the New Jersey open public meetings law was enacted to ensure the rights of the public to have advanced notice of and to attend the meetings of the bodies at which any business affecting their interests is discussed or acted upon in accordance with the provisions of the act public notice of the meeting has
been given by the board secretary in the following manner posting written notice on the official bulletin board at the Eileen Abbott central administration building mailing written notice to the Courier Post and the South Jersey Times and filling filing written notice with
the clerk of the Township of Washington on April 2nd 2025 roll call mr le Liberty Mr serrano here Mr ross here
Mrs baker here Mrs bloom here miss Clancy here miss Chilla here mrs harong here miss Kazmpo
okay good yep mot motion i'm good yeah now we motion to Okay motion to go into executive session to discuss so somebody gives you a motion we need a motion motion second okay
lyndon Ralph say no I got read that after that after right completed the motion okay discussive session just to be just to be sure okay all right so motion to go into executive session to disc I thought I did that after sorry uh the following attorney client privilege
personnel matters disciplinary updates professionals negotiations update legal matters do I have to read the whole the whole thing okay all right let me restart that all right let me restart okay okay you'll be here all night if
you resolve that pursuant to section 8 of the open public open public meetings act the public shall be excluded from that portion of the meeting involving the discussion of I'll go through the list again attorney client privilege personnel disciplinary updates
professionals negotiations update legal matters further resolve that discussion of such subject matter in executive session can be disclosed to the public if any action is taken by the board either at the resumption of the public session at the conclusion of executive
session or at a public session at some later date now motion to go into executive session motion second okay all in favor i All right so the fastest
thing it Welcome to the work session of the Washington Township Board of Education uh this meeting is being videotaped anyone wishing not to be seen on television may be excused please rise for the pledge of allegiance i pledge algiance 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 okay we do not have any presentations tonight um or regular work session
discussion of the agenda so we'll just move right into Mr dillio with a report um from community outreach thanks Miss Kazmple i have a lot of uh great things to share today um uh first
um on March 26th um many of the W uh TEA staff members got um information about the mini grants for their classrooms um want to make sure everybody knows that May 5th is the deadline to get that to your principal and then from there May 12th is the application to get it to
Heather Sullivan who's the WTEF vice president so just uh making sure everybody knows um also an unfortunate thing on April 24th is Take Your Child to Work Day we will be on spring break um therefore we will not have Take your
child to work day this year um as far as uh going back to the WTEF to help raise money for the mini grants we're asking as many people to participate in uh the 28th annual golf classic that's going to be on August 9th
2025 for questions please contact Heather Sullivan again um special shout out to um I just got this correspondence today um special shout out to uh uh Mr stefan and the uh the um drama
department there's the Monontlair Theater Night Awards 2025 which seems to be the high school version of the Oscars um we want to let everybody know that we just found out that our fall production of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child High School edition was nominated for a
total of nine Monontlair Theater Night Foxy awards so the nine categories they uh were nominated for was outstanding achievement in lighting design scenic design special effects dance choreography best actor um Presley
Church um uh best ensemble in a fantasy or fable outstanding production in a fantasy or fable and outstanding direction of a play Mr stefen so congratulations and we're looking forward to seeing how that plays out um want to make a uh say special thank you
to everybody who had a piece of the um of organizing the junior prom and I know the senior prom is coming out i heard that was a wonderful event and also over the weekend the springtime suareay um for project graduation apparently we raised a lot of money i don't know the
exact number that we raised nor does Mr anderson but um I just want to say thank you especially to um three main people that help organize it mrs atur Miss O'Brien and Morazz thank you very much couple more things um three more
things shout out to U mr shatsman and his uh football leaders as they were in episode 10 of the We Are Township Leadership Podcast um we um publish uh a new episode about every two weeks um where we talk about ethical
leadership and leading by example and uh this effort has been in place throughout the year with the assistance of Mr lindstead it has been a wonderful experience um we found it rewarding to not only talk to leaders in our buildings but also the students that they serve and through these 10 episode
we celebrate the educators who are leaders by example and children who they see leadership in and this week in a couple days we're going to launch episode 11 that's going to feature Chestnut Ridge counselor Guy Cwley and his students you can view them on our YouTube channel WTTV as well as or you
can listen to it on Spotify um Mr anderson and I led the final superintendent student cabinet this week and not only do these young adults have fabulous ideas they are committed to service and assisting others along the way just want to thank all of those students who served on the committee this year for their cander and their
wonderful ideas mr anderson and I are looking forward to continuing and hearing these wonderful students assertions and suggestions about Washington Township and finally a special shout out to all the schools in the district for their support of autism over the last week recognizing the
importance of neurode divergent learners is essential and WTPS has committed to this understanding teachers staff students and administration at the school levels deserve great accolades as they collectively work to promote respect for all that's my report thank you Miss Kazmple
thank you very much Mr dilio items of old business anyone have an item for old business okay um can I get a motion i have one oh go ahead uh I'd like to make a motion to bring Dr
hibs back as superintendent i second that emotion to bring Eric back any discussion quick question do I have to abstain from that i believe
Pat and Carol right is that right pat Linda and Carol oh okay pat Linda um Julie and Carol are conflicted that's what you're asking yes okay any other
discussion seeing none roll call mr serrano no mr ross no mrs baker no mrs bloom abstain
mrs clancy yes mrs chill mrs hartong abstain mr liberty yes miss Kazmple abstain motion fails any other items of
old business um I just want to comment um today at um Thomas Jefferson Elementary School uh they had an Alex's uh lemonade stand that the kids at during their lunch uh recess and they
raised a lot of money um and um I won't remember Casey's married name i I'm sorry Casey um but um the teacher okay I know her by her she was a student anyway it was an excellent um
thing to do and they raised a lot of money the other thing I want to shout out to the dance production on Thursday night um elements the dancers the choreographer it was just it was fantastic so we'll shout out
thank you Mrs clancy okay can I have a motion to open to the public second all in favor i don't have any cards so I guess motion to
Okay who is is that Mrs shector you can just go ahead go ahead thank you you don't have to sit down and get back up okay good evening uh I guess I have a question about the vote that just happened um why are some members
required to abstain um once the doctrine of necessity was enacted is that for not all actions or was it just a particular action so um I also reached out to the board to ask who our superintendent is
at the current moment when I called administration they said it would be discussed tonight i didn't see it on the agenda um again I think we should bring Dr hibbs back so far there's been no information provided um to me or to anyone in an official
capacity as to why he's incapable of serving as superintendent uh last week Miss Gazmble you shared that um your ethics uh violation or you know accusation resulted in a reprimand and were public record when I requested that from the state it was denied as still
pending and in action so um are those documents available and can they be posted to the board uh website if they are of public record and then um at the end of the meeting last week you uh voted uh several board members voted to suspend the policy that would allow the
board of education solicitor to um act to be too conflicted to act on the negotiations committee is this going to be a permanent change why um the change to the policy so thank you first about the the doctrine and the
conflicts so have to definitely pull your mic with regard to the individual conflicts that's in the doctrine which is posted on the website um those conflicts are specifically set forth in there i'm not going to get into any more detail on that uh with regard to your question on
Dr hibbs obviously the board is not allowed to give you information related to any employee whether it be the superintendent or otherwise that's probably why you're not getting the information you're seeking um I think that covers it yeah uh oh
well regarding the doctrine originally Elaine and I were both conflicted but then that issue was resolved the issue that you know conflicted us so we're not conflicted anymore on Dr hibbs related to that for that reason so Elaine isn't
but then Dr hibbs had filed ethics against me and I responded and now we're waiting for that so that's why I'm conflicted on him and Carol is conflicted on anything related to him because of her ethics charge and then
the other two people Linda and Pat um are related to employees the item you mentioned about the reprimand i don't know where she went but Oh there you are um that I'm I'm happy to share that but um as the complaintants one of the
complainants mentioned at the microphone that it still has to go through the SEC again for approval so that's why we're waiting for that but um and I think that's everything okay uh Tom Baldisaro the superintendent oh Annette Miller
annette Miller temporarily thank you um you you talked about just now uh that you and Elaine are no longer conflicted actually you were no longer conflicted last week when you invoked the doctrine and it was wrong you had
five unconlicted members last week so I hope you've had discussion around the risk that this district's under for inappropriately invoking a doctrine the second time as well um because that it was you know again five unconlicted members last week and you invoked the
doctrine uh you need to reverse everything you did last week would be my thought um I sent a couple emails today about the budget i know you're going to vote on an increase today and I I just would love to hear some discussion around the why washington Township is
one of the most heavily taxed districts related to schools in the state of New Jersey there's only 11% of municipalities that have a higher tax rate from schools than Washington Township um I think putting forth a plan
without a real plan I mean I mean I hope you have a plan that keeps us sustainable we don't go through this again i talked about this last year when we raised the taxes said it was malpractice to raise taxes above the cap without assuring that we wouldn't have
this problem again and here we are um it's just you know I look forward to hearing what a full plan i don't know how you can ask for a tax increase without presenting a full budget first you're putting kind of the cart before the horse there and it's unfair to the
public to do that uh I I presented a couple other things to you today the most egregious to me u the publicly reported data when when we look at our food service there's an area in there that says how much we support per pupil
food service um the average in the state is $6 per pupil washington Township is 112 what are we doing to get that down that's that's worth almost a million dollars so you want to find big money
um 520 out of 660 or so districts have zero and we're at 112 that's the sort of thing you need to look at when you're looking for big things in a budget you need to look for you know comparing the benchmarks this is what you know I had talked about
before the importance and one last thing just to share you know there's a lot of talk about our administration and how we're bloated and overpaid we are 12% under the state average in what we spend on administration if we wanted to match what the average school district did we
would add 1.7 million in cost to this district so instead of coming down on administration that we have too many we should be saying "Wow how are you getting it all done with so few people compared to what we have in the rest of the state?" So you know I'm all for
cutting where we need to cut but what you have to do is look at where are we high and we're not high in administration guys it's it that's what the numbers tell you so as you're looking to do what you need to do and the public talks about you know all of the administration we have it's it's
just not fact it's just not and I you know when people make comments it would be great if they had facts attached to it thank you mr schneider asked me to clarify that Miss Miller is um acting as superintendent until we find a long
another fill-in as part of her role as assistant superintendent jenny Murphy right good evening i'm going to hold my comment on the ethics because I didn't come here to speak about that tonight i think there's more important things to
speak about tonight but I disagree with what Miss Kazmple just said um so budget question this is going to be to Janine don't blame the taxpayers it's their money my first question is what impact did the change in the school funding
formula in 2019 have on the current situation this district finds itself in in 2018 the board learned that because hold harmless aid was frozen by Chris Christie for five years our district was receiving funds for students that we
didn't have in the district while others were growing and were not getting uh funding for those students so I guess in 2019 when Steve Sweeney went around and and was behind the change in the funding formula um they came to Washington Township and they
said "Washington township we had a target on our back." If those of you I think there's fellow board members out here that remember that they said "You're overfunded you have you have to cut $8 million in seven years." Okay 2024 was year seven
many of us know that without addressing those cuts gradually over those seven years this day was coming this day came last year and this day is back this year if you looked at the the budget presentation
from 2010 which I was on the board in 2011 if you looked at the budget presentation in 2019 and if you looked at the budget presentation in 2024 and 2025 you would see the same group of people all of us look a little older the
same organizations saying the same arguments the same exact thing two superintendents in two weeks here's what I know about Jack McGee he would have never ex stepped up to do this job if he didn't think he was healthy enough to do
it jack McGee never quits let me tell you something jack McGee never quits and I'm doing that on purpose if you ever talk to him Jack McGee Jack McGee never quits jack McGee resigning after eight days confirms everything I suspected
jack McGee would not let this board tell him what to do period there are several board members that believe they need to run the district along with being board members board members do not administer the district point blank you know that you
took the training having a board member draft an organizational chart eliminating positions and listing names and salaries where were all these employees riceed there's people that are sitting in the audience were these people riceed
when they were talked about ari maybe you want to instruct your board on 18A27-4.1 dr hibbs invoking the doctrine of necessity in the cover of darkness in a meeting between meetings and then never
informing the public that such an action was done until a vote to suspend Dr hibbs was taken and a member of the public inquired this is the board that claims to be transparent and wants to bring the government to the people let me tell you
what the doctrine necessity is not it is not a tool to allow the vase of the board to conflict another board colleague on a manufactured ethics complaint that they anticipated would be filed so that they could fire the
superintendent any adult that could sign that complaint which contains zero evidence and use a child as a pawn has some real civil searching to do lastly does an ethics complaint over a
grade change over two years ago really warrant the removal of the superintendent via police escort along with the removal of his personal property on the same day this wasn't an administrative emergency it was a manufactured
opportunity to carry out a side agenda of some board members and why is the second employee involved not on administrative leave dr hibbs would not allow the board members to administer the schools that
was his job so let's fact check a couple things i'm running out of time board members can't talk to employees once again Julie takes a thread of truth and weaves it into her false reality board members cannot talk to district employees about board issues and how to
resolve them period all complaints must be sent to the chief school administrator rep counsel this is the meeting between the CSA and his staff the board has no role in personnel i never received rep council minutes my entire tenure as a board member line
item budget for tenative budget approval never pass practice always a slide presentation and overview to get the pulse of the board am I done i'll come back thank you um Ron Lucarini it was nice to hear about the um drama
department and the Oscars uh New Jerseys version of Oscars i think that was the guy that uh they didn't want to hire right the guy who's the head of that anyway um Mr go you could answer this afterwards how come every time you're on
the board of education there are all these ethical questions swirling it's you that's all there is to it and you had the audacity to send me a cease and desist letter from some quack lawyer
that we sent back uh a while back it said you know go pound sand more or less all right um there's always controversy but getting back to the uh what Tom Bolazar is up here talking about in terms of the
$112 costs for um you know cafeteria workers or support staff i always have arguments with Tom but uh about that because I'm a union guy and he I'm not qualified to argue
with him about finances all right the man was the a CEO or a CFO of a billion dollar expansion all right i ran a Hogy sale so I don't think I'm qualified but
on the surface I always tell Tom this is my only argument that I'm a union guy and I want everybody to have health insurance i want everybody to have uh uh you know full-time position if they want it i'm a pie in the sky guy and then of
course he hits me with the practical end of it but here's where I always lose the argument not just with Tom Bulazaro but with every person who leans a little bit more conservatively they come back to me and they say "Well do you want to pay
$112 for what you're seeing in on this board of education and what and the and the um results that we're seeing in the classroom and across the district?" And that's where I have the problem where I can't come back at them okay because
we're spending this kind of money and then our union leaders are involved in shenanigans with this uh conflict of interest so that we could get uh Carol Cha uh to be conflicted so everybody could be conflicted so then everybody
could vote okay that was unethical it's you know part of why we are on the bottom 30% of the uh scores in you know whatever the rankings all right i wouldn't mind if
we're paying everybody $112 per kid or whatever it is that figure he he yelled out if we were also in the top 30% in our scores and in what we're doing in the classroom and this stuff is affecting the classroom i've talked
about this numerous times and all I get from Srano and Blom and you comple and Ralph well Ralph doesn't really say anything and of course Baker she's another story in and of herself all right shouldn't be on a board education
uh all we get from them is oh you know we're trying to do the best we can and you're all in cahoots and it's all political and this attorney needs to be investigated as well all right because I don't know how you could conflict
somebody when that nonsense that's in that complaint about Jill it's just total ridiculous and I don't even think they they had filed it at that point in time officially all right so but you're just doing whatever you're told to do because after all what can we expect
from a guy who uh was at least once um representing Mike Milm or Chris Milm or whatever his name is thank you that's the indicted guy see you Nicole Lenudi because you like to make up stories
about me in a weird fantasy world okay remember the time I I I read your order you're out of order be quiet sit down be quiet sit down be quiet
mrs len yeah I'm here sorry about that mrs lud again i'm going to turn into him special edition one day um at the last meeting we were talking go ahead Nicole uh at the last meeting um we went
through listening to so many kids speak on begging not to cut sports um and all of middle school sports and three high school sports are on the chopping block among with a whole bunch of jobs however then we all of a sudden somehow came up
with $15,000 extra a month to pay a superintendent when we already pay a superintendent um where did that money come from did you know that we had that extra money previous to that meeting and why was it
never used to save the jobs that you are about to cut um it seems to be that maybe it was not utilized because a majority of this board knew to save it for when you carried out an orchestrated plan to remove the superintendent that you would have to pay a double superintendent
salary ironically last year at the same meeting um it was accused that Dr hibbs and Miss Wctor were hiding about $7 million if that was
true did you find the $7 million and why is that not being used to save jobs and not raise our taxes since we know that we now have $15,000 extra a month since Jack has since stepped down are we putting that extra
$15,000 a month into saving some of these jobs that you are about to cut and not to raise our taxes i had something else i'll come back dr hibs has not been riceed for this meeting so we can't talk about anything
related to his employment people at the Yeah we can't do that um as it relates to budgetary things I'll just say that sometimes there are like emergencies and Janine has to figure it out sadly that was one of those situations
um okay linda Keane that's all I can please state your place of residence too i forgot to tell everyone to do that it's not on the cards some cards don't even have the topic of discussion that would help if you could fill the
cards out properly but it's not required it's not in the laws i'm standing here tonight as an outraged member of the public what has taken place involving board member Connie Baker is not just a
lapse in judgment it is a clear abuse of power a gross violation of board ethics and a direct threat to the integrity of this district let me be absolutely clear connie Baker created and submitted an
organization chart to the interim superintendent Mr jack McGee that recommended by name which district employees should be terminated demoted or promoted she did this unilaterally
without board consultation and completely outside her authority as a school board member this is not policymaking this is not planning this is an attempt to personally control employment decisions decisions that
should only be made through proper channels with transparency input and due process the fact that actual names of employees were included makes this even more egregious these are real people
with careers with families and with the right to work in a district that respects ethics and process what Connie Baker did wasn't just inappropriate it was reckless unethical and dangerously
out of line worse this behavior appears driven by a personal or political agenda not the interest of the district as a whole and the impact was immediate our interim superintendent a man hired to
bring stability was so disturbed by this conduct he resigned the very next day that is not a coincidence that is cause and effect and that is damage connie Baker's actions have put this board's
integrity in jeopardy she has undermined the trust of the staff the community and the administration and so tonight I am calling unequivocally for Connie Baker's immediate resignation from the Washington Township Board of
Education if she does not resign I expect and this community expects this board to take a formal vote of no confidence in her ability to serve if you do nothing you are complicit if you
allow this to stand you are endorsing a culture where ethics don't matter and backdoor decisions are acceptable the school district cannot and will not be governed by personal agendas or secret
personnel lists we are better than that we demand better than that thank you just to clarify a few things the only time that thing that you posted on your fan your board of ed fanfiction page is
um no one had ever seen that so there was no deliberation about anything in that the first time I saw it was actually when Mrs chilla sent it to me and so when you you should not be saying that Mr mcgee his resignation had
anything to do with that that's a mischaracterization completely we can't talk about personnel issues but his health is none of your business and that's why he's not here and it had nothing to do with an organizational chart so I know that this gets you like likes and views and you feel good about
that that makes you feel good in your life that's what you have you don't even live here you don't speak on behalf of the people that live here and you certainly have no right to ask for someone on this board of education to resign based on again your fanfiction
randy Ford I just I just want to comment real quick i want to comment real quick uh I was a part of a meeting last Thursday and Julie you were not in
attendance you were not there at the meeting um I don't know if we were going to be prepared to read Jack's letter and why he departed that's fine we don't have to i have never
in any year of serving on the board been a part of such a disturbing meeting i have uh a lot of respect for the former acting interim superintendent um he is a man of
integrity and I will tell you that I think if anyone was in that meeting you would have absolutely have shed tears with Jack as to the way he
was treated and Carol for anyone Carol you're talking about just be careful what you're talking about because you're talking about private meetings thank you um this was a committee meeting i'm not talking about a private meeting this was
a committee meeting so I think that we should allow the ethics complaint that I filed along with Linda Hardong who was also in the meeting with me we both felt compelled to put forth a
concern of an ethics violation that's it we're allowed to do that as board members we felt as though it was so concerning that's why we did it and we'll let that play out we'll let the school ethics commission rule on it um I just don't think that we should jump and
make assumptions if you were not at the meeting we just should say there's an ethics complaint i'm allowed to say that it's public thank you thank you Randy Ford randy Ford Washington
Township uh I have a few questions uh the first one is that on the agenda I believe there's a board resolution for additional expenditures and tax incentive aid so I was hoping that since that's on the agenda before it's voted on there's going to be some discussion
uh I was curious as to what below local fair share and spending below adequacy means and then also if the board could elaborate on the four bullet points that are submitted for approval uh I see like support staff salaries uh some windows
at I guess Chestnut Ridge uh etc so that's that's one question uh the second question is related to the doctrine of necessity i believe the board invoked the doctrine twice one on the 18th and one on the
25th i have not seen the posting of the 25th invocation of the doctrine so if someone could point me to where on the website that has been posted I would appreciate it uh third at the last
meeting I think during executive there must have been discussions around suspension of the policy for Mr mr snyder to serve as both uh I think chief negotiator and solicitor i was just curious if Mr snyder was in that meeting where he
advised you on suspending the policy because there could be a conflict for him where his interest in serving in both capacities could be adverse to the board's interests um the other question I have is when did
Miss Miller become uh acting interim superintendent if you have a date that would be much appreciated and then uh at the last meeting Lou Randazzo who's a field rep for the New Jersey Education Association I'm going to read something
he said and then I have a question about it so during that meeting he said "I love the Fifth Amendment and love due process but it has a cost and to litigate those matters is very costly." and he was
talking about some unfair labor practices um so he said to defend the board and district on these matters for that individual if that individual were to not return I imagine the association's staff would likely
withdraw those matters and the savings to the district would be in the neighborhood of hundreds of thousands of dollars so that's our position on the finances my question I mean it sounds like a pretty good deal right if we're going to
keep Hibs out anyway because there was a motion to try and bring him back and you know that failed i'm just curious if it makes sense to try and get I don't know if Mr randazzo and his representation of field representative for the New Jersey EA can speak on behalf of the unions and
the bargaining units i really don't know that but if that is a real possibility it might make sense to get that in writing so then if you guys do decide to keep hibs out then you could go and maybe settle those unfair labor
practices charges so that's just a you know questions suggestion and then the last question I have is during Miss Lenudi's uh speech uh or you know presentation uh Mr snyder had wrote a note it appeared on a piece of paper or
a device and showed it to Miss Kazmple i was just curious what that said thank you and have a nice night i can speak um I'll speak a little bit about the resolution um to for the additional expenditures so after we submitted the
tenative budget the Friday after we received notification from the state that we were allowed to apply to the commissioner of education to increase our expenditures um and it was um an increase we were allowed to increase our
tax levy um the two factors that allowed us to qualify for this is that our budget our 2526 budget is below adequacy to the tune of about $10 million and um according to the state
we're not taxing our community and they're not paying their local fair share so we were able to increase the tax levy approximately $10 million um over the past uh couple of weeks we had committee meetings and um just ran some
scenarios with the board mostly just highlighting some of the cuts that um you know were painful for us as far as staffing and um the ones that caused us concern with being able to fill
positions and um you know safety and security of buildings um we ran calculations of how that would affect the tax levy and then over the past couple of days the board um agreed on some scenarios within the resolution is
what you see um will be added so an application has to be filed actually tonight after the meeting um with the commissioner to increase the tax levy and add to the appropriation side of the budget for the items that you see listed
in the board resolution randy just to clarify two things uh Annette and I I can't see where you are but Annette was not appointed as the acting superintendent officially she is the assistant superintendent similar to a situation where the superintendent's injured in the hospital not available
out of town she's simply subsuming those roles for right now while the board figures out what they're going to do um obviously they're working through that process uh the second part of your question was I was giving legal advice to the board president as to the standard for removal of a person from a
board meeting april Renzetti good evening um I'm going to try really hard to stay calm this is really hard because for the first time in a year and a half that Dr hibbs was
here for 2 weeks we were all able to feel a sense of safety and relief and the fact that there are still people asking for this man to come back when you've had multiple people give you what they could without
violating things is appalling miss Pitman last meeting was my name this meeting was my principles and colleagues names shut your mouth township address please thank you tonight
I am here to celebrate and acknowledge my fellow colleagues from every area that contribute to the success of our schools and the well-being of our students on behalf of the WTE executive team I want to personally address the negative and false statements being
circulated about us whether on social media because they have nothing better to do or disappointingly from some of our very own board members please know that the executive team stands firmly behind you and supports all of you we remain committed
to advocating for your safety your well-being and your continued success in your respective roles no matter the challenges you face at the last meeting I ran out of time and was unable to finish my points initially I considered letting them go however after reading
the press release about the meeting and re-watching the meeting to ensure I hadn't overlooked anything critical I felt compelled to address them in particular i want to respond to comments made by Mrs clancy as if hearing them during the
meeting wasn't enough I saw them quoted in the press release you stated and I quote "I am appalled at what has been done to Dr hibbs in my opinion he was railroaded by certain people on the board and the
union." First thank you for attributing such influence to the union with that being said Connie as the negotiations chair I would appreciate a 10% increase for every union since we have that much pull we also acknowledge and understand
that all can vote and how you see fit but to constantly vote against the union who are the teachers is a statement that you never support our issues and concerns and contributes to two sides of the
board instead of one group working together to say we are appalled by your comment would be an understatement your stance and allegiance have been made crystal clear along with others in doing so you have disregarded the very people you once stood among the
teachers you remain a member of the NJA retired teachers union yet you continuously oppose the concerns we bring to these meetings do you believe that we fabricate these issues we just made them up there isn't any fire to where the smoke is we're just making
this all up he wasn't the bully that he was we're just all meeting together and creating stories is that what you think with that in mind I urge you to stop claiming and that you support teachers while you simultaneously
dismiss the voices of the WTE members the very educators you profess to stand with are the same union members you perceive as a problem and we are one and the same as far as the budget concerns go we fully acknowledge that money is an issue
major shifts must be made however please stop claiming financial destitute when when Dr hibbs was here he spent an ungodly amount of money between salaries and capital projects i would imagine all of his followers Janine have op
requested where his money was spent and how frivously he spent it i would imagine these people are doing their due diligence and they're asking for that some of the things that were spent were asked upon and was fell on deaf ears and wasn't answered again I don't know
Janine if you can answer me have any of those expenses been over requested by his fan club what he spent his money on while he was here that everybody has a problem with the amount of money that we're lacking but nobody is questioning the
money that he spent so are you able to answer that okay okay okay we just want to know if any of those expenses have been opered by his fan club are you done yes I'm done i I
don't I can't I have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of oper requests that I deal with i can't think of I can think of a couple in particular okay particular expenses i don't know if it had anything to do with Dr hibs i answer tons of oper requests okay all right
thank you you want to call me i don't I just can't be on the spot like that there's hundreds thank you also um we forgot to say Mr ford I don't know i don't know if where he went oh there he is um what Ari wrote to me on the paper was if I asked for someone to be removed
from the room oh you said that oh okay i didn't hear you say that okay sorry I was looking at something else um Shireen Ducas apologize good evening i'm Shireen Duff WTA Middle School executive committee member in these trying times I find
myself reflecting on the growing uncertainty and unrest in our district the students the faculty and families who make up this community deserve better than confusion division and
instability inspired by Langston Hughes's haunting question what happens to a dream deferred this piece captures the disarray we are living through each day this is not just about policy or
positions it's about people our people our kids and the leadership they so desperately need what happens to a district unled does it flounder like a ship lost
at sea or sink beneath blame that flung so fearless freely does it scroll and see on posts and threads while solid solutions go quietly unsaid does it burn like staff's tied
eyes scanning another change another new rule another new face does it crack from too many hands in the pot too many whispers too few plans or does it simply implode
once again I urge our leadership those still here and those yet to come to work harmoniously and selflessly for the greater good put aside differences quiet the noise and bring calm and clarity
back to our district we need decisive united direction now more than ever i worry deeply that if we do not act with urgency and care things may get worse before they get better but I still
believe we can reclaim the excellence and the pride that this district once stood for if we choose to lead together i think that we have a team the team needs to work
together we need the leadership and not the former leadership thank you thank you Mr cross brandy Williams um I would like to know what is the plan to fix the budget is there currently a plan in place because if we
just increasing the taxes then we're just putting a blanket on it so that's one of my questions also are we going to hear a reason why McGee resigned she said there was a letter so can you read it if you have
one also can you also share the ethic complaint that you guys filed against i don't know who you filed against but the one you guys referred to a minute ago i'd like to hear it and then I wanted to address with the
attorney Ari with the not speaking to the microphone there's a lot of whispering you're paid with our tax dollars so I think you can give us just a little bit of respect of paying attention to the people that are speaking making eye contact stop looking at your phone stop whispering and stop
you know not paying attention to us sorry all right that's all I have so can you answer my question though what is the plan for the budget the plan for the budget is we will have a public hearing on the 29th to go over any of the um
changes that were made between the last time the budget was presented and we met last week three time I think we had three meetings last week and um yeah I mean we're just taking feedback from the public and really looking at every
aspect of the budget to see what can possibly um be cut what can be done more efficiently and I guess that's really the answer to that um we can't talk about personnel issues mr mcgee gave us
a letter saying that he had a health issue that was emergent that he had to take care of and oh ethics complaints i'm I'm all for people putting their ethics complaints out there is it you know you're asking to see just one there are several
so so yeah there are several filed against people up here and not everyone has shared them but that's up to the complainant to share it um I believe Janine said that even when people opra things they are considered confidential like the district can't give it out so
the complainant um has to give that out okay jerry Tarashi So uh we are allowed I am allowed I'll speak for me um we are allowed to talk
about the charges i don't need to go into detail that was never uh in my plan to begin with but there are charges filed that can be public that um there's a charge of a violation of 18A12-241C i'll confine my board action
to policym planning and appraisal i'll help to frame policies and plans only after the board has consulted those who will be affected by them there's a charge at 18A 12-241D i'll carry out my responsibility not to administer the schools but together with
my fellow board members to see that they are wellrun and that's it so those are the two charges in the complaint prior to my presentation I want to acknowledge a couple things first Mr jack McGee is a man of the highest integrity and if he decides that
his reason for resigning shall remain private we need to respect and honor his wishes um I'd like to also ask Miss Baker your role on this board is part
partly to be in charge of negotiations is that not clear not is not not correct it is correct as your role in that area are you allowed to make
suggestions as to what takes place in regard to creating the budget saving money for the district the answer is yes so whatever was posted may in fact just simply be recommendations or suggestions
which Miss Baker is entitled to do with that being said I come here this evening with another presentation unlike the ones that I've basically presented in the past this one is going to be done in a little
different way years ago we were a place where people wanted their children to come and learn a place where people wanted to come and teach and work now we're not that anymore so what has changed what has
changed is refusing to listen to those who best know listen to those who are on the front lines working with the children of this community and who truly care some of you
claim to care but you're lying you only care about your own personal gain and political agenda you have to stop all this nonsense and fix this stop fighting and recognize who you are really hurting the
kids your employees stop this nonsense and recognize what has been created in this district you've heard it from us repeatedly you've allowed an environment to be created where academics discipline
facilities personnel are all suffering as a result of the decisions that have come from this board that's not necessarily directly due to you because you've never been told you don't get the information
that you so rightfully deserve hearing you've had a leadership who refused to let you know refused to allow you to communicate with your employees who tried to intimidate bully and turn over things like your emails your text
messages all because they wanted to have control of you and what you thought what is so unbelievable is why any of you after hearing all of this been witnessed to it still want to have that situation
return we shouldn't be that predict that in that predicament of finances that we are in right now someone or something is wrong the financial numbers submitted by the district to the state that Mr yordi
has cited different why are they different they came directly from the state why are certain administrators leaving do they know or see something that they they don't want to share with anybody else why is confidential board
communications being sent out to social media who's leaking that information who on the board would benefit from that i won't insult your intelligence in answering that question that will eventually be exposed for years I've heard that
elections have consequences a couple years ago the board was different changes were made how the changes work out academics have been suffering our support staff have suffered our teachers
have suffered our kids are suffering now the board has changed again so why question these consequences and these decisions by the majority of this board or do consequences only matter when you have the results that you like from
elections to all you critics you social media no nothings stop bashing the WTA the WTSSPA and seek the answers to all those questions you might wake up and change
your opinions thank you former employee 13176 can you please state your name when you get to the microphone good evening my name is Madison Ambrose um I am former employee 13176 i spoke at
the last board meeting as well um I am here to um speak on you know everything that's going on um I no longer work here as of April 10th um same day that our now former interim superintendent Jack
McGee resigned as well um and I just want to talk about um you know I encouraged everybody last time to continue to ask questions to look into what's going on um but I want to encourage people to not only look into what's going on here but other districts
as well similar things are happening in places like Cherry Hill Eve Sham Township uh I'm looking for a job uh so I'm looking at what's going on in a lot of these different school districts um I want to speak about what's going on as
well with like the union um my personal story I got up here last time and I told everybody that the union did not help me uh the way that I was hoping uh with the situation that I was in i was terminated because I was being targeted by my boss
um I was being harassed by my boss and I continuously reached out to the union for assistance and I did not get the help that I was looking for um then after that is not true um at the MBOS training meeting on March 26th let her
finish her comments thank you um at the MBOS training meeting on March 26th I was actually working past my scheduled hours just to assist the union so that they had computers that they needed for training i was approached by the vice president of the
WTSSPA um and repeatedly what you know my personal issues were made apparent to everybody in that room i was told that I was wrong about being um assisted by the union but that's not true um I had reached out to our president multiple times for help in fact there's a
specific district policy that would have really assisted me back in November um that just was completely overlooked um I wasn't assisted when trying to apply for FMLA um and in fact the the things I was being told by the union were really
similar to what I was being told by my boss um so I am encouraging the people here yes your union should protect you uh parents you need to start looking out for your children i know that this is um
I'm not saying anything bad's going to happen i'm just saying what you need to do there's there's a lack of trust in a collective whether it's the board whether it's your union whatever you need to look out for yourself you need to ask questions for yourself i know
that this is uh we're trying to say that this is all you know fanfiction or that this isn't happening but this is happening i was fired my life has been affected by this so this isn't just some madeup story people are saying on Facebook maybe this note or whatever it
is isn't exactly what we think it is but if you're going to act like it isn't real or not even answer any questions about it people are going to make up their own narrative about it um so I'm not asking for answers about it but my
life has been affected by this this isn't fanfiction this is happening i don't know what's going on up at the level with the board i know at the level of the support staff people are being affected by this their salaries are being affected their benefits are being
affected um so start asking questions start looking out for yourself if you feel like something is wrong if you feel like something is off do something about it say something about it who cares if somebody is going to retaliate against
you who cares if the entire union is going to be mad at you for saying something about it at the end of the day it is your life and you have to stand up for what is right jack McGee is a man of integrity i personally consider myself a person of integrity if there's something
wrong I don't think I should stand by and watch it happen i feel like what the union did for me was not right and if I can can have my fellow union members or any other staff member know that if they feel like they're in a situation where
they're stuck in a pot of boiling water that if they're they're smart enough to jump out and do something about it instead of being told that they can do whatever they want they can do whatever they want it's extremely tonedeaf of a union president to get up here and
support a board that just last year they were criticizing for cutting their staff thank you Patty Sucalis hello so Patty Sukalis um teacher at the high school for 25 years i'm speaking to you today because we're
in a budget crisis and I certainly don't envy your position to have to make the tough decisions on where to make cuts what I'm requesting tonight is that you don't consider any plans to reduce or eliminate the basic skills instruction and intervention services within our district the high school and the three
middle schools saw cuts to the interventionist last year and we're struggling to meet the needs of our students this year the data is clear these programs are not just support services their proven high impact high impact tools that drive student achievement close learning gaps and
contribute to long-term academic success i've been a math interventionist at the high school for the past three years and I can tell you that these programs are not luxuries there are lifelines to countless students who depend on targeted support to succeed academically and emotionally bsi and intervention
services provide critical scaffolding for learners who are struggling helping to close achievement gaps and ensuring that no child is actually left behind they are often the difference between a student falling through the cracks and a student finding their confidence their voice and their path forward our
educators in the classroom rely on these services to help deliver differentiated instruction and meet the diverse needs of our classrooms without them the burden on the educa the general education teacher increases drastically while the students who need extra help are the most to lose in with this
support system without this support system furthermore reducing these services sends a message that we are willing to compromise on equity and excellence as a district that prides itself on inclusivity inclusivity and student- centered education we must stand firm in our commitment to provide
every child with the resources they need to thrive i urge you to maintain the funding for BSI and intervention services these programs are essential not optional for the success of our students and the integrity of our educational mission please consider the long-term consequences of this decision
and I'm not saying that there was one i'm just because we don't have time before the um before the budget committee so I wanted to speak because we were cut um basically in half last year please consider the long-term consequences of this decision and the impact it'll have on the lives of the
children's and the families we serve um you know as someone that served as the interventionist for the past three years I right now oversee over a hundred students myself so while it might look easy because I'm not in a classroom and it would help maintain classroom sizes the impact that I have on these students
maintaining relationships it actually will reduce discipline help them with their academic success with lack of with less retainment with all these services so again I don't want the people in the public to think this has been cut or this has been brought up to be cut but because the budget is being presented on
the 29th and then it has to go to the county I believe by May 1st I wanted to present this ahead of time for you to consider we had two math and two ELA interventions at the high school we were reduced to one of each um for this current school year and we are struggling um to meet the needs of the
students at the middle school level they had one math and one English at each of the middle schools we're down to one ELA interventionist for all three middle schools because another one has been moved into the support service i did see we approved finally um a part-time ELA
interventionist at OV and then we have two math interventionist one that works at Chestnut Ridge and and um Bunker Hill and then one that is strictly for OV so again this is not something that has been said something that's been talked about but because we were cut in half last year I just wanted to present as to
why I feel like we cannot cut this service again so thank you for your time thank you Lissa Danowitz i don't want to seem like a mic drop all right there we go hi um I'm an art teacher here in the district i work at
Orchard Valley uh I stand here tonight representing our amazing VPA department at all levels i'm here tonight to stand up for my students the talented art program at the middle school and the VPA Academy um I've never been up here
before so me being here um it's it's really important that you um understand that I'm here because I'm asking for help and and for you to be aware um I stand here tonight because I feel confident and I feel comfortable i didn't feel that way before and I feel
that you're willing to listen and I'm I feel that you're willing to learn from our experiences that we want to share with you i feel that I will not be told that I'm being disrespectful for asking questions and speaking up i'm here to remind you and the parents at home
watching tonight's meeting about the importance of the VPA programs why because nationwide there's a correlation between high performing schools and art programs because an education in the arts contributes to learning across all content areas the arts have unique
capacity to engage students at three levels emotional intellectual and physical allowing for divergent learning learning styles and intelligences we reach all students in the arts and in order to continue we need your help we have to put our needs of the students
first please do not cut programs and funding please stop merging different level classes to save money doing this will have a longl lasting negative effect and impacts on our students there has to be a better way when you merge
classes a teacher cannot give 100% to each group students are becoming frustrated teaching a year-long course and a 10-week cycle class at the same time dilutes the program we claim to offer teaching a level one course and a level three course at the same time
takes away from uh the instruction from each group students suffer at the expense of this bad idea i'm reporting tonight this plan is a failure it contradicts what we strive for here in Township and it interferes with the integrity of a quality VPA education so
how can we prepare our students for our academy if this is what's happening i'm reporting tonight that the trial run that I was told which was what I was supposed to do this year it needs to be over this is not what is best for our students i take my oath as a teacher
serious i put my heart and soul into working with my students i was taught to speak up when something is not right and for the sake of our students we need to do what is right for them this they should not have to sacrifice a quality education and I'm asking you tonight to please look closely at what is going on
in the VPA programs come to our shows as Spencer said please come out our district art night is April 30th from 5:30 to 7:30 at the high school come be amazed at what our students accomplish with minimal budgets we don't complain
that we have $6 to spend on each student for the year we make it work i invite you to see how we are getting by and consider ideas to help us fund and support to sustain and grow our VPA programs we need your support because
our students need us thank you thank you Rob Scardino there we go rob Scardino WTEA Executive Vice President the WTEA leadership would like
to recognize and express our appreciation for our secretaries to the board of education this evening the hard work and dedication professionalism of our secretaries has not gone unnoticed by staff and administration and like
each and every secretary within our district have all stepped up without hesitation taking on added responsibilities wherever needed going above and beyond showing a level of commitment to this district specifically to our students and staff and all that
enter our buildings and that dedication is valued beyond words it should be recognized that the roles which once required two or three secretaries have now been thrust upon one individual in many cases and merged into a single assignment after many cuts it should be
understood that more responsibility means greater pressure higher levels of multitasking as well as increased time management and prioritization of tasks and in many cases longer working hours with secretaries often reducing or not taking their lunches to assure an
efficiently run building this commitment to our schools goes beyond the scope of their job descriptions and makes them a true force that keeps our buildings running smoothly and efficiently our secretar's contributions and dedication to our district students and staff is
not optional they are the foundation and keep all buildings safe and running in a professional manner on a daily basis we ask that when considering cuts we no longer cut secretaries thank you thank you
Christopher Bik Bakiki i'm not sure if I said that did I pronounce your name incorrectly can just clarify uh Christopher Bakish i'm a resident of Washington Township um longtime listener
first- time talker so new here um I was actually home watching this and I drove over um because I felt like something got glossed over a little bit and it's that $10 million uh ask um which is really an ask from
the taxpayer um so on top of the already raised taxes that we have you're asking for an additional $10 million is that correct if you want to finish all your comments sure we'll respond but no that's fine um but it will come from
the taxpayer correct yeah so um I feel as though maybe we haven't done our due diligence on the budget um I'm not exactly sure how it works but I'm pretty
sure the audit has not been released yet from the prior budget year um so how do you know where the money's going if you don't even have your audit yet and now you asking for more money when you don't even know where you're currently spending the money or maybe you do but
we don't and that's a problem as a taxpayer I want to know where every single cent of my property tax money which is 56 cents to the dollar that we give to this township goes to you where
is it all going where is every single scent where is a line item breakdown i come from a finance world that's what I do i get everybody's here for the kids and teachers i have four kids who went through this district uh I went through
this district lifelong resident lived here forever planned to live here forever although I'm not sure if that is attainable at the rate that our taxes continue to rise something else needs to be done
something more drastic and maybe some people with more a business acumen rather than an education acument should be looking at this to figure out what is the best way to both teach our kids and be fiscally responsible with the money
that you were given from the taxpayers of Washington Township so I think you know it is a very difficult job for everybody up here very difficult job for the teachers i speak for myself i don't dare come up here
pitman lady and say that I speak for everybody there's no way you speak for everybody cuz you don't speak for me i speak for me and and anybody in township who wants to say that should come up here just
like I did get off your sofa and speak for yourself i will not let another person come up here and say you speak for me that is not happening i will speak for me i will speak for my tax dollars and I would like to applaud um
Councilman Pete Delberella for posting this because that's the only way I found out that this was happening tonight um we are really not clear with giving out direction on when these meetings are it I get it and you might post it on your website but um a better way to probably do it would be on social media much more
than it's currently being done um and I only got a minute left but I did want to say you're all ex This is exhausting it's exhausting listening to you all fight back and forth and back and forth bottom line is it's our tax dollars get your together and get
it right get it right i don't care that you don't like her and she don't like you and you're all emailing back and forth and Oprah and every other second it doesn't matter it's our tax money we voted you in do what's got to be done
make the hard decisions if you have to keep the kids in mind keep the teachers in mind there has got to be places you can cut the budget in this town there's got to be in this school district there's got to be other places that don't affect the kids 100% there's
definitely a lot of administrators if you look at the the BO web website maybe some of them need to go maybe consolidate some positions start thinking outside the box think of it as a business think of it as your money cuz for some of you it is your money none of
us want to be paying all these taxes thank you thank you Janine janine um Miss Wctor will answer the budget questions yeah um so we were allowed to increase up to $10 million
because when we sub submitted our tenative budget to the state online according to their calculation our budget is $10 million under adequacy so we were allowed to go up that amount um we're actually asking for a total
increase of 5,292,000 and some change um but then the state gives us incentive aids in the amount of 252,000 um so I just wanted to clarify that and then also as far as the
financials are concerned our auditors come in in the fall and they have to upload all of our financial information from the year before by January 1 and then we review and certify it all that financial information gets populated
into the budget software so we have access to all of our audited figures when we're preparing this budget um and then um just to just kind of review the process again in our March meeting we're we have to submit a tenative budget to the county
office once we submit it the county office is in the process of reviewing it right now and then once it's approved it gets advertised to the public and then on April 29th is when we have our public hearing on the
budget adrien Choma hi my name is Adrienne Choma i'm the middle school vice president for the WTA and I've been a middle school ELA teacher in the district since 2006 i'm also the chair of the WTEA superintendent liaison committee at the
last board meeting some board members expressed concern about some of the issues we were bringing to the podium asking why they weren't brought to your attention sooner i'd like to reference district policy 1100 all members and employees of this board are directed to observe faithfully the chain of
communication established by the district organizational plan the board expressly disapproves of any attempt to expedite the resolution of a problem by disregard of the organizational plan and the appropriate processes a staff member's persistent disregard for the
established management organization of this district in violation of this policy will be considered an act of insubordination subject to discipline the WTA has been following this chain of command we have teams of WTA staff
members at each school who meet with the building principles each month to work together to resolve building level issues if an issue is brought to a building liaison two months in a row with no resolution reached or if the issue is so pervasive it affects
multiple buildings the issue is assessed by the WTA superintendent liaison committee to determine if the issue needs to be brought directly to the superintendent the WTEA superintendent leaison committee members add these items to an agenda and we present these items to the
superintendent each month and we meet together each month to work together to resolve these issues our understanding has always been that these minutes from our superintendent meetings are shared with the board this is the chain of command we adhere to if you are not
receiving information about these issues that we're bringing to this podium and other issues that we're presenting each month at the superintendent liaison meetings there's a breakdown at the top of the organizational plan which is why we have resorted to bringing these issues to this
podium this breakdown is happening with information going up the chain and now coming down the chain why is information about resignations and position changes being released to social media before it is officially shared with staff members through district communication why are
current and past board members participating in social media discussions knowing full well that the district's social media policy prohibits WTA and other district staff members from participating honestly in those conversations
online when past and present board members pick and choose which social media conversations to take part in you are validating these forums as a valid means of communication parents and community members have a right to engage and share information but board members
past and present should be held to a higher standard knowing full well that when you engage in conversations about district rumors and staffing cuts the staff who may have more accurate or other clarifying information are prohibited due to the district's social
media policy from engaging with you or community members in those forums thank you thank you can I have a motion to close to the public julie I have a question real quick why oh hang on okay
can I ask the question why don't we get those those meeting minutes i mean I've never I honestly I don't know i don't ever remember getting them ever um but it sounds like something that we can definitely ask to start
receiving we should be looking at um I serve on a similar committee at my job it's called faculty counsel so it's like there's 12 of us that take issues from the union and bring it to the president and talk with her i don't believe any of that gets shared with our board i don't
know um but like you know I've never experienced that so I just think that maybe we could that's something that we should request um Melissa McN thank you i can honestly say that at this point in my 25 years of teaching in
this school district sadly I am embarrassed to work for Washington Township Public Schools i've seen my fair share of crazy board meetings over the years i've worked some great with some great and under some great and also some less than perfect superintendent here and I've seen some poor decisions
be made and also you know some rather sound ones but I've never really seen and I don't mean to be rude but I've never really seen a circus quite like this one and I've never before felt that I truly feared for our school district
and I do right now i I fear for where we're going and where we're headed and how we're going to straighten it all out from the name calling to the fingerpointing lying and hiding it's disturbing and I often think about what kind of role models we are to the young people that we educate cuz they're
watching we look ridiculous to the world around us we are the laughingtock of the educational community right now and many of our community members look no better i keep searching for what we are gaining through all of this but I can only see what we are losing and I don't just mean
respect dignity and a path forward but also people services and standards within what we do i've actually reached a point of hoping that some outside entity will sweep through here and clean up the mess because I just I really am
struggling to see a way forward one of the things that I do as the elementary VP of the WTEA is I represent members in times of struggle within their teaching and other job roles and sadly what I've seen this year are many situations where I'm called to represent people who
literally can't do their job due to a lack of support materials or an overwhelming workload today I represented a teacher who had a special ed student for the majority of this year with major behavioral issues in their class all year long and they did not
have a special education teacher in the classroom until February why i have no idea um I've represented teachers who cannot teach because they have students with such major behavioral issues that they completely disrupt the teaching process yet our admin continually fails
to enforce the code of conduct we keep taking more and more pieces of the puzzle away our kindergarten and preschool teachers have their work cut out for them more than they ever have our students are entering kindergarten not potty trained very little language
it's alarming um yet we're taking away things like kindergarten snapshot why i have no idea why are we going to dissolve our LLD classrooms at the elementary level i don't know why are we going to cut BSI down or
interventionists i I don't have an answer for that just because something isn't required by law doesn't mean that it's not needed are we going to become the district that only does the absolute bare minimum because that's what I'm feeling in my role both as a teacher and
in the union silly little example of something that I kind of think speaks volumes and this is a very small example but my program um at my elementary school used to have a budget of $3,000 a year for the program for materials
um or curriculum or whatever I chose we needed my budget at this point is $300 that's $300 for 500 students that's my budget in the economy we're in and the way things cost so much more than they
did 20 25 years ago it's embarrassing i have to do things to fund raise to even support my program at this point that's why I do the kids heart challenge and things like that our standards just keep going down there was a time when I used to attend board meetings for positive reasons and
I had good things to say i remember standing before some of you talking about the Herurville Readathon and how we were cooperating and doing all these great collaborative things and now I feel I'm only compelled to represent the shortcomings that our members carry on their backs i sit in meetings and shake
my head at the things I learn when I question how did we get here and to the public I'm very frustrated with feeling hearing the negative comments about the union maybe you aren't really listening we aren't up here asking for higher salaries or expensive materials we're
advocating for basic student needs we're advocating for things like grading policies and dress codes and discipline so we can teach and safety last month I had to get up here and talk about how the code of conduct wasn't followed when a student threatened to
shoot up a school okay these are the things we're advocating for listen to us we're not advocating for ourselves and if you're listening you know that because you've heard us speak again and again and again if you start listening you might
find we're actually probably on the same team we just happen to see the inner workings of the system here and have a clearer picture of what is broken stop advocating for hibs and start advocating for kids thank you thank you Heather
Witcraft also is Jeff in here jeff Walter is there any way we can turn the heat down a little bit i see everyone's fanning themselves and these lights are really hot did he leave can someone turn the heat down somewhere i see Mr
anderson thank you hi Heather Witchcraft Washington Township um as I said last time thank you for your service to this community and your commitment to our students and staff staff who are largely also residents here as well as parents of our
students the district hired a conflict attorney in November i've heard he recently resigned as he himself is conflicted how much were we charged for his services how did we come to hire a conflicted conflict
attorney was there no research done to verify his background what happens to the actions taken or any direction resulting from their advice and opinions thank you i wasn't on the board then so and I don't think I can talk about it so Ari I
don't know what you want us to do about that she wants to know about basically the status of the conflict attorney that was conflicted how did you guys not know i think the short the easy answer is the bills are definitely operable if you want to see what was charged um and
obviously Jine would would take the Oprah request and give you what she can with redactions it's probably the best way to answer that question okay james Msadi good evening james Msadi Washington Township um wanted to start off i've
been um a township resident for a little over 10 years now and only just started paying attention to the schools cuz my daughter recently entered kindergarten at Hurville and my father-in-law is a retired superintendent my wife's a teacher my
in-laws are teachers school administrators um I have a lot of respect for the school system for the folks sitting up on this board and when I saw an opportunity to join the community task force on the budget last year I got really excited as an
opportunity to engage with the school district at the same time that my daughter started in the school to say that it's been disappointing would be an understatement as I've watched the recorded board meetings as
I've started listening and paying attention there's a lot of anger and divisiveness and just unkindness that is unbecoming of a school district like Washington
Township the behaviors that I have seen from community members board members towards each other board members towards other members of the community are things that would have my six-year-old be sent to the principal's
office and I've heard from the education association that they need support i've heard from the community that they have questions and that they have concerns and what I think we need a lot of is leadership and we need healing
and we need kindness so that people can learn how to work together to resolve their problems and I don't see that coming from the current board i did not see it coming from the past board and yes there are a ton of keyboard warriors
i have found those face group Facebook groups myself and you can go on there and find me and I have defended members of this school board while also being critical of you i think that we need to ask you guys as the elected leaders to
please lead the way on finding a way to first work with each other but also to bridge the gaps to work with the community and with the staff of all parts of this to make Washington Township what everybody thinks it's
supposed to be i do have questions about the community task force we had a number of really great folks on there um I myself am just a data and analytics junkie and so you know as soon as I started getting in there started digging into a lot of
information and really wanted to focus on how do we bring more revenue to the school and not how do we cut costs i've got a lot of benchmarked data i've shared a video on Facebook and I'm happy to share it with anybody else and I may come back up later and share some information but we do spend a lot of
money we have the 34th largest school district in the state of New Jersey and we have a budget that goes along with that size but when you compare our faculty to student ratios our administrator to student ratios our support staff to student ratios we're
lagging behind when you look at our test performance we're lagging behind i don't know what's going on other than to say that we have a environment that does not breed positivity that does not breed the support that the students that the
faculty that the administrators and that the community needs to really drive the results that everybody here ultimately wants to see come out of Washington Township Public Schools i really believe and really think that there is so much potential and so much
opportunity in this school district but so long as we spend our time fighting amongst each other we will never be able to put the students first like we all want to we all have different ways of wanting to accomplish the same goal
there are lots of people out here that will point fingers and will call names and will do all kinds of things and they're going to happen and I'm unfortunately sure that most of you when you took elected offices understood that that was a risk of the positions that
you assumed but understand that there is a thing that perception is people's reality and whether it's true or not that is what you are battling against and I'm sure that we don't have the full
story you legally can't give us the full story and that is frustrating to a lot of community members i would ask that you speak with Ahri and you try to find ways creative ways to try and engage the community to try and engage the staff and try and bring everybody together we
desperately need it thank you motion to close to the public i'm going to close first motion to close to the public i wanted to respond to that first that's fine but I already have a motion asking for a motion to close second all in favor
i Okay Scott go ahead you did anybody else i said motion to close to the public and he said second i said all in favor yeah is everyone in favor of closing yes okay thank you Scott go ahead uh first I
just want to thank you for your service on the budget task force uh and everybody else that served i I enjoyed meeting everybody on there i thought there was great ideas and the quality and experience of the people that served on that was was amazing um I apologize it didn't go further than it did you
know at January I was no longer chair of that um we had other things we were dealing with so but uh I thought great ideas came out of that and I appreciate your service there um hopefully something like that can be resurrected in the future because I think we're going to need those ideas in the future
we'll talk more about that later um also regarding the question about how did we pick the conflict attorney and how would we pick a an attorney that was conflicted i can just describe that process because I was chair of business at that time so when the RFP goes out
the proposals come in the business committee members go through all those proposals and we have criteria by which we score and rank the proposals those are like you know quality of the proposals number of lawyers they have um price things like that through that
process it would be nearly impossible for us to identify a conflict with any of the attorneys unless they identified that to us so I just wanted to transparency on how that process occurs and why we probably didn't identify that the attorney was conflicted until he let
us know of that thanks Julie can I say something i think it also needs to be said that we worked with our conflict attorney from September until January and we didn't know about the conflict until December
so we were working all that time and also when you're all speaking I've been thinking about the budget a lot and all the things that you're talking about and I don't know how old all old you are but not that many years ago the public voted on the budget do any of you remember
that when that was the way it was and I think we've become disconnected with the public ever since that changed when that was taking place I can remember I taught here and I was picking
out a new curriculum for reading there was a board member that sat there at every meeting to find out out about the curriculum that we were going to choose not to administer the district just to have knowledge to take back to the instructional affairs committee i think
the financial committee was a great idea but I do think Carol had talked about at one time too we need to find a way to get the community and the staff i think they should not have been left out in my opinion of the financial committee and
the board members that has got to be something that we work on together that's a big disconnect because there is no feelings of trust with anybody right now and I think that was the difference back then not only did you vote on the
budget that in itself has a certain different type of accountability but you knew every step of the way what was going on and we talked to parents when we um chose a superintendent years ago they had again they had staff that sat
in on the interviews i sat in on that they had uh community members that sat in on that as well as your board members we got to fill out surveys we were not involved in choosing the superintendent
but at least the board got feedback from what the public thought and we have totally gotten away from that i don't know if we can blame COVID i don't know if we can blame the fact that the budget's not voted on by the public anymore but I think be who keeps talking
about goals of the board that has to be a priority because there's so much disconnect there's so much not trusting of each other and I think that's because there are all these barriers where we're not supposed to interact with each other and that's totally
ridiculous thank you Mrs blum we have to do um committee reports now do you want to start with IIA sure i'll go right into that all right we had a um meeting Thursday night none of the things that we talked about are being voted on on tonight so we're
we were just being informed we talked a little bit about QAC and Mrs gerber can you help me explain what CUSAC is so it's a series of every three years the county uh comes out and takes an evaluation and they look at us in
different areas uh the only area we've been evaluated thus far this year so far is in curriculum so that's why we spoke about it in instructional affairs uh we had our county ed specialists come and meet with uh some of our supervisors and our curriculum office team to review uh
not only our curriculum but certain mandates that are required by the state where we are in that process and um then from there they go into a desk audit because we upload all of our documentation and proof of PLC's and lesson plans and things like that that
they will then do from their um from their offices and then ultimately give us a score but right now we only had the one area which we've been evaluated so that would be just curriculum instruction we have not heard any findings yet okay thank you the other things that we discussed was on the
report cards if you have children you understand that for elementary there are work habits that are listed on the report card they're listed in the elementary schools and in the middle school there's a pilot program going on right now of having work habits in go
going on in the high school no decisions have been made and I think it continues into next year but that's one thing that we talked about we also talked about AI best practices are being reviewed throughout the district the goal is to help our staff receive information on
how it can be used effectively in our schools and classrooms at all levels an expansion of the district's preschool program has been approved for the 2025 through 2026 school year and again Mrs gerber works very hard on that a lot of
the success in that program is because of her hard work and the people that work with her the district is working on updating the policy pertaining to the school child care program for staff members fees will be updated as well
before and after school fees the week of May 11th through 15th will be designated special education week um it's a time to recognize our special education students and staff members this is a yearly event in our
district the district received a grant entitled nurtured heart approach so far four elementary staffs have been trained during next school year the two of remaining elementary um staffs will be trained and we we
heard about this from Mrs gromald Ms grimmaldi she's in charge of guidance and to me it was a very exciting program to learn about it highlights positive ways of interacting with children throughout the day and uh it
emphasizes what phrases or wording work best to promote a safe and positive classroom environment for all students so that seemed like they also then have the students take over and start using those same words among each other to
have kind words and encouraging words mrs schill commented at our meeting on class scheduling for our incoming freshmen for the fall of 2025 she stated that the information shared with parents and students as schedules were being
made was informative and much easier to understand for everyone so this board was was very happy to hear that report from Mrs chilla and that's all I have thank you thank you uh business committee Mr shano
yes thank you so in our business committee uh the individuals in attendance were Jack McGee Janine Wctor myself Scott La Liberty uh Mrs comple and Mr ross items discussed the first item we discussed was the energy audit
the solar interconnection possible solar interconnection and upcoming approvals needed nothing that we're voting on tonight i believe we had the budget discussion which took up the majority of that meeting finance agenda was another item
discussed upcoming purchasing items and Janine I did want to ask you about Brown and Brown is that something we're discussing next yes next meeting yep we're going to discuss that the next time okay understood um that is just for the renewal for next year's rates it
doesn't have anything to do with the RFP okay for professional services understood all right thank you that's all thank you thank you um student activities and communications Mrs baker
yes the uh student activities communication committee was scheduled for Wednesday April 9th and it was cancelled okay um anything else from committee i have one thing I just I don't know who's I'm sure Mrs blow you're taking as many
notes as me but some of the issues I can put it in an email to you that come up I was hoping could go into IIA just different notes um I guess we can decide you know now for instance just answers to questions like why did we take away
the kindergarten snapshot um We were making a list oh good okay as long as you have go in case we missed it okay so I have that i have actually I'm going to go back oh these are all my notes from budget let me go back even
more um the one was well particularly with the um arts the sharing of um staff for among the middle schools you have that okay um the interventionalist issue that
came up y just a history on why these things you know what the plan was uh when this came up um oh also this goes along with the middle school but um the
um Mrs um I want to say I'm sorry Deborah the teacher Mrs uh Lissa Danowitz sorry I did write it down um she said some teachers are teaching one level and three one level one and level three i don't know exactly what that means i wanted more information on that
if anybody else has anything let me know um this is not this oh the threat assessments um what what are the threat assessments and how are we following them right and everything else is pretty much
budget stuff so I added the grading policy to it to because I think we need to look at that oh yeah for sure i that wasn't on that wasn't discuss okay no no the grading policy and the attendance policy needs to be looked at absolutely yeah and I know Mrs gerber was talking about that a little bit so I didn't know
if that came up good thank you the code of conduct could you please Can you please speak into the microphone can't hear you the code of conduct seems to be something again not to administer but to have a clearer understanding of
how that's working thank you on to Okay uh report of the superintendent items one through three can I have a motion to approve items one through three which is the HIP report the resolution for special education
week and the revised district calendar motion have a second second discussion roll call mr serrano yes mr ross yes
mrs baker yes mrs bloom yes miss Clancy yes mrs chilla yes mrs hart yes mr liberty
abstain on one yes to two and three miss Kazmpo yes motion carries under human resources can I have a motion to approve items 1 through 26 motion to approve thank you a second
second any discussion go ahead Mr speaker yeah I just wanted on number 26 is that date incorrect document that I got said the 11th and not the 10th what was Friday was Friday
the 11th his letter said the 11th i think she's right that should be changed right yeah it should be the 11th good pick up thank you do we make an amendment to make a change
yes can we Ari how do we do just say on number 26 the date will be changed from 10th to the 11th this is Jack's um resignation okay thank you any other discussion roll call please
mr ross yes mrs baker yes mrs bloom under agenda item four under human resources extended school year i abstain on KH i'm yes to the rest and on
number 18 Ms who has given us her resignation i accept that regretfully um I want to thank her for all that she has done for many of the students in our district while she's been here and I believe she was a teacher of the year from Burches
maybe last year and it's really sad that we're going to lose her as a teacher in the district yes to the rest mrs clancy yes m Yes but I just want to ask Scott you usually call out the retirement so when
we're done the vote would you mind doing that yes tall mrs harton yes but I do want to say I'm very upset about losing Mrs mrs shalomé she's a prize of the district and it's
sad that she's leaving for the reasons that she is or whatnot yes Mr liberty yes Mr serrano yes Miss Kazmple
yes motion carries are you I have a list if Are you ready oh good okay um Mr yamamoto West Yamamoto 25 years in the district retiring um Mrs nancy Dickerson music
teacher at Bunker Hill 28 years in the district let's Let's Julie real quick we have to make sure it's Mrs dickinson oh he's retiring so Oh I thought that's what I said um Mrs febbo Donna Febbo's retirement 28 years as a specialized
instructional assistant and Amy Mirman's um retirement 25 years working as a science teacher at Bunker Hill thank you so much that's well over a hundred years
cumulatively okay um can I have a motion to approve item the item under finance and facilities this is the tax levy incentive application motion second second discussion
um I understand the board resolution however I hope my mic is working i have a problem with agreeing with the percentage of the tax increase so that will be why my vote is what it is
scott thank you so first I just want to say I really appreciate all the work that the administration put in to you know then building the budget and coming up with this i know they worked tirelessly hours and hours of overtime weekends etc so thank you very much
Janine uh Gretchen Annette and and everyone else so thank you very much um I also appreciate that administration worked tirelessly and found a way to get the three high school sports that were cut
back in and that was in under the 2% cap amount so I was really happy to see that um but unfortunately I I can't support the amount of the tax increase that we have here that we're asking for it's uh
7.39% almost 7.4% that's on top of about 4% last year and you know if you remember right it's similar like deja vu to where we were last year i said "Hey we're probably going to be in this situation again next year because what
we're putting in place isn't going to fix the problem." So rather than just replay the tape I'll say it again um what we're doing this year is not going to fix the problem and we're going to be in this situation again next year last year I predicted we'd be 5 to 7 million
in the hole we ended up 11 i'm predicting we'll probably be 3 to 5 million in the hole next year how do I know that and how to do math right i can add what the contractual raises will equal i can estimate what the health benefits increases are going to be etc
and you're going to have a 2% cap next year so we're going to have a shortfall this increase is irresponsible i'm sorry right i mean I'm a I'm a business guy i look at things as dollars and cents and I'm You call me cold and heartless i've been called that a million times but I have to put those
pieces away and look at it from a business perspective and we're just not fixing the problem where we're putting this money is just going to make the problem worse for next year that you know one positive thing a little bit of money that they're going to infuse for capital projects that'll create a little
bit of a buffer for next year but it's not going to be enough what's being added in other areas is going to make this unsustainable so that's why I'll be voting no so I'll just comment real quick um the reason why I'll be voting no to
the tax levy is because I just have some concerns about the cuts that are in the budget and some additions so I just disagree fundamentally with those cuts and the additions and that's why I'll be voting now okay roll call
mrs baker yes mrs bloom yes mrs clancy no miss Chilla no mrs yes mr liberty
no mr serrano yes mr ross yes miss Kazmple yes motion carries thank you nothing under special education or
negotiations any items of new business yeah I got one sure so when I was a novice on the board I guess I'm probably still a novice only been my third year um and I was on
negotiations and I said something on social media that was intended to be a kind words of support to our support staff and I think was misinterpreted or could have been misinterpreted but in the
interest of you know sparing the board from any controversy I resigned from negotiations and I think that some of us other board members here should think about any of the situations that we might be involved in that could be embarrassing to us as
board members or us as a board and think about the positions that you're in on committees and others and think about whether it would be in the best interest of the board for you to potentially step back from those roles i'm just going to leave that consideration for people to
think about okay any other comments new business new business um I think we talked about this several times and it's never really happened there's clearly um community members
that have come up and I forget that is it Mr bich i'm sorry if I'm mispronouncing that um you know and it was also Mr mazati and others asking for us to come together to do some planning i think we've talked about a board
retreat I don't know maybe two years that has never happened so we I I think there was a presentation given at um the reorganization in January 7th that was elaborate in terms of planning and all of the things so I think that um once we
get done the budget April 29th my time is limited here right I have till December 31st when I've fulfilled the longest penance I've ever served but it will be done December 31st um I think it would be beneficial to at least have
some kind of a meeting retreat to at least set up for the next board and and where we go from there because again we've talked about it January 7th it was discussed and we haven't done anything around it because we're it's always a fire drill in some way the community is
asking the staff is asking i think that we have to at by the next meeting maybe if there's by way of email to get together a few dates to do that and sit together and do board work and figure out and plan strategically what does the
remainder of the year look like what are the big topics and priorities obviously once we get through the budget so I'm just asking if you know if you agree or don't agree whichever if you do agree um to you know email maybe Lori some dates and some possibilities because I think
the longer we go out it's almost May we haven't done that since Jan we haven't we talked about it and we didn't do it so I think that we have to get back on track and start doing those kind of things as a board i completely agree with that and I also would like to make the note that it
starts with responding to emails that are about board business and showing up to meetings i think if people even just did that bare minimum that would help there are some people that don't respond to emails continuously i'll say to Janine "Did you hear back from all nine and there's always one that we haven't
heard back from or two that just completely ignore emails?" And but if it's about ethics fighting things like that it's constant response all night and so if you're one of those people then maybe you should think about how
you're working on the board and would a retreat help you if you're not even responding to emails or attending meetings i agree you're right it's not and I also would like for everyone up here to make a pledge to stop making your decisions
based on what you think people on Facebook are going to say because we need to listen to the staff that's in the room with us and each other that is such a small byproduct of this town and it is a toxic environment
and I'm not even on Facebook so I don't know what happens i don't get the emails i don't have you know I don't want that in my life and on a weekend when you know I'm getting emails from some of those people um and people letting me know what's being posted I'm like it's
80° outside like even just for your mental health do something else it's really it's really um scary that people will go onto a Facebook group and completely change their opinion about someone that they've known their entire
life just based off of narratives all of us were on that page all of us were blocked except for four of you the four of you that are on that page I'm not saying about any specific person but if you're on that page I don't think that's appropriate as a board member to be on
that page i don't think you should be commenting there and I think when confidential information is found out by people and two days later it shows up on that page that says a lot about the relationship between the people on this board that are active on that page and
those of us who are not can I have a motion to open to the public hold on hold on just for the record just for the record first of all there's five of us that are on that page not four i looked at it the other day and second of all I'm a parent so I
deserve to be on a township parent forum page i'm I am a parent before I'm a board member and if there's something going on at the at the school as a parent I deserve to know what's going on
yeah all right so I'm not even active on social media except for business LinkedIn i stopped being active on social media when I got involved with the board and had a little run in there with with social media that caused me a step off of negotiations so I couldn't
even tell you what pages I'm on first of all second of all I can I have the right to be on whatever and everybody up here has the right to be what on whatever uh group they want to be on what they say on those groups they can be held accountable for but just being a member
that's different secondly I'm not making a pledge that's what I was elected to do was to serve the best interest of this district right i don't care what people say on Facebook i have no political aspirations to ever touch anything political ever again in my life and I
won't be rewriting for this board i do what I think's right i do what I think is in the best interest of this district that's it period julie but we also make sure that we I keep saying it that we work on board goals and district goals because
actually that's part of what should be included when you're doing your budget especially your district goals i agree can I have a motion to open to the public motion second can I get a
second second all in favor randy Ford Uh Randy Ford Washington Township uh just a couple things there were a few questions and I know I had a lot at the public se or the public portion for agenda items uh but I didn't get answers
or comments to the question about the suspension of the negotiation solicitor policy or where on the website the doctrine invoked on March 25th was posted and then also with respect to Mr
rendazzo's statement uh so if at some point that would be great uh I really liked what Mr msadi said James around trying to find an idea or a way to bridge the gap among board members um I've been coming and
listening to these meetings for 13 or 14 months the one thing I think everyone could probably agree on and maybe not an admin but is to get rid of the 50 grade floor right i mean that's all I I all I hear
is people can skirt by or students can skirt by in the second semester of the year and I've never heard a single person ever defend it so maybe that's where you all can unanimously agree or you know
anonymously agree to um the other thing I would say is with respect to transparency I'm somebody who ops things on a regular basis because I want to understand i'm a parent with three kids in the district um they're all in
Hurville Elementary School which is filled with awesome teachers awesome principles they're absolutely incredible um but with that said there's things that I think this board could do to be more proactive with respect to
transparency uh one thing would be every committee could have a proactive uh statement of what they've done since the last meeting i know most of them were tonight but negotiations yet again no activity since the last at least just
just say that so we're not left wondering right as to what happened um the other thing is I know these meetings are posted on the website and on Facebook but every parent gets parent square notifications why we're not using parent square to notify people of the
meeting and the agenda I don't understand i think it's free mr distillio could probably you know tell me whether there's a limit to the number of posts uh that can be sent out that way uh the other thing I'd like to see are meeting minutes are ultimately held
for a quite a long period of time i know there's no set rule in stone in the law that says how quickly but maybe what could happen is by the next meeting the draft minutes from the prior meeting are provided to the board and then you all
vote on them so then people that can't make or don't want to listen to a five-hour meeting can review those meeting minutes uh I also Oprah committee meeting minutes those could be proactively posted on the website so then again Janine doesn't have to get an
Oprah from 18,000 different people in the district so that's one way if she can post it out to everybody and then Mr mr snder can tell you that if someone sends an Oprah request and it's something that's publicly available on the website it's as easy as an answer of "Hey it's already on our website." Um
also I'd like to see the entirety of these meetings not the executive session but the entirety of the meeting posted onto YouTube or however WTV uh March 25th there was a meeting where
I came at 5:30 when the meeting was posted as starting typically I think the what usually happens is the board makes a motion to come into public session and then immediately goes into close session instead that meeting had a 20inut public
meeting where the the doctrine of necessity was invoked again and the public who can't make it out or follows a notice that says public will be excluded from the executive portion of the meeting shouldn't have to be left
wondering what happened during that meeting so if you have something at 5:30 or 6:00 post the start and then immediately go into executive session and put the little blue logo up you know um let's
just see oh and item 26 tonight on the human resources it'd be great to if and again from an interest of transparency people come up the first public session is supposed to be agenda items no one knew until you just voted on it that there was agenda item 26 i saw it on the
website about a half or 45 minutes before the meeting started but the printed versions for those in the back do not have item 26 on it so um I think that would be nice if you told the public for those items that you know about are being added that were just
added in an hour or two before the meeting that we know what they are thank you very much um some of the items you mentioned are not things that we do i mean these are unpaid positions so you know posting things and printing things we don't have
anything to do with that but noted um I'm not going to address anything about what Lou Rendazzo said because that would be talking publicly about the union stuff we can't do that um the
doctrine ari do you want to mention talk um why wasn't it posted for the meeting on the 25th i I didn't know that it wasn't posted till you said that uh so I need to talk to Janine and we'll figure that out tom Besaro hello again um I want to mention
you know this is going to tie into the budget and the tax increase uh it's policy 6210 fiscal planning one of the requirements that by your policy is to have a five-year plan to you know Mr li
Liberty talked about how it's irresponsible to you know last year we didn't fix the problem this year we're not fixing the problem i said the same thing it's malpractice when you go through a riff to not fix the problem because then
you get there every year i sent you an article a while back about the Philly school district they you know they published their five-year plan basically the the superintendent talked about it and they had to use $300,000 $300 million from their reserve to cover
their budget and they said in five years they're going to have a $2 billion gap do you guys have that information do you know you know other than the math that you know Scott did what our gap is for next year because those should be
informing the decisions you make now it's so disturbing to hear Scott say that some of the decisions you're making today are going to make next year worse that's irresponsible that's the definition of irresponsible
you know every employee that works here has a right to to be paid a fair market salary that's what we need to ensure you figure that part out and then you figure out how many people you can have we should never hear people say people are leaving because they're getting paid $4
an hour somewhere else that should never happen there's not enough planning happening you're reacting constantly and you're putting it on the taxpayer you know you keep talking about
what you can do yes you can increase taxes for $10 million i told you there's only 11% of municipalities in the state that pay more a higher tax rate than we already do now so you can do it but it's
wrong it's 100% wrong if you're making decisions today in this budget that make next year worse what are you doing why would you do it i appreciate the people who who voted no on the tax and told us why but
I would love to hear the people who voted yes tell us why tell us why it's okay to create a budget gap for next year while you're raising our taxes 11% over two years if they give you the ability to raise a 10 is that going to be what what solves
your problem next year next year planning starts with this budget and you failed 100% you failed it's not how we support our students it's not how we support our
teachers when you're in a constant state of panic and reacting there's no nothing is going to move forward and I think that's what everybody wants everybody wants to move
forward but it's got to start with a plan and you're wasting money last year when you raised it to not fix the problem same thing this year that's a waste of resource it's a waste it's a complete
waste you guys have to get in a room and look out five years what's our gap in five years if you know if the Philly gap is going to compound 12 times over 5 years what happens if that's ours you know who's going to get hurt
it's ultimately going to be the kids you cannot just keep raising taxes to fix the problem you know you you you talked about you know you know a forum where where people might talk and you know part of the problem is when
sometimes when you get asked legitimate questions you guys don't respond at all like I talked earlier today about you know our food service we pay $112 per student the average is six 85% of school districts in this state it's zero does
anybody have a concern with that does anybody say that should be the first million dollars that we fix i don't care how you do it but your goal should be to get there but I brought that up and not one person not
one responded to that is a legitimate question that is the first thing you should all be looking at the money where you're way above what your peers are at but I got nothing so it's very frustrating when you ask might be a hard
question but I got nothing no response and that that's that's irresponsible too tell us you're going to fix it tell us you're going to get into a room tell us before the budget's final we're going to figure it out tell us we'll fix it by next year that's the part if you make a
decision today and don't look at it and you make a decision that commits you to something for 5 years irresponsible and you're not using your tax dollars appropriately thank you Ron Lucarini yeah the uh $5 million
increases i just figured it out the average homeowner what does it come to uh they usually give that information so maybe um Janine can tell us what the average increase is going to be the average
homeowner um but what I hear tonight is a lot about respect you know we don't get enough respect and the sides have to come together or the split has to come together but you can't come
together and uh for instance Mr deli he can't vote yes to a budget just to show that he's coming together if it's irresponsible right it would be nice it would show that we're all together ralph would be happy and all the politicos up
there would be happy but you can't come together and respect people when they don't respect ethics all right this is the school system and the people up here from the WTEA who come up here and say that we
have discipline problems we have you know academic problems they are absolutely accurate but to portray an image that had happened with Dr hibbs walking in the door and I'm no fan of his i'm not a fan it didn't happen when
he walked in the door it happened while she was president of this board of education and maybe some of the the things that were in the works along the way but when you have a person who sends an email to someone saying "This is my
scheme to pick the next superintendent my best friend who I dance with." Okay uh and then lies and says she never sent it and then is part of an ethics complaint then apologizes and then resigns and then you people stand there
and clap for people like Mrs bloom who can't give us a direct answer as to why she would vote for someone like that for president of the board of education instead what Mrs bloom does is she starts attacking me and sends you know
maybe she'll send her husband up again and then we get Mr uh what was his name arpino talking about all and the people in this room clap for these people it's a disgrace we you want academic improvement I say
you improve academically yourselves because if you took a multiple choice test based on uh common sense and ethics if you took an ethics test based on uh what this board of education does and the decisions they make you'd all fail
it okay well at least the the the political whhouse five would fail it all right and that's what we have here a political wh house and the if you notice we don't even read the room properly because every resident who's not
affiliated with the school system that came up here tonight I don't consider I would say they're all negative but they weren't all positive they weren't on the cheerleading for this okay and yet our teachers want respect but the things that have been going on in this district
for years including political hiring and what whatnot and and the description that young lady gave up here about how she wasn't supported over serious issues that went on all the time and that was even before Julie Kazmple okay they've
been wheeling and dealing with the administration and the board of education for years for years all right uh but you know don't come up here and blame this one guy who I could care less about to be be quite honest don't blame
him for the problems in Washington Township all right you're part of the problem you knew these discipline problems existed you never came I've never seen in other districts i I don't know which one I read about recently they came out and they're protesting not
against the board of education but they want stricter discipline in the schools where have we been i come to these meetings I haven't heard too many conversations tonight was the first time I heard a conversation about education from a couple people over there but most of the time nothing it's all about this
nonsense and that's what it is all right and uh for Jerry Tarashi to get up here and start saying things like well you know indicating that it was Dr hibbs's fault no we all bear the burden of that
and it was going on long before Hibbs okay you can't have three board presidents all resigning under a cloud of ethics in one year and then sit there and blame Hibs when he picks up the ball and has to carry the you know this pile
of that's what this district has turned into thank you thank you J murphy hey good evening so just a couple things um about the Facebook thing i think there was a reference to your use of Facebook and then someone made a comment if you're a
former board member you shouldn't be on a site and something about the district policy for um employees i'm not an employee and I am a volunteer i was a volunteer board member i'm really on Facebook i may be in a group i don't know if I'm in that group and if I post
I mean to post and I I do it with integrity and I take a position on an issue that I know a little bit about so I'm I'm just going to say I have a constitutional right to do it and if that that's not going to change um with regard to a great point Pat Bloom with regard to voting on the budget I was
elected in the last April election where we were allowed to vote on budgets in 2011 and guess what you all can do it you can move the election back to April the council can move the election back to April and you could do some kind of resolution or referendum to move the
election back to April and the what what is gained by doing that is you get to vote on the budget every year that would be great i'd be 100% in on moving the the election and voting on every budget so good point um the other thing I want
to say is you mentioned goals every single board meeting that I come to I look on the website to see if those goals are up there are they up there i look to I look today but you know what i'm going to tell you what my interpretation of what that list would
look like and it would only be one thing fire the superintendent because that's all I've heard about since I've been watching these meetings now I didn't come here to talk about ethics in my office at home i have 11 or 12 packets for all of you guys in rebuttal to Miss
Kazmple's statement about our ethics case back in May of 2022 I stood before the board of education and I told you that I was filing the first and only ethics complaint I ever filed in my life and I did it on behalf of three district
employees that had um been what I considered defamed or affected by the reading of personnel information between um of a between a text message between Connie Baker and Julie Kazmple and it was defamatory to those people and it
was absolutely uncalled for it was unboard related and they used the deis to do it and when I talked about filing that complaint I told you exactly what three ethics violations were committed that was May of 2022 when I filed the ethics case five out of six counts were
um transferred by the school ethics commission or what you hear we talk about the SEC and the SEC sent a report that Miss Kazmple and myself and it had a resolution like you guys approved where the SEC voted to move that case to
the office of administrative law which is the O miss Gazle for three years came up to this podium and sat over there and said no probable cause was found in that case that's a lie there's no other way to say it
then she said for years the case has been dismissed we heard it before she ran for re-election we've heard it on both sides of Deis the case has never been dismissed it's still not dismissed but last meeting she said it was dismissed she also said it was no big
deal in one of the one of the three she was found guilty of a third of the ethics components of the state ethics code for board members by the judge at the OIL a third one of those that bothers me the most is failure to protect school
personnel so when you have leadership that thinks it's no big deal to fail to protect school personnel and then you have another board member pass or submit her own organizational chart to this acting superintendent with list of names
employees their salaries what jobs are being collapsed and then I sit here and listen to the discussion and I hear and I don't want to misquote anybody we did not distribute it as if it doesn't exist it exists because Jack McGee received it
and you know what in that case Jack McGee is going to testify jack's a man of integrity i've never had a discussion with him i didn't know about this but I guarantee you Jack's going to talk about what the hell happened with that organizational chart who gave it to him who else talked to him about it so when
you sit up there and say it doesn't exist because we weren't going to use it you affected school personnel the same exact provisions Miss Kazmple was found to have violated in my ethics complaint and you've got people sitting in this room whose names were on that list whose
jobs were cut you don't think that's problematic now I don't get and I wouldn't stand up here and say this i actually had all that stuff to show you because I come with charts and graphs to take a position on something that was important to me because nobody if I said
to you all of you guys out there someone was going to read a text message about you not being tenured and about your wife in the district and about your performance right and all the it's about your job all of your jobs and you're going to watch that on television what I
want you to do is put your name in that spot and then think about what it was like to go back to work the next day thank you Mrs murphy randy Williams said it's okay hi again um I want to say stop with the whole Facebook stuff you guys have been
spending way too much time on it more time than what we really need to be addressing and we're not going to get off Facebook the stuff's not going to go away we're going to keep paying attention to what's going on so I do want to address with the raising of the taxes is just a quick fix you said "Oh
we're allowed just because we're allowed doesn't mean we should have raised it." Um I'd like to see is where can we see the line item breakdowns of all expenses like all the way down to the pennies that it's being spent it should be accessible so when can we see it where
can we see it and if we can't why can't we if it's our money um are we taking advantage of any additional grants does the board actively look for new grants there's so much money out there are you guys doing
anything is anybody looking at that does somebody actively look at that often audits what's the stat with the audit what's the status is it finished if so when and where can we see it is that going to be public there's just a
lot of secrecy like this is our money but yet we're not allowed to know anything and I want to address that our kids are not getting a quality education and that's no fault of the teachers at all the teachers I keep hearing come up here and they're begging you guys for
help uh what is the board doing to help them i just keep hearing all these other excuses and fighting but every teacher that comes up here they are begging for help but you never address it and it doesn't seem like nothing's being done like are the policies being
changed for example the dress code someone mentioned attendance scoring discipline scoring was a big factor in the last meeting everybody kept complaining about what are you guys doing it just feels like the teachers are so stressed out and that really does
affect our kids even if you don't want to believe that and I also want to understand is like school used to be so much fun to learn like we it used to be really engaging activities field trips experiments assemblies it doesn't feel like that with my son like he's starting to hate school it's just like you pack
so much stuff in there because the teachers have to get so much stuff done and then you mentioned I just this is the first time hearing this is you're cutting kindergarten Snapchat that's why that's really important like I when
my kid went to the Snapchat and then when I had the meeting with the teachers they were able to like just tell me like this is where your kid scored this is what he's doing d Why would we take that away pat I just want to address that your pos all the information that you
were just saying about how um you guys should vote and uh the position of what you're saying the position that you take i'd like to see it sounds like a good idea but I'd like you to take the lead then like all that whole speech that you gave to us do
something about it then you're saying it it's great you guys get up here and you say things just to take the heat off of you do something about it show us you're listening be transparent like you're just ignoring it feels like you're ignoring us that's what it is it's like you don't want to pay attention because
you know you it's not your problem because you're not paid it's the role that you fought for so show us that you're listening and really take the teacher seriously thank you terry Shear hello uh first uh I'll just repeat the
question it doesn't seem to have been addressed um what was the reason behind the suspension of the uh policy for um our solicitor to act as both on the negotiation committee as well as our board solicitor is that going to be a
permanent change going forward and was that discussed um I'm really appreciative of the people who come in this room uh I'm happy to see some new faces who are also tired of the negativity um and I understand that it is a very frustrating process as a
parent to try and learn the facts i come here week after week month after month i participate i make open requests i try and talk to board members and I try and respectfully come up here and talk about process and actual facts rather than rumors however um I think it's
irresponsible to continue to um talk about frustrations in social media when there's an absolute vacuum of truth and communication coming from the board of education i've come here meeting after meeting volunteering not only myself but speaking for parents who are don't have
the luxury and the opportunity to come here that would happily participate in engaging with the board and presenting the facts so I can respect that um you are all most of you out there are all volunteers and are doing the business of the board and don't necessarily have
time um for you know duties as assigned if you will um but there are people who are willing to engage and are trying to do so um respectfully and engage in the facts so I would appreciate if we can move forward with some of those things because I think um to several board
members points up here um while I am very concerned about the tax increasing votes I'm concerned about um the ethics violations I could really rather not talk about that ever again i'm sure as many of you up there would rather not have to talk through those things again
as well um I see us here next April talking about the same thing i think it's going to be substantially worse and we're just like last year not doing anything to proactively address it thank you Nicole Lenudi um earlier this meeting uh Julie you had
mentioned that Janine had to find emergency money um isn't staff leaving and the non-compliance of our district an emergency aren't students unfulfilled IEPs an emergency staff being pushed to
5.7 hours with no benefits that they're begging you for how is that not an emergency these children are our these individuals are our children's right hands with the most disrespectful pay scale and that has never been seen as an
emergency did anyone ever listen to the support staff when they came up here they have emergencies they have for years burch's housing MD at 62% staffing how is that not an emergency my kid among others missing 90% of
extracurriculars that she is so very deserving of how is that not an emergency how is fixing your ethics and personal agendas an emergency over our children and our support staff staff and parents have begged for
help where was this emergency money at that time your director of special ed resigned why she's phenomenal melissa Shia is on the agenda tonight and you approved for her to resign she is
irreplaceable why are these people leaving why has much of our support staff left why is Burches at 62% have any of you cared enough about why and how it got to this point are people like this leaving not an
emergency is anyone worried about who's going to follow and how many people are going to follow do you have a plan for when that happens it is not an if you have no plan for the budget you have no plan coming up what is the plan when
more people leave because of this i said in a previous meeting you're bound to lose staff because of budget cuts and poor previous planning what are you doing about the staff that you're losing that's not even affected by budget cuts you can't lose
both mr trash you made a great point listen to the ones on the front lines why did no one listen to our special ed staff and support staff as they begged for help over and over julie you said listen to the teachers did anyone go back and watch rewatch Michelle May beg
for help at the last meeting did anyone look into anything that she said did anybody look into anything that any of this support staff or any of these parents have previously said when are people going to listen to
parents and residents too teachers are important and so are we what about all the people that don't come to this podium and look into why they don't come to this podium parents for years have been made to feel as a problem when they fight for their kids
they are our children it is our job to fight for them do you know what it's like any of you sitting up there to have a child that you have to fight for every day in every capacity medical school their daily rights do any of you know
what that's like it's exhausting and parents are always made to feel wrong to be an annoyance and that they don't know what's best for their own child the other people that know what's best for these children are support staff and
these teachers and many of us has been blatantly lied to and disrespected on multiple levels and apparently it's not just parents because now you're losing great staff too what is going to happen in this in the future of this district if this
continues what's going to happen when more people leave are you going to push our kids out of district because I will tell you right now today it's not happening to my child you will provide for her what she needs in this district i respect all teachers and in
all capacities and I was an educator myself for many years but it's an important job to be a parent and fight for your child too it's very hard in this day in this district to know what's truth what's not truth what's rumors what's for your own
agenda all of you up here do it teachers are split you hear very strong opinions from teachers at this podium there are strong opinions opposing that on the other side that don't speak care for a reason how are we as parents supposed to know which side is right they're both
valid but for different reasons they're not invalidated the other side that's not here is not invalidated they both feel a certain way for for a reason but as a parent and residents hearing both sides of it who do we
believe for you guys fighting with each other who do we believe none of this however gives any of us any light at the end of the tunnel that any of this is going to help our children thank you Heather Qua
i'm Heather Qua i am a parent of two graduates in the district and I have one still in district in the middle school and I've I've been watching the meetings and debating about whether or not to come up here and speak and I feel that I
it was time you were elected here to represent the district parents and act in their best interests several of you have shown that you can work for the betterment of the district but I can't say that for all of you up there people come up here to the podium
and ask questions that go unanswered questions around the budget you know why programs are being replaced there are no answers right now the district needs stability and several of you clearly have no interest in providing that for
our children as per your job you're only responsible for the position of the superintendent in acting in the best interest of this district to interfere in any other position is overstepping your duty as an elected official we are bleeding
valuable people from this district the special education department is losing one of its best employees with Melissa Chel leaving she's not the only one i certainly hope none of you would
have to have a child that's in special ed or needs special ed services you know put yourself in our shoes and see what we have to deal with on a day-to-day basis we're losing the director of special ed who has been in
her position less than nine months nine months before that we were without a special director of special education and Miss Miller was having to do both positions at one time she is one person she should not have to hold more than
one position and now you've added a third one with her stepping in as superintendent of the district she is one person you cannot force her into three different positions without something getting lost along the
way she should not have to do that it brings major red flags when you can't hold on to somebody who was brought in to serve the district for less than a year so my questions are how are we the
public supposed to trust that you have our children's best interests in mind when you're up there making decisions what is the plan to address the needs of our special education teachers and other teachers who are coming up here with complaints that there's discipline issues and other
issues going on in the classroom how quickly are you going to be able to find replacements to replace some of these teachers and some of the upper level administration staff that are leaving because honestly who would want to come and work for a district where the board can't work
together for those of you that are not here for the kids and for the betterment of our district when will you step down and allow somebody else to take your place on the board to work for the betterment of our children james
Msadi all right uh so before I kind of dive into some of my data here I was definitely curious what our process is in the district for coming up with the budget like when does that process start that we start building it um so I' I'd
love for some information about that because again I was involved with the community task force we started meeting in the the call was put out in the summer um Janine shared with us in our first meeting that we had a projected $1 million shortfall and the fact that we're still here i just don't know when
we actually were working on the budget process when I especially when here Janine's been having to burn the midnight oil trying to get there um going to share some unpopular opinions perhaps uh as I also present some some facts i mentioned earlier we're the 34th largest school district in the state of
New Jersey when it comes to uh our overall spending per pupil we rank 398 out of 570 school districts in the state administrator costs we rank 371 out of 570 classroom salaries
463 support salaries 307 operational cost 417 extracurricular activities 216 equipment cost 289 and legal cost 285 we have the best ranking in our legal costs not probably where we want to rank well when it comes to our ratios uh our
teacher to student ratio is 11.92 that ranks right around the average for the state of New Jersey administrators 297 students per administrator puts us uh well above the average of 200 students per administrator and support staff of 72 uh students per support staff
professional is higher than the state average of 67 when you compare us against the 14 other school districts that have between 7,000 and 8,000 students in their district we have one of the we are the ninth ranked in overall academic
performance and we are among the lowest in faculty and administrator ratios uh across those 14 peer groups one of the things I would like to also point out when we look at the uh revenue for those same 14 districts that are of similar
size is that they average uh tax levy uh across those 14 districts is 66% of their total budget washington Township only has 57% of its budget coming from the tax levy so by comparison uh many
other districts uh the largest of those uh would be I believe uh Wayne Township has 90% of its entire budget coming from their tax levy so I understand that we have a budget shortfall uh a significant one and that we definitely need to look
into it um and when you look at our spending uh across all of the criteria uh I pulled the budget data every single line item again not the detailed but the way it gets rolled up into the state and when you look at where we spend our money on a percentage basis we are on par with every one of those 14 districts
as well as all of the districts in Gloucester County and in um southern New Jersey when you compare against Camden and G and Burlington counties as well the one exception is our um benefits costs we are about 4% higher than average on benefits so I think there's
an area to figure out why other districts of our size and in our region are able to keep their benefits costs uh lower than where we are but there's been a lot of talk obviously of of the impact to the uh faculty to the administration
the conflicts that are there um and there's a lot of data publicly available from the state that says we need to invest more money into our staff we need to invest more money into our administration uh and that in general we need to have more money to do that we are in a position where we're forced to
have to raise taxes but there are other ways to raise revenue for the district that I think as Mr baldacero alluded to you know where is the five-year plan what are we looking at where does this budget process start and how do we try to get ahead of this not to benefit the
taxpayers i am one of those and certainly I would love to not have my taxes go up that sounds fantastic i don't think anybody voluntarily just wants to sign up for 10% tax increases i do want to have a fantastic school district you know for and and I want
teachers who feel supportive and have the resources they need in their classrooms so there's a lot of opportunity to you know not only improve what I talked on you know when I first came up but the the financial where we're putting our money
again needs to be really looked at because it's not into our administration it's not into our teachers um you know it's it's into legal costs it's into equipment costs it's into extracurricular costs and those are all very important things but there's um you
know I think the $10 million is needed but I think we can't neglect the fact that there is public sentiment that needs to be addressed so thank you Carrie Capio i have a whole speech prepared that I
may deviate from i heard a few members say that they were not okay with approving the budget or the the tax levy because of what it could potentially mean in what is being cut we don't know what's being cut
i'm here as a parent of a student in the emotional support program if you're not aware of what this program is it was the unbudsman program that was cut last year i do not know if this program will be cut again this
year the program has done wonderful things for the students it is teaching more than what any more than what any standardized test can teach them mr dillio we had a call on Friday you're aware of my concerns the support
staff that were promised to this program are being moved out there is no consistency the counseling program that was supposed to be in school the contract was discontinued in January they had another counselor they can
offer the social worker that was part of the program has now been moved out of the school not she has other job responsibilities in another school they brought in another social worker to fulfill the job duties because
consistency in the I I apologize i forget what was said but the consistency in the service versus consistency in the staff is more important to kids that are an emotionally support
program this is not to take away from the the special education programs and the needs that they have you need to be have consistent staff for these kids in our special ed programs in our emotional support programs and our behavior
support programs does anybody in the board I I just I'm going to leave with has anybody in the board even made aware of what this program looks like and what it's capable of i ask you to please educate yourself in
what these programs are doing for the kids that are enrolled thank you can I have a motion to close to the public motion second second all in favor um can I have a motion to adjurnn motion
second second all in favor hi i