I'll call this River Edge Board of Education meeting to order can I have roll call please m brown here miss Crespo here M delandra here Mr
Frias Mr Cohen here Mr Sim and Mr Langley here uh can I get a motion to move in to close session second that was loud roll call please Miss
Brown here yes M creso yes M delandro yes Mr FZ Mr Cohen yes Mr Sim and Mr Langley yes all right we'll be back at 730 e
e e e e e e e e e e
e e e 7:34 I will reconvene this meeting let's do uh roll call number two please Miss Brown here miss Crespo here Mr delandro here Mr f here Mr Cohen here
Mr Sim here and Mr Langley here let's all rise for the flag salute I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and
justice for all uh Mrs Brown would you read the mission statement please the River Edge school district is a partnership of students parents staff and community members we are dedicated to providing a supportive environment in which all students can reach the maximum
academic potential while developing as responsible citizens who respect in respect individuality our goals will be achieved because curriculum and instruction are aligned with the New Jersey student learning standards all decisions reflect the academic social
emotional and physical needs of prek to sixth grade students cooperation and ongoing communication exist between the school district and the community school administrators and the Board of Education work together to assess and adjust procedures in response to new mandates and the changing needs of the
community thank you open public meetings notice pursuant to the open public meetings act notice of this meeting its daytime and place have been delivered to the post office of Municipal building the record and posted on the district website at least 48 hours prior to the time of this
meeting thank you at this time we'll open it up for public comment on agenda items only a reminder that comments will be limited to a duration of three minutes per speaker neat speaker speaker must begin by stepping up to the podium and stating for the record their name and address after which the timer will begin
you have any comments on agenda items only seeing as there are none we'll move on to the financial report is that next should we do that first yeah let's do that what's that
called a motion to modify the agenda agenda and do the student presentation awards first yeah can I get a motion to modify the agenda second roll call please Miss Brown yes Miss Crespo yes Mr alesandro yes Mr Fus
yes Mr Cohen yes Mr sim yes and Mr Langley yes all right Miss good evening I'm excited to be here tonight to announce the winners from the fourth and fifth grade classes who participated in the junior Women's Club
of uh the riverge tri Community spelling be this spelling be took place on Sunday Jan anuary 19th with 42 spellers from five elementary schools across Riveredge idell and New Milford we are incredibly
proud of all of the Riveredge spellers who took part in the spelling be standing in front of a crowd and spelling words takes both courage and determination congratulations to each student who represented their fourth or fifth grade class from Cherry Hill or
Roosevelt School I will begin with the class winners for Roosevelt School some of the WN winners were not able to join us tonight but I would like to acknowledge their achievement when I call your name please come up to receive your
certificate aah [Applause] gonan Audrey Kang [Applause] Ayan man Dumar Kira
Sur I'm not sure if these students are here uh Loa Gian Violet Kim Nolan Ogden [Applause] [Music]
what you want to do that was all of the Rosevelt now we we'll do it in Doos so we're GNA do a Roosevelt student all right sorry all
right all right nice thank you everybody we'll call you back in a second now I'd like to announce and congratulate the class winners for char Hill School leis [Applause]
Kang Jaden ma Vana [Applause] mantry Shuan paner
[Applause] aam [Applause] Raina Mari
[Applause] Yu Vivien [Applause] Yun matth Matthew [Applause] Zang and I'm not sure if these students
are here but I'd still like to congratulate them Noah Hugh sahy Manchu Grace [Music] Nam bring the Sher Hill students back up take a picture the Sherry Hill picture and
it'll bring everybody back up you want do one one more we'll do that when here okay all right everyone look that way over there good smile I 30
C all right and then why don't we bring the the ro ro all right everyone stay everyone stay there for one second I have one more special announcement I'd like to invite Shuan paner to come to the front
Shan um Shuan won first place out of the 42 spellers at the junior Women's Club Tri Community spelling day again that was out of three school districts Riveredge idell and New
Milford we have named Shuan our 2025 River Edge speller of the Year congratulations Shuan we are so proud of you and to celebrate this special achievement we 3D print Ed a special
trophy for you in our steam lab congratulations congratulations to all we look forward to participating in this local spelling be again next year in addition this summer we will also be registering as a school district to
participate in the scripts National Spelling be for the 2526 school year so I encourage all students to keep practicing your spelling and we'll see what happens next year maybe we'll have a national spelling be of the year with
winner okay I know everyone really probably wants to stay for the audit report but you don't need to so if you want we can take five minutes and you can gather unless you want to hear the audit report well look I mean I like audits
still prob but uh I'm covering one of their I was getting real excited yeah no that's fine I guess I guess it's it's not really called the audit it's the cfer correct is that the appropriate AER AER they had to
change oh boy okay oh it's in number five oh is this gonna be up on the screen or is there no okay got it okay on the districts it's on it's on State website okay
go I'm very faithful 42 years so tell good evening everyone Gary Higgins from pkf Conor Davies I think I've been your auditor 40 years so back to Janet brers if anybody remembers that name maybe nobody here
does but uh it's been a long been a long road um I'm here to present your audit for June 30th 24 it's not late just because it happens to be February the actual due date was January 15th and it was timely um but the way we've been
operating since Co and the fact that the state constantly provides pension and uh OPB information on the post deployment late we never can get the audits done quick anymore um I don't know who has anything with them or on their iPads but
the larger document I'll just touch on three pages that is the AER it was a caffer until three years ago and that acronym didn't work somewhere in the world kapper so they flipped comprehensive and annual and now it's
the AER and until somebody figures that's in salting will be with ACTA for a while um the only thing I'm going to touch on in the in the large report is the independent auditor report which is on pages 9 and 12 and really what you
need to know is that the financial statements as presented or in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America um so that's an unmodified opinion and it's basically the best opinion you can get as a governmental entity um and
basically you follow I know how to spell gasby all right and that stands for the government governmental Accounting Standards Board so I hope I pass the spelling be with gby um the more important items that are really laid out the thin little report is the order's management report this is
a special report that's prated just by New Jersey uh the act for is nationally renowned um I'll just cover uh something that has to be done every year and you basically perform most of it when you do this June resolution and direct your Surplus if you recall um you set a
certain amount aside you put some in the capital reserve um but going back to a bill a Senate bill was 1701 and it goes back a lot of years now basically limited your Surplus that you can hold as unassigned to 2% of your expenditures during covid it was rise to 4% because
nobody knew what we were going to need for contingency basis but now it's sunshin back to 2% so on page 11 in the AMR if you're following along uh we start with a number of 26,2
15640 uh that's the total expenditures on the C1 exhibit as we call it uh last year uh for some Rod grants you transferred in 1, 83120 from your capital reserve into the capital projects fund as your local
share uh so that's considered expenditure and it's added to that number from there up in the 26 million we have to what we call put an on behalf revenue and an expenditure in the numbers and the 5,287 and9 represents what the state
paid for your tpaf pension and social security so that number now comes out of the number and we get a base number of 22759 831 that's where we apply the 2% uh to um and then in addition to that
you'll see you have the 45517 you can add to that 498 396 and if you just flip to page 12 uh that number is detailed down the bottom and basically what the state law says you can add any state aid that you
received in excess of what the budget amount was so you budgeted 130,000 for Extraordinary Aid so the amount in excess 48975 51 you add on to the 2% and then you budgeted zero for
additional non-public Transportation Aid uh and that was 8,645 so those two numbers get added to the 2% so you can retain 953 593 the key thing to know is that that 498 396 you can appropriate anywhere in your budget
anytime during the subsequent year which happens to be this year so if you needed that tonight on the agenda okay that was a good segue okay good thank you um and you don't need commissioner approval or County Executive superintendent approval uh for those amounts all right because they've
been previously awarded so that's kind of like bonus points when you have that so the calculation says now we have to work towards that number uh your total fund balances at year end are 7,1 17,190 at year end you had certain purchase orders that had been issued but
the goods or services had not been received uh to the 297 482 so that money gets segregated um in last year's close out of June 30th 23 you set forth 500,000 as excess Surplus to use in the current
budget so that money is set aside and then you have other reserves that are on the page 13 that make up this 4,9 66115 and it's your capital reserve of
four bill of four million not four billion 4,449 691 uh the maintenance reserve of 331 478 and then unemployment which is really payroll deductions that have accumulated over the years that if you have insurance or unemployment claims
you can charge against that so you take that number out and now you get to a net number of a milon 453 593 you compare it up above and you end up with 500,000 but you directed all this in the June resolution already uh but this is the way it all falls out at the bottom
so now when you turn the page uh you have the excess surplus of 500,000 at June 30th 24 you will be including that in your upcoming 25 26 budget so we're like covering like three or four years here back and forth but um many
districts have a similar policy to yours that you're kind of like you know you know the number you want for the future budget for tax relief and then everything else is backed in and mostly pushed into the capital reserve uh that's what you've basically done again so you know the district's you know and
Good Financial Health from that standpoint uh one thing to keep in mind you know unlike the municipality um you don't have the ability to find Capital money they can pass a capital ordinance you know have a they have an introduction they have a public hearing and they pass it and they buy a fire truck you don't have that
ability um so having capital reserve funds is a good thing uh otherwise you're going to have to seek voter approval and you know how that goes you can't determine the outcome until it's over so that's where we're at does anybody have any questions on Surplus or
how we got to where we got all right and then the final page well not really the final page 14 uh summarizes all the various compliance areas and I'm pleased to report that we don't have any recommendations which means your finance
office and your SBA did a wonderful [Applause] job so one little other side report is the region report um they're required to have a separate little report um and I don't know who has that
open but probably the best place to go would be if you have it page 10 which is a statement of operations um and basically it shows you had re revenues of approximately 17 million and expenditures were
167 uh and change so the operating net income was approximately $ 240,000 and then your District like most districts generated in this case almost $50,000 of interest income last year which they'll probably be declining now uh so your net
position increased $289,500 balance um of a milion $5,600 um as it was disclosed in two places in here uh one being on page eight under the future under your Management's
discussion and Analysis um there's a disclosure regarding the action taken uh by the sac on May 22nd 24 appropriating the $560,000 uh for the ER program uh so keep in mind even though there's a
million dollars there you've already dedicated 560 of that and um you know whatever you don't spend obviously you'll go back uh but other than that there's no comments here if anybody's been around a few years obviously these records and everything uh had a very
positive uh increase from uh the things we found a few years back um so there's really nothing to report from a uh material weakness significant deficiencies or non-compliance in either the region or the district this year
great thank you so question about uh that uh um half milon dollar approved by the superintendent advisory committee what is that about can you El elaborate a little more so that was the money for the startup of the new school hopstone
academy so that money that was in Surplus in the region 5 account was voted and approved by the river board also to use as a startup of the school so that paid the rent and started the classrooms and the staff yeah thank
understood any other questions thank you very much all right well thanks again for allowing us to do your audit and hopefully we'll be here soon again so the year's almost over yeah
so take this off right you want to Y thank you favor I yeah all right everybody thanks again all right thank you all righty CS review
training uh yeah we should probably scoot over right we'll just yeah this way just do this you know what we're on this side I never know
where to stand yeah I'll hide back here Al righty go ahead we go so good evening for those of you who don't know me uh my name is Matt Lee I'm
the Bergen County Field Services representative for njsba um little bit of background on me I was a board member myself for 20 years and I've been in this job for about nine years now uh covering Bergen County uh here to talk to you tonight about the
superintendent evaluation process uh but the first thing I'd like to know is how many of you have used our tool before 1 two three okay all right um it just helps to
know what I can kind of take for granted and what I have to kind of spend some time on so um starting out of course uh the idea with the evaluation is of course this is your opportunity to uh fulfill your oversight oblig obligations in the
district and your appraisal obligation for the superintendent um but we like to talk about the fact that this is a an opportunity to facilitate uh professional growth and continuous Improvement within the district so that's the sort of lens through which we
want to view this process um the sort of foundation for why we do this is really embedded in statute and code in New Jersey starting on the left side of the slide we talk about the fact
that statute requires this to be done at least once a year that it needs to be in writing the board and the superintendent need to meet to discuss findings and that's an important piece because there are times when uh boards will allow or
at least try to allow the board officers or the Personnel committee to exercise this on their behalf it's really meant for the entire board to take part uh evaluation based on goals and objectives so that would be the goals the district goals that you set for the
year and other responsibilities and other criteria we'll talk about how that manifests itself in the tool in a bit um the code part of this um states that this needs to be done by July 1 that's important of course because if
you're working against that deadline you're going to want to plan for the stages that have to to happen leading up to that and that can take uh meeting planning and you know issuing rice notices and things like that so we'll talk about developing a schedule as we
go forward the bottom part there um on the right side the summary conference meeting needs to include a majority of the total board membership to be compliant with code here um quick note on uh conf
so if anybody has a relative employed in the district they are ineligible to take part in any part of this process um in addition to the statutory obligation um this is a a you know
significant component of the qac evaluation process as well um one of the five areas that qac monitors is called governance and that is the role that you as a board perform in the district and and part of the indicators for that is
what you see on the slide there number two a that you have a policy and a contract to annually EV evaluate the superintendent seven points are attached to that piece and the section B there
completes the evaluation by July 1 six points attached to that piece if you lose those 13 points on the governance piece um you're already well on your way to to losing the 20 points that might require some kind of uh uh remediation by the board so you do want to uh pay
attention to that aspect of it as well the evidence of your uh training which is a requirement in a is having completed governance one so if qack comes in is looking for that your governance one completion is evidenced
there the July one evidence that you complied with that piece of code is a dated and signed copy evaluation uh generally the ECS executive County Superintendent is going to look at the signature page and the
date for um the evidence on that piece and Andor the meeting minutes to show that you had that meeting with the superintendent um things that um you know sort of get into the detail about how the process
works um are starting with that third bullet point that the superintendent starts the process so in using our Tool uh the superintendent will log on to njsp.org go to the evaluation section and enter the goals and his or her self
assessment against those goals and once the superintendent fills out their part of this uh then the board is notified that it's time to do their section of it and that's an automatic process um the board president presid
and anybody who's not conflicted can track the progress of this on our website so you can see who has completed and when they completed and all non-conflicted members should take part in this process these are all the steps in the
process and it really started back when you set your goals for the coming year so that's step one down on the bottom left of the slide the next piece was the district goal updates so across the course of the year your superintendent is going to come back to you and talk to
you about some of the things that have been achieved against those goals and those progress reports are areas that the board should be taking note of perhaps taking their own notes so that they don't have to kind of scramble at the end uh when they're going to
complete the evaluation and um kind of revisit all of those issues number three is an evaluation pre-conference and this is very similar to what a an educator would experience uh through their principal or other supervisor it's really just a meeting
where you kind of level set the progress on the goals and some of the other pieces of evidence that'll be supplied in the process by the superintendent and just so everybody is sort of uh talking the same language if you will as the evaluation moves
forward step four is the superintendent completing the district goals self- ratings and providing in evidence for the standards we'll talk about standards in a bit um board members then on step five complete their own EV individual CSA
evaluation and after that is compiled the board meets to review the compilation which is everyone's individual contributions to the process those individual contributions are not the evaluation the evaluation is
what comes out of Step step number seven or excuse me step number six where you um decide on what majority opinion looks like for the evaluation step seven is a meeting with the superintendent to discuss that we'll talk more about that as we go forward
and the last piece of course by July 1 signing the annual and dating the annual performance report um some of the things that we do to help out in this process um we've opened up the evaluation tool already for
superintendent and some have logged in and started to add evidence to that I think it's uh helpful to have a lot of time prior to um having to meet with the board to build that evidence if you will in the tool
um the we have a sample evaluation calendar which is helpful it outlines all of the steps and helps you um plan it against your own meeting calendar so that you can make sure that everybody can uh take part in each stage and once
again uh allowing you to track on the website this is what the sample evaluation calendar looks like again I think individual board members are well serve to bump this up against their own meeting calendar there are times probably where you can accomplish this
in conjunction with your other meetings um so do take a look at that and figure out what's best for your board in terms of uh board member availability for this uh our Tool uh it's important to
note uh is built by njsba which is the association that represents school board members in the state but it was done so in partnership with njasa which is the association of school administrators the reason that's
important to note of course is that we did this in a coop operative fashion so that serve the needs of both our members and the members of the njasa so we're we're doing everything we can to make this a uh fair and um effective
evaluation tool for both sides the tool has two sections referenced them before the district goals section and then the leadership standard section and that is based on Professional Standards for educational
leaders um we'll talk about what those look like as we move forward um so with the three sections of the evaluation tool we have the beginning part which is the online tool where the superintendent puts in his uh
pieces and the board actually goes in and ranks uh or rates I should say the superintendent's performance against the goals and standards the next piece is a compilation report and that's where everyone's responses are aggregated it's
an anonymous document in other words you don't know who uh made whichever comments and that that becomes a single document that becomes the basis for your discussion when you meet without the superintendent to arrive at consensus opinion and the last piece is the annual
performance report template we'll talk a little bit more about that that is the final document uh it's a little bit different than the online piece though and we'll talk about why as we go forward um couple of things that's important uh at this point when we start to talk
about the online evaluation tool if you don't know your login to njsp.org uh I would suggest settling that now uh try to log in if you have to reset reset uh you don't want to be doing this on June 30
right um also uh I know Lan's been around for a long time you know the census very well uh the key piece in the census is that your board president is designated in the census because the board president has certain permissions in this process
that need to be um matched up against their standing on the census so uh those are two key parts to start with um okay last bullet point on this page is
important uh the superintendent essentially after entering his or her information will hit a complete button the complete button then starts a 48 hour period which is kind of like a whoops period right so uh transparent to
board members at that point the superintendent can go back in and correct anything maybe add some extra evidence whatever um that's a running clock by the way so if you do happen to go in there uh it doesn't stop the clock 48 hours
straight um and then at that point once the 48 Hours conclude each board member will get an email system generated that tells you it's time for you to go in and do your part of the evaluation going to stop real quick and ask any questions is this all making
sense so far awesome okay um so in compliance with statute uh the evaluation is based on the goals and objectives of the district conference needs to include progress of the
superintendent in achieving those goals um yeah okay enough said about that all right it's probably not um a mystery why the goals are important right they're
the way that the board has expressed its um desires for the district to the administration and of course that is only uh it's an obvious reason why we want to evaluate the superintendent against those
goals um and it's a way in that cycle that you see on the right side of the slide to uh again facilitate that continuous Improvement Dynamic that you're hoping for in the district this is what the goals
evaluation portion of the tool looks like uh there'll be a description of the goals supplied by the superintendent the superintendent does a self- rating which you see on the right side of that top graphic then the superintendent can make
comments and or enter links in that area where the board can link out to pieces of evidence that the superintendent wants to uh provide in demonstration or support of his his or her own rating and then on the evaluation
standard side um the superintendent will again um make a self-rating and also Supply some evidence to demonstrate Proficiency in those standards this is just kind of an illustration of what that might look like
um you can see that there's uh an area for a rating it's radio buttons like achieve satisfactory progress made or little or no progress made and then uh comments there um on the top from the superintendent and on the bottom from board members we we try to encourage boards to
set goals that are demonstrable through data and uh we like to recommend to boards that data be the basis of the performance review as well so that there's an objective way to judge progress in certain areas that are the
designated goals for the here um there's also uh a need in that case of course for boards and superintendents to be on the same page about what success in that goal area looks like so what are the metrics that
we all talked about when we set our goals and that we provided in the action plans for the goals the second portion as we talked about a little bit earlier is the stand standards portion uh you can see that there are six of them uh shown on the left side of
the slide they are again taken from the Professional Standards for educators and they are assessed against a rating scale that you see on the right side of the slide it's a little bit more complicated than that and that's what it really
looks like so if you look at this example standard one is Mission Vision and core values we do have the rating scale right at the top there but if you look at the right side of that portion of the chart next
to exemplary you'll see that there's some verbiage there that talks about what exemplary looks like so we've defined what that standard looks like and that changes for each one of the standards so exemplary means
something different in standard one over standard 4 so you should pay attention to the wording in the those areas um we also recommend some resources that can be considered for uh evidence in those areas there are is's an area for the
superintendent once again to provide links and then underneath each of the standards are a set of indicators those indicators are sort of the pieces of the puzzle if you will in that standard so what are the things that need to be demonstrated in order to
show Proficiency in that area there are uh like between four and seven indicators for each of the standards depending on the standard so you'll notice next to each of the indicators there's also a rating scale
and an opportunity for you to rate each one of those indicators separately but there's also at the very bottom an overall rating for that standard and that of course needs to make sense you can't give satisfactory
in all of the indicators and then put an exemplary at the bottom right should should make some sense and once again an area for board member comments at the bottom so that's the input side of this
process the next piece is the compilation side and this is where we bring everyone's individual contributions together and as you can see on the left side of this slide there are a number of links there and that is what the board
president's view of this process looks like so you can see down there where the red arrows are there's a compilation report one and a compilation report two one being the goals section two being the standard
section that will be um accessible to the board president once the board president lets me know as a field rep that you're done I don't really have a view into who's conflicted on the board if there's any so you really do have to
let me know that you're done um and then I open up a gate in the system to allow you to download that compilation the the last arrow on this page is the superintendent annual performance report which is a word template right so that's a downloadable
template for you to work in the reason we don't have that as part of our system is that is a confidential Personnel document right so we're not going to house that but you will have access to a template that you can use that will um
give you a onetoone correspondence on each of the sections so it's you know it's pretty easy to figure out how to put the right things in the right place and that becomes your final evaluation document and we'll talk about what the process looks like with
that um this is what the compilation report might look like so this is on the goal area uh sample goal there you can see that there's a number of comments that were provided under the district goal one member comments and then the last
part there um shows the rating scale you can see what the superintendent um assessed this goal at as achieved and you can see that six board members agreed with the superintendent in this case
you can see that another uh or two other board members um had a different assessment of it given that this is a majority document would we say that this is an achieved goal yep of course right um does that
mean that the other two board members who didn't agree with that their opinion isn't counted or heard no it doesn't but you can only reflect what the majority it of the board says here because the superintendent does not report to individual board members but to the
body this is what a standard compilation might look like as I talked about before we have in this case seven indicators in this area and as you can see there there's pretty much consensus down the proficient area for this um
superintendent and um again with a a consensus document you're looking at giving this superintendent a proficient rating there there will also be an area for board member comments on this
page okay so with the compilation report what we have of course is a bunch of different individual responses to the superintendent self assessment um that works as way into the njsba
template the board president or a design will type up the annual performance report which is a final document and at the annual summary conference um you're going to Rice the superintendent it's an executive session meeting superintendent meets with all the non-conflicted board
members to review the document um important to notice of course that this whole process is confidential you shouldn't be sharing any of this discussion with anybody out outside of your board um performance report represents
the majority opinion and the superintendent addresses the board and board addresses the CSA minority opinion can be expressed verbally at that final annual summary conference it does not get written into
the report though okay uh okay I think we're good there yes sir sure conflicted is when a board member has relatives living in the community correct no working in the
district in the district yes why why would that I'm just curious I don't have anyone here I'm just asking sure why would that why would that conflictos why wouldn't a board member be allowed if they have some right so um any employee in the
district is essentially an employee who's working for the superintendent okay so it if you look at the advisory opinions and some of the decisions that come out of the school ethics commission it's not just the superintendent's evaluation but it's any aspect of
personnel that would lead down to that employee so yeah to that there's quite a wide swath of things if you have a relative working in a district that you would have limitations on on your board service sure um okay so once again this
is the uh the final performance report uh it has spaces on there to reflect when you had the meeting to finally discuss that document um it has uh places for you to summarize the input
from the individual board members and to reflect the majority consensus rating um yep and then there there's a part for at the end for an overall summary evaluation which is an open-ended text box and area for Signature and dating by
the board president and the superintendent um once again as I talked about in the beginning really do sit down take a look at your calendar in a thoughtful way so that you make sure that you can get all of those meetings in there's at least two meetings of the board in executive session session one
with and one without the superintendent and potentially you're going to have a meeting for that pre-evaluation conference as well again to get on the same page about the evidence that's going to be submitted and progress to date um uh when
you as a board president get the um compilation document that's something that gets shared with the board prior to you having your summary conference so that everybody can come there ready to have a an effective discussion about it um sometimes board presidents will come
to that first meeting with a summary um document draft that can then be tweaked if you will after you have that summary conference with or excuse me after you have the initial conference with the board um but that's you know the board's
Choice whether they want to handle it that way or not create a final document till after the board meets together um okay I think most of that stuff is good just want to focus on the last two pieces on this page uh one the all
non-conflicted board members must be present again as I mentioned before um sometimes it's thought of that that can just be board officers or board um Personnel committee or something of that nature uh it really should be the entire board so they all have voice in this
process and um that uh finally evaluation conference that you have with the superintendent is the opportunity for someone who may not agree with the consensus of the board to express why they thought you know the the rating
might have been different or um may have something to add to uh what the majority opinion was um again just a a opportunity for verbal discussion as opposed to writing into the
document that's kind of it couple last minute kind of things um we like to talk about this not a once a year event from the perspective of you should be having discussion about the progress on the goals all across the course of the Year
through the reports the superintendent is giving you um it doesn't really pay anybody to leave this all to just evaluation season it should be a consistent um topic of conversation throughout the course of the
year on the top on the right side there review performance over a full year um sometimes things go sort of uh astray toward the end of the year and you want to make sure as a
board that you are looking at the full breadth of the superintendent's performance as opposed to something that may not have gone so well in the last couple months before evaluation time develop a system to retain evidence um again that's something that's a
personal um preference as to how you do something like that some people make notes on their agenda and save them some will have their own file that they want to um add to Across the course of the year but it's really helpful to have something to refer to that is objective
and is recorded during the uh course of the year so that you don't have to go back and kind of strain your memory to to do a good job in the evaluation um okay any
questions Dr brunes anything from you no thank you very okay um yeah you uh any geez anybody on the board is welcome to uh reach out if yeah any other questions on it as well
process wise happy to help great thank you very much thank you thank you thanks very much thank you okay moving on to report superintendent report good evening everyone uh great to have the students out tonight uh good
showing only a couple of folks couldn't make it so we'll get them to certificates uh in the next two two or three days um I do have to uh give the student safety data system report for last
year uh the this is broken up into two reporting periods and then a total uh for the balance well for the entire school year um this is about incidents of violence incidents of
vandalism uh substance abuse weapons confirmed the HIV alleged hivs and then other incidents leading to removal so whenever we have this uh suspend a student out of school that's what that would be last year the Cherry Hill
School reported three alleged HIV incidents um and one incident of violence making the incident total for violence one and three hivs for the year the uh and the Roosevelt School had uh that was in reporting period one and the
Roosevelt school and Sherry Hill School in reporting period to had uh zero so the total for the year uh was Roosevelt one incident of um uh violence um and Cherry h house school three incidents of HIV alleged you already know that we've
had more hivs this year than we did last year uh that that total is already up we also have um more incidents leading to removal um and that uh is based partially on the fact that and I'll go over this again at the second
the hopstone academy is technically an extension an Annex of the Cherry Hill school so those data are um grouped into the Cherry Hill data for this year so uh when I give the report for uh the first half of the year it's going to be there's going to be more digits on there
than than there was last year um but I'll I'll cover that more uh when we um report that there is some discussion uh amongst us if we should have a separate um uh School number for hopstone um so that it doesn't scoot the Cherry Hill
data uh to get things running we set it up this way but perhaps in the in the near future we may want to change that and I'll go over more of those changes in a second any questions on last year's incidents last year's okay that concludes that section of the report not the entire superintendent report sorry
um uh the next Boe on here is the change of the Cherry still had us to Service uh pre to uh age 12 students again that has nothing to do with what's happening here at Cherry Hill school at this address um has everything to do with with the ability for hopstone Academy to uh begin
to accept um a a greater swath of uh students so uh we have um applied actually you're going to be um uh we're going to apply for that permission from the executive County Superintendent just as a an update the
hopstone academy program now has uh 10 students uh in the program and U the financial Break Even point for hopstone we believe is 11 and weisa beron as well on their way to exceeding that by by September so the hopstone academy should be um uh sustaining itself financially
by The End by the beginning of next school year and possibly even by the end of uh this school year and that goes to the $560,000 uh that was already discussed Mr that's that was the place for students that were home to go to
school correct so the more students we could bring in into hopestone the the better off they are especially if they're um at home right now we can get them into a school so uh there's lots of potential there and I applaud uh Lisa Berard Vision uh and and the region five
superintendent Council um and then ultimately you folks for approving those uh this plan it's uh it is making a difference for for many students like I'm over there about well I'm over there at least once a month and so was land for our meetings but it's turned out um uh to be a little bit more every so often uh and I have committed to to
getting there more often than than the once a month um okay uh comments on agenda items in administration uh fire emergency drills have been completed uh up until January you'll notice on the agenda the bus drills were completed in October and we
did approve those in October well probably November but um there were is very specific reporting requirements on that so uh I asked the principles to update that chart that you see on the agenda and we'll approve the the chart even though they were done
um in uh we've already approved these drills in a different chart this chart now has the required reporting information so we'll do that moving forward um they used an Antiquated chart that they used to use and it it no longer has the U the
ask uh calendar for uh Academic Year 2526 is on the agenda agenda there is something specific I want to address there are holiday observances that are not reflected on this calendar period um and I want to um recognize that uh the
NJ doe keeps a list of religious holidays permitting pupil absences from school there are 167 approved holidays on that on that chart so understand that it would we can't give a day off for every one of those 167 days we would never we would never be here right we
couldn't get through a school year so there is both in our uh policy in state code in our policy and in the student information system a mechanism so that when and I listed them here in the report you can read along when a parent
tells us that they are um observing one of these holidays uh it has to be in writing but if they write it it could be on a a you know a back of a stunk and donuts receipt on their way into to U dropping their student off in the morning if if it's in writing to the
principal today we are observing whichever one of the 167 holidays they choose to observe the principal can take that we do Mark the student as not being here cuz they're not physically here so that's only however in the sis it's a uh a religious observance and that
religious observance will not count up against any reported document whether it's the report card or any kind of transcript um if they if they take all 167 holidays and we get a note for each and every single one of them or at least a list of notes they can technically not
be here for 167 days and have zero absences so I just one um I want the community to know that because one of the first meetings I took here was uh a group of parents who wanted certain things recognized on uh on the calendar um and we do recognize uh the W New Year
in this case as a um a date on which it's a a recognized holiday and on those dates of that uh we're not supposed to give homework on those days that are circled on the calendar but keep in mind there's even though this three to dat circled on our calendar there's also
there's 165 other dates that can be observed uh and and officially um not counted as an absence so I don't know how well socialized that was in the letter that's going to go out by probably by Friday saying hey here's the
calendar for everyone I'm going to fix a letter to the a front page that and say and by the way this is a way that we can honor your um uh culture and however you want to go ahead and and observe that if it's on this list of 16 please feel free
to inform us formally uh either and I'll accept an email uh in writing that your child is not going to be in school that on that particular day for this reason specifically for this reason we will mark it as a religious holiday and they
that is an exempt uh um an exempt absence the sis already has this because of course Genesis is Statewide and they your uh riverge current policy already has this and of course State ww has this so um I just want to articulate that to
the community when the weather does go out on probably on Friday um this way folks know that this is a mechanism that they can use um and I think that that may uh help um some folks not feel guilty about taking a day off um for
their religious observance or their cultural observance um when they feel like their child perhaps should be in school it's it's it's okay um and it won't count towards the the 15 days of is what's considered chronically absent right so if there's three or four holidays that you need to take off uh
because your family wants to observe it go ahead and do so let us know and it won't count up towards chronically absent that helps us as a district so that we don't have chronically absent students but it also um helps people feel a little better about not sending their kids to school because they want to go ahead and and um observe a family
uh early this holiday so uh we welcome that um curricular uh curricul instruction items regular travel is on there Museum and National History is on there one of my favorite exam is very excited to see that we're bringing the sixth graders there um summer compete Academy approval
is on the agenda that's uh something that the the board is um approved in the past and um we go ahead and and uh grant that permission to that organization again um Finance items regular are pretty regular note the change in there
the April board meeting is is uh changed to May 7th in that section we we uh purposfully put it there not in administration because that is the um uh budget me uh preliminary budget meeting so um that's something for us to
uh consider audit acceptance uh thank youan of course and the entire board offers for the excellent work in securing a queen audit um you had the Auditors that's uh Quite a feat and we're happy to um accept a a nice um audit with no findings in Personnel
there's appointments of resignation leaves there uh were uh appointing a new coordinator of educational technology and two new hires as technology assistants uh all three of these billets reflect forward change for the district uh ASA Shaw and ashy Shaw are
uh here tonight they're running our Tech no relation um just friends just really good friends um so uh H happy to have both of you on board thank thank you for being here tonight technically tonight I think they're still on the um the other
the yeah the other uh berant Tech um uh payroll but they'll start here are you starting tomorrow March thir March 3rd Monday March well welcome aboard regardless um they've been working the district they've had uh um essentially a like an eight-month interview because
they've been working here as an extension of our contract so uh happy to um for the record we had a discussion with Berg Tech they're not upset over us hiring them they're they're okay there's no there's not a noncompete cost so I welcome okay um
okay I'm recommending the approval of a power professional job description the county office needs documents from us the last time this particular document was updated I was still in high school so we really need I don't want to send anything to the counting office that says 1993 on it any document that says
1993 on is not appropriate so we're approving this tonight and as we as we come across these things we'll do this over the summer we'll systemically go over the job descriptions and make sure that nothing else is left from 1993 I think the principal one was when we hired Grim show was like
1987 uh yeah that's not that's not something that was okay so we updated that as well um we do need to change uh classroom grade band servicing LOD populations that's this is IP driven um there's an expanding need so we're going to go ahead and um change those uh grade
band servicing it's uh those students are are already here we just need to Define what those uh classrooms um which grade bands those classrooms service region five just standard resolutions that support their operations in policy items Mr Langley uh
carefully assigned each committee a chunk of the policy guide and we'll we'll go ahead and go through that in our committee meetings um and the goal is to complete this work for the end of June stra s does take some time to digest all of that and then I we'll hopefully have a new policy manual by
August 2025 to approve for operations in the next academic year I did receive an closing items I did receive an inquiry about the Cherry Hill School gym 4 this was refinished in December and the cating is flaking away uh pretty rapidly there's entire swats
of the floor that now um has that initial coating uh that has flaked off and it's not there anymore the contractor was here this afternoon they'll be on site for 3 P.M Friday afternoon this Friday afternoon very responsive and again on sun Saturday to correct the problems um with a
completely different coding product there might be some kind of strange coding phobic thing going on between the surf the two surfaces so they're going to try something else uh the owner did note that in his 40 Years of doing this work he's never seen this type of erosion before it's very completely
aberant and there's no real way to predict it I guess we don't know if it was a bad batch of product or something would happen with the application in the environment unknown so they're just going to strip this down try something different um so that'll happen over the weekend and we should be up and running
it might smell a little bit but um the we can invent that over the course of uh Sunday strategic planning continues uh with our next final community meeting um on March 20th right here in the project room meeting notes and presentations including the summer results from the
community surveys is available we have this one click go to rivered schools.org it's right up in the One-Stop shopping right up in the upper right hand corner strategic planning that'll open up the page and I'm very uh I'm being as quick as I can to upload things as they uh
come in so that uh the last document was up within 48 hours from the last meeting so you can go ahead and peruse those documents if you're um you could probably start to see the Strategic plan um begin to take shape at this point uh
we'll have um we had the goals meeting the last time that output will be uh uploaded before the the next meeting where we'll also talk about um what those goals look like and how we're going to go ahead and Implement them the actual operational piece of that is um it's it's pretty much Administration
administrative in nature and Dr Murphy will come back and work with the administration and and a small team of folks to go ahead and look at what the activities look like the community though really sets the um the goals um so thank you for everyone uh for participating in that we had 490
respondents that's kind of remarkable considering the student population um so I was I was very impressed um and the next regular meeting the board border is Wednesday March 12th and that'll be the preliminary budget review
okay that concludes my report great thanks any questions from board members all righty board secretary report thank you um thank you to those board members um who have completed their personal financial disclosure statements if you haven't completed it
please do so as soon as possible it is a qac requirement and we do lose points if it's they're not completed um I wanted to say thank you to Mr Higgins from pkf for coming out to the meeting this evening to review the audit um I would especially like to thank my office staff
da mwano Cindy Riley and dorine Luca and the region five staff um it is not an easy feed to get a clean audit it it takes a lot of work and it's done um throughout the year um without letting POS or requisitions slip by that don't
have the proper documentation so I am very thankful to all the staff for um helping accomplish that um on the agenda tonight is the semi- approval it's item E5 that's to approve a waiver for um semi if you have 40 or more um 40 or
less Medicaid eligible special education students you can participate Riveredge has 23 so that's part of the budget process that's a a waiver that we apply for and is granted each year um H5 is the vote on approving the presented
audit um as of June 30th and that is uploaded to a repository so that's why it's done as a separate resolution that you accept um the audit AS stand H6 is to vote on something that we talked about with Mr Higgins appropriating funds that were received
over the budget amount um we're going to use that for technology purchases that was pulled out of the budget this year and also for some purchase Professional Services and training um as he was stating that amount would normally could be put into capital reserve or you could
allocate it during the school year so we're going to allocate it at this point because these were items that were pulled from the budget for this fiscal year um H7 is to the approval of the contract with Bergen County Technical Schools for higher level technology
Services they support us in many ways um and I believe that's all of the items thank you any questions from board members all right I only have one question Qui thing um there is a pull it
up there's a welcome Ramadan event this Friday in the River Edge Library we got an email the board was invited go I'm going to go if I if I can um but just a reminder if anybody wants to go to that you can uh it's between 3:30 and 5:30 if I didn't say
that and we'll go to committees uh we'll start with financing facilities sorry um we met uh Monday February 10th uh at 7 pm uh in attendance Dr Bernice Lan napalitano Miguel Fus Eric Langley
and myself we discuss boilers the summer project and the abatement schedule um and potential changes to uh that actual schedule um we did discuss the compete AC Academy which Dr Bernice
mentioned um Bergen County Tech contract which was just mentioned as well Mr Higgins was here to discuss and review the audit um there was the discussion of the use of Poss excuse me possible Health Care adjustments which is in the bank cap was also
discussed um there's some capital projects that were discussed which are the univ ventilator and control systems um so uh more to come on that we're going to discuss that in more detail um potential esip project for that's being explored for next year which is redoing
all the Lighting in the building which is essentially cost neutral um we discussed reviewing policies um there was a discussion of tuition rates um tuition rates are based on the actual cost
um 25 26 budget review and potential increases due to salaries in healthc care um next meeting is March 10th um some few future topics um Aftercare RFP discussion of a field use agreement
batting cages and the policy review our April meeting is going to take place on April 21st um due to April break any questions sorry I'm losing my voice apparently all of a sudden any
questions okay thank you curriculum and instruction met on Wednesday February 19th at 4:30 Dr Bernice uh Mr Langley and myself were in attendance for approximately 30 minutes we followed up with the math curriculum
rollout for grades K to3 for the upcoming school year uh we discussed professional development for the K to5 staff um with using $53,000 paid from this year's money like muan was talking about
before um policy updates we'll be looking at programs students and Community with Dr Bernice uh additional items we discussed were Chromebooks for K to3 that um needed to be updated again using those
funds from the 24 to 25 year and a conversation about uh exploring a partial departmentalizing of grade four that was it next meeting Mar uh March 10th at 4:30 thank you very much
uh personnel and management personal and management committee met um on February 9 19th um 5:30 p.m. um virtual was about 65
minutes Mr Ken uh Mr Langley Dr bise um Mr poan myself attended there were overlapping uh issues the boiler and um and abatement was uh discuss same as U finance and
facility was U mentioned so I'll just skip that one and was a br County Tech partnership so that was uh we are renewing uh the contract with the um bgen County tech school um um the budget
was 25,400 and budget review was discussed and there was a recommendation of using um health health care adjustment uh Bank the cap of Health Care adjustment because of pending uh
reduction of state aid um so uh committee uh the consensus was that it is right um right thing to do use the uh uh bu I mean the bank cap if
needed uh policy review will take the 1, series 3,000 series and 8,000 series um will review it and um uh go over it and report it back to the
board and uh tenure and non 10 year uh notice calendar uh which is legal deadline is May 15 and and superintendent working on it uh should be done before and Target date is April 15th and Q preparation is
ongoing um Mr Fletcher was Vis visited um I was school for pre what was it um preliminary work through and everything went okay so we
are we are in a strong standing old and new business strategic planning meeting uh scheduled for February 20th which was a day after uh and the committee acknowledge
on teacher shortage is in Statewide so superintendent will be attending uh Bergen County job fair for teachers in April and uh advocate for the school and apply for
the jobs in the uh school district and next committee meeting will be um scheduled for March 10:25 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. any other questions or anything you want to
add no thank you um we did have preliminary a preliminary walk through uh in um three of the five set categories um uh they'll be officially
um monitored at the uh official um visitation uh in two weeks um but uh things look pretty good on the preliminary so we had a couple of things to fix and we're doing that so um looking forward to the qack
visit great thank you all right moving on to uh motions to be acted upon can I get a motion for item D1 move to approve E1 is stated second roll call please miss PR yes Miss
Crespo yes Mr elisandro yes Mr fries yes Mr sim yes and Mr Langley yes uh can I get a motion for items e one through five move to approve items e 1 through five is stated second um I have a um
question about the bus DRS I actually wanted to ask you after the Super de report I kind of forgot it U what is the can you elaborate more about the B uh every student in the state needs to go through a a bus drill twice a year um
it's basically an evacuation drill so we put all those students on the bus we go over the state safy features on the bus and then show them how to get off the bus children not uh on the bus at all I mean the you don't you don't look um it's a parked bus right it's just parked
yeah they open the security right the bus is parked it doesn't move yeah um they get on the bus they go uh the person doing the training goes through all the safety features and we show them how to get off um and we have uh I think maywe surpris us for
us yeah so they send the bus okay okay any other discussion roll call please miss Prem yes M crbo um can I abstain from
two from E2 yes yes okay so yes for everything except for abstaining for E2 we can do that right St Sandra yes Mr Fus yes Mr
sim yes and Mr Langley yes uh can I have a motion for uh F1 through two move to approve item F1 and two as stated second discussion roll call please Miss Brown
yes Miss Crespo yes Mr elisandro yes Mr Frias yes Mr sim yes and Mr Langley yes um can I have a motion for G1 motion to approve G1 is that
good uh discuss roll call please Miss Brown yes Miss Crespo yes Mr alandro yes M Mr Fus yes Mr sim yes and Mr Langley yes can I have a motion for items H1 through 8 move to approve items H1
through 8 as stated second any discussion roll call please Miss Brown yes Miss Crespo yes m alandro yes Mr Fus yes Mr sim yes and Mr Langley yes um can
I have a motion for item I one through n move to approve items I 1 through n as stated second discussion call please Miss Brown yes Miss Crespo yes Mr alesandro
yes Mr Frias yes Mr sim yes and Mr Langley yes um have a motion for J One second discussion uh roll call please Miss Brown yes M Crespo yes Mr alisandra yes
Mr Fus yes Mr sim yes and Mr Langley yes uh Comm I have motion for items K1 through 12 as K1 through 12 move to approve items K1 through 12 as stated second discussion roll call please Miss Brown
yes Miss Crespo yes Mr alesandro yes Mr Fus yes Mr sim yes and Mr Langley yes does anyone have any old or new business they wish to bring up right moving on to public comments on non agend agenda items um this public
comment time is for non-agenda items only comments will be limited to a duration of three minutes per speaker each speaker must begin by stepping out to the podium and stating for the record their name and address after which the timer will begin I don't see anybody so can I have a motion to
adjourn the meeting Mo motion to adjourn second call please M prown yes Miss Crespo yes Mr alisandra yes Mr fries yes Mr sim yes and Mr Langley yes all right thanks everybody if you're not going to
participate I'm not going to participate