2026 meeting of the South Orange Maplewood Board of Education. Miss Gallatin, would you please call the role? >> And could you use the microphone so they can hear us? Thank you. >> Jeff Bennett,
Dearra Brown, Elizabeth Callahan, I was here, but Meredith Higgins >> here. Bimal Capadia >> here.
>> Will Meyer >> here. >> Molini Nar >> here. >> Shaina Sacket Gable >> here. >> Paul Stefen >> here. Can you recall Elizabeth Callahan? >> Yes. Elizabeth Callahan here.
>> And student reps? >> Not yet. >> Not yet. Okay. All right. So, we have a quorum. Uh, please stand if you are able for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the
republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Please take notice that adequate notice of this meeting was sent from the office of the secretary of the board on January 6, 2026 to the Maplewood and South
Orange Township clerks and the editors of the news record, Star Ledger, Tap into Soma and the Village Green. Uh I'll now entertain a motion to enter executive session as permitted under the open public meetings act to discuss uh personnel, legal, and uh other
miscellaneous matters. Uh, no formal action will be taken. Do I have a motion? Order Stefan. Do I have a second? Callahan. Uh, show of hands. All in favor? All right. Unanimous. The board will enter executive session at 6:33 p.m. And we'll be returning to
public session. Any action resulting from our discussions will be taken in public session. And we'll see you back here shortly. I want to be Good evening. I would like to call this meeting back to order at 8:06 p.m. The board is now
back in public session and thank you all for joining us tonight. Uh we have a lot of business to get to this evening. However, uh I want to pause for a moment because uh and I mentioned this two nights ago, but there's a bigger audience here, so I'm going to do it again. The district has suffered a loss
this month. Uh not everyone who has attended our board meetings knows Chris Settle by name, but everyone was greeted by him when they entered this building and was met with a kind word and his unfailing smile. And when we trudged out of the building late into the evening
from our board meetings, Chris would still be there at his security guard post keeping watch. Chris passed away not quite two weeks ago, very untimely. Chris was part of the 525 Academy family for a long time, and he served this district with distinction. He's left a
hole in the lives of many people who loved him, including in this building and this room. And we want to take a moment tonight to honor and recognize him. Uh Chris's family is collecting donations for his funeral arrangements. Uh for anyone led to give, there is
information in a QR code in the back there and folks online can feel free to reach out to me as well. So we we did just want to announce information about Chris's uh celebration of life services. Uh we are looking at
April 2nd um at the Newborn Baptist Church, 391 Avon Avenue in Newark, New Jersey. Uh the viewing will be from 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. Uh and the service begins at 11:00 a.m. And I'll
echo board member Meyer sentiments. It's a very big loss for us here and for many of the students at CHS who also knew Chris. Um, he was just the kind of person that would brighten your day. So,
and as you leave tonight, please take a look over at the security guard desk. There is a a wonderful tribute on the wall to him. Now, uh, and next we have the pleasure of recognizing three outstanding SOST educators.
And first, I think we have in this room, well, I'll hand it over to the superintendent. Uh, we have Emily. Are you here? >> All right. I see Laura here. Laura, you want to say
a couple words about this wonderful person? I forgot about your foot. >> Where's the button under there? >> Laura, just press the till. It's red. >> Got it. Thank you. >> Perfect. Good evening everybody. This is
one of our Marshall Multi-A teachers, Emily Mamrach. We are so excited or I am so excited. It's my great honor to recognize her tonight for her outstanding contributions to Marshall, specifically in health and wellness within our Marshall community. Uh last year, she
inspired all of us by completing the New York City Marathon, motivating fellow staff members to set and pursue their own fitness goals. We had several other staff members, I believe directly as a result to Emily, that started running smaller marathons and really increasing their goals. And she really promoted
this with our our students and our staff in general as a whole. She then further um her commitment to wellness by earning an achievement gra grant last summer through which she completed over 200 hours of training to become a certified yoga teacher and social emotional
learning facilitator. And then I specifically nominated her this year because I'm so excited that she has now spearheaded the launching of the first chapter of Girls on the Run at Marshall School, which is a wonderful organization.
Um, Girls on the Run, if anybody is not familiar, is a nonprofit organization. It's dedicated to inspiring and empowering young girls to build confidence, develop life skills and embrace a healthy lifestyle through fun experience-based curriculum. They run, but there's also a lot of like
empowerment and social emotional lessons. And again, Marshall, as most of you know, just expanded to a K5, so we're really focusing on our upper classmen, and this is a really inspiring and motivating program for them. All thanks to Emily and our PTA members. So,
super proud to honor her and give her Hey um want to get a picture with the with the board. Lori, too. >> Sure. Okay. >> Where? >> All right. Tell us where we >> go in there. >> Go in here.
>> Right. Could they all go in there? in there, too. She's like, >> so cute. >> Hello everyone. We're going to have some nice jolly smiles in three, two, one. One more in 3 2 1. And we're going to do
one more now. In three, two, one. Thank you all. Very wonderful. >> And she also Wait a second. What about the marathon? Did she mention that you just got into now? >> She just made New York marathon. >> She just got picked for the New York Marathon. >> Oh, she got in New York.
>> Yeah. Right. >> New York. >> Yeah. Again. >> Oh, I didn't for a second. >> Sure. We'd like to shout out two more of our staff that have consistently gone above
and beyond. Um, at uh, Maplewood Middle School, dance teacher Kenya Macy hosted the One World Dance Concert in celebration of Black History Month. Students of all skill levels performed and expressed themselves through movement centered on the theme of
globalism and loving engagement. The concert created a welcoming space where students could connect, build confidence, and celebrate culture through the arts. It was a it was a wonderful concert. So, just big thanks um to Kenya. This is a big project that
she does every year. Takes a lot of time um and a lot of effort and the kids love it uh every year. And finally, at Maplewood Middle School, uh we want to shout out physical education and health teacher Jamie Henworker. Partnered with the USA track and field to help bring
Hazel Clark Day to life. She led the planning coordination for a run, jump, throw clinic that engaged more than 200 students. The event gave students a fun and active way to experience the value of youth sports and staying healthy. We had about,
I believe, four four to five uh US track and field Olympians, former Olympians there. Um, and the kids loved it. I mean, just loved it. And we're knock on wood. We're extremely lucky. The individual who coordinates this as well as a parent of ours that we were able to
work with uh and bring these folks in and we hope that's going to be a regular yearly event. So, big thanks to to uh Jamie who coordinated it all. and it was a lot uh for Maplewood Middle. They uh also did the event at South Orange uh I'm sorry, at uh South
Mountain. And after uh South Mountain and Maplewood Middle School, uh Hazel read from her new book at the Maplewood uh library. Okay, next up, I'd like to get a uh a student update from uh our student
representative and one of the stars of the CHS musical, which if you didn't see it, wow. Uh Miss Drogo, please. >> Um so, I have a couple of congratulations. Um, congratulations to the teachers and teams of teachers who
received um, Deborah Prince educator grants this month through the Achieve Foundation. Achieve board members delivered more than $23,600 in grant funding for 14 projects and programs across SOSD, adding to nearly $62,000
for 41 grants awarded this past fall. We are grateful for this continued investment in our educators and students and for the creative opportunities these grants make possible throughout the district. Um, Columbia High School is also proud to recognize Sophia Khan as
our class of 2026 validictorian and Lola Karp Foster as our saludiatoran. Sophia will be attending the University of Pennsylvania where she plans to study political science and Spanish after serving as managing editor of the
Colombian and as being and being selected for the New Jersey Scholars program. Lola plans to study biomedical engineering focusing on neutral neural neutral technologies building on her advanced classes and research experience in neuroscience. Even though they've
taken different paths, both Sophia and Lola have made a real impact at Colombia through their hard work, cur curiosity, and dedication. So, huge congrats. Um, and then another update that I have for the board is is a concern in general
about communication, especially with within our athletics department. Um, so a couple of weeks ago I received in my Gmail um a a communication protocol
and in it it reads that first contact the staff member directly involved within your concern. If you don't hear back within 48 hours or the situation worsens, escalate the issue to the department supervisor.
And then the department supervisors are um listed. And one of the people included on that email on that um list is Miss Winstead, the athletic director. Um, and I think that you'll hear from a
couple of students here, but I I am one of the people who have reached out to her and have not heard back within 48 hours. um or ever re really. Um, and I think that if we are a school that wants
to make our athletic program as as good as it can be and get uniforms in time and get buses on time and we need better communication in general, um, and also transparency
cuz I I also heard about um, cuts after a roster being finalized and then and then a proposed solution. Um, that isn't great, I've heard. Um, and I just think
there's a lack of communication between the athletic director and coaches to actually discuss about what is the best plan to better our athletics department. And I think it's going to require a lot of work on a lot of ends. But if we all come together and just talk to one
another, I think we can do it. Um, so that's that's my update. Thank you. Any questions? >> Okay. Uh, I'll turn it over to Superintendent Bing for the superintendent's update. >> Wait, stop. Nope. We're going to back it
up here because we skipped right over the very important task of approving our board meeting minutes. Uh, we are reviewing Hang on a second. We are reviewing our minutes from well, you know, I had them up here just
a minute ago. We're gonna do it in a minute. The superintendent's update. >> Got to stay on your toes here. >> March update. Uh I want to thank our student reps as usual. They've been wonderful bringing
information to us. Much appreciated. And I do uh echo what Mr. Myers said I had the chance to. I like to just stand in the back and watch the performances and it was quite spectacular. So something you should be very very proud of. Um we do want to congratulate Dr. Ty Bennett,
assistant principal at Columbia High School and Dr. Candace Stewart, art teacher on the successful defense of their dissertations. This remarkable achievement reflects uh their dedication, perseverance, commitment to excellence in education. We are incredibly proud to have you as
part of our district community and celebrate this significant milestone with you and to be calling you Dr. Telia Bennett and Dr. Candace Stewart from this point on. Uh I know for a fact uh I been privy to part of their journey and
it's been a journey for both of them. So just kudos to them both. It is not easy. Um, on March 12th, the South Orange Baywood School District proudly recognized Columbia High School student Okafor, who was honored at the Essex County Unsung hero ceremony for
outstanding leadership, service, and dedication to her peers. Board President Will Meer and board member Shaina Sak Gable attended the ceremony to celebrate her achievements. Gi's impact spans academics, athletics, and service, including her roles as a student council leader, team captain, and volunteer
tutor. Her commitment to uplifting others and leading with integrity reflects the very best of our district. We congratulate Chioma on this well-deserved recognition and celebrate the example she sets for our school. I don't know if Will or Shane, I want to comment on that night because I I I read
a couple of your emails that it was a heck of a night. I will personally say that I had uh the wonderful opportunity to uh speak with Enit prior to the event uh sitting down at the high school with a few folks. And so at the event I have to say we were
limited to it was about a minute and I said there's really no way that in one minute I could do her justice but also in 20 minutes I couldn't do her justice. This she has done one of everything. Uh and she has clearly been an uplifting force for her peers as well. So, uh, that celebration was was very much
deserved and it was great to, uh, meet with her and her family to honor her. Um, the state robotics competition team 4102 from Columbia High School earned a spot
to advance to the world competition in Dallas, Texas for the first time. uh a lot of work has gone into what they they have been doing. Um so I I truly appreciate their mentor. I truly
appreciate the community who supported them. I know a chief foundation has also l lended their support. Um it really has been an amazing journey for these students and wish them the best of luck in Dallas. Uh, congratulations South Orange Maplewood Board of Education on achieving New Jersey School Board's
Association Board Certification. A testament to the board's strong commitment to effective governance, continuous improvement, and student success. The board will be recognized for its accomplishment at the Essex County SBA meeting on May 14th, 2026.
Kudos to the board. Uh want to shout out our our uh Mandarin teachers over at the high school who had a Lunar New Year celebration today. Unfortunately, we could not make it due to the board meeting, but uh their events are always incredible. So, big thanks to that team. Uh congratulations
to Principal Lynn Herby. Students at Columbia High School's GMAC program led a powerful evening of recognition on March 12th, honoring South Orange Middle School principal, Miss Lynn Herby Hill, a longtime educator whose leadership and mentorship have shaped generations of
students across the South Orange Maplewood School District. Uh the program was organized by educator Marsha Hicks, who always goes above and beyond, and her students. Uh and I had the opportunity to stop into that celebration. It was quite awesome and
welld deserved and the kids did an incredible job. Um, we are developing this year's budget and has been exceptionally difficult exercise and balancing educational necessity with their fiscal reality. As we observe the challenges facing our surrounding districts, our primary goal
remains to rightsize the ship while protecting our greatest asset which is our hardworking folks. Um, we are approaching this cycle, we have approached this cycle with a deep commitment to empathy, transparency, and the responsible stewardship of taxpayer dollars. We've established a couple
community-based um committees, including our transportation action committee as well as our budget action committee that we are working with um over the next month. Uh the work continues as we strive to finalize a budget that minimizes the impact on our classrooms.
Uh, I truly appreciate our community and our teachers, uh, and all our staff for their continued dedication to our students. Uh, I did shout out Scarlet and Into the Woods. So, I'd also want to shout out Legally Blonde at PS, which
was an incredible performance. Uh, as well, um, also this month, I had the honor of being a reader for choosing uh, our new governor education educator of the year. uh had the opportunity to review about 30 applications and rate
them and then we worked with another small group to consolidate our our scoring uh and chose a governor education of the year award winner which uh we are very proud of and I think everybody will be very proud of once you read her biography. Uh also as noted
earlier I do want to shout out Hazel Clark for spending her time March 12th uh in the district. I also do want to recognize and I Scarlet touched on this um the work that is ahead for our
athletics department uh across the board. Um since I've been here, which is going on about 19 months, um we faced some issues. Let's just say we we'll leave it at that. Um,
I think we just need to tighten up the ship and I think the best way to do that is through a community advisory committee. So, we're looking to recruit about 25 to 30 folks who will work on that advisory committee and really help to develop a 5-year roadmap for the department. Currently, the department does not have one or I don't think the
department has had a strategic plan for about going on 15 years right now. Uh, that department is significantly growing. Um, we are adding more and more athletics. We are also adding middle school sports. uh into the mix starting next year. Um as a district, we have to
put a little more effort and time into student athletics. I think the same amount of time that we also put into the arts uh in this district right now. It's it's an underfunded department. And uh I can speak for the board that I think our student athletes deserve a lot better uh
than scrambling around for uniforms, wondering if buses are going to come, wondering if tournament or a competition uh fees are going to be paid. Um so I think this committee is a good start to really working on uh rede oh well good
opportunity to redevelop that department collectively uh and collaboratively and also really develop some standard operating procedures. Uh so we look forward to that work. I believe uh something was sent out today around that. Uh and I think there's a signup list um on the website. Uh the more
students on that committee, the better for us, more student athletes. So, we look forward to your contribution, but we're also looking for parents of student athletes as well as uh community members that are in the field or in the athletics field. As I noted previously, we're working with one of our parents that that uh works closely with the
United States track and field who's been wonderful for us. Uh, so if we can recruit a few of those individuals as well as we do the strategic planning for the athletic department, I think we'll be in a in a better place moving forward. And that is all I have. Dr. Gilbert.
>> Oh, what's Dr. Gilbert doing out there? Dr. Gilbert, your music is about to play. Good evening. Good evening. >> Good evening. >> Thank you. All right. I'm Dr. Kevin Gilbert, assistant superintendent of
schools, and I just want to give everyone a quick update on where we are with the implementation of our equity audit conducted by Ruckers. Um, in September, I gave an update. And so, this is just another update just to make
sure everyone knows that um we are on track. Uh, our goal is to have um all of the recommendations implemented by the end of this school year. However, there's going to be one imp one that I'm going to talk about today that uh we
will not re be able to really implement until the start of next school year, but I will go I will go into that. Uh next slide, please. So, as I always do with this presentation, I always start with the uh
quote from Dr. Eddie Fergus and the Ruckers team uh that really talks about when we look at this equity work uh that you know we talk about this systemic approach that we're taking and sometimes when you do equity work there are some who may feel like you're taking things
away but we're not taking things away. We're trying to make things better and and by working to help support our our more underrepresented students, our students of color, we're actually building a bigger, better, bolder school district in of itself. So, this quote
just talks about that we we're centering our students of color, our black students, our uh our our our students, our Hispanic students, our Asian students, uh our LGBTQ plus students, all of our marginalized students and our
students who are on free and reduced lunch because if we make their lives better, we make our entire school district better. And so, we're checking our data and looking at that. And we're also trying to create opportunities so everyone can get together and understand that the work that we're doing is with
that mindset uh in place. Next slide please. The next series of slides go through what these recommendations are. And so just for those who may not be familiar with this and this is a new time I will read these for you so you can kind of understand. There are several areas. The
first area is curriculum and instruction. Uh the seven recommendations provided for us was to pri prioritize materials and verbal messaging regarding math growth mindset, foster heterogenous generous student collaboration and math instruction.
Ensure ensure the low track students receive the high quality instruction that they need to become better math students. uh clear uh create a clear plan and timeline to identify high achieving students from underrepresented backgrounds and higher track math
courses, create enrichment and acceleration opportunities, increase accessible and equitable parent involvement, and revisit the choice policy for math course selection. You hear there's a lot of math in there. Uh, math is one of the three courses that we have that have different levels in it
that can can we can really track and see what is happening in those classes, who's taking those classes, but math is the entry point for all of our courses, all of our subjects. So, because you see math here, that doesn't mean we're not looking at all of our courses. Next slide, please.
Then we have our intervention recommendations. Develop a district-wide tier system of support. That includes defining academic and behavior tiers. available and processes for utilization. Extensive review of the INRS implementation process guide in order to
address inconsistencies and redundancies. Develop a list of tiered interventions for academic behavioral support and develop tools and protocols for the operation of intervention team meetings. Next slide please.
Then we have uh seven recommendations around the develop pedagogical capacity with the equity lens. And these recommend include develop and implementing professional development series for our staff uh that uh continues in the development of cross-cultural capacity across our
district. Continuous assessment of educators knowledge on intervention support systems, curriculum and instruction improvements through professional development. Build better empathy for all of our students. events such as what we used to do, challenge day. We don't do that anymore, but we
are encouraging our schools to create those community building activities. And for our staff out there, you know, we've been talking a lot about reframing our restorative justice work. We've been doing that for the last several years. That fits into this category. Our social emotional learning that we're doing,
that also fits into this category. I know our students in our middle schools have been experiencing Wayfinder, that is part of all of that work. As part of these recommendations, uh, hire more black teachers, uh, teachers of color and create affinity spaces to support
those teachers and increased retention. Build on the successes of these affinity spaces for students of color such as our that should be GMAC as they change their name to the global majority uh, scholars and provide affinity spaces for BIPO
students at school levels. Next slide, please. And then there were five uh recommendations that dealt specifically with our intentional integration initiative. Uh further modeling of the integration in which factors with the
greatest skewed patterns are weighted more intensely over the over other factors. Uh the pattern of average household income and parental education level should be examined over time in order to understand whether triple eye plan can be sustained. a stage integration that prioritizes South
Bordon and South Mountain over the next several years. Review precoid quarantine school years to understand these withdrawal patterns and the triple eye plan needs to parallel the integration academic supports and services. All
right, next slide. So with the next series of slides up again um the uh this is another quote from the audit which uh talks about the implementation where really talks about the fact that we're
looking at a three to five year plan and we are actually in year three of this new iteration but year six of trying to get this on the coursework. There was a three years prior uh to my arrival here in the district Dr. Fergus did one
preliminary audit. I'm not going to recap everything for you. He had to come back and so we're working on the recommendations from that second iteration of what Dr. Fergus came in. So, but from that iteration, we looked at about a three to five year plan. So,
when I talk about us implementing all of these recommendations by the end of this school year, which is year three, we are making a difference. We are making a differentiation between implementation and sustainability. My teachers know that I like that use of the word differentiation. Didn't I did good with
that? Yeah. Thank you. All right. Next, next slide, please. So, this is the the the map that kind of shows where we are currently. Uh you will see highlighted in green are the areas from September that were not
green. So, what I'm what I'm doing is I want to show you where we've gone from the last time we were here. And so there are two new areas that we have marked completed. Uh one uh prioritize material and verbal messaging regarding math growth mindset a couple of years ago
when we had coaches. Those coaches put together uh a professional development series for our K8 teachers in which they looked at doing growth mindset and now we have asked that all professional developments that happen have to have
some embeddedness of growth mindset in them. Well, we are happy to report that our internal review of these professional developments, we have found those elements of growth mindset in those presentations. And so, we moved that from yellow to green to say that we're on our way and that has been
completed. The second new addition to this slide is create a clear plan and timeline that identifies high achieving students from underrepresented backgrounds in the higher track math courses. this we've been partnering with equal opportunity schools for the last
several years. Partnering with them means that we have done uh surveys, we've done focus groups, we get reports that show us the trends. Uh we feel very confident that we've gotten that data year and year over year, which gives us
a good monitoring tool to see where we are with that. And so we feel pretty confident that we've met that particular implementation goal. And so we moved that uh to green. The third item which says revisit the choice policy for course selection that was already
completed the last time we did this presentation. Next slide please. This area is the one that we're super proud of. When I came in May of 2022, the INRS system in this school district was broken. That did not really exist.
Uh so we spent uh 22 23 23 and 24 really revamping breaking that program down and putting in a true uh tier systems of support. Dr. Zora Carrera as well as uh Dr. Carrie Wayable were instrumental in starting to get this this going and is
now sits it was our multi-ter system of support was sitting in our special services department is now moved to our curriculum instruction. We now have a consistent multi-ter systems of support that looks at not only a instructional support but also looks at behavioral
support and we can safely say that we completed all four of these recommendations that was asked that was asked of us and so we're pretty proud about that work. Next slide please. This particular piece development of pedagogical capacity with an equity
lens. So this is the area where we we got kind of stagnant in. We know what the national climate has been around the work that we've been trying to do. And so we have to be very particular and very cautious around some of the things that that we were saying that we were going to do. Not cautious about the
importance of doing the work. Don't get me wrong. We never stopped doing the work, but with the climate and things that it was, we had to be very particular about how we phrased and how we did and how we went about doing this work. What that meant is some of the
things that we were putting into place. We had to get legal reviews on. We had to send things back to kind of make sure we were in line with uh what at the particular point in time uh what we thought the current administration was saying. Uh since then we know that the
current administration has lost several court cases in terms of what they were trying to do with this work. So now we feel like we are back on solid footing to really engage in a more meaningful way. That does not mean we're not on track to getting most of these to green.
And as a matter of fact, we have we feel confident that uh the continuous assessment educator knowledge and intervention support systems, curriculum and instructional improvements, we can move that to green. We do constant surveying of our staff. We do constant
evaluations of the work that we're doing. I talked about the new new the the new New Jersey tier system of support that we have in the district. We now have a monitoring tool that goes along with that. I think we have done a tremendous job in making sure we've put
that piece together. And so we moved that to green, which was not green when I did this presentation back in September. The one I want to talk to you about is the one around hire more bipok teachers, create affinity spaces, support those teachers, and increase
retention. So this is the one where we found challenges and how we were going to go about putting that together. And it kind of delayed and delayed and delayed our response. We're safely now we're in a position now where we are ready to create those affinity spaces.
They will not be based on race as this this one uh this recommendation puts out as that that that is still one of those areas that uh uh is still pretty up much uh confusing around what we can do. However, we are going to create affinity
spaces. some of our educators who we've trained in seed who's been doing some of our internal training around a culturally responsive teaching uh practices. Dr. Wayel put together a great equity professional development plan where she brought teachers together
to put that together. And so we have a good cadre of teachers in our district who have the background, who have the tools to to to actually help us do these affinity spaces the way we want to. So, this spring, we're going to name these
affinity spaces, and then we're going to get some of our teachers who have already uh been trained. We're going to check the union contract and make sure we're able to support them and and do what we need to do on that end. And these spaces are going to launch in
September of 2026. So, this particular recommendation may not be green at the end of this school year, but at the end of this school year, you all will have the definite plan and the roll out that we're going to use uh to get that to get that going. Next slide, please.
And then the last slide, the not the last slide, the second, the last slide I'm going to show you is the intentional the intentional integration pieces to this puzzle. So um as you know uh we have been since fall 2122 when our
kindergarteners were first placed in the algorithm we've been embarking on this intentional and integration initiative. Of these recommendations we can safely say of the five we have completed implementation of the things that Dr. Fergus asked us to do. A lot of this is
centered around the fact that uh we get yearly reports from Michael ALS and ALS and uh Nancy Micardo the ALS group that gives us a lot of this data that we've checked on a on a on a year-to-year basis. So we're always looking at the data. Um, another piece of this is that
for example that first piece where they talked about modeling uh the skew patterns we learned very early on that there's only two factors that go into our intentional integration that make up our algorithm which is uh income levels
as as well as family educational levels. They Al's group did do some trial runs with doing different percentages with that and there was no significant difference in that and so that was tried that moved to green. We just added to this that was different from September.
Uh we knew look at the pattern of household income and educational level that's found in those reports. We're checking that yearly. One of the things that's come up in that piece that we we're learning is that particularly in the uh the area that we're living with
the new ACS data that is used, uh we're starting to see the economic trends kind of shift a little bit in terms of what the low SCES tier is. And when we say low SCES tier in this district, we're not talking like a traditional low SCES tier
in this district. is we're looking at a sixf figure number that comes up that puts families in that low SCES tier. What that means for us is we got to be very diligent as we do this to to really make sure as we're doing our placements
and stuff uh that we're maintaining uh the kind of balance that we want to see. But the incomes levels in our communities is growing at a very uh more more higher average rate than in other in other areas around us. And so that's
going to be a little bit of effect. We don't quite know yet. We're still looking at the data, but that's going to have a little bit of an effect going forward on how we go about triple eye. The other piece that we moved to green in here was reviewing our precoid quarantine school years to understand
the withdrawal patterns. We sent a survey out to every single family that has withdrawn their kids from at school year 2018-19 to the present. We're getting some feedback. We're we're we're studying those survey results. We're looking at that. This recommendation actually gets
to that so we can kind of see what that impact if I is having a impact on what the folks are saying about those withdrawals. Once we go through that data, uh, we would definitely be willing to share and share what those results are telling us. But two, what the what
the Ruckers recommendation folks asked us to do. Um, that's we we've got that in place. The last recommendation will probably be yellow for a while because what that means to us is it says the AAA plan needs to parallel the integration and academic supports in our school
system throughout until we can turn all those other recommendations green. This one can't be green. This is about how we take the overall plan and build it into all of our schools uh across uh the district. The last slide I'm going to
be, if you go to the last slide right before questions, slide 16. If you go to slide 16, the slide the 13, 14, 15, these are all as he flips through these, these are all just documented proofs of the kind of work
that we've done. We've gone over this over and over again, so I'm not going to reread all of this. This this presentation will be posted for you. So you I please tell you to take a look. There's been a lot of hard work put into this. But go back to that last slide. I did add three more pieces to this puzzle
that were that was not there in September that I do want to talk about. We have finished our c culture responsive curriculum audit of all our four core classes or core subjects ELA, math, social studies, and science. We're going through those audits now. Uh
that's a huge task. It took us a couple of years to get there. Uh we're going to move to electives ne electives next but uh but we're we're pretty excited about that accomplishment. Um we've continue to collect that survey data data on underrepresented student
groups and advanced placement courses and the identification of barriers to the part participation of students of color through uh through focus groups. And the third thing is we developed and deployed that survey to families who
with who withdrawn from SOMD since 2018 2019. That was a that's a pretty big feat. And so with that said, you can go to the next slide. I will stand for any questions. Questions? >> Board member Higgins.
>> Well, first of all, that is an excellent presentation, sir. >> Thank you. >> I I am definitely on the back foot. I'm trying to catch up as much as I can because like you said, it's year six, but now like that was really new information of it being year three of this new iteration. So, I find that very
helpful. Um, some things that stood out to me that I just thought were really powerful to have in a presentation for a school district is using phrases like you're trying to combat colorblindness, deficit thinking, racial discomfort, and then align integration work throughout
the entire school experience. That's a huge job. And that whole list of accomplishments is really really incredible. Um, keeping in mind uh questions getting to the questions um you mentioned Bdon and Seth South South
Mountain prioritization and so I'd be curious to hear what kind of patterns you're seeing there. And then um the ACS data just so that I understand that is not we're no longer using the data that's kind of old from we're using more
updated data. Correct. That's correct. Y >> Okay, great. So, yeah, if you could just talk a little bit about the South Mountain Bdon things that you're finding. >> Sure. So, when the So, without going through a complete history lesson around triple eye, when I was established, the two areas of
the discrepancy in terms of where students were going was the Seth Bdon area versus the South Mountain area. one area had many of our students of color in it as well as many of our SCES low SCES tiered uh students uh in it versus
the other district that had less students of color and higher SCES tier. I will say that so part of the recommendations came from that frame of mind. What we have learned is there's kind of like a little bit of a shift happening as we've been really paying
attention to what's happening in our Tuscan region, our Tuscan schools just simply because of student priority. What we've actually been seeing in Tuskan is they are actually becoming a little more disproportionate related to Seth Bdon as opposed to South Mountain. So, we're
still looking at those numbers. Uh what we we also we did have a bit of a a shift back towards South Mountain this year because as you know we did a different placement where we we did proximity placement through the
algorithm where the closest we tried you start you out at your closest school. If there wasn't room there based on the variance numbers we move you to the second closest school. But what that meant for our families in South Mountain because they have smaller capacity than other schools didn't didn't say that is
that those parents got placed or we had to move those students into our school that had the greatest capacity which is still Seth Bdon. We increased the capacity in Seth Bdon which opened up a large a large number. So to answer your question about that, what we're what
we're seeing in South Mountain and versus Seth Bordon is we were able to move more students in to Seth Bordon. We still see some of that disproportionate data between the two schools, but that's being driven by the fact of less capacity at South Mountain versus what's
at Seth Bordon. So um and then um you had one more point to that question. I think one more part to that. I had asked about the data, but you you would already if I could just do a quick followup. So, are you essentially saying that with the elementary schools you
it's still it's basically a moving target in a way that because it's changing year-over-year d like >> how the neighborhood structure works, people moving in and out. Um it's I don't know how else to say it other than like you kind of have to think about it every year. Every year.
>> Yeah. It's not something where it's like there's going to be this stamp and then it's done. It's actually just constantly something that you have to gather data on every single year. So that CHS is a true reflect like the CHS experience is like happening at every level, >> right? That's correct. That's correct.
Yes. Yes, ma'am. >> Other questions? >> Well, Dr. Gilbert, I'll ask. Um, obviously we are in year three of what is expected to be a five-year plan, but as far as our monitoring goes, we're in year three of year three and there's
deliverables that are sort of expected of us and I know we're undergoing uh frequent monitoring uh by Judge Wallace. How are we looking in that respect with regard to the progress we're making against those metrics? >> Absolutely. So, um we have not had our
re our next meeting with the monitor just yet. So far, you know, they have and I think we've talked about it in previous uh uh meetings. Uh they've been they've been very informative. We've appreciated the partnership that we've been developing with Black Parents
Workshop uh with that work. Uh while and Judge Wallace has been really keeping us uh focused and driven to hidden the goals. We do know the next time we get together, we are going to be talking about what release looks like. So what does it mean for to be released out of
the monitoring? What uh what what what steps we have to take uh to make sure uh uh we're there. I I go back to the whole notion that I talked about earlier about the difference between implementation and sustainability for the rest of this plan. Getting these recommendations
implement implemented is only the beginning. We're going to come up with a sustainability plan to show how we plan to make sure this work continues because change it takes five years to change. And that's what that one slide talked about from three to five years. We we're
in year three. We're going to start gradually seeing and we're already starting to seeing some movement in some of our data. Not as much as we want to, but we're starting to see some movement. But we're hoping the next couple of years as we move towards year four and year five, we're really going to be starting to see uh some progress being
made. >> Thank you. Any other questions? >> Thank you so much, sir. >> All right. >> All right. And now it is time for the board president update. Um I'll be try to be pretty quick here. Uh first of
all, we are commemorating uh the International Transgender Day of Visibility that is coming up at the beginning of next week. Uh a few of us had the opportunity to go over to Maplewood Town Hall to catch the very beginning of their uh transgender day of
visibility uh commemoration before we hightailed it over here for our meeting. Uh and uh we have a resolution on the agenda uh to be considered tonight in recognition as well of that uh event. And you know, as uh I shared at the
event earlier today, I think that our community values so highly uh the rights and protection of uh transgender students, gender non-conforming students, uh as well as the the whole of our LGBTQ community. And we also know
that we frequently just uh we are not hitting the mark the way that we always want to be. uh and it is an ongoing uh redoubling of efforts to protect those students uh who identify as transgender, gender non-conforming in our schools. Uh and that remains an item
of of tremendous importance. Um earlier this month on March 4th, myself and Bor Callahan had the opportunity to uh attend a crossing guard uh breakfast that was put on by uh the South Orange and uh Maplewood municipalities. who was
hosted at Jessie House uh and talk about unsung heroes. You know, this was a great chance to talk to the folks who really make attendance in our schools possible for the huge number of our kids who walk to school. Uh and it was great to get to sit down and have coffee and a bagel with them and uh hear some of
their harrowing tales uh and and the lives that they have, you know, before and and and during uh their student desk crossing guards here. And we're very grateful for their service. We also had a strategic planning meeting that took place on March 16th. That was
the first of our three sessions. It was led by our uh New Jersey School Board Association Representative Jean Clearary. It was a great session. We had some open chairs. We didn't think we were going to have open chairs, but it was it was a rainy night. Uh there are two more sessions coming up. We have a
lot of names. We want more names. uh please go to our website, sign up to participate in one of those sessions uh and help us develop the plan for the next 5 years. Uh as Superintendent Bing mentioned, we were thrilled after pursuing it for many years to find out
just midday today that uh our district and our board has attained certification by the New Jersey School Board Association. Uh that is not a small feat. You have to satisfy a few different criteria. You have to meet the governance portion of the New Jersey
Cusack monitoring process. There's a lot of pieces to it. Uh submit uh historic teacher pay data, pass uh an audit of our policy manual, uh complete the annual board self-evaluation, which remarkably a lot of boards don't do. Uh comply with current mandatory training
requirements for each board member. participate in at least one full day retreat, which we've definitely done more than that, and earn 16 credits of group training within a four-year period. So, this is a multi-year uh achievement, and credit is due to our
prior boards under the leadership of Nubia Deval Wilson, Dr. Kawi Telsford, and Caitlyn Whiteter. So, uh kudos to our past board members and kudos to everyone here. This is pretty great. And we get to uh get commemorated for it uh next month.
>> First time in over a decade. >> In first time in over a decade. I I believe that's true. >> Thank you. Okay. Okay. >> I'll take it. >> Uh for those of you who tuned in on Tuesday, we had our preliminary budget presentation. Uh the district has been
working feverishly to deliver a balanced budget under difficult circumstances. Uh unfortunately, those circumstances were not just the uh incredible rising costs and and diminishing uh year-over-year revenue growth. Uh but also unfortunately, we had our our business
administrator, Mr. Ammani Moody, has uh stepped back on a family leave right now. We wish him the best. Uh Mr. Frank Servils has been appointed as our interim BA as of Tuesday. Uh Frank has been working incredibly hard. He's been working with the district for a number
of months now uh in the business office. He was able to pick up without much of a hitch. Uh but it has been a a huge lift and and that office working uh very hard uh through tomorrow to get that budget uploaded. Uh board members have had opportunities to sit down and meet in
small groups to go over all the pieces of the budget as it currently exists and it is a moving target. They're trying to get it into the best shape possible uh by the time we have our uh our formal adoption date for the budget, the vote happening on May 4th. Uh and finally, we
have a lot of folks who have emailed expressing their concerns and thoughts on Ritzerfield. And Ritzerfield has been sort of on ice this month because we have just been working real hard on the budget. Uh however, at the beginning of this month, we did get some information back from the state with regard to how
much debt service aid would be provided for those projects. So that is looking at Ritzerfield, the uh uh Maplewood Middle School Auditorium, and the South Orange Middle School auditorium. Uh and I can announce the auditoriums were
deemed fully eligible for state funding. So the state uh assists at 40% for the cost of those programs. So the eligible cost for the MMS auditorium was $2.2 million uh and the PS auditorium is $900,000.
So both of those would be eligible for full 40% state aid for Ritzer. The determination was by happen stance part of the program the pieces were eligible part of the pieces were ineligible. It was almost exactly 50/50 costwise. So,
of the 7.7 million that were submitted, 3 point actually $4 million were eligible and 3.7 million were ineligible. So, that would mean as of right now, we would get uh state aid in the amount of uh debt service aid the
amount of $2.86 uh million for those projects together. So, the board is going to be sitting down and looking at what the next steps may be for those pieces of uh of the project and we'll report back. Any questions or comments?
>> Paul board member Stephan. >> Thank you. Uh could the district consider doing some type of field maintenance for Ritzer aation or irrigation as the spring season comes up and as the larger Ritzer project is um
is a little bit stalled right now. Can we at least look at that to try to do a little a little something for the fields uh in the near term? >> Yeah, we do that regularly. So that fields airrated every every year. That's part of that's been in our budget for quite some time. Yeah, it's the field is
You can do a lot to that field, but it it's it's very difficult to uh it's it's a tough field to deal with. Uh but it is I promise you it's air Tom as you remember Tomated it before he left. Our former director uh did that work. Henry now has the responsibility
of doing that work. So it is done. I do get some emails uh and I think we received them as the board received them as well about covers that were we don't have those covers. I don't think they've ever belonged to the district. we can't find the organization that they did belong to. Uh but yeah, we'll continue
to do the spring maintenance that we normally do. We're also doing some spring maintenance over at Underh Hill as well uh for the uh baseball fields over there as well. >> Yeah. Board Callahan. >> Regarding Ritzer and just to build on
what board member Stefan said, I know we had also gotten some emails about some of the pits that were dug to do some testing. So just if the community could just have an update on the status of those um in the interm period as well. >> Yeah. So the company's coming and they're starting to fill in those those uh digs currently. We notified them I
think a couple weeks ago. So they've been filling them in. >> Yes. Board uh student representative. >> Um do we have a date to vote if we're on if we're going to turf Ritzer yet? >> We do not have a date. So the board
would need to regroup with these figures and uh determine the path forward to a resolution. The next step for a public vote would be uh a resolution uh recommending to the board of school estimate that they approve uh a bond
issuance to pay for the cost of uh that program. So we do not yet have that in place right now and we're still figuring out what the path would be for that. Yeah, I think there's a lot of back and forth with Ritzer, but if you look at the common themes, the common themes is that field needs to be upgraded, plain
and simple. Uh our our student athletes deserve it. Our fizzed students deserve it. Our kids during lunchtime deserve it. Uh and it's been a topic of conversation now before my time going on close to nine years at this point. and
the patience of many people uh are growing thin, especially our student athletes who might have started on this journey as freshmen and now are graduating college and the field looks exactly the same. So, um I can promise you we're working on that project and hopefully we'll provide our students
with what they deserve in regards to facilities, especially our Ritzerfield. >> Thank you. >> Any other questions or comments? No. Okay, with that we're going to move over to our business administrator update. Mr. Serville is appearing us uh
virtually tonight. >> Oh, sure. You should we do the minutes now? Let's do the minutes now. I love that idea. >> Uh great. So, I uh would like to uh seek a motion to approve the minutes from our board retreat on February 12th, 2026 and
our board meeting and executive session from the regular meeting on February 26th of 2026. Do I hear a motion? Order Callahan? And do I have a second? Board member Sacket Gable. Show of hands. All in favor? Unanimous. Thank you, Miss Gallatton. And now I'm
going to shift over to uh our uh intram BA for an update. >> Okay. You uh can everybody hear me? >> We can hear you. >> Okay, great. So, uh you know, thanks for uh thanks for having me on in the
introduction. Um I uh am am uh just wanted to say thank you to everybody who has been more than gracious to me stepping in again. Uh you know best wishes to Ammani uh for everything that he's going through and um I I I hope to
provide some stability and some continuity and just to help the district. if you heard me on Tuesday night, like this is a this is this is this is us working together to try and get through uh not the best not the best situation, but I but I think that that
my background and the ability that the fact that I was actually working in the back end of the district was is huge because um I had access to the systems and I had a basic understanding of of of the budget and I was able to kind of hit
the ground somewhat running. Um, you know, the timing was was couldn't have been worse and the last three weeks have actually have just been an absolute whirlwind. Um, but we are in the final stages of being able to submit a t tenative budget by the deadline of
tomorrow. Um, we were choking out we have we have all our little edits out. We have all of our stuff ready to go. We'll add some stuff in the morning and hopefully uh, you know, do all of our checklist and be able to submit that in. So, I just want to thank everybody, uh,
the business office staff, the board, the SLT, uh, everybody's been more than welcoming, uh, having me come into the district. I don't know how they'll feel two months from now, but but at least for now, it's it's a it's a it's a nice, uh, it's a nice welcome. Um, the
smallest bit about me, um, I retired about five years ago, but prior to that, I spent my entire career working in the business office of schools. Um, I graduated right away from college and started doing accounting work directly for a school system. I was an assistant
business administrator and became a business administrator uh in 1993. And from 1993 until 2021, I sat in that chair uh in a number of districts in Bergen and and Pay County.
Uh, I did the math in my head one time and and I've probably uh been a participant in probably more than 800 board of education meetings and we could probably throw another four or 500 committee meeting negotiation meetings over the course of of of my career. So,
um I've I've been through a lot and um and it's probably why I retired at an early age. I took an early retirement and uh got out of the business. Um, so for the past 5 years, I've been helping school districts just with projects and overload and and and gaps and vacancies.
And uh I'm I'm happy to to help in any way that I can. Um, with that said, uh, the the budget, the meeting tonight, um, it there's all real standard stuff on the agenda. Um, we have a carryover application for one of our federal
grants for IDEIDA. Uh, we have a towing agreement. We have approval to hire a consultant to help us with some procurement. We have a significant amount of procurement that's due this spring. Uh there's also recent legislation that precludes every school
district from using uh a lot of service vendors that work on a time and materials basis that were procured through a co-op. uh legislation has found that no district can long districts can no longer procure services through a co-op on a time materials
basis. So, uh we have to address that and just with the shortages and everything going on, uh the the the gentleman that we're looking to hire is pretty much the uh the go-to person in the state for this type of work. so he can help to provide some backend and and
help us to recreate some of our RFPs and specifications with the hope that they'll be they'll be a lot tighter and we'll get better pricing and be able to control uh control our vendors a little bit better. Um we do have uh something on the agenda to
approve uh our construction manager for another month. um really through no fault of of either the contractor or the architect or any of the professionals. Uh just really delays in the delivery of materials, most likely most namely the lockers at the high school. Um we need
another month to finish that project. It's my understanding that flooring was going down this week. Uh locked doors are supposed to start next week and they're supposed to take two weeks and we'll clean up. And the the hope is that we will turn that locker room back over
to the district uh by April. Um there's also a little bit of work that needs to be done in the middle school. Um I I actually haven't physically been on site, so I'm trying to get down next week to get on site to actually to see the Ritzer turf and to see to see the facilities and to meet a lot of the
staff in person. So I'm I'm looking forward to that. Um I also wanted to really commend the board on the board certification process. Um I sat through with the previous board and it it it's a commitment. It's a commitment for individual board me uh board members and
it's a commitment for all the training and all the staff and I I think it makes the board u um I think it makes the board better. So kudos to the board for doing that and for achieving the certification. It's uh it's no small feat, you know, because we're all really busy and you're volunteering your time
and it takes a lot of additional time to meet those requirements that they're they're asking. So, I uh you know, since I was hired two days ago, I don't have a whole lot more to report. So, I would keep it short and uh you know, openselves up as the meeting goes on to
any questions that might come up. >> Thank you very much, Frank. Any questions, comments? boy river Stefan. >> So this is my first rodeo in terms of budget development and on Tuesday as you know there were a lot of questions,
concerns, uh requests for analyses and things raised by all of us. What's and maybe this isn't a question for you Mr. Svelv but somebody else. What what's the process for us getting that information? Should I be looking at FFT notes? Is it done by email? How does how does this
work? You know, so what I would answer that is, you know, we are we were definitely uh we're a little bit behind the eight-ball with the approval of the tenative budget and um you know, after the budget got
approved, we really were scrambling just to get the budget into the county. You know, once we approve that budget, the budget needs to meet I don't know how many checkpoints and past edits and past county review. So, you know, for me, tomorrow after we get that budget
submitted into the county, we'll then be circling back and trying to to to address these concerns and address some of the some of the questions that have been raised. Um, you know, a lot of those questions will be raised just because because I need to get my hands
into it a little bit more and get to understand the budget a little bit more. You know, it's it's a $200 million budget, so you know, we're not talking about a small operation. Um so as we continue uh through the process um we'll continue that open dialogue. Um you know
I'll make myself as available as I can you know with the understanding that you know we're trying to get information out to as many people as possible and to to give a clear presentation of what the budget includes and what it doesn't include and uh you know the impact on taxpayers and and all that information.
So, um, you know, I'm I'm I'm comfortable that that we will get there and we'll we'll get the board to a place where they'll feel comfortable about the budget. You know, it's that's kind of uh kind of something that that I've I I've think I told the board on Tuesday and
I'll continue to say that, you know, I'll do my best to help you to get through this. >> Thank you. And I and I really do appreciate you jumping in and all the work you've you've done just in the last uh uh last short period of time. So, thank you.
Any other questions or comments? Okay, thank you so much. We're going to move on at this point to our first hearing of individuals and delegations. Uh we thank you for coming in person and joining us online this evening and for your patience. Uh we value public
comment at our board meetings and while we can't engage in a dialogue with you, we do take your comments very seriously and your input will inform our work. Our comment period is limited to one hour and each speaker will have three minutes. I ask that you begin by please
stating your name and your town. We're going to have our students first and we have a few here. Uh first I'm going to ask Caroline Caroline Shaw to come up and just make sure you push the button to turn your microphone on.
>> Okay. Um, hi, my name is Caroline Shaw. I'm from South Orange. I'm a senior and one of the captains at the CHS track team. Recently, the track team along with many other teams at CHS has faced significant uncertainty due to the lack of communication in the athletic department
and between the teams. Uh, the athletic director has implemented changes without consideration of how track and field operates. These decisions have made h have been made in the name of creating a safer and more competitive team, but they are based on inaccurate statistics about other track programs in the area.
Coaches and parents were told that the team is too large to manage and that other high schools programs such as Montlair and West Orange High School have sim have smaller teams with a coach to athlete ratio closer to 1 to 20. In reality, Montlair has over
165 athletes and a total of five coaches, a 1-33 ratio. and West Orange has a total of 224 athletes and eight coaches at a 1 to28 ratio. This inaccurate information has influenced the decisions made by both the athletic department and the board of education.
Had the track and field coach coaches and athletes been part of this conversation, the recently proposed cuts to the team would not have been would not have caused such instability. Instead, premature conclusions and hasty actions reflect a concerning pattern. What I find even more frustrating is the
inconsistent and contradictory justifications provided to the athletes and parents. One of the most prominent justifications is the intention to make CHS sports more elite. This district does not offer sports programs to the middle or elementary school levels. As a result, making high school sports more
exclusive will disproportionately impact students who cannot afford private coaching or to participate in club sports before reaching high school. Uh, Colombia athletics is often students is often students first introduction to organized team sports. It is unrealistic to expect these students to reach a high
level of performance before they have even had the opportunity to train on a school team unless they have had access to outside resources. Just a few weeks ago, when our head coaches contracts were in question, we found ourselves in a rush to respond. We had less than 24 hours to send emails, organize our thoughts, and present at the board of
education meeting. Fortunately, our voices were heard and they were reinstated. At the meeting, we called for more open communication within the athletic department. We left with the assurance that our concerns were being taken seriously and that meaningful steps would be taken to improve
transparency. I'm disappointed, though not surprised, to say that communication and transparency has not improved. At the last meeting, I mentioned that seniors on the winter track and field team paid $65 for banners. To date, those banners still have not been received and none of the senior families
have been reimbursed. And unfortunately, seniors did not get to see their banners hung up like every other CHS team. I do hope that I do not have to be sitting here in a few months talking about the spring track team banners. Each sport requires a unique combination of
resources, space, and time to function effectively. There is no quick fix to the challenges facing CHS athletics as a whole. And I'm hopeful that this new athletic advisory committee will be the first step in creating a consistent consistent open and honest communication between the athletic department and
teams. And I hope that you as the board of ed will ensure that our voices are taken seriously. >> Thank you, Caroline. >> Next, we have Elizabeth Ley. Hello, my name is Elizabeth Ley. I am from South Orange. I am a junior and captain on the Columbia track and cross
country team. Recently, an email was sent out in reference to the future of sports at Colombia, claiming that it was the goal of both the athletic director and the superintendent to see Colombia refocus on elite level competition and results and that selection and participation on teams would be based on
high level performance. This came only weeks after not permitting the track coaches to accompany their athletes to the most high level high school meet in the country. One day later, Principal Sanchez and the athletic director sent out a mental health toolkit PDF stating that it is not performance or statistics
that define an athlete, but the work that they put in. Inconsistencies such as this suggest not only a lack of concrete end goals, but also a lack of coordination between administrators. This is not a one-off situation, but rather a trend with the athletic department. There has been lacking or
immensely delayed communication on the topic of every concern brought to the athletic director's attention, often leaving teams without the proper resources or answers for months and impacting their seasons. Is clear that coach Windstead needs further support and interference from the board in order to create a more successful program. We
would like to know what the ideas are, how the board plans on supporting the AD as she takes on increased responsibility through boosters while she currently struggles to fulfill her typical duties. What resources and supports will be offered to her? What support will be offered to teams so that they know what they entrust in her to do will be accomplished. We are grateful that the
district is taking steps towards trying to improve the Columbia sports culture, such as with the new athletics advisory committee. However, there is still the concern that the same inconsistencies will remain and we want the board to take a role in ensuring that promises of fairness, inclusion, and proper planning are followed through on. Moving forward,
we hope that there can be a clear and open line of communication between the superintendent and board, the athletic director, and captains of Colombia teams in order to ensure that student input is heard and plans are made as well as goals are understood. No team is trying to avoid the necessity of rules or
commitment. However, we can recognize that the fast turnaround of temporary fixes and plans are not the most effective way to support programs that are expected to function at such a high level. We do not need urgent progress for the sake of change. We want concrete, long-lasting plans that consider the consistent input of student
athletes and the well-being of programs through communication, deliberate end goals, and proper execution of necessary steps. Thank you. >> Thank you. Next, we have Katie Calhoun. I'm Katie Calhoun from South Orange.
I'm a sophomore from Columbia who runs on the track team. First, I would like to thank the district for not following through with the proposed cuts to the track team. For context, last Friday, we were informed that our coaches were being forced by the athletic department to cut our team down to 100 athletes. In response, we protested as the cuts would
have risked the health of the remaining athletes, the future of the team, and the family that had been created over years. In response to our protests, we were presented with a solution that really raised more issues. The athletic department has told us that instead of following through with the cuts, we will now have two practice groups who each
practice for only an hour and 15 minutes each. Not only is there not enough time to complete our workouts, but it shrinks our practice nearly in half. Beyond that, our coaches would be forced to work longer hours while still receiving the same pay. However, this is more than just the track team. Up until two weeks
ago, I was also a member of the varsity girls lacrosse team here at Colombia, which has also been a victim of poor oversight. The team was in need of a new coach earlier this year, and the job applications were submitted in October. However, the athletic department did not start interviewing until around January, and ultimately the first job search was
inconclusive. This left the team with no coach and only a month left until the season started. The team was not able to meet their coach until 3 days before the season started. This left the entire program in jeopardy and many athletes questioning if the school would even be able to have a team. We live in a world
where teen mental health is becoming increasingly important, specifically in our district. Sports are a great outlet for lots of students and have been proven to be beneficial for youth mental health. However, when our teams are being mistreated, left in a period of uncertainty, and specifically when we are told that one in three of us on the
track team are being cut after we have already made the team, it is extremely damaging to our overall well well-being. My question for the board of education is this. Do we at Columbia Athletics want to build an athletic environment that is not defined by playing time, stats, wins and losses, or scholarships
as referenced earlier by Elizabeth? or an environment where we take opportunities away from athletes and directly contradict the priority of mental health because we are an elite program. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Next we have Levi Faber Keen
and I hope I got that right. Uh yeah, you got it right. Um, so my name is Levi and I'm a junior and I'm also a captain on Columbia's cross country and track and field team. Um, I know that many of you guys are aware of
the troubles of what coach Winstead has put the track team through and I know that many of you um, uh, Coach Winstead often argues that we strive for excellence, but she fails to see that our team was the most successful before she came along. Last spring we had one
of the top track and field teams in the state. We had two graduates run off go off to run at division one colleges and a graduate run a division 2 college. We had a relay team go to the state meet and bring back eight medals. Our team placed fifth at Nike Cross regionals
which included 178 teams from every state in the northeast. And we also had an athlete run the number one time in the state for all sophomores across the 800 meter distance. Since coach Winstead has joined as a new athletic director, we've had to come up with a new solution or hit every curveball that she's thrown
us. Over the years, the track team's media days only charge seniors around $50 for their senior banner. This year, however, the team's media day costed each team $500, and Coach Winstead refused to tell anybody where that money went.
The CHS Photography Club, which generously stayed all day to take photos for over 100 athletes across all of the winter sports teams, is an unpaid group, so the money couldn't have gone to them. Additionally, many seniors on the team never received their banners, despite
Coach Winstead walking around the gym on media day taking envelopes with cash and even loose change from many seniors. The disrespect given to many of these seniors who didn't receive their banner photo after working their entire high
school careers is unreal. The unprofessional attitude expressed by coach Winstead towards the track team by firing both of our head coaches in the week before the state champ in the week between two state championship meets is unreal. Yet even with our coaches being back, it's clear to see that this will
continue to happen. Hence the recent threat of cutting a third of the team. The track and field and cross country teams along with all other teams at Colombia deserve an athletic director who can ensure safety, efficiency, and organization for their team. And we
strongly urge you guys to reconsider who should be fulfilling this role. Thank you guys. >> Thank you. Next, we have Jeremy Crawford. Hello, my name is Jeremy Crawford. I'm a junior from Maplewood. I'm a track and field captain. I've been part of the
team for as long as I've been in high school. I've had the privilege of interacting with many parts of our school administration due to my sister's health complications. And during that time, I've witnessed an incredible level of professionalism from every single member of the administration in this district. That is except for the
athletic director. Because my my team's already done a great job explaining what she has done to our team as a whole. But there are me many many specific examples of things that she has done to individuals. For example, in during the winter season, she told one of our captains, "Colia High School used to be
such a great team. What happened to you guys?" As as a school that professes that we care much about our athletes mental health, I find it ridiculous that someone who is supposed to be nurturing our athletes could go to a student and say that during sorry she does not
communicate adequately with our team which causes has caused panic on multiple occasions. When our coaches were fired without warning, we had people texting in group chats the night before the board meeting trying to figure out what had happened. when she didn't tell our coaches in advance about roster limit changes. We had freshmen
finding out on their own that there could be cuts to the team. Lord knows where they heard it. And I had freshmen coming up to me who had never played a sport before in their life, who had made the team off of their own hard work coming up to me asking me, "Am I going to be cut? What is happening?" And none
of us knew. She emailed every single person vaguely related to the track team at the exact same time about her new solution to the coach to athlete ratio. This includes people who had already been cut from the team and people who were never on the team in the first place. She also did not communicate with
our head coach about this issue before sending the email to everybody. Every single team at the school that uses the buses that she is in charge of has had multiple buses arrive late and not arrive or have not enough buses, leading to some teams, like I've heard
of lacrosse having to fit 65 people into one school bus with all of their bags and sitting on the bus for hours and hours. That is ridiculous. And you cannot expect anybody to perform well at a tournament under those conditions. And when the buses are late, that takes away time for sports like us to warm up
because we cannot race properly without our time to warm up. Um, there's a lot more things that she's done, but for brevity sake, I'm going to end here with two questions specifically for the superintendent. First of all, do you care about your student athletes? Second of all, how many times do we have
to bring up these issues with the person that that you have employed before you realize that she does not care about our team or any team for that matter? >> Thank you. Thank you for your time. >> Thank you.
>> Next, we have Aiden Kleinman. >> Hi, my name is Aiden Kleinman. I'm a junior in the varsity lacrosse goalie. Uh I'm here speaking on behalf of the entire Columbia boys lacrosse program about the impact Miss Winstead has had on our team. We understand and appreciate that the role of the athletic
director is to streamline and equalize resources across all sports. However, instead of making things easier for our program, her decisions have often made it more difficult for our team to function effectively. The most significant issue was transportation. During my freshman year, we had two
buses, one for varsity and one for JV. Now, despite having a larger roster of about 50 players along with all of our equipment, we're expected to fit onto a single bus. This leads to cramped seating, players sitting on laps, even in the aisles, and gear packed into
every available space. After long rides, we arrive overheated, uncomfortable, and stressed before the games even begin, which impacts our performance. Having only one bus also affects academics because both teams travel together. JV players are forced to leave school
earlier than necessary, usually missing an entire class. And at the same time, varsity players, especially upper classmen like me with demanding workloads, must stay and wait for JV games to finish before returning home, taking hours of time from homework and studying. Another major concern is the
delay in communication and receiving equipment. Our coach submitted an order for new goals and uniforms back in October and it took all the way till the second week of January for her to call him clarifying sizes, meaning that she hadn't ordered them yet. And they didn't
they she then notified us that they wouldn't arrive until late April, more than halfway through the season, and the seniors had to take their banner photos with our old with our old jerseys. Lastly, we are gravely concerned about the recent directive that all booster
related activities will now be coordinated through the athletic director's office. The efficiency and success of the lacrosse program is largely due to the work of the lacrosse boosters. They fundra, engage our parent community, and respond quickly to our team's needs. After hearing about
frustrations from most teams at Colombia, it is clear that the athletic director needs to first do the job she has before she is given more responsibility. The boys lacrosse team and every athletic program at Colombia deserves an athletic director who
ensures teams can operate safely and efficiently while allowing student athletes to compete at a high level without compromising their academic responsibilities. Thank you for your time. Thank you. So we have a few more in person, but I
want to prioritize our students. We have one online public speaks from Margaret Doran Paley. Is Miss Doran Paley available? >> Um, I'm a parent and I have her written thing. Is that possible? >> You know, >> she was unwell today. >> No, no, no. That's fine. If I can have
you wait, we prioritize students so they can get home for homework. Yeah, sure. >> Thank you so much. >> Uh, all right. Our next will be Donald Connelly. >> Donald Connley, South Orange. Any other students? >> So I can't speak out.
>> Any other? >> Okay, good. Am I good to go? >> Yes. Okay. Hey, so I recognize you've heard a lot from the the track team today or the issues regarding the athletic director. And I wanted to point out that the issues with the AD are
wider than just the track team. So, I'm a parent of a wrestler and there's five things I wanted to point out that we've certainly experienced with the AD this year. Connelly, thank you. >> Okay. The first one is lack of any
attention to a schedule. We've had issues where wrestlers have attended events and they haven't been registered. Lack of any busing. There's been issues where we as parents have had to drive our children to wrestling events because no buses have arrived.
hiring and not paying our coaches. We had the first female coach in the history of the school, still not paid. Our senior coach who came in at the last minute, still not paid. Equipment, we have 55 wrestlers, which
is a record, including six female wrestlers, which is more than we had last year. It's terrific. They don't have any equipment. Didn't get any net new uniforms. And then there is a complete and total lack of responsiveness
to any parent emails to the ID. Right. Um she committed at one point to to a 48 hour response time which you had mentioned earlier on. I sent her her email last June about getting assistant
coaches into the wrestling program. She still hasn't responded. Finally, and I think this is important, her inability or refusal to communicate to anyone
makes me question the decision to have her manage the boosters, right? And to manage the boosters, your ability to communicate is the job. She can't communicate and she won't communicate.
So, I don't think that's fair to her cuz she's clearly not able to communicate. It is clearly unfair on the parents and the children who spent 3 hours here waiting to speak are committed to the program, are committed to doing the right thing by our student
athletes that that's the way they're being treated. Thank you. Thank you. Next. Do we have Elizabeth Putra? >> I'm giving a >> Oh, all right. >> Thank you. >> Yeah. I don't know. Were you written
down separately or you just >> Sure. >> Come on up, please. >> It's her words. I'm just saying. >> Very good. I appreciate it. >> Okay. So, this is from Margaret Doran Paley, my daughter um from Maplewood. She says, "Hello, my name is Maggie Doran Paley. I'm a junior and I have
been a part of Columbia High School track and field since freshman year for both the winter and spring seasons. Track is is and always has been an incredible community and a fun end to the school day. I would not be where I am now in my life without the community
and support that track has given me. I have built incredible friendships in my runner peers and have found amazing mentors in my coaches. They all know me well as an athlete, as a person, and about the things I have overcome as a runner and in my personal life. While I
can only speak fully from my experience as a sprinter, every day at practice, Coach Mcomes, the sprint coach, takes care to explain good running form, help people with starts, give tips for stretches, and give individual help when he notices something or he is asked. If
I were to go to coach Carluchio, coach Simon, Coach Johnson, or Coach B about anything to do with my personal training, all of them would help me out. Not only would they be able to answer my questions as a coach, but they would be able to answer specifically to me as a runner because they have all taken the
time to get to know me just as they have with all of the other athletes, no matter how many there are. I believe that while track may be bustling with a lot of people at Underh Hill at once, it is not an environment that is unmanageable for the ratio of athletes to coaches that we have. Track is the
most rewarding when you are running with a group of peers all experiencing the same workout at the same time as you. Because track is not a team sport in the same way that sports like lacrosse, field hockey, and football are. Feeling like a team is integral to the sport as
a whole. Splitting up practice times takes away some of that team aspect which could affect how meets go, how relay events are looked at, how the team energy is, and the sense of community that track brings. I also believe that before a decision is made to split the
team into A and B teams, each with different practice times that are shorter than the practices we have now, the people making that decision should actually see a practice to decide on whether or not the problem the team division is solving is a problem the
team actually has. Thank you. >> Thank you. Next, we have Ben Vatelli. Okay, change the subject. I'm sorry. >> I just have a letter there that's been signed by 270 members of the community
that I wanted you to see. You've already >> I I I think you've already seen a preliminary version of it and people are still signing. So, this is about security as usual. Sorry. uh about the Raptor visitor management system.
You know, it's we we've we found out that um contrary to what you were probably told by the vendor, um the vendor told me that the system does store data in the cloud. And you know, sometimes I wonder if this is a a solution looking for a problem. You
know, we we prefer human security. Um, and one of the reasons we we we like that is because when you hire people, um, you know who sets the policy? Well, you do and Mr. Morgan does and Superintendent Bing does. When you hire
one of these big edtech companies, they set the policy. Um, and and you know, that's not ideal. I understand that you need to use technology to to save money and to do a good job, but we need to think about
these issues, right? So, you want to print a badge. Okay, that's great. I think that's a great idea for security. Um, do you really need a log? Well, okay, maybe you want a log. Maybe you need a log. Do you need that log to be on a computer?
Why exactly? You know, okay, maybe you want it to be on a computer. Well, do you need that computer to be on a network? Probably you don't. But if you want it to be on a network, you need that to be on the internet, right? And you can see how it goes. Um,
do you need that internet log to be run by a big Silicon Valley cloud company that's venture capital startup? Okay, that's that's another question. Um so you know in 2008 and 2011 the department of education amended furpa
student privacy rules to allow these edtech companies to act as school officials and that's sort of we opened Pandora's box right so now we have Google classroom we have canvas we have power school we have all these things I'm not going to ask you not to use cloud software that would be crazy school is very useful although it did
get hacked >> and it's going to get hacked again so when you use this cloud cloud software, the district needs to start thinking very carefully about what information it puts on what systems. That's just the way it is. Um, and security applications are sensitive. You know, you're you're
tracking the location of a person at a specific time. And in the present national context with people getting kidnapped off the street and stifling of descent, these concerns are acute and urgent and that's why 270 people signed that petition. Um, there are other school districts in
the country that just have policies in place that make something like Raptor just a non-starter right from the start. It doesn't even, you know, it's not even can't even be on the table. Most districts don't have policies like that, but a few other districts, you know, decided to float this thing and they uh actually reversed course after community
pressure uh and concern. So, uh I hope that you will reconsider. >> Thank you, Ben. Next up, we have Dr. Cadishia costly white. >> I'm sure I still have crumbs on me from
dinner. Um, but I ran out of bedtime to come down here talk to you guys. I'm not a politician. Um, just a community member. Uh, I um am here representing SA justice. Erica could not be here tonight. She would have been here
representing SMA action. um we are very concerned about the raptor uh system and the the implications for immigrants but I have to kind of talk as an as a scholar right so there's this experiment that's famous you get taught this experiment when you're a grad student
first thing right it's supposed to be your lesson in ethics and like the stuff you're really not supposed to do right and the story goes um this Yale psychologist brought a bunch of people into a room and he told them to press a button anytime they got a wrong answer, right? People have heard of this, right?
The Mgrim experiment. And um when they pressed that button, they would hear the person screaming. And he told them, "Well, we're shocking them, right?" And he they kept shocking the person um even as the distress got worse and worse and worse until the point that they could have killed the person on the other
side. Now, as scholars, we're not allowed to do that anymore. Um because the people who were pressing the button experienced a lot of anguish. But there's a overall lesson about that whole experiment which is about bureaucracy and what happens with authority and that people start to listen and conform in groups. Um
especially there's a theory around conformity that when people feel like they don't have enough information in a group, they just kind of defer, right? Um they defer the expertise. They defer the ability to think through who's getting hurt on the other side of that
wall, right? When they press the button. You guys are pressing a button on surveillance. that is unnecessary. We have technology in the school that now alerts kids to their birthdays when they come in and says happy birthday when they they swipe into the system. Um we
are putting in Raptor technology right now that will take driver's license of parents including immigrant parents, including undocumented parents, including parents who might not want their information or personal information popping up on a screen and we're storing that for no reason. If
this is about security, you have people that we pay good money when we're firing teachers to sit at doors all day to watch who comes in and out of a building. They can photocopy if you want to store licenses for some reason. They can photocopy them and keep
them at their desk, but there's no need to put in a system where you are making people endangered. A man just died in one of Trump's concentration camps from a tooth rotting in his head. So, it's really easy to press the button, you know, on these things, sign
a pen, sign a signature, stroke of a pen, and not think about the implications of what you're doing. And so, I'm asking you as we deliver this petition to you to think. It's easy. It costs money anyway. We need to save it.
So, just like think, okay, please. I hope you read the petition. Thanks. Dr. White, thank you. >> Dr. White. >> Yes. >> You've made me feel very old by mentioning the Mgram study.
>> Yes. Early 60s. Yes. Yes. >> I remember. Well, >> don't do them. >> Next, we have Todd Illingsworth. >> Good evening. Uh Todd Ellingworth, president of Maplewood. I'm a graduate of class of 88, this
institution, third generation. God willing, my daughter will be fourth. I can't tell you how upset I was when my daughter was competing in nationals,
Nike indoor nationals. and her coach was not allowed to attend. I'm in good communication with two of the coaches. One of them, actually three of them. One of them was an official, so she was
disqualified. She was officiating. That makes sense. The other coach had to work. That made sense. The third one of the other coaches I'm not too familiar with, but the one guy the one guy that could
have been there and supported these three girls in the 4 by yeah 4x200 was for some reason banned. I don't understand that this year. Yeah.
Nike indoor nationals couple week and a half ago. How much better could those kids have done with this right support? They went together in one car with a family. I took the train in because I wanted
them to be together as a team. And I told those girls, I said, "Look, life isn't fair. Go kick some butt. That cannot stand. A coach should not be penalized
because of the incompetence of someone that's above them. I do not understand why this person is still employed. Okay, I did my time on that field out there, Ritzer. I got the shin splints to
prove it. I would never let this woman write a recommendation for my daughter for college. Bob Cersio wrote my wrote my recommendation to get me in school. To this day,
I thank him for that. I don't know where it went wrong, how it went south, but uh something's got to change. Okay, I've heard it from multiple athletes, a
lot of kids. They are not happy. And if this person can't do the job, either get them help or get them out. It's that simple. It's not a hard thing to solve. Thank
you. Thank you. Okay, we have a few folks online. First, Matthew Frink. >> That committee members not online. >> Next, we have Jurga Marshall. That committee member is not online.
You're >> in person. Welcome. >> I must have clicked something wrong. Um I'm Jurgen Marshall. I am from South Orange. Um and I was at the meeting last BOE meeting uh February 26. I was here
to speak in support of the track and field coaches. However, uh I also noted at that time that chaos that we were experiencing in track and field uh was not isolated. Um I noted that these issues have been widespread across
multiple sports. Um, and I also asked uh the district to consider holding a crossport town hall so the parents and the student athletes could ask questions and hear how the district plan to begin repairing this erosion in trust that has
resulted from repeated problems within the athletic department. I'm back tonight unfortunately uh because there have been no signs that trust is being repaired. In fact, uh things have worsened. Uh the AD AD's
recent attempt to institute cuts after announcing the team only added to the ongoing confusion. And while Mr. Bing's letter that followed shortly may have looked well intentioned to the an outsider to those dealing with these
inconsistencies, it felt inaccurate, inflammatory, and dismissive. The letter letter shifted blame onto the coaches and the parents and ignored the long-standing failures of the athletic
department. Mr. Bing also stated that the boosters club uh inconsistencies require all activities to now go through the AD's office, but this overlooks the main issue that families have been raising for months. Um the AD's office
does not communicate with us. Uh parents want uh coordination and clarity if only anyone round uh responded to our emails. Mr. Bling Bing uh closed his letter by saying the priority is to provide a
safe, disciplined, elite environment for our student athletes. Unfortunately, that is not the experience families are having. What we see is an effort to blame coaches and parents, cover athletic department shortfalls, and
protect the AD rather than support the athletes. At this point, unfortunately, I have doubts in Mr. Bing's sincerity to address these issues. So, I'm turning to you, the elected
um members of this board, uh to step in um and please require real action, accountability, and plan to repair the athletic department. Our students, parents, and coaches deserve stability, appropriate communication, and
leadership that um we can trust. and I hope this is the last BOE meeting in a very long time that I'm attending. Thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> And I think lastly, we have Jessica Miller online.
>> Good evening. Um, first of all, I need to sing the praises of our students. I love to hear their self- advocacy and I agree with them. They're a good reminder that something really works here. For those of us who are adults and
responsible for setting an example, we need to tell the truth. I live across the street and Ritzerfield has not received deep core irration or receding since I can remember. It is terrible to deprive maintenance on a district
facility to push an agenda of an overly priced project. Being in a budget crisis requires prudent and careful choices. Maintain the field, get it going over spring break by air rating, reeding, and
top dressing with compost. Our student athletes deserve that. I request Mr. to publish the maintenance log for Ritzer on the district site tomorrow and I ask for this board to insist on this accountability. The turf blankets belong
to South Orange and their DPW knows how to deploy them. Why did no one ask to use them? The student athletes deserve the bare minimum of maintenance and that is not and that's not done.
I will echo one of our student speakers. Do you care about your student athletes? >> Thank you, Jessica. And that concludes our first public speaks. Uh we will now move on to our committee
reports. Uh and so first up, I think we uh much of the work our board does happens in committees. The results are brought to the board meeting for action. Detailed minutes of each committee meeting are posted on our website and we encourage you to review them. We'll now hear from
the chairs of each of our committees with a few brief highlights from this month's meetings. And we will start with uh finance facilities and technology. Board member Nyer. >> Thank you.
>> Okay. Shall I go ahead? Okay. Um Okay. So the finance facilities and technology committee met on March 18th and uh we primarily focused on two topics most importantly the 2020 the
formulation of the 20 26 2027 budget. Um a few highlights from that discussion um I I'll point out um and this was covered at the preliminary budget adoption meeting we had as a full board a couple of days ago. Um, Mr. Serville presented
the budget and he noted that the general fund or the operating portion of the budget overall increases by 2.27% over the current fiscal year. Um, our state aid has increased by 6% and our local tax levy in order to cover
operating expenses is expected to be 5.63%. Revenues also included about 9.4 4 million in excess of from excess surplus in 2024 and 2025. Um our appropriations are 174 million and um the district has
been working hard on identifying areas where we can make some structural changes that are long that will have a long-term impact in right sizing our budget. Um and that includes areas such as transportation, custodial services
and optimizing class sizes um by analyzing over and under staffing relative to class size maximums and contractual teacher workload in um across the buildings. Um we are in we have been in a tough budgetary
environment for the last few years and that is something we talked about. We talked about the fact that we've been relying heavily on savings over the last couple of years to basically kind of close the gap between expenses and revenues which has led to a depletion of
our um general fund which is um or fund balances which is our savings and this is really the situation we've been calling the fiscal cliff. Um, and in order to to rightsize this, we are going to have some to make some difficult choices. Um, some of which we've begun
to look at in the upcoming fiscal year, and we will continue to do that as a district going forward. Um, other than the budget, we also talked about a little bit about our capital projects. Mr. Serville actually um put together an analysis of the use of bond proceeds and
uh the different projects that were approved in the 2019 board resolution. We've asked for additional information on these um on capital projects and the available bond proceeds um in a future budget um future board presentation
after the budget's done. So those are the two highlights from um FFT. >> Any questions? Hearing none, we'll move on to special services board. >> Great. Thank you. Uh the special
services committee met on March 19th. Um, all board members were in attendance with Miss Chess Maria and Superintendent Bing. We were first joined by CPAC president Nicole Josie who shared that members were appreciative of the renewed focus in the district on mental health. We also clarified paraprofessional pay
questions reinforced school-based communication when teacher changes occur um and got confirmation that within the budget that board member Naier just spoke about that no legally mandated services will be affected by our budget posture. We moved into review of our district and
board goals related to special services. The first one is about strengthening academic culture and climate through collaborative learning. And in support of this goal, CNI and special services teams collaborated to provide a parent webinar on accommodations and modifications in the classroom, reflecting an effort to build some shared understanding with our district
families and increase equitable access to instruction and strengthening that homeschool partnership. We also spent a great deal of time in discussion around the budget, which is both a board goal and currently the season that we are in. Um the committee engaged in a robust discussion on the district's
multi-pronged approach to reducing our par profofessional spend while still maintaining strong student support this past year. The efforts involved in that included standardized data informed approval process which was embedded in discussions with families during IEP meetings. um improving staff capacity
through collaborative problem solving and increased BCBA support and ongoing collaboration with administrators and then in our committee having a month-to-month budget monitoring of that spend. We also discussed the upcoming RFP process for select services including PAR professionals and the district's review of related service
spending to ensure provider time is maximized. Finally, as Superintendent Bing said during the preliminary budget hearing earlier this week, protecting mental health and special education remained a key guard gale guardrail, excuse me, in budget development. And for that, I am deeply grateful. So, thank you. In
alignment with that commitment, the district is prioritizing opening a middle school emotional regulation impairment classroom at the middle school level next year, expanding uh enrollment in ASD classrooms, and building out our 18 through 21 transition program at CHS. Our next
meeting of this committee is scheduled for April 16th. There's a full recap on the website and I am open to questions if there are any. >> Yes, Jeff. >> Um I'm more like I have a comment that relates to FFT and special services. >> Um when we go through budget season, we
usually like raise concerns about things that are actually not going well for the district, cuts we have to make, um spending we have to defer, um cost drivers, etc. But I do want to highlight actually something did actually has been going well with the budget last few years. When I was on the board the first
time in the early 2010s like we were always very concerned about the cost of out ofd tuition which at the time was increasing faster than the rest of the budget. Um that took up a lot of the board's attention but I do want to raise for the public that actually for the last few years out of digit tuition has been very stable and it actually is
something we can take comfort from. Um, for instance, actually the last few years, like really going back to 201819, out of digit tuition has fluctuated in like the 13 to 14 million range. It actually peaked at $15 million in 201920. Um, for this current year 2526, it's
actually less than $13 million. And for this coming year, uh, 2627, it's only projected to be $13.5 million. Um, also for the first time in my memory, we have students from other towns who are being educated in our district because actually we have some very high quality
services. That's happening a lot on the middle school level. So I do want to raise for like the public's awareness that actually we do have some like good news on the budget. Um, you know, our new superintendent gets credit. You know, his predecessors do too. I just wanted to raise that for the public. It's a contrast from my first term.
>> For the record, you're my favorite board member. Any other questions? All right. Uh, the student and family affairs committee met on March 17th. Uh, in attendance were myself, board
members, Bennett, Higgins, and Nyer. Uh, as well as our two student representatives uh, and a tremendous array of different district uh, employees. We addressed four different general areas. We addressed athletics. We addressed uh, our intentional
integration initiative. We addressed uh mass communication and we addressed HIV concerns. Uh our athletics conversation was great. This is I think the first time we've had a committee in a while that was really dedicated and focused on among other things athletics and it was sort of an orientation for us. We had a
discussion in two parts. We had our uh student representatives join the meeting for the first 40 minutes or so and a lot of their conversation was about athletics. Some of their concerns that we heard tonight were brought to us in a group as well. Uh and there was a a healthy dialogue between themselves and the superintendent regarding the state
of athletics, the areas uh of growth uh both as far as some of the communication issues that were raised as well as compliance uh that we've been out of compliance in a number of areas in athletics and the goal that the district has uh of of overhauling our athletics
program to bring it into compliance and strengthen coaching oversight, etc. Uh we also uh were able to have uh athletic director Winstead join us later on in the meeting uh to discuss uh her view of the athletics department, some of the
struggles that she sees and uh things she's attempting to do to bring us on track. Uh some of the outcomes from it were that uh there is an advisory council that is being put together uh that's going to bring a lot of voices into a room together to work on developing uh the program and addressing
some of the needs that were raised. uh redefining the athletic philosophy and creating a mission and vision for the department as well as revising the coaches handbook which has last been updated in 2017 to better align with um with state policy. With regard to triple
I we discussed the uh imminent release of our experience survey which was changed by policy from a twice a year to once a year survey that is expected to go out uh toward the beginning or middle of uh April. uh and that is going to uh
be brought I think given to a number of different people in the district uh K through eight I believe uh getting their input on triple I that'll be followed by our second survey which we've done for the past few years the uh New Jersey school climate improvement survey uh
that also tackle some of the same climate and culture pieces. Um within the experience survey board members have been reviewing it. uh this is a different survey than in years past and there were some concerns raised as far as the tone and focus of some of the questions uh and so that is currently
under continued review uh by Dr. Gilbert and his team uh to finalize that survey to go out at the um uh within the next month. Uh we also discussed the uh imminent change in triple eye in discontinuing use of triple eye in
middle school which was a district determination um and the rationale for it and what the likely impact was going to be. There were questions raised over what the likely um demographic outcome would be for that upcoming sixth grade class which is a class that actually has
gone all the way through without ever touching triple I and will continue to in the middle school. Uh the district talked about some of the modeling they've done. they don't have an SCES tier analysis for that grade uh as they do for others before and after it but they are using uh free and reduced lunch
numbers to have a certain idea about how the SCES would fall. Uh there were some some concerns and discussion raised over exactly how that would impact the middle school overall. Uh and we anticipate hearing some information back from that as it goes forward. Uh we also discussed
uh a regulation regulation 5120 is being developed by the district that will articulate with immense detail exactly how the triple i algorithm is working uh as it pertains to the 2627 school year and that will continue to evolve and
that goes into a number of factors including the variance which is anticipated uh at this point to go from the current 5% up to perhaps 10%. uh concerns were raised and discussions were had about what that impact would be, what the difference is from 5 to 10
and middle numbers. Um and so there was an expectation there would be continued discussions as uh that regulation was brought to various committees and reviewed further. With regard to uh mass communication, we expect there's a standard operating procedure being
developed by uh uh the communications department that articulates how uh these communications are pushed out, emails, all calls, etc. Looking forward to seeing that soon. And regarding HIV concerns, there was an acknowledgement of the issues, especially with uh been
raised regarding our our trans students uh and and other populations. uh in the middle schools. We've heard quite a bit, but there's other, you know, throughout our district. Uh a parent focus group is being set up to uh identify better some of the issues that
are happening and supports that'll be developed. Uh as well as discussion of regular lessons that are being pushed into the classrooms addressing some of these uh pieces. Uh more info is in our minutes. Any questions? Board member Higgins.
It's uh more of a comment, but I just want to say the student and family affairs committee has been very very powerful and very very helpful to have people come in and speak about different areas of what's going on in the district. Um being at the board level, we really have to stay at this very high
position and not get in the weeds of everything. And I valued that and I've taken that from my governance training to the women's leadership training that I went to. But we are to some level the voice of the community. So I did want to tap a little bit on athletics mostly
just to say that what I'm understanding is that there is just a lot of frustration everywhere and what I kind of would urge everyone to do is just take a moment. I know it's frustrating. I know it's difficult and there's a lot of change that is happening. But almost
to Dr. Gilbert's point, it takes five years to do what he is trying to do and what the district is trying to do. So, I'd almost want to encourage that we take that same approach to big changes within a department and it's been very
well thought out. Sadly, I think through litigation, but in this case, I think we can do it ourselves. So, I'd just like to encourage everybody to, you know, be don't close off from communication. try to still connect with each other because I think this SFA committee is really
helping. >> Any other comments or questions? >> Okay, moving on to personnel board member Higgins. >> Gez, I didn't realize I was next. Okay. Um, so personnel committee. The personnel committee met on Monday, March
23rd at 6:30 and ended at 7:45. In attendance were board members Meredith Higgins, Bamal Kapatia, Shaina Sacka Gable, and Malanie Nyer. The administrative liaison were superintendent Mr. Jason Bing, assistant superintendent Dr. Kevin Gilbert, and director of HR, Mr. Tundday Adoyan. The
committee notes are or will be made available on the SAMSD website for public consumption. But please keep in mind that there will always be items in the agenda that will be notated as confidential and will have to remain in compliance with our legal obligation as a board and a district to not share that
information. The highle points are as follows. Policies, there were no policies discussed at this time um either requested or uh sent by policy and governance. transparency. We are aiming to put more detail into these agendas, but again we
have to be very careful about confidentiality. Um, every month we will continue to recognize one or more staff members. Tonight was Emily, Kenya, and Jamie. Congratulations to their wonderful work. There is a dedicated page where anyone can nominate someone for recognition. So, please use it. Let's celebrate our
staff and how hard they work. Go to the SOS website, click on board of education, and then click submit a recognition. recognition personnel wins and challenges. HR shared that this month is has been very tough and that wins aren't often in this time of year
nor in this department. This budget process has been very challenging with many varying opinions and priorities. There have been a lot of work and requests for HR to deliver data, but they have been meeting those needs and providing support for the decision-making step by step. They are
doing so collaboratively and remain committed to do what's best for students within time and budget constraints. The 5-year workforce diversity plan, district goals, and personnel goals were not discussed because we're in budget season, but we received a wonderful review from Dr. Gilbert that touched on
quite a few of those points. The next meeting is scheduled for Monday, April 20th at 6:30. Are there any questions? Okay. >> All right. Next, we're going to have curriculum and instruction for Macka Gable.
>> Thank you, board president Meyer. The CNI committee met on March 9th with all district administrators present and um our board team, board me, vice president, how to say it,
board member, vice vice president, first vice president. No, it's late. Callahan, >> Stephanie, >> board member Kapadia, and our board president filling in for board member um Brown. As always, we discussed district
goals related to CNI and progress toward the third quarter metrics. Dr. Wayel presented data on freshman academy regarding attendance and academic outcomes. Um you all should have received that in the meeting minutes at a link to that. And in Dr. Gilbert's
presentation tonight, he referenced the curriculum recommendation to create enrichment and acceleration opportunities. So in aligned with that at our meeting we discussed gifted action plans also known as gap plans and we heard about how content area
supervisors are developing a hub of instructional resources really focused on depth and complexity on various topics to support teachers and strengthen gap implementation in the classroom. The committee didn't have any further discussion on related policies for this
month regarding next year's budget. Miss Bodner told us about how she reviewed three years of CNI spending data and used that information in budget discussions with supervisors. Um, title 2 funding will
continue to support professional development as reflected in the budget presentation. Some textbook purchases will be delayed by a year while others will be phased in over time such as by grade level to avoid absorbing the full cost at once. I do want to note that
while meeting minutes provide an update on the elementary dual language program, that program has since been tabled for next school year um in light of our budget constraints. And our next meeting is April 13th at 6:30 and you can read
more on the website. >> Any questions? Board Bennett. Um I was wondering if the CNI committee discussed about what percentage of our students have GAPS right now
>> we didn't discuss the percentage. Um but I think did I'm not sure did you submit that for the tracker? I feel like I saw that number somewhere. >> I might have about a year ago. >> Okay. If not we can we can get >> we talked about it on the phone once but >> yeah we can we can definitely get that number. Um
>> yeah I think it might be it. I'll look back at the tracker and I'll let you know. >> Okay. >> And if not, we'll add it. >> I asked because you know you know five or six years ago is a very low number. I think actually we're told in public that it was just like 19 students and I know that there has been an increase but I
don't know like what the current rate is right now. >> Any other questions? Okay. Board member Stefen. >> The policy and governance committee met on Wednesday, March 11th. In attendance were Mr. Bing, Miss Jez Maria, Dr. Gilbert, and board members Brown,
Higgins, Meyer, and myself. There is one policy up for first read tonight. That's policy 1220, which is about the qualifications of the superintendent and the procedures for hiring uh that person. We also have three policies and two regulations that are up for second read. Policy 0142.1
on nepotism. Uh policy 511 on eligibility of resident and non-resident students. uh policy 9163 on the spectator code of conduct and then two regulations. We've got regulation 2535 on library materials uh and regulation
5530 on substance abuse. Uh and one other update uh policy 2422 which had gone through first read is actually going to go back to SLT to consider whether uh well that that policy is about statutory curricular requirements. is going back to SLT to consider whether
we ought to add information about preK and also non-stutory but district specific curricular requirements. So that will go back to SLT and then to CNI and then back for first read through the Rub Goldberg machine. Um are
there any questions? All right. Uh that concludes the uh discussion portion of the meeting. We're going to move on. >> Say something about attending the women's conference. >> Oh, yes. I do want you to say something about that. >> Great. >> Right. I just want to briefly
acknowledge that um myself, board member Sack Gable, and board member Higgins attended the uh school board's women's leadership conference at the College of New Jersey this past month where we had the opportunity to connect with board members from around the state to learn from one another and earn earn some
board member credits. Um given the district's current financial position, though they do uh pay for us to do that learning, we all plan to uh collectively reimburse the district for the cost of our attendance um and look forward to uh putting our learning into practice. So
thank you. >> Any questions on that? Hearing none, I will now reclose our discussion section and move on to the action portion of the meeting. Uh I'm going to first uh call resolution 4943
specifically the resolution recognizing the International Transgender Day of Visibility. Uh do I have a motion? Board member Nyer. Do I have a second? Board member Higgins. Uh moving on to discussion. Uh board member Callahan, I
want to thank you for your partnership in drafting this. Would you be so kind as to read this into the record? >> Absolutely. Okay. So, this is resolution 4943, a resolution recognizing the International Transgender Day of Visibility.
Whereas, International Transgender Day of Visibility observed annually on March 31st celebrates the contributions, resilience, and lived experiences of transgender and gender non-conforming individuals. And whereas the South Orange Maplewood School District is committed to fostering a safe, inclusive, and equitable learning
environment for all students and affirms the dignity and worth of every student and family. And whereas visibility and affirmation are critical to the well-being and academic success of transgender and gender non-conforming students. And whereas the board of education recognizes with concern
ongoing incidents of bullying and harassment targeting transgender students which must not be ignored. And whereas the board further acknowledges a broader national climate in which transgender individuals face heightened scrutiny, actions, and even policies that may contribute to feelings of
marginalization or vulnerability. And whereas transgender students may experience intersecting forms of discrimination requiring an inclusive, responsive, and proactive approach by the district. Whereas the district is committed to enforcing policies that prohibit discrimination, harassment,
intimidation, and bullying based on gender identity or expression, including through the continued implementation of board policy 56 5756. And now therefore, be it resolved that the South Orange Maplewood Board of Education recognizes March 31st as International Transgender
Day of Visibility. And be it further resolved that the board reaffirms its commitment to supporting transgender and gender non-conforming students and families, ensuring their safety, inclusion, and full participation in the life of the district. And be it further resolved that the board calls upon all members of the school community to stand
up against bullying and harassment in all forms and to actively foster a culture of respect, empathy, and belonging. And be it further resolved that the board will continue in its oversight to ensure that the district is engaging with students and families, listening to its concerns and responding
within with appropriate supports and actions to ensure student safety and well-being. And be it further resolved that this resolution be read publicly in advance of March 31st as a clear statement of the district's values and expectations. >> Any further comment?
>> All right, Miss Gallatin, will you please call the role? Board member Bennett. >> Yes. >> Board member Brown. >> Board member Callahan, >> yes. >> Board member Higgins, >> yes.
>> Board member Kapadia, >> yes. >> Board President Meyer, >> yes. >> Board member Nar, >> yes. >> Board member Saget Gable, >> yes. >> Board member Stefen, >> yes.
All right, motion passes. >> Uh, now I'm going to entertain a motion uh for the balance of our consent agenda consisting of resolution 4934 through
4942 and 4944 through 4945. Do I have a motion? Board member Bennett. Do I have a second? Boardia, >> any severs? No discussion. I have a question on the board.
>> Do you want to jump in? >> Can I Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. Board member Nyer, please turn on your mic. I think we still have Frank with us, right? >> All right. Great. So my question is on page three of our board secretary
report, Frank, we we see the recapitulation of fund balance appropriations budgeted um roughly 170 million actuals through the 8-month period that this is reported on is 159
million and the variance or the difference is about 12 million. Does that mean that we have 12 million left to spend through the next 3 months? Because if you just take a straight average of the budget, the average monthly spend
should be around 14 million. So, just wondering if you could clarify that. >> Yeah, I'm I'm just uh bear with me for a second. I'm just pulling up the board. You're looking at the board secretaries report ending >> ending 227 2026 >> and it's on page three.
Okay. So, are you talking about the recap of balance right on the top? >> Yep. >> Okay. So, if I if our if our budget was to end and again, you know, we've had this
conversation about um making sure that the finances actually reflect our district practices, right? Mhm. >> So, so the easiest way to look at the recap of fund balances is if you go to page uh
if you go to page four, >> okay, >> uh you'll see the the appropriations for the current expense. Page five, you'll see the appropriations for for the um the general fund. And this is picks up number right from this.
>> So, page four and five are a little bit more detailed. and then it drop into pages uh six, seven, eight, nine, 10. The board secretaries report gets more and more detailed as you go further back into the report.
>> I like to look at this report. I like to look from from the back and move forward. So if you go into page seven, you'll start to see the the more detailed appropriations for our different lines broken out by the function that we've talked about these
cost center reports. And these cost centers tie back into the board secretaries report. >> 7 8 9 you can see and the state rolls into the first four digits. So all the accounts that we have, we have like 900 and something accounts. they all roll
into this four segment account code. So that that cost center report, the budget projection report will all roll into these numbers. So if you go down to the bottom of this next like I look I like looking at this report because the the
report that the number that you picked out on the top it just shows at 11 million but this is the breakdown. And then if you look at our budget reports, it breaks it down even more more granularly about the the appropriation, what's been encumbered, what's been
expended, and what is available for each one of these accounts. And if you get down to page 12, you'll see that $11 million number. Uh that's the that's the current expense. General fund uh is page 12. So 14 is where you'll
actually see the copy of that number, the 170, 96,62, and 11 million. And if if you remember um our conversations in FFT during the budget process, I would love to look at this number, the expenditures tie out because that ties
to our cash. this encumbrance number of 62 million >> is the number that that that I don't believe um will act will accurately reflect all of our year-end incumbrances through June. So this $11 million is not
showing incumbrances that aren't booked into the system yet. And this is the biggest piece that as we talk about improving we can improve upon. So I in a perfect world if you read this report you would see that there's $1 million that hasn't been committed or expended
right. >> Yeah. >> In actuality in this report I would not agree with that number because there's incumbrances and if we go I've shown you the other projection reports that we've done. we've dialed in and the goal is to
get this report to reflect what's actually happening out happening out in the field and the commitments that we've made. >> Right? >> So, so if you go back to that if you go back to that that top report that you talk about on page on page three,
>> our appropriations for the general fund are 170. Our actual expenses and incumbrances, the combination is 158. The variance is 11 million. So if these if the financials were 100% up to date
and we shut business down tomorrow, we would have $11 million uh that is not committed for a purpose as of FE February 27th. >> Okay. So another >> sorry just to No, sorry to interrupt. So
encumbrances here could include expenses to be incurred through June. >> Yes. But but but what our goal is to recognize those incumbrances and put them on the balance sheet now so that you don't read a report that that that
let you believe that there's $12 million available. That's that's the goal. The same thing with revenues. Our budgeted revenues are 156 million. We've actually acrewed 102 million. We're still waiting for $54 million worth of
revenues to come through. And as we go through those more detailed reports, >> you can see like line by line what have we collected in taxes, what have we collected in our receivables. >> Um, so, you know, this report is is telling us that we would be $42 million
in the hole if we shut down tomorrow. And I, you know, I I don't I don't believe the $54 million number. So, >> you know, I'm looking at this a little bit from behind, but I'm I'm, you know, this is the stuff that I was saying to you, like we have to get these financial
reports to where we can read that report and understand it and have confidence that to the best of our ability, everything that's out there is listed on this report. >> Okay, >> that's I think with the next FFT, maybe we can include an agenda item. Maybe we
can pick one line item and just do a little bit more of a deep dive. >> Um, okay. Thank you. >> Sure. >> Any other questions or comments? Board member Stefan. No. Oh. All right. >> All the time.
>> Just Just in the laptop. Okay. Uh then I will ask you, Miss Gallatton, to please call the role. >> Was there somebody move those or we don't need to move those? >> Sorry. >> Did somebody move those? >> I believe we Yeah, we moved and seconded. We're in discussion. So, I
believe we're ready. >> Okay. Who moved and who seconded? >> Uh motion by board member Bennett, second by board Kapatia. >> Thank you. >> Yep. >> My apologies. Okay. Board member Stefen. >> Yes.
>> Board member Saget Gable. >> Yes. >> Board member Dear. >> Yes. >> Board President Meyer. >> Yes. >> Board member Kapadia. >> Yes. >> Board member Higgins. >> Yes. >> Board member Callahan. >> Yes. Board member Bennett.
>> Yes. >> Motion passes unanimous. All right. Uh now we're going to handle our walk-ons in two parts here. First, I'm going to seek a motion for resolutions 4946, 4947, 4948.
>> They're coming around. >> And 4950. >> No, just take one packet. One packet. >> Oh, sure. Yeah. Sorry. Take a minute and pass them down first. Yeah, we can take a second for everyone to take a look at them.
>> Take a packet. >> All right. Well, I'll just take a minute and get up to speed with these. So, again, I'm going to set 4949 aside for the moment. We're going to handle the other four. While you're reviewing those, I just want to note that we did meet with
Assemblyman Chagi Anyma this week. Uh that call discussed various things rank choice voting funding formula mental health uh President Obama's my brother's keeper and uh integration legislation in
regards to providing incentives to schools and for the benefit of the public while we're looking at these these are hand carry resolutions one regarding student removal for non-residenty one regarding uh long-term suspension. Uh another one regarding a long-term
suspension and then the outcome of two HIV appeals. So everyone just give me a sign when you're ready to move forward. >> Yep. So right now we're going to do uh not 4949. So the other the other four
>> 46 47 48 and 5. >> You're doing them individually. >> I'm gonna move those four together unless unless anyone's looking to separate. >> Okay. >> Do you know what? Let's go one at a time. Here
we go. >> I like it. All right. I'm going to seek a motion first of all on 4946 uh upholding student removal for non-resident. Do I have a second? All right. So, I'm thinking a motion first of all. Second, Gable motion. Yeah.
>> Sure. Second. >> All right. >> Second. Thank you. Board member Higgins. Uh, any discussion on this? I guess we can't have discussion on these. We got to move them straight to a vote. Uh, will you please call the role? >> Board member Bennett. >> Yes.
>> Board member Callahan, >> yes. >> Board member Higgins, >> yes. >> Board member Capadia, >> yes. Board President Meyer, >> yes. >> Board member Nar, >> yes. >> Board member Saket Gable, >> yes.
>> Board member Stefen, >> yes. >> Very good. Uh, entertaining a motion for 4947 upholding a long-term suspension. I have a motion. Move second. Cable, do I have a second? Board Callahan, would you please call
the role? Right. Okay. >> Board member Stefen, >> yes. >> Board member Sacket Gable, >> yes. >> Board member Nar, >> no. >> Board President Meyer, >> yes.
>> Board member Kapadia, >> yes. >> Board member Higgins, >> yes. >> Board member Callahan, >> yes. >> Board member Bennett, >> yes. All right, we'll entertain next
resolution 4948 declining the recommendation of the disciplinary action following long-term suspension. Do I have a motion? Board member Higgins. Do I have a second? Board member Stefen. Miss Gallon, will you please call the role?
>> Board member Bennett. >> Yes. >> Board member Callahan, >> yes. >> Board member Higgins, >> yes. >> Board member Kapadia, >> yes. Board President Meyer, >> yes. >> Board member Nar, >> yes. >> Board member Sy Gable,
>> yes. >> Board member Stefen, >> yes. >> Next, I'm going to call resolution 4949. Hip appeal. Do I have a motion? Going once? >> Nope.
>> No. Do I have a motion? Boy Higgins. Thank you. Do I have a second Stefan? Thank you. And can we call the role please? >> Board member Stefen. >> Yes. >> Board member Sack Gable. >> Yes. >> Board member Nar. >> Yes.
>> Board President Meyer. >> Yes. >> Board member Kapadia. >> Yes. >> Board member Higgins. >> Yes. >> Board member Callahan. >> Abstain. >> Board member Bennett.
>> Yes. And lastly, entertaining a motion for resolution 4950. I have a motion for Callahan. Do I have a second? Board member Sacket Gable. Miss Gallon, will you please call the role?
>> Board member Bennett. >> No. >> Board member Brown. Oh, sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Board member Callahan. >> Abstain. Board member Higgins, >> no. >> Board member Kapadia,
>> no. >> Board President Meyer, >> yes. >> Board member Naar, >> yes. >> Board member Sack Gable, >> yes. Board member Stefen.
>> Yes. >> Very good. And that concludes the action section of our meeting. We will now move to our second hearing of individuals and delegates this evening. Do we have any individuals or delegates
this evening? We have none in person. We have none online. Neither a person nor a delegation. That concludes the second hearing of individuals and delegations. Is there any new business for this evening?
Seeing none, I'll announce our future meetings. The board will meet in public session on Thursday, April 23rd, 2026 at 6:30 p.m. where action will be taken. Reminder, we do have two remaining sessions of our strategic planning sessions, April 15 and May 11th. You can
sign up on the district's website. And with that, can I entertain a motion to adjourn? Board member Sacket Gable. Do I have a second? Board member uh Naar. Show of hands. All in favor? It is unanimous.
The meeting is adjourned at 10:33 p.m. Good night.