the board has plus being general counsel thanks thank you is there anyone else that's interested in speaking at this time good evening scott Cohen Raron
Township uh my first comments this evening are in regard to the agenda item for the board's president's um commentaries about the approach for board comments um with all due respect for the process you've going gone
through um I made my points clear at the February 24th board of ed meeting uh so I'm not going to go over those again they're on record and on tape um and I sent a follow-up email in correspondence
to board president Sant Santangelo and thank you Miss Santangelo for your quick response to that email i appreciate that um Central does not settle for mediocrity it never has and I expect it never
will last year we were ranked as you know among the best public schools in the state of New Jersey our staff and our students make this so with regard to
that um sorry about that um Central has been a leader in more fronts than I can speak to tonight we heard a lot about the things that are happening across the seal of biiteracy comments from our superintendent Miss Jessica Kangelo Zahade and all the
amazing things it'd be endless to talk about all the things that our students have accomplished given the confines of this school central we've heard presentations in the past about how we're leading in AI how we're leading
with our MTSS work how Central has had an incredible expansion of dual enrollment programs our Central Robotics team going off to world champions yet again our um our all of our sports programs and taking state championships
across the board it the list is endless um so in just a few short months I've observed that the board members have been silenced by eliminating the board comment section for the board of ed um and what we're witnessing is sort of a
metamorphosis of a board that has had a very open and public discourse and discussion in front of the public what I and the public have been witnessing over the last three months is a reduction in the ability of the board
of ed members to openly deliberate with each other allowing the key stakeholders who elected each of you to the board parents guardians included the community at large and also our students and staff to hear the thoughts of where the
board's head board members heads are what I and the public have been witnessing over the last three months is having questions raised by board of ed members go unanswered and redirected to committees shutting out the public from hearing the responses and likely
silencing board members from asking questions in the future as we go forward knowing they're going to be told to go through committee what I and the public have been witnessing in the last three months is a shift in behaviors and a significant divergence from the board i
have witnessed change hands many many times over the last 15 years of attending these board of ed meetings that includes a change of numerous board presidents board members themselves leadership members and board attorneys
it is amazing to me that policy 0164 which specifically listed the items for the board agenda which included board comments didn't just exist for the 15 years that I have been attending these meetings if you look at the original policy it was approved in
February of 1998 so let's do the math i'll save you the trouble that's 27 years more than a quarter of a century that that has been something this board has taken pride has
had no issue with through attorneys through board presidents through leadership change what I and the public have been witnessing over the past three months is board of ed members that are brand new to the board with no former board of ed experience being assigned to
key committees by the BOE president and in some instances giving those individuals the chair role of those committees while those that are more seasoned and experienced are being left behind and not allowing their legacy knowledge to be brought into the
conversations when we talk about a focus of students it is their knowledge that helps lead the charter of the incredible legacy of this school what I have always appreciated about our board was their transparency
something each and every one of you ran on when you ran for office you got elected on transparency integrity accountability time is up i'm sorry okay thank you very much for your information would anybody like to yield their time to me
i have two people yielding time what I and the public have been witnessing is that our students watching are seeing a transformation of a board that had always leaned into the side of openness and dialogue to a board that is not interested in having the public
deemed to be stakeholders this is deeply distressing it is baffling to me beyond words that the majority of this board does not see any value in having this agenda item the NJBSA the attorneys have been here for
the last 27 years no commentary or concern about having that on the agenda at the March 17th board of ed meeting there was a discussion opened up around a motion to discuss this very topic
comments such as it may add more time people are using it incorrectly or abusing it all things that allude to silencing commentary not looking for ways to be innovative in how we can move forward with
that it is not clear to the public how the board would decide when and if board comments would be allowed if it's only going to be partial or not now we're hearing tonight it's not going to happen so I conclude with the following
commentary the approach that's been underway for the fast for the past three months at this board of ed meetings is neither aspirational nor is it representative representative of the exceptionalism that central has been known for thank
you thank you Mr cohen point of information can we make sure that we get the name and address of the individual who yielded their time also on the agenda just for the record please yes okay do we know who that is can you
state your name please thank you that's okay all right anyone Anyone else for comments all right with that we will close the first public session and uh we will move on to organiz organizational
items so with that I would like to move items one and two the revision of the school calendar which uh Jessica already addressed and also the HIP report so can I get a second on that motion second thank you can I get a roll call mrs spitzer
mrs dugen yes mrs gray yes dr halpern yes mrs kellogg yes miss Laccasta yes mrs peterson Mrs rothell yes and Mrs santangelo yes oh yes motion carries all right with that we will move into our
committee reports i will reiterate that I went into great detail on the committee process last month and um I will just recap that when we do our committees we send out an agenda we give everybody the opportunity to provide
feedback questions comments etc we publish the minutes we make sure it's incorporated into our process so everyone gets to comment on that whether they're in the committee or not so with that I will um ask Leslie to report out
on student life and programs thank you and I believe I'm actually going to do it because Leslie wasn't there that's right thank you very much Sue yep all right so student life and program met on March 18th and um I was in attendance becky Peterson Lisa Santangelo Ed Brandt
Jessica Candalosi Hay Matt Hall and Mary Pat public cover okay so we um we had three agenda um action items that we talked about the first is um welcoming two foreign exchange students from
Switzerland and North Macedonia which is pretty cool we talked about an overnight trip for the robotics team and this is um it's a proactive approval they'll find out on April 7th if they actually qualify for
this trip but um the trip is uh to Houston as Jessica mentioned she has her Houston shirt on tonight supporting them it's on April 16th it's about 16 students five chaperones and um the cost is about 3,000 per student which will be paid by the students families and
fundraising and then finally we're we talked about an overnight trip for the youth and government this is on April 20 25th to 27th it's about $550 per student 28 students three chaperones attending and um this is also going to be paid by the
students families and fundraising so with that I'd like to move student life and program items one through three any comments seeing none roll call please
mrs gray yes dr halpern yes mrs kellogg yes miss Lacosta yes mrs peterson yes mrs rothell yes mrs dugen yes and Mrs santangelo yes oh yes motion carries thank you all right with
that we'll move on to Operations and Transportation Committee with Jessica's readout uh thank you we have a lot so bear with me um the committee meeting met on Thursday March 13th uh in that meeting was Sandra Gong Lisa Santangelo Jessica
Kangelo Hay Heather Spitzer and myself um for action items number one through three removing standard financial operations which include financial reports invoices and transfers for approval item number four requests the approval to apply for and accept accept
the New Jersey STEM Strategic Advisory Board Innovation Fund Grant which if accepted this grant could potentially award the robotics team with $20,000 item number five is being moved for the approval to allow Hunter and Central to act as the shelter and mass
care facility for the Readington Township School Board items six and seven seek to approve the purchase of Chromebooks under the current budget as well as the purchase of classroom computers also under the current budget item eight seeks to
authorize the procurement of Normandy Studios um to procure Normandy Studios a concession for school photography um note that concession and not contract is being used because the school will receive no revenue number eight seeks approval to award a
legal services contract to approve McDermott Mastro Murphy for the period of April 1 2025 to December 31 2025 that Jessica Kangalloi Hay has already spoken about number 10 and 11 seeks to approve
donations from Where the Buffalo Rome in connection with the motion picture that was rehearsed photographed filmed and recorded at Central as well as a donation from Robert Novik in support of the school trip to the Holocaust Memorial Memorial Museum uh we'd like to thank both of these organizations and
gentlemen for their support uh number 12 and 13 seek to approve the renewal of the joint transportation agreements with Delbert Township School and East Amwell for the 2526 school year finally items 14 and 15 seek to approve the architectural services for five capital
projects and execute a contract for behavioral con consultation service in support of a student in our ABS program i'd like to move items 1 through 15 can I get a second second any comments
all right um sorry I just had one question um in response to Mr hoff's comment i believe that the um when we discussed the budget uh last week there was an item on the budget that we were increasing our legal services by $35,000
to $110,000 is that inclusive of the cost to switch attorneys um any you know ramp up speed or would that be additional to to that budget
so I don't think there is any ramp up speed um with regard to board counsel so Mr gobi was already on our roster so he was already working with us and familiar with our issues um so that I believe is
because of the previous Right yeah it's just an anticipated right increase so I'm sorry can you repeat that i didn't understand the So Heather um increase the budget for anticipation of I guess the trends that
have been going on right with the budget which we required more money for um we're not anticipating any ramp up charges for the board council thank you okay any other
comments okay roll call please dr halpern yes Mrs kellogg yes Miss Lacosta yes Mrs peterson yes Mrs rothell yes Mrs
dugen yes Miss Gray uh yes except for abstain on number two invoices check number 81849 thank you and Mrs santangelo yes all yes motion carries thank you all right i will read out the personnel committee
report we met on March 13th in attendance were Jessica Kangalloce Hay Heather Spitzer Maryanne Stokes Claudia Gray D Kellogg and myself we discussed the following: Appointments of various positions substitutes coaches bus drivers as well as professional
development courses for the staff retirements leaves of absences as well as the 100 central bus driver association contract and all of these details are itemized on the agenda for your review with that I would like to move items 1 through 14 can I get a second
second thank you any comments i would just like to comment um to thank u Miss Lang and Miss Stanganger for their service um I believe Miss Lang is retiring after 20 years according to the agenda um you know T Lang is kind of uh
legendary for my kids so um we wish them all well and you know appreciate all that they brought to Central any other comments all right can I get a roll call
mrs kellogg yes miss Laccasta yes mrs peterson yes mrs rothell yes mrs dugen yes mrs gray yes dr halpern yes and Mrs santangelo yes oh yes motion carries thank you with that we'll move
on to the policy committee rebecca uh the policy committee met this week on Tuesday um in attendance were Sue Dugen myself uh Lisa Santangelo uh Jessica Canelo Hayade and Mary Patver i almost
got it um just a reminder for everyone setting policy is the primary is a primary responsibility of a school board in New Jersey and so our policy committee has uh two foundational principles regarding the policies for this year uh the administration has to be able to effectively implement our
policies and the manual has to be efficiently usable by parents students and administration our policy manual currently has 492 policies um our goal is to make policies easier to consume for everyone and so we do this with
three key action items um this year our committee will move beyond simply updating policies as required by changes to the law and instead assertively review every section of the manual to ensure that first all policies are still relevant and up-to-date second that they address the needs of the district and
third that they don't conflict with each other and so to that end we're excited to share this update with you um in the last two months we've completed a review of all 42 bylaws and have made 12 recommendations that would be to abolish four bylaws and to update eight bylaws this will reduce
the size of the bylaw section by roughly 10% and improve its usability by about 20% overall it's a really successful first step in our full manual review some suggestions are on the agenda tonight for first read stage and others on this second read stage um since our
last board meeting the committee did receive two questions from fellow board members regarding the first read items from last month um those have been brought to the committee the committee discussed them and we shared back out with those um board members um essentially if there was uh legal update
or anything else in that we discussed and uh shared our concerns with them um the committee did not receive any communication regarding any first read items for this evening our second reads for adoption this month include three bylaws um which we are updating
based on our review as well as eight others which have been marked as mandatory by our public policy vendor uh by our policy vendor strame our second reads for abolishment this month include two bylaws whose information has just been consolidated into other pos um policies for
readability so wrapping up the review of our bylaws we've now completed a review of just over 8% of our total policy manual we still have a long way to go but we thank everyone who helped us get this far and with that I will move items one
through four second any comments i move to amend bylaw 0174 by inserting the following sentence between paragraphs three and four the superintendent of schools and the board
president shall be responsible for ensuring that all board members have timely full and complete access to all materials related to district legal legal matters i second comments
so the intent of bylaw 0174 is to ensure that the district appropriately and efficiently uses legal services my experience in the past several weeks is that I've not had the information that I need to make to make informed decisions related to legal matters during
executive session last Monday there was a discussion of a legal matter i was not informed prior to the meeting what the topic was to be discussed during that 15minute meeting and I was not given any context on the matter or an understanding of the implications of the decisions that we were being asked to
make i was further concerned that at least four of the board members that were present in that session were new to the board and had never had never been briefed on that particular matter this was particularly frustrating for me because I had requested information referenced in the attorney's invoices
that are pro provided to the board regarding the matter four days prior to that meeting and I've still not been provided with that information again today we have an executive session scheduled to discuss a legal matter the board was informed of the topic yesterday graciously Mrs peterson went
online and provided the board documents available to her through ecourse but reviewing and understanding 346 pages in a day is not a reasonable expectation for me so I'm offering this amendment to ensure that the board has the time and
information needed to make informed decisions related to legal matters okay thank you any other comments um um I agree with your concerns about um getting access on legal um matters in fact in the past I think we really had
to fight to get some updates last year i think we had a legal update finally in May on all of our litigation and this has been a concern and I have discussed this uh with Miss Kangalosi Hay too in the past um regarding certainly these long long-term some of the long-term
litigation we have that spans um multiple superintendent and many many many many board members um so there is a concern about that and that has been discussed we have brought that um that it will be on the forefront of our
committee's work this year um however our our legal council didn't feel that the this particular policy was the place to put all of that because there's a lot of detail that's going to go into it as we know there's a lot of protections that need to happen um and it's also
going to require talking to our legal counsel to make sure that they are informing us ahead of time because a lot of times unfortunately we don't get the information about updates until the last minute so um we are working within the bounds we have right now but we are planning on putting that um into the
committee and I would appreciate any you know thoughts you have on how you'd like to see that implemented i would like if you could share them with the committee and uh we will certainly consider them as we go through making this process i just I I wanted I'm glad Rebecca
brought it up because I was thinking in my head is it even possible in some cases for us to have that information like you said we didn't know until the day before that we were meeting about this particular incident tonight so right to put it in a policy when we
can't guarantee we can do that is is that even possible yeah that's a good question so that's why we um had consulted with legal today just briefly and that's why it is not recommended to put it in this particular policy uh it
is recommended to discuss a new policy because there's a lot of nuances around special education cases federal cases administrative law cases i too share in that frustration that you know we very rarely get um a heads up that we're
going to be speaking on some of these cases and then we don't get the information sent to us to give us enough time to review so I do share with that frustration as well with you D as you know last year it was very difficult for me to get the information that I requested so again this is a great
opportunity for us to work with legal we're going to definitely need to consult with them and I think the right approach and the advice from legal today was that we put it in a new uh we put it in the committee we uh go through the deliberative process we get everyone's
feedback and we're definitely going to need to consult with legal on this because each case is different so there's certain things that are public information there's other things that aren't so we wouldn't know that so we definitely need to be guided by them so that is the recommendation from legal as
of today um but we've all experienced that frustration so we are definitely going to be expediting this as best we can going through the process so with that um then we will do a roll
call on the uh motion to amend mrs spitzer mrs lacosta no mrs peterson no mrs rothell no mrs dugen no miss Gray
no i just agree that I I agree also that we need to bring this to a new sounds better if it would be in a new policy that's more in detail dr halpern yes mrs kellogg yes and Mrs santangelo no
motion fails okay yeah so with that then we will go back to our original motion which is to move items one through four we already have a second on that right yeah okay so roll call please mrs
spitzer miss Lacosta yes mrs peterson yes mrs rothell yes mrs dugen yes miss Gray yes dr halpern yes mrs kellogg yes
and Mrs santangelo yes all yes motion carries all right thank you so we will move on to additional business so this included the legal RFP committee uh report out which we already covered um negotiations
committee was that regarding the bus drivers yes okay so we already covered that the parent engagement committee leis on um that was uh to discuss the climate survey with the parents i don't believe any board members were able to attend it this month
oh okay does anybody want to talk about that yeah I'd be happy to um thank you so um I I actually attended specifically because it was the parent engagement survey and I was very excited to hear the information um Mr brandt did a
wonderful job of uh I guess he he used AI to pull together um and elaborate on a lot of the the comments uh it was a really good turnout and we had several groups of parents that worked through the comments and suggestions um and
provided some some feedback to to Mr brandt so it was excellent and I I'd like to add um the three of us D and I and Sandra were there um I was at an earlier meeting of the parent engagement when it was still called school and whatever home school association where
we did a previous year with the a with AI and it's just was a really great group work these we broke up in groups we looked at the the different perspectives and how they interacted with each other we learned a lot about things that the school had that we
didn't know um it was it was really excellent oh good all right very good thank you for that um and then the following uh item is the student discipline committee so the committee met to discuss a student discipline issue um we will be talking about that
because of confidentiality in executive session and we will be taking action after that executive session [Music] um and then we have additional board business is there anything that anyone wants to raise as additional board
business that would be seen in our committees anything else okay no okay all right so with that we will move into the final residence forum so this is for general comments if anybody is interested coming up please state your name and your township and
please sign in you have five minutes i'm Ted Huff again from Maritan Township um I want to start a discussion about DEI um which I'm not going to call that from hence forward because it's too it's too politicized um let's call it
heterogeneity versus homogeneity um and I speak from the perspective of a retired professor of international relations for the last 25 years at the University of Michigan Ohio State University and the National University
of Singapore i have had lots of experience with the issue of diversity uh affirmative action and so forth and my own personal experience for what it's worth is that uh I've never seen
anything but positive outcomes come from the practice of increasing diversity among students and faculty um I've served on so many committees recruitment committees to recruit faculty uh to come to the university
join my departments and probably even more committees selecting graduate students for graduate study uh to work to get their PhDs um and it's just never been anything other than a positive experience and then even to even go more
granular in my classes themselves i used to teach a class on the psychology and politics of identity so you can expect that um a lot of kids came undergraduates and graduate students i mean and the graduate students of course come for the theory the undergrads come for the practice right when they're
coming to like learn about themselves or learn about others and um while Michigan was great uh Michigan is also extremely rich and white uh whereas Ohio State was fabulous because Ohio State has a much more broad-based student body they have
much more open admissions they have a much more diverse undergraduate population than Michigan did and those classes were just eye opening uh among the Ohio State students you'd have students sit there in class and talk about how they'd never met a Jewish
person before in their lives until they came to Ohio State because of course as you know Ohio is pretty rural pretty agricultural people live out in the countryside there wasn't much diversity out in the countryside but but a student
after student would express the kind of the wonderment of having a gay roommate or an African-American uh lab partner which they'd never never in their lives uh experienced um so I I
consider these kind of ane the anecdotal evidence that I can attest to as being you know kind of a sort of testimony but I'm a political scientist so for me of course data matter evidence matters empirical tests matter not my own
personal experience this is just anecdotes after all uh so let me recommend to you uh a book by Scott Page Ph a um former modeler statistical analysts at University of Michigan
called the diversity bonus how great teams pay off in the knowledge economy because what we really care about of course at Hunter Central is the success of our students right and it turns out if you read Scott
Pages's book which I hope you do uh it's only 300 pages or so add it to your reading list um he through a s he you know gleans from a whole bunch of case studies a lot of business school case studies whole
bunch of case studies um whole bunch of survey research experiments that he himself and others have run uh and his own formal models that he develops these rational choice models that diverse teams actually have greater success than
more homogeneous teams and now it's very very important because this is one of the problems with DEI is that in this in the in American contemporary discourse uh DEI is all about race it's all about gender but in fact
the groups that Scott Paige was looking at included age ideology class ethnicity religion right i mean diversity isn't just two things right i mean you look at this board you think that everyone here is
homageous that's ridiculous i'm sure if we drill down with each one of you probably turns out you're a lot more diverse as a body than you think right um so it's important that in these The empirical evidence that Scott presents
and I'll end with this since I see there's only 10 seconds the empirical evidence that Scott possesses is that you know if you wanna if you tell a group um I want you to I want you to develop a sales campaign uh for this product the more diverse the group the
more effective the sales campaign the more homogeneous the group less effective so it's a it's a bottom line issue the GI is not some emotional airy fairy um moral and ethical concern although it might be but it doesn't have to be it's also a rational choice to
maximize your returns thank you very much good evening uh Madame President uh did I hear you correctly stating that you publish the meeting minutes for committees and uh does that mean that you publish minutes to board members or
to the public or both uh if so uh if to the public where do where do you publish those minutes that we might be able to find them finally uh President Santangelo I found your conduct at the end of the preliminary budget meeting
um last week as reprehensible and disrespectful to your fellow board member Mrs gong you may not appreciate what board member Gong did but was she uh was was she not
within her right to step down from the deis and speak as a member of the public regardless of how you felt about her actions you were out of line causing uh you to do what was tanamount to me as
to throw a temper tantrum in which you attempted to adjourn the meeting on your own only to have to be told you must come back to properly adjourn the meeting president Santangelo we as the public parents
students teachers and staff deserve better behavior from you as our board president [Applause] lori Blfield Readington Township for those of you who don't know me I have
been a Readington Township resident for almost 32 years i have three children who have all graduated from Hunter Central so I was a parent here for 10 years i also spent nine years as a member of this board during which time I
was vice president for two years a member of almost every committee and chair of many committees so I have seen many many board meetings worked with many different board members and board presidents and have watched many
different board member interactions unfortunately what I have witnessed these past three months are in my opinion the workings of the absolute worst 10 central board I have ever seen there are six current board members who appear to all be working together as
one unit to implement some sort of personal agenda i have never seen this before this is not what you were elected to do you are here to represent your constituents with independent thoughts and ideas that is how you make decisions in the
best interest of students and taxpayers and ensure that the school is well-run the new majority on this board has made a mockery of what it means to be an elected official and abide by a code of ethics from the appointment of inexperienced leadership to the
designation of inexperienced committee chairs to the rejection of a highly qualified community leader in favor of a less qualified candidate to fill the vacant Ryarin and Township seat to the rescending of the board attorney's appointment to the creation of an ad hoc
legal RFP committee consisting of a combination of inexperienced and at least the appearance of conflicted board members to the stifling of public board member discussions the actions of this board's majority under your leadership Miss
Santangelo offend the sensibility of well-intentioned people and now as Mr cohen stated you were trying to silence the minority voice by removing board comments and I have to question the advice you were given because no
concerns were ever raised about this in the past and by the way it's a violation as I think you know of current policy 0164 and for the icing on the cake you are now trying to infringe on the rights of resident taxpayers to speak at a
public meeting again I disagree with the advice you were given board members do not give up their rights as private citizens to become schoolboard members miss Gong had every right to speak at the public forum last week and if you were going to continue to keep off board
comments then I hope she continues to speak at every public comment section the excuses given for not wanting board comments are just excuses to keep trying to silence anyone who doesn't agree with you that section of the agenda would generally not take more
than a few minutes anyone who is too busy to an to allow an extra few minutes even 10 minutes to hear what your fellow board members have to say has no business being on this board the public expects and deserves more out of our elected officials thank
[Applause] you scott Cohen Raron Township i already signed in so I'm not going to sign in again and I'll be rather brief um I was hoping to have an opportunity to state this at the last board of ed meeting last Monday night but unfortunately our
board president uh inappropriately closed out the meeting without a motion and shut down the public comment section so I would like to say I'm entitled to another five minutes because I never got my time last week but be be that as it may we've already heard enough about
that um the other part about the silencing piece we have had board members at prior board meetings ask questions in a public forum and the public is entitled to hear responses as a result it was a publicstated forum we have heard no responses to these
questions we can go through those questions i'd rather not take up the time they're on they're documented on the live stream videotape for example uh Miss Kellogg's question about the legal entities and uh the legal legal uh expenditures asking uh about whether or
not the board would have the right to expend funds if the board is sued before the next board meeting would a committee be set up what is the process i'd like to know that i think the public deserves to know that and it's going back to committee everything goes back to
committee the public hears nothing we see nothing we come to these meetings and all it is is down the line items check check check check check end a meeting um I think this is the most outrageous definition of transparency when you think about it and certainly
our students who are very in tune with parliamentary procedures and know their rights as citizens which we're trying to educate them against our school's mission would be really it's really re uh reprehensible what's been happening
thank you [Applause] uh good evening my name is Marco Tumalo from Raritan Township um I appreciate what everyone said but I don't necessarily want to come here and point fingers and be angry
more so um since I've been attending my district FRSD's meetings the township meetings um obviously I'm sure you guys know about the budget thing ul like one of the positions at risk were the class three officers in our district i see tonight we have one here i'm sure makes
everyone feel safe you guys feel safe um so I get I every meeting I go to it's they just kind of say go to that meeting go to that meeting go to that meeting um so I'm just kind of in this carousel right now but I guess I'm just
hoping there's like a clear message from the residents um public discourse i guess if I understand there's a lot of compliance with the state or these processes you guys have to live by but if somehow I guess from like a human standpoint or you know excuse me for
what how I'm saying this but just like a true effort to see what we can do um if I understand it correctly that this budget is sound no problem we're you know really under it at the K
through eight level so um kind of like Scott mentioned just looking to get more like access to understanding how all of this works and how we can kind of communicate
amongst each other to further empower each other to then I guess have more trust in you guys so five out of the six people aren't yelling at you i you know what I'm saying i don't know um so yeah that's more or less my thesis
for what I'm looking for [Applause] sandra Dbor Raritton Township once again I have to um point out Mrs blefeld's hypocrisy um and I just want to say that
actually this is not the worst board the worst boards were probably back in 2021 through 2023 and I don't think that the majority of the people in this audience want transparency what they liked was the public persecution especially when it
came to Mrs peterson and Mrs santangelo and the same with Mrs kellogg and Mrs blfeld i pointed out many times the hypocrisy that they tried to derail last year was back in March when it was point of order you're supposed to be
addressing the chair and you're supposed to be enforcing that at the meeting she is addressing the chair i am i'm looking at her to please not speak during public comment everyone deserves respect for the
speaker thank you sorry that's fine and actually you know what you can all go back and you can look at the past videos they're all online and you can see some of the horrific behavior of the board members and last I'd also like to just say congratulations to the girls
softball team i heard today that they actually were they were in Florida they went 4-1 and I think that's amazing because actually Mrs blufffeld in the audience Mrs gong who's not here tonight and at the time Miss O'Donnell voted no to send those girls to the to Florida so
I'm so glad that the majority won and that they had an amazing time and that this was great for these girls and I'm hoping that some of them get some college scholarships out of it thank you whoops so I just want to state that we have
time for two more comments yours and and that's it okay thank you um Suzanne Boage Ritton Township um I just wanted to say that I um really appreciated this board meeting today thought it was great with the kids i mean the the bilingual I
mean that's so um wonderful so I really appreciated that i also appreciated the dialogue that went on um because a lot of times me also I feel like I'm in the dark i want to know more about what's going on in the school and it was uh good to hear the dialogue about the
legal and um talking more about the policies you know what was your policy committee i mean that was all really good information um so I just thank you for that and I just wish you all well as you've just started over the three
months as working together as a board you know sometimes there's a little rough edges to work with so I'm really just um wish you all the best and um appreciate all of you and just um I just noted one thing that I don't really know
and I know that probably it can't be addressed it's just a budget item and I was just wondering as we were looking at um the Chromebook purchases and it seemed like 177,000 for Chromebook purchases i just
like wondered um just because it seems like our student population is pretty much the same it's not like it's growing and I I was wondering like do the students keep these Chromebooks when they graduate and we need to get new ones for all the children like I is that
part of the Okay so they get to keep them okay yeah i thought because I thought "Wow that's pretty high." So that's a nice um uh gift I guess for the children you know i thought that was interesting so
that was just looking at the numbers and then the 117 for the computer equipment i thought okay like you know again it just made me wonder because I know the price of commu computers and I know there's software purchases and all that other kind of stuff that goes along with
it but and I probably will send a um email just for a little bit more inquiry because I know you cannot address that i understand so um but I just wanted to point that out because to me it just uh kind of stood out and um and I do understand with the board I mean I know
that you have to be um uh you have to be careful about what you share and I understand with your committees and your workings and everything that you know you have to um the word escapes me but I just appreciate that and um I just wish
you all the best as you continue to go through this um this rest of this year so thank you thank you all right the last speaker of the night hi everyone i just want to be clear that
I believe that our district does demand transparency and transparency is really just seeing what is happening without a filter without an agenda we just want to know mrs kellogg made a motion that she
is just informed transparently of what's going to be discussed at a meeting that is set by the board if she can't if she or other members of the board cannot have this information before the meeting maybe you should move the meeting but
the other part of that too is I've worked in law firms and the law firm does not drive the car unless they're pro bono which I really highly doubt they are so if you need information from the law firm they have parallegals they have secretaries they have overtime they
love overtime i loved overtime when I was there it's great they should have that information to you you tell them you're having a meeting we need this and they give it to you it's not rocket science it does take a degree in law but it doesn't take a lot of
this pullivar let's just say it's really just ridiculous and I actually found it offensive for someone else in our community to come up and say that we don't want transparency because we don't agree with you we want transparency so everyone can see where the chips lay and
make their decisions there that's what it is and I feel like sometimes I have a very definition of what different definition of what transparency is that means laying your chips out and people decide without a filter and I don't see
why that's so hard thank you thank you all right with that we will close the final public session um I will make a motion to convene into executive
session for action to be taken afterwards can I get a second second thank you roll call mrs dugen yes miss Gray yes dr halpern yes mrs kellogg yes miss Lacosta yes mrs
peterson yes mrs rothell yes and Mrs santangelo yes and I will just add that the executive session is approximately 90 minutes thank you my mic's on so can I get a motion and a second to
reconvene into open session second okay all those in favor let's just say I i thank you um okay so motion to move to approve the long-term suspension from school for the following
student until the date as indicated which would be May 13 2025 in accordance with the decision of the 10 central regional high school department of education student discipline adog committee and on recommendation of the
superintendent uh with that can I get a second yes and is there any comments okay seeing none can I get a roll call mrs rothal yes mrs dugen yes mrs gray
yes dr halpern yes mrs kellogg yes miss Lacosta yes mrs peterson yes and Mrs santangelo yes all yes motion carries all right thank you so um I would like to move to adjourn the meeting all those in favor do we get a second second
second yes i Thank you thank you